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Feb. 15, 2008 - No Agenda
01:10:30
17: Gold Toe Socks
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Time Text
Well, it is time for the program that comes from two different parts of the world.
They've got a lot.
They're lacking a lot.
Oh man, it's the worst intro I've ever done.
No jingles, no commercials.
Maybe in a phone call here or there, but still, it's no agenda.
Coming to you from the United Kingdom in the Curry Manor, I'm Adam Curry.
I'm from the United States of America, Northern California, where it's going to be another beautiful 70 degrees out of February.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
And I can't pretend, John, I can't pretend that we didn't just start the whole show over again because something went wrong with the recording.
I just got to let everyone go up front.
Yeah, you put a new rig together and apparently the thing's a junker.
Well, it's not, but when you're on the cutting edge of technology, and that's essentially exactly where I live.
Yeah, of course you get cut all the time, because I'm living on the edge of what software can do with the hardware available, and it's so close, and yet so far away.
And I'm getting better, but you said it sounded like I had a loose wire, but it's not.
It's the software breaking up and...
The CPU load is going up.
Something is dragging down system resource.
I don't know what the hell is going on, but it's upsetting to say the least.
Yeah, I got a...
Well, my rig, as it were, is just...
It looks like a rat's nest.
You mean with wires and shit?
Oh, there's wires everywhere.
There's stuff on the floor.
I can't even vacuum in here because it'll suck the wires up and then disconnect something.
It's just a mess.
I found part of the problem.
I don't know what to do.
Part of the problem is Firefox sucking up resources.
Have you tried Firefox 3?
I need a browser during the show, don't I? No, I don't think so.
Yeah, when we're talking about stuff, I want to be able to bring up a web page.
You just got to be careful that Firefox doesn't lock onto one of those sites that starts, you know, where it's...
I've had situations where I've killed Firefox, and this machine's still grinding away, and then I go look at the task manager with the Control-Alt-Delete, and Firefox appears to still be running.
It's still running, yeah.
I've had that happen.
Doing what?
Hell if I know, man.
Didn't they come out with a new version?
Version 3?
Yeah, they did.
I love that.
That was straight from the heart, John.
Luckily, they upgraded to Beta 3, which is a little better.
But it still has this weird problem, which gives you an error message.
I blog this, I believe.
It says, dvorak.org slash blog.
It says...
We are going from an encrypted page or secure whatever it is page to an unencrypted page.
It gives you a big message.
Is that okay?
And then it asks you if you want to always be informed about this.
And you say no?
No, it doesn't give you the no option.
Huh?
It just asks you if you want to affirm what they're already doing which is interrupting your session.
But can't you get rid of that?
I swear to God.
Can't you get rid of it?
No.
You're kidding me.
Hmm.
Anyway, so I don't know what they're thinking.
So we talked about Valentine's Day briefly when we started off the original show.
This was the show part of the show everyone would miss.
It was actually quite good.
Maybe the best stuff we've ever done.
But it's gone now.
Sorry.
It's gone forever.
History.
You did ask about Valentine's Day.
You implied that I was a big stick in the mud and probably wouldn't take part in this phony baloney holiday because I'm a cynic.
Yes.
But I told you that I did take part, which I did, by sending an SMS message to my wife.
Because it was the biggest, it was a world record breaking day for SMS messages as predicted by the phone companies.
Something like 2.5 billion messages were sent on Valentine's Day.
I think that's a sign of the times and probably a good thing.
Although effectively it's reduced spending because now you get away with sending a text message instead of the traditional flowers and chocolates.
Well, you know.
Or as I did, I took my wife to the arena tour of Dancing with the Stars.
What?
What is that?
You know Dancing with the Stars, the TV show?
Yeah.
In the UK, it's called Strictly Come Dancing, where the format originated.
And they have an arena tour with a couple of the celebrity couples and a couple of the judges who are normally on the TV show.
And they basically do the TV show in an arena.
It's pretty entertaining.
It's actually entertaining?
You don't just feel like a schmuck sitting there watching people dance?
Well, no, but I got into the show.
I like watching people dance.
It's fun.
If there wasn't such a height difference between Patricia and I, we would go dancing together, I'm sure.
Huh?
Yeah, you don't dance, huh?
No, I like to dance.
I'm a natural.
How's your posse doble, John?
When I was a kid, the difference is, I mean, I don't do a lot of dancing, obviously, but when I was a kid, we used to be required in grammar school to learn to dance.
It was like one of these things that they don't teach kids anymore.
They don't teach kids.
The kind of the stuff that people miss out on is, when we were kids, we were taught how to balance checkbooks, we were taught civics and ethics.
Hell yeah, how to type.
We were taught how to type.
We were taught penmanship.
We were taught how to dance.
And one of the things about the dancing was we learned everything from square dancing.
It was like a whole year of square dancing.
Square dancing, tango, mambo, everything except free-form rock and roll dancing, which was some sort of a horrible thing to them.
So you'd learn all this stuff in school.
I don't know.
They don't do that anymore.
Now there's a lot of stuff they don't do anymore in that regard.
We used to have a gym class every day.
You'd have to run around.
They still have gym classes in school.
They don't have it every day in a lot of these schools.
The kids don't get enough of a workout.
And music lessons?
We had music lessons.
I'm sure you had music lessons where you had to play like the recorder.
Yeah.
That was an option.
You could.
And there's a lot of kids who did.
But nowadays, half the music departments don't even have them anymore.
Well, of course.
I don't even know what the point of it is.
Why do they even send these kids to school?
Well, no.
The Department of Education wants to keep us dumb, John.
You know that.
That's the main thrust here.
So, one of the things that people missed out on, we were talking about, actually we'll do this when it's more natural, but we're talking about morning radio, and you brought up the fact that you didn't realize that Dennis Miller was a right-wing talk show host.
Now, I made the comment, I think I kind of realized that he was definitely not left-wing, but wasn't he on Air America for a while?
I don't think he ever was on Air America.
I thought he did the morning show and then he spun that off into syndication.
Well, that's a possibility because nobody listened to Air America because it was dreadful.
I mean, they didn't get it.
And some of it was horribly weird.
I mean, I listen to all these different things, but...
Air America was just like, except for there was one woman I think that was a standout, and I can't remember her name, and she was somewhat entertaining, but everybody else was fawning out over each other, they were politically correct, they were gushing over each other, it was pathetic.
Oh, I hate that.
Yeah, that doesn't work.
So anyway, I wanted to talk about one thing this week.
I mean, I don't try to make a list normally, but since I was waiting because you were uploading daily source code...
Yeah, and trying to fix this piece of shit setup that sounds like crap and is going to make us unhappy with the actual show.
Yes.
It doesn't sound that bad.
Anyway, so when I was in New York the last time, and since I was sitting here waiting, I decided to do a little research on this.
So when I was in New York last week, or a couple weeks ago, I went to the place I always go when I'm in New York, which is in Manhattan specifically, which is a Century 21 department store downtown.
Oh, I love that place.
You can get all kinds of brand name clothing really cheap.
True or not.
True or not.
Century 21.
You're from Long Island the way you were delivering that.
But it's true.
Yeah, no, it's absolutely true.
It's an amazing place.
Anyway, so I'm going through there.
And one of the things I always do, they have a lot of collectible ties, dirt cheap from big designers.
And I have a tie collection even though I don't use it much nowadays because ties are not in there.
So I'm walking by to leave, and then there's the socks.
I said, you know, I could use some more socks.
And I was looking at, they have this gold toe, which is this big brand of socks all over the U.S. Yeah, that's the sock to have, man.
Gold toe.
Gotta have it.
And they had cashmere, a three-pack of cashmere gold toes for like $4 for three pair, and it was marked down from like $50 or something.
Yeah, baby!
So I said, wow, I got to buy these.
So I bought a set.
And of course, now I realize why they were marked down to $4.
Were they irregulars or messed up?
No.
In fact, I have them on now.
This is what brought it to mind.
They're really soft.
And if you stick your hand into a pile of socks, you can literally find these socks by feel alone.
Yeah.
Except that when you put them on, because of the nature of cashmere, it doesn't have any structure.
And so the sock basically falls apart on your foot, and it's like they're upside down within just a couple of minutes.
They're not snug.
They can't stay there.
It's a disaster.
Oh, man.
But in the process, since I was waiting for you to finish Daily Source Code, I was saying Gold Toast.
What is the history of this company?
It's apparently a company that was the great American knitting mills, and they started making socks before the Depression.
They still make these gold-toed socks in North Carolina.
They're not a Chinese product, and I realize it's one of the last things we still make in this country are socks.
Socks.
We make ammo and socks, everybody.
That's our claim to fame.
We make jets, we make bombs, and we make socks.
And I couldn't find any evidence that they have outsourced these sock-making, and they've actually expanded somewhat.
Well, the sock business, you know, it's like, what was the line?
Plastic, son.
That's the future.
Well, socks apparently are too.
But anyway, so their gold toe is really an outstanding product, I think.
Because I realize that most of my socks, probably 90% of them are black gold toe socks.
And sometimes there's a mix and match problem because they do have longer ones and shorter ones and some that are slightly different combination of fabrics.
Now, do you do your own laundry?
Do you wash your own socks?
Generally speaking, yes.
Except sometimes if a bunch of laundry gets backed up, there's a couple of services that I just pile everything into a truck and drop it off there and then I get it all sorted.
Because you know what happens with the socks, of course, anybody knows, especially if you do your own laundry, is that you end up with...
I have a box of about 150 single socks that have no mate.
Exactly.
This is where I was going.
Because whenever I come back from San Francisco, or almost every single time, I do the laundry.
Because that really scores big here at home.
And, man, those socks, it's like you've got to have a spot where you can lay them all out.
You can look at them.
Because I'm a little colorblind.
And it's hard, man.
It's hard to find the matches.
And then always, it's like, wait a minute.
I'm fucking missing one.
Yeah, but every laundry is like...
Well, I won't go into the where did the sock go routine, but...
Well, that's the thing that's cool about gold toes is that you just keep buying them.
Costco has them.
And you just keep buying them and buying them.
And then pretty soon, yeah, okay, so I'm missing a lot of socks, but I have a lot of combinations of the same two gold toes that happen to be black and...
And, you know, eventually, I mean, but still, I'm still tempted, unfortunately, to, like, especially when I'm at Century 21, I go by, like, there'd be, like, the sock rack, and there'd be, like, a really cool-looking pair of socks that are made by, you know, some designer, Donna Karan.
And so you grab the pair, because, oh, these are cool, and you wear them a couple times, and then you always lose one of the two, and that's the end of it, you know, and this one sock is just as loner.
And then the worst part is, is that one sock gets into one batch of laundry, and the other sock gets into another batch of laundry, and for some reason...
Yeah, they're out of sync.
They're out of sync.
They're out of sync because one of them soaked up some color from one of the batches and you hold the two of them up.
They don't even look the same anymore.
It's like, you know, this is a dilemma of modern life.
Yeah.
Fuck, I hate it.
No, really.
I wish I could just have all the same socks and it wouldn't make any difference.
Well, you know, just buy Goldtoes.
So anyway, I was thinking about that and you can go to goldtoes.com if you want to look at the history of this company.
And I also found that they had sued some...
They were one of the first companies that had sued...
In 2000, they sued gold-toes.com and some other derivative name through Icon, the internet naming guys, and won one of the first cases of beating a squatter out of the name because it wasn't theirs to have.
Well, what's the address?
It's not goldtoes.com.
Try goldtoe.com then.
Goldtoe.
I can't believe I'm actually doing this.
Oh, there you go.
Enlighten your feet.
Now, 25% off.
Now, I'm reminded...
I'm going to take the conversation off in this direction because of the underwear.
But I'm reminded...
The first time I went to England was in 1973.
And I met somebody on the Dunkirk Ferry, actually, who I was hanging out with, this girl.
And she turned me on to the concept, and then I checked it out from other people, that the place to get underwear, specifically briefs, was Marks & Spencer, which for some reason is called which for some reason is called Marks & Sparks as a diminutive, and I don't have any idea where that comes from.
But anyway, that's what the locals call it.
Yeah, that's what we call it here, Marks & Sparks.
It rhymes, that's why.
Well, whatever the case, it's a huge chain, and I don't think the quality is what it was back in the 70s, by the way.
But anyway, you could buy this underwear, briefs, and I wore briefs as opposed to boxer shorts.
That was information I really didn't need.
They're made with Egyptian cotton, and the stuff is unbelievable.
Now, over the years, they've expanded, and you can find some of these briefs that aren't made with Egyptian cotton, although the Israeli stuff looks pretty good.
But there's stuff I've seen now from all over the place, and some of the bands break.
The quality has gone way downhill.
But back in the 70s when they were at the peak of their quality time, they also had a T-shirts that they sold specifically, and they don't do this anymore by the way, you can't find this anymore that I know of.
They had wool T-shirts.
Yeah.
Now I bought a couple of them.
I still have them, they're still, you wouldn't even know they're this old.
It was an unbelievable product.
I think if they kept making wool t-shirts, the t-shirt business, there wouldn't be a t-shirt business because these things, I guess, can go 50, 60 years without wearing out.
It's an unbelievable product.
Well, yeah, but you know, I hate to do it to you, but that's all part of the consumption theory, John.
We've got to make products that break early.
Hence, t-shirts made of cotton.
Right, but the point is that they used to make a product that didn't break at all.
That was no good.
And the underwear, for that matter.
You know, some of that underwear from that, I mean, was just amazing.
I mean, the stuff would just last forever.
And now, of course, you know, the stuff is...
Made in India, it's not as good.
When Ron and I had our previous company, Think New Ideas, we were part of a bunch of agencies that launched the new Gillette Mach 3 Razor.
They had this huge briefing at Gillette headquarters and all the agencies were there.
They showed the pack, the product pack and all this stuff.
Stuff that you really don't care about too much because we just wanted to build a cool website.
With some flash animation.
But at one point, they talked about the blades because they had this new diamond-encrusted platinum something or other.
And someone, basically in this auditorium, one of the people at the agency said, Oh, so we can talk about these blades and how much better they are and the longer they last.
And it was like, boom, complete silence.
And then the chief marketing officer of Gillette says, We never do.
Ever, ever talk about how long our blades last.
We have a nice little colored strip on top, which could be an indication for you as to when you might want to get a new blade, but we never, ever talk about how long the blades last.
And I know people who have used the same blade for years, but have never gotten a replacement, and it still kind of works.
Well, you know, there used to be, kind of in the folklore of the consumer world, a belief, and I think it may be true, that when they come out with a new razor, whether it's Schick or Gillette or whomever, the razor you get when the new one comes out is so sharp that you could use it probably forever, and it's the replacement blades that they start to dull.
I've heard that.
They just turn down the knob, and they make them less and less sharp so they don't work as long to get people to go to the next new razor.
So I generally only buy – I usually buy complete replacements.
So I buy the razor with a couple of blades brand new, and I believe – I could be wrong, but I believe that those blades and that razor – Brand new are going to last longer than buying replacement blades for any of the razors, even though it costs maybe two or three bucks more to get another razor.
So I ended up throwing a lot of razors out.
So what kind of razor do you use?
Right now I'm using the Gillette, the one with the four things and that little trimmer deal.
Oh, that's the five-bladed deal.
It's got, yeah, it's got a million blades on it.
And that's the one that vibrates, or do you get the non-vibrating kind?
No, the vibrating one just seemed kind of creepy to me.
I didn't get that.
It works for me.
I really think there's a difference.
Do you use a little vibrator?
John, that's my job, man.
Who's making the jokes around here, huh?
Goddammit.
Hey, Adam.
This is Matej Golob, or English version, Matthew Pijin, calling from Slovenia.
I'm listening to DSC and No Agenda, and the last time you had No Agenda with John C. Dvorak, you made me really laugh.
Actually, he did.
He was commenting about Slovenia and how we eat shitload of horses here.
And actually, it's true to a certain extent.
And where we eat a lot of it, and yes, we don't talk a lot about it, unless on pot shows such as yours.
You know that each city has sort of a fast food thing that you go after clubbing, like late Saturday night, early Sunday morning, like a kebab or something?
Well, in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, we have a thing called Hot Horse.
And it's actually the thing where all the clubbers end up at 5, 6, 7 a.m.
And you guess from the name what they're serving.
Hot Horse?
Anyway, 31...
I loved it.
Hot Horse.
There's an actual fast food joint called Hot Horse where they sell horse meat in a pita bread.
You know, I may have been there and they said to me, hey, John, we're going to go clubbing and afterwards we're going to get some hot horse.
Oh, you misunderstood.
You're like, yeah, now you're talking, baby.
So I was a little surprised and dismayed.
So the other thing I want to mention about Slovenia, since we have the one listener, and I find this to be kind of interesting.
Actually, Slovenia and lots of parts of Croatia, most of that Adriatic area.
What's notable when you're driving around the area is the number of chickens that are just out and about.
I guess they don't quite have the same kind of predators out there that we might have here.
But it's interesting to me that they have all these chickens.
We have chickens up in Washington, and we've actually had chickens in the Bay Area.
You can have chickens legally.
And chicken eggs that are made from chickens that are just roaming around the yard are astonishingly delicious.
And they taste like a real egg.
And it's amazing chickens can crank out this many eggs.
But it seems to me that the Slovenians in particular must eat a lot of eggs because those chickens, they're all around.
But then they obviously go home to roost at night, and then they lay eggs all over the place, I would think.
But I thought it was just cool to just see nothing but everybody's chickens.
There's no fences around a lot of their places at all.
And there's just chickens everywhere.
You drive along the road, there'll be chickens everywhere.
It's pretty funny.
Well, I've never been to Slovenia, but...
Oh, you'd love it.
Certainly sounds like a good place to go for chickens and horse.
Fucking horse.
But actually, what they have there that's pretty astonishing is pastries.
I don't think there's a...
What were you doing in Slovenia, John?
Why the hell were you there?
Yeah, I've actually been through Slovenia a few times because I write for Bug Magazine in Croatia, for one thing, and so that's on the other side of Slovenia, so you really can't get there on the train without going through Slovenia.
But the first time I went there was when PC Magazine had a licensee in Slovenia because the guys in Croatia had lost the license, and PC Magazine sold it to this publishing company in Slovenia, and I went there for the party that they were rolling out.
And so I got to, you know, kind of party, as it were, in Slovenia.
With a hot hose.
Meanwhile, of course, because of that, the Bug magazine could hire me because there was no licensee in Croatia, so I ended up getting kind of another gig there.
So meanwhile, I made pretty good friends.
And Croatia is another place if people want to go to a vacation.
Just a dream come true vacation spot.
Wow, that country is unbelievable.
I've heard that.
Actually, we're thinking of going to Turkey next time we go on vacation.
Yeah, I've been there too.
Turkey is getting a little rough, it seems to me.
Really?
Although for you, it might not be so much.
In Istanbul, there's a Four Seasons.
Oh, as long as there's a Four Seasons and a Marks and Sparks nearby, we're set.
Not a problem.
So you could go to the Four Seasons and kind of enjoy it from that perspective.
I don't know.
I don't know when I could go.
By the way, you're going to buy a couple of rugs, so get ready.
No, no, no, no.
I went to Iraq, same thing.
I didn't buy any rugs.
They got plenty of them for sale.
Yeah, no, they got tons of them for sale.
I bought two rugs when I was in Turkey.
And what was interesting about it, and by the way, the rug salesmen follow you over here.
That's how aggressive they are.
What?
Literally, they follow you.
I get called once a year from one of the rug companies over in Turkey that they come to the U.S. They got a storehouse somewhere outside of Beverly Hills and they drive a truck around to all their customers and they pastor you to buy more rugs.
It's unbelievable.
How many rugs do you need?
Crazy.
It's pretty funny.
But the weird thing is that they can fold these rugs up and put them in these weird little suitcases that you can carry on the plane because that's the way you want to bring the rug back by hand carry-on.
Oh, man.
You know you're just asking for trouble with today's security measures.
You check it.
It's checked luggage.
Yeah, so?
You don't have a problem.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, maybe.
I will.
I can't wait, by the way.
Monday is my time again.
Oh, yeah, right.
You're coming back, so you're going to go through another process.
But you're coming into San Francisco again, right?
Yeah, which is always the easier airport.
But you know I'm going to get stopped.
You know I'm going to get the W or the M or whatever the hell it is.
Yeah, well, why don't you not go to San Francisco?
Why don't you fly into L.A. and then come up?
Yeah, I don't think so.
We're going to L.A. I think a website describing the different airport entry procedures would be cool.
That's actually not a bad idea.
Yeah, and it would tell people what to avoid.
And it would be nice if you could surreptitiously take pictures of people, but they'd throw you out if you do that.
But I was always told by rule, do not go to the woman customs officer or passport officer.
Just don't do it.
Never go to the woman.
There aren't that many in San Francisco.
I think it's mainly guys.
There may be one or two women, but I think it's all guys.
Yeah, I think San Francisco's not at issue, but there's some place where there's quite a few women.
And the rule is do not go to the women.
And the reason is because they go by the book more than the men do.
That's a pretty generous statement.
I'm just telling you what I'm told.
I don't necessarily agree with it.
Oh, okay.
But I don't go to the women.
You're reliably informed.
Just to be on the safe side.
Mm-hmm.
Alright, so I got my stuff out of the way.
I got the chicken story.
I needed to get that out of the way.
That was important.
I didn't get to do my Top 40 thing again.
You mean the voice?
Yeah.
It's alright.
I don't want to do the voice.
When you hear the show, you're going to hear how shitty this sounds.
And it's just pissing me off.
I can't even concentrate on doing the show.
Because I'm hearing all this crackling.
And I don't know where it's coming from.
And I don't understand it.
Why did you change your gear?
Because I'm tired of having to have a second, you know, like two laptops.
One to work on, which is the Mac, and then the only thing that was really reliable up until now was Cast Blaster, and I had to have a secondary, you know, like Windows.
Yeah, I know I can run Parallels or Boot Camp or all that crap, but I just wanted it all in one, and I wanted...
You know, I wanted something where the processing is in the computer.
Cast Blaster doesn't have that.
You have to, you know, there's no digital processing.
For this very reason, of course, because it always starts to mysteriously, I don't know, it could also be the hard drive.
You know how Mac hard drives can get sick if you use really big files a lot?
So you're telling me you're doing this, this is the first time we've done No Agenda on a Mac?
No, no, no, no.
We did it last time.
But then what's changed?
I don't know!
That's a big mystery.
It's stupefying.
Have you had an upgrade?
Because Apple had a couple of upgrades, I noticed, last week.
Oh, that's a good point, John.
Fuck.
It was this week, I think.
Oh, man.
Oh, dude.
Well, that's it, then.
How do I roll back?
How do I roll back an update?
I don't think I can.
You can do it on Windows?
You can roll back?
Yeah.
If you're John C. Dvorak, you can.
No, no, anyone can.
It's designed in.
I guess I could go to my time machine backup and restore, but that would be a whole week.
I wonder if that actually works to that extreme, where it actually takes the operating system and backs it up.
I don't think so.
But what's crazy, John, is I just did the daily source code, and everything was completely tuned and tweaked, and it was all perfect, and then we start doing this show, and it's all messed up.
I don't get it.
Maybe the daily source code contaminated the machine.
No.
And I'm seeing if it's...
Because I added you.
I'm seeing if that's it.
But...
No.
Daily source code contaminated the machine.
Fuck you.
That took you a while.
Wow.
That's how distracted I am.
This is really bugging me.
Why don't we put a stopwatch on you?
Alright, so I'm going to try and do Cranky Geeks with you on Wednesday.
Is that the deal for this week?
I would hope so.
Yeah, that would be good because we're going to have Leo.
It's currently scheduled and you should be on and that would be a very high level show.
I think that would be a fun show, yeah.
Unless you guys don't read the memo and don't read the news.
What do you mean?
I always come prepared.
I'll read the memo.
Well, you're the only one because I don't.
And Sebastian?
Sebastian's always on the show, right?
Yes, he's the number one go-to guy.
Okay, cool.
The show is an interesting structure for people who watch it.
I designed it specifically.
Well, I didn't completely design it from scratch, but I designed it to have less people because I've always felt that one of these types of talk shows that have a host and four people for half an hour, one person never gets to say anything.
Right.
And it also causes a weird dynamic because it's kind of unbalanced and so you don't get a free flow of information when you only have three people.
The banter can be a lot more aggressive.
And you've got a shill because Sebastian is essentially a shill.
Right.
The great thing is I really only have two people because Sebastian isn't really on the show.
He's the shill sidekick and the go-to guy, which is the tweak on this model.
And what makes it interesting as a tweak is that if you have two guests that are just duds, I've never actually had two complete duds, but I've had two questionable guests, Sebastian can literally, and myself, can carry the whole show.
And he can do it, and he knows when to do it.
And when you have two people that are extremely talkative, Sebastian knows to back off and let these guys go after each other or whatever they're doing.
So they have that one – so essentially it's a two-man show, a presenter, which would be me, and then essentially a co-host who appears to be a guest.
He's not really a guest.
He's a co-host, but he's presented as a guest.
And so you have this unusual model.
Well, now you've just ruined it for me.
Now the show is not going to be any more fun now that I know how it works.
I don't want to be on it now.
Screw that.
With your show.
There's no show that's ever done.
There's Sebastian the Shill.
I'll say, hey, John, thanks.
It's great to be on Cranky Geeks.
Leo, good to see you.
Hey, Sebastian the Shill.
Yeah.
Hey, how you doing, man?
Well, you know, every show has an underlying model that makes it work.
I mean, the show that we're doing here, No Agenda, the model is there is no model.
But that's unusual.
That only works with a couple of blowhards like ourselves who can, like, yak away about stupid stuff.
Well, speak for yourself.
You're the one that's been yakking throughout the entire show.
I can't get a word in edgewise.
Yeah, well, just because you're sitting there obsessing with your crappy rig there that you ruined.
Well, it's true that I ruined.
I'm just trying to carry it here.
There was some guy that called in and said you could set this up on Windows.
He did have this set up, including the virtual audio cables.
Yeah, I'll send it to you.
I've got to dig it up.
Good.
I don't know why I didn't send it to me.
So you two can have all this aggravation.
I just want someone to share it with.
I'll be doing it on Windows.
It won't be aggravating.
How does Leo do it?
Does Leo have a whole studio?
He has a whole professional studio, right?
He just plugs in Skype into his existing setup, I guess.
Have you ever seen it?
You know, I have to go up there because he owes me lunch.
He's been promising to take me to this two-star Michelin place up in Healdsburg.
Really?
And I've been wanting to go up there because this is apparently one of the best restaurants in California, but it's a little out of the way.
And so I want to go up there, and in the process, I want to see this studio and take some pictures of it and see what it is he is doing because I think he has a, I think it's got a, yeah, he's got a professional studio with a lot of gear.
Well, see, that's, for some reason, I've always wanted to just have it all contained in one box.
That's just, you know, I could build a whole studio here, but I don't.
I just want the little fucking box.
I just want it to work.
We've got all this, you know, audio is the last thing that people always think about in everything these days.
They don't give a shit.
Yeah, a lot of audio is bad.
And Apple's got some good things going on inside with their virtual devices and aggregate devices and all that.
But still, it's not enough horsepower going towards it.
I don't know.
I should be able to tweak that.
I just want it all to work in one.
Portable, man.
Under my arm, wherever I am, want to have the same setup, same sound, everything configured.
So I don't have to be like Leo.
Stuck at home.
Roger McGuinn has...
Something like that, because he's got one, I think he's using a laptop, a Toshiba or something.
I'm not sure, maybe he's moved to a Mac.
But he has a rig like that, and I think the ex-Rocker, oh man, Billy, whatever, Billy Idol.
Billy Idol?
They have these rigs.
I know Roger has this laptop with a little built-in mixer, and he takes a microphone and he floats around and records stuff.
I've made a study of this, John.
All of these things, right?
You've got these USB microphones and USB direct inboxes and everything.
All of them, you have to monitor.
So if you're recording just analog audio, so something coming out of your mouth or an analog instrument, The monitoring of it always occurs before it goes into the software, so you're basically hearing an unprocessed signal.
And then on the mix, and sometimes even because there's delay, these programs have special digital delays built in so it'll sync up because you were basically singing or playing your acoustic guitar along with a track and It was recorded like three milliseconds later than what you were actually hearing.
So there's all these tricks, and it works great for producing music, but when you actually want to process what you're saying at this very moment and listen to the process signal without a delay, which makes you talk funny, it almost can't be done.
I mean, I'm right on the edge of making it happen.
And for some reason, it worked earlier today, and now it doesn't.
And it's like milli...
Millimeters of CPU usage make all the difference.
I just can't figure it out.
No one's set up for this.
It's just not set up.
No one's ever really thought about what it will really take to make all of it work.
Okay.
I know you're sad.
I know you're sad for me.
So I'm glad you got that off your chest.
Hey, was there anything from the Barcelona conference?
Yeah, there was one piece of news that I reported on.
Was there anything good?
Well, there was one piece of news that I reported on tech5.podshow.com.
Figured I'd get some plugs in.
Apparently, Motorola was such a big disappointment that the European press just ragged on them endlessly.
Really?
They had nothing.
This is not a good situation.
Motorola, for some unknown reason, just seemed to have fallen off the...
You know, they had...
Ed Zander came in there and took credit for the Razor, but it looks like that was on the books before he got there.
And then he couldn't do anything there, you know, ex-son guy.
And then they fired him and gave him like $100 million to go away, which is good work if you can get it.
And now there just seemed to be a rudderless ship Wasn't the history of Motorola, weren't they car radios?
No, walkie-talkies?
Yeah, Motorola.
It was a rolling radio.
I think they made the first car radio.
They may have even done a record player or something like that before that.
I know there were these, we're talking about in the 20s and 30s.
That's how they got started, as a radio, moto, moto, motor, you know, kind of rolla.
Huh.
Like Victrola, you know, Victrola, Motorola, get it?
Right now, you know, I guess it's kind of anyone's, you know, gamble as to where it's going to go and what people want.
I'm still carrying around multiple devices.
You know, they had it with the Razer.
It was a fashion statement and it actually brought back the clamshell handsets.
Because those were really popular for a while in the mid-90s and then when everyone's lid started flipping off and the speaker would break and everyone was like, I don't want one of those.
Motorola, I think, aren't they the ones who super popularized it with the StarTac?
StarTac, that's the one.
Yep, the little StarTac with the pull-out antenna.
And everyone who had one when they first came out, they always show them off to everybody.
People would gather around you if you had one of these things.
Yeah, baby.
Yeah.
And then they kind of modified it and shrunk it and shrunk it.
And then they made one.
I remember this because I was working for Tech TV at the time, and one of the guys was a guest on my Silicon Spin show.
And he came in with the newest version of the StarTac.
The MicroTac?
Yeah.
I remember that.
It was like the size of a, I don't even know, it was like the size of a small cigarette, about the size of a Zippo lighter, only not as wide.
Yep.
And it was this little bitty thing, and he opened it up, and you could dial on it and the whole thing, but when you hold it up, you look like an idiot holding this little bitty thing to your ear.
It was smaller than the typical Bluetooth thing that you stick in your ear.
Yeah, you're right.
And that somehow marked the end of an era, because that was so stupid.
Well, Nokia had one of their own at the time.
Imagine the classic Nokia, like the 5350 or whatever it is.
The very classic, robust Nokia that everyone had.
You could drive a truck over and nothing would happen.
So they shrunk that down to the same size as the Microtack.
I think it came a couple of years later, actually.
And it weighed nothing.
You could stick it into that weird pocket that you have on your pants, on your trousers.
That little pocket on the right-hand side.
The one that holds quarters?
Yeah, that one.
You could stick it in there, literally.
And you're right.
For weight and stuff, it was great because it was almost...
Actually, I remember I had that one, but I gave it up for the Matrix phone because that was the next one that you had to have.
Remember the one they had in the Matrix with the mouthpiece that slid down, that popped down at the pressing button?
Oh, yeah, right.
I remember that.
Yeah, so we all had to have that one.
Anyway, so it was years later that the Razor came out, which was just a throwback.
I don't know, man.
It's design.
Look at the iPhone.
I mean, good, bad, and different.
You can't deny that the concept and the design and a lot of what it's doing is just radically different than what everyone else has.
Yeah, but people are now moaning about it.
Really?
Yeah.
I mean, I just did the Cranky Geek show this last Wednesday and had Larry Magid on, who's a commentator for CBS, and he...
He's a local radio guy or something.
And all he did was complain bitterly about the thing, and he mainly talked about, I guess it's part of the town where he lives, about the fact that you couldn't get a signal, which we talked about before on this show.
And so I pulled out my Nokia, the one I have that Pacho loaned me, which has the exact same service he has on the iPhone, and we booted him.
And we looked, and I had a bar and a half, because we were in the studios, you can't get a signal in there.
I had a bar and a half, he couldn't get a signal at all.
And we used the exact same service.
Minor inconvenience.
A lot of the stuff is really good.
No, but a lot of the others, I mean, they can fix that.
They'll figure that out.
We know that they messed up.
I don't know if you can...
You know, they got that metal case I don't think helps.
Well, no.
We went through this, John.
There's a little plastic bit in the metal casing where the antenna is supposed to be able to transmit and receive through the plastic bit.
But it's just a design thing.
They'll figure that out.
They know.
They fixed that.
And once that's working, once they have the battery life up to a normal person's work day, and then they get the 3G or WiMAX or whatever they're going to put into it, it'll be great.
Yeah.
Yeah, but then it'll be dated.
Now, which reminds me, talking about dated phones, if anyone gets a chance, go to the register and look up Andrew Orlowski's coverage of this phone conference, the World Phone, whatever the heck it's called.
Andrew Orlowski?
Yeah, Andrew Orlowski.
He does a very funny, I'm going to give the story away, but it's just worth reading from the structural perspective.
He does this product review of the Nokia phone that is the absolute best phone.
He says, is that the conference?
And look at this phone that Nokia has, and he shows the side picture of it, and he talks about the battery life.
The battery life is like a month ago.
And talk time is like, you know, a week, and it's got all these characteristics and features and everything, and then he reminds us that this is a 1995 phone that they don't make anymore.
It's quite a funny article.
So I just Googled him.
And comic strip blogger, you know, my super fan.
Your buddy.
Yeah.
He has a page on Andrew.
You'll like this.
Yeah, sure, Andrew.
Biography of Andrew Orlowski.
He is a citizen of the UK who now lives in San Francisco, USA.
Ancestors of Andrew Orlowski were Polish citizens who stayed in the UK after World War II because Poland was then occupied by the Soviet Union.
And some Poles didn't want to live under Soviet occupation and stayed in the West.
What the hell?
He says he works for The Register.
The Register is a dirty tabloid, and it shows in many ways.
They are publishing, for example, without permission, emails that were intended as private.
And also they are publishing anonymous emails that contain offensive content, even if information from these anonymous emails is not confirmed as a lie.
Okay.
Go CSB! Yeah, it sounds like a pretty accurate description.
Except for the fact that Arlowski lives in London, but that's another story.
Well, this could be an old page.
It could be.
Oh, man.
Comicster blogger.
So what else we got on the list?
We talked about the chickens and the marks and sparks.
Yeah, we talked about...
I don't know.
When you hear this show, you're going to understand why I'm so distracted.
You're just hearing yourself fine.
You have no idea what's going on.
Yeah, it sucks.
There was a thing in the news that was interesting about the Danish ISP that just says, screw you guys about Pirate Bay.
We're not going to do anything about it.
I missed that.
What was that?
Is that in the news over there at all?
No.
The news here is about the three strikes you're out rule.
You heard about that, right?
You must have.
No, tell me.
Oh, there's a green paper, which is kind of a bill being written.
So I think a trial balloon, essentially, that the government would require UK ISPs to monitor everyone's traffic.
It's a three-strikes-you're-out.
So if they're caught downloading a file illegally, is kind of the way they're paraphrasing it.
Oh, right, right.
No, actually, I've talked about this on Tech 5.
I didn't know it was called that, though.
Well, of course, in a country that knows nothing about baseball and everything about cricket, of course, they call it the three strikes, you're out rule.
Makes sense.
So it's three strikes and you're out.
They don't play baseball over here, dude.
I have to explain to people all the time, say, you know, baseball, how does that work?
Okay.
If you can explain cricket to me, I can explain baseball.
Yeah, cricket, wow.
No, forget it.
You can't.
You can't explain it.
No, it doesn't.
The game, I think they make the rules up as they go along.
Seems like it.
It's like, oh, tea time.
That's it.
We'll see you all tomorrow.
They just have a couple of really good players and they just let them hit all day.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like if it was baseball, they'd have Barry Bonds just doing all the batting.
For three days in a row.
For a week.
Depends on how many hot dogs they can sell.
Nah, nothing else is going on here.
I mean, it's stuff I talk about on the Daily Source Code.
People hate it when I cross-post, as it were, from one show to the next.
Oh, you know, I don't do that kind of thing.
You do all the time, man.
You're always talking about, oh, I mentioned that on Tech 5.
Surely you've heard of me, the prognosticator of all things tech, John C. Dvorak.
You could make a career out of this, man.
What, just plugging myself?
Just talking shit and plugging it in.
I mean, kind of we're already on the way, but I think now I've validated that concept by doing this show with you.
I've got to do some with my spare time.
You're the only guy.
Nobody writes anymore.
I mean, nobody reads.
There's a whole generation of people coming up that listen to me.
And they don't even know I'm a writer.
And it is a good market, and they're good people, and they want to hear this stuff, so I figure I'm going to have to do a dual purpose.
I took broadcasting in school.
It's not like I haven't been doing this for a long time, so I can do it.
But I'm not really cut out for it.
I'm a writer, basically.
I'm not a good-looking guy.
I don't present myself.
I'm grumpy.
It's just like I'm not smiling all the time like you need to do on television to really do the job right.
Or wait, here it comes.
You're not good for like a morning zoo format?
Like you would be.
Everybody, that's right.
Good morning.
It's John C. Dvorak here.
We got the Palo Alto morning zoo, everybody.
Yeah.
Something like that, right?
Yeah, so you could do that.
You can do it.
I mean, I can do a kind of a gag voice, but I can't sustain it.
You could probably go out for hours.
Let's hear your gag voice.
I'm not going to do it because I'm just not in there.
I mean, I can't.
I'm just too early in the morning.
No, come on, John.
Do you do a gag radio voice?
Let me work on it first.
Hey, everybody.
Good morning.
San Francisco City by the Bay.
Hey, it's ACC here on the T to the E tip.
We've got Johnny C. Dvorak.
He's standing by.
He's going to give us a little bit of his prognosticating.
John C., where's that voice of yours?
Come on in, boy.
No.
No?
Okay.
I tried.
I just, you know, it's one of those things I can click into it.
It's like my Indian voice.
Oh, please.
I can just put myself into it.
But I've been working on another voice.
Don't do the Indian voice.
We'll get hate in the middle again.
You know, the Indian voice, I get notes about it because...
Because people think...
Don't even get into it.
For some reason, I'm not in doing a voice mood.
That's okay.
If I was into doing the voice, I would do it now like this.
Now, let me tell you something.
Now, I've talked about this guy before.
Now, he talks like this, and I get a lot of complaints about doing this voice because it's somehow insulting to someone, but I'm not absolutely sure who...
And I've said this, and I'll say it again.
This is the number one accent for speaking the English.
There are more people that talk like this than talk like anybody else, including a Southern guy.
And I've heard the Southern guys, and I can't understand a word they say.
So I can do this.
I can also do a Bombay voice, which is a little different.
Now, there's a guy who talks funny, if you ask me.
Now, I could get criticized.
For doing that Indian voice.
But I won't get criticized for doing this kind of generic bullshit Southern voice.
It really doesn't come from anywhere.
It's a little bit of Texas, although without the screeching.
And it's a little bit of Georgia, maybe.
Maybe Alabama.
It's hard to say.
I've been around most of the South.
But I won't get criticized for this voice.
And I won't get criticized for my French guy, Brit, Russian, or anybody else.
But that Indian guy gets me in trouble.
Oh, you were very close to a George Bush there when you did your southern thing.
That was pretty good.
You should try that.
You should try and get a George Bush together.
Well, you know, there's a Texas accent that I've always liked, where there's a guy who talks through his teeth.
And the Texans, especially guys from Dallas, they're executive types.
They talk through their teeth.
And so if you get that kind of sound, you're getting closer.
It's too bad my wife is downloading fashion TV off of YouTube again.
While you were doing that.
I have actually talked, I've picked up on the guys talking through their teeth when I met John Roach, who was the CEO of Radio Shack for years on end.
Yeah.
And I went to his office, a beautiful place.
He had a huge office with, oh man, the ceilings must have been 50 feet high.
And he talked through his teeth.
And I started realizing that Texans, executives in Texas, and I'm not sure why, what did they, I don't know, it seems like mumbling if you ask me.
You're pretty good, you got some chops there with the accent.
That was alright.
Can you do New Yorker?
You know, I can, but I'm not so good at it that I feel comfortable doing it until I get it down.
It's one of those things I can...
You know, there's certain accents you can do, like the DJ, where you can go in it...
Excuse me, it took years of practice to get that voice, okay?
I mean, it's not just like a thing you can just lock into.
I mean, that's real talent at work, okay?
So...
But...
Anyway, I've done the Indian accent with some Indians, and they all, you know, they look at me funny.
You did it with some Indians?
You're kidding me.
Oh yeah, no, I've done it.
No way!
That's horrible!
They say to me, let me hear this accent, you say you do so well.
No!
And let me guess, it was like crickets after you were done, right?
They were like, uh...
No, actually, one of the guys gave me a comment.
He says, you know, he told me where the accent was kind of from.
And I should reference it.
He says, you know, that sounds a little...
And he told me something.
And I think if I changed it, maybe it would be less offensive if I said it was a Pakistani accent.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that'll fly.
You should come over here and do that.
That'll result in the breakthrough...
Right.
Get into any taxi cab, please, and just say, oh, here's my Pakistani accent.
So anyway, but I do make the remark that that is probably the number one, and I listen to watch Indian TV, and they all talk like that, and I think that is the top accent if we do a numbers game.
I think more people speak English with that rhythm than they do with any other.
Yeah.
So I don't see how it could be offensive.
Yeah.
Well, because we're all politically correct and we're all stupid that way.
That's why.
I think it's going to be the way we're all going to be talking.
That's my theory.
I'm just practicing.
Just getting into it for the inevitable.
We'll have to speak that way.
Yeah, the inevitable.
We're all speaking with an Indian accent.
Why not?
It's actually kind of got a nice ring to it.
It makes you sound very sage.
Okay, but here's my gauge for it.
Okay, so if you're making love, right?
That accent just doesn't fly.
It just doesn't sound right.
It's like, oh, yes, baby.
Oh, give it to me right there.
Oh, yes.
Please, put your finger in that orifice really quickly.
I like it very much.
I mean, you know, it just doesn't quite fit.
I don't know.
Maybe they...
Well, I mean, look at the music that they listen to with that screeching...
Dude, Desi?
I love Desi.
I can't get enough of it.
Are you kidding me?
I love that.
No, you don't.
Yeah, I do.
I do.
There's no way.
Yeah, absolutely.
The modern day Desi, that's D-E-S-I. It's got a great groove.
It's got their really funky harmonies and stuff that just isn't even in our musical vocabulary, literally.
No, I dig it.
And all the kids are dancing to it, John.
By the way, I should mention this.
When I do that Indian accent with my daughters around, she thinks I'm an idiot.
And she says it doesn't sound anything at all like an Indian accent.
No, I should get my daughter up here.
She's in home yet.
She has school vacations, so she's working.
But she's really good.
Next time we do a show on a weekend and I'm home, so that could be like in 2010, I'll ask her to come up and do a couple of her accents.
She actually speaks Dutch and Flemish with a complete accent.
She speaks American English, English-English, but she can do all sub-accents.
Australian, she's really good at.
Ah, I like the difference between the Australian and the British accent.
And Australian, and there's also Australian and New Zealand, which is, yet again, subtle differences.
I would be interested in listening to her try to define those two, because that's another fascinating difference.
Because every once in a while you run into some guy somewhere, especially around here in the San Francisco Bay Area where all these travelers are.
And you hear a guy and you go, oh, that's an Australian.
And you say, you're from Australia, right?
And you can't piss him off more.
Well, if he's from New Zealand, he's not too pleased.
No, exactly.
That's my point.
Generally speaking, you don't run into too many New Zealanders because I don't think many of them get off the islands.
That's not true.
I fly with a Kiwi.
A guy who runs our office here is a Kiwi?
Maitland?
No, there's lots of them.
They're infesting the world.
Maybe they don't admit it when they're over here.
Possible.
Or they just say, yeah, I'm from Australia, mate.
Just easier.
Because if you're not from...
When someone says, hey, are you from...
Hey!
Hey, you!
Are you from Australia?
And if the guy says, no, I'm from New Zealand, it's like, oh.
Well, I like Australia because that's where that crocodile guy was from.
And you got that other...
That Dundee fella.
And New Zealand has nothing.
So that's your dumb American accent.
So I think there may be some truth to the fact that most people in the United States don't even know where New Zealand is.
And these guys are sick of explaining it.
Yeah, but they also have no national heroes.
Australia.
We've got Mel Gibson.
We've got your Olivia Newton-John.
We've got...
Come on, help me out here.
Nicole Kidman.
We've got Crocodile Dundee.
We've got Crocodile Dundee.
Oh, actually, there's a whole bunch of models from New Zealand.
Yeah, dude.
I mean, there's beautiful people down there.
There's that one that was married to Stuart for a while.
What's her name?
Rachel something or other.
Rachel?
Hunter.
Rachel Hunter.
There you go.
Rachel Hunter.
Yeah, Rachel Hunter.
She's still married to Roger Rod.
There's more, though.
Well, Richard, what's his name?
Murdoch is from Australia.
Of course, he's an American now.
Right, and Kerry Parker, who people know less of, who's probably more powerful.
Kerry Parker?
Kerry Parker, yeah, he's the other Murdoch.
Oh, that's right.
The two sons have now started a venture together, I think?
Yeah, they're right.
He's dead, right?
And Parker's a notorious gambler.
He comes to Vegas, and there's lots of stories about him going into Vegas.
Isn't he dead?
I thought he died.
I don't know, maybe he did.
Let's look him up.
It wouldn't have been covered in American news if he did, so how would I know?
Let's look it up.
Kerry Parker information.
About Kerry Parker?
Is it with an I or with a Y? I think he's a man, so it'd probably be with a Y. Who?
You don't know.
UK glamour model, Carrie Parker.
It's not with an I. Which is kind of the porn spelling.
Yeah, there's always a variation.
Rusty Nails and Carrie Parker.
Now for the first time in a world.
I can't find anything, John.
Figures.
You're not looking?
It's just me looking here?
Yeah, because I don't want to kill the whole show.
Am I your Google bitch?
Come on.
Yeah, you are, though.
Let's see.
Okay.
I can't find it.
You brought it up.
You should find it.
All right, all right, all right, all right, all right.
Here we go.
Australia's 200 rich list.
Here's my Google search.
This should find it.
Packer.
We're both idiots.
Carrie Packer.
I'm saying Parker.
But I typed in Carrie Parker, Australia mogul, and got the top thing, Carrie Packer dead.
Really?
It worked.
My wife is actually better at this than me, but I'm good.
Anyway, Carrie Packer dead.
Carrie Francis Bulmore, Packer 68.
Richest man was chairman of a media company.
Let me actually click on it instead of just reading the summary.
Hey, I just came up with a great new format, dude.
This is a great idea.
You want to hear my idea?
So he died at 68?
And he was Australia's richest man.
Dude, this is a great format.
Think about it.
He died in 2005.
Yeah.
Well, there you go.
The New York Times will report it next week.
So listen to this.
It could be an audio show.
It would work.
It could be video as well, but it's a game show.
And the game show is you get these ridiculous questions and you have to answer them and you can use any resource you want on the internet.
Google, any other search.
No one's doing it because there's things like cheating, right?
Well, let's do it.
Let's do it.
Next show, No Agenda.
We'll get some participants on.
Or maybe...
We should have a whole other show for that.
People like No Agenda the way it is.
Yeah, but we have no agenda.
We can do whatever we want, can't we?
Oh, that's a good point.
Yeah.
We can test it out.
Well, then let's get some dancing girls.
Heck with this other idea.
And we're back to strippers.
Okay.
Lovely.
So, yeah, so Kerry Packer, unknown to me, three years later, apparently is dead in 68, which is kind of young.
You should send them a card.
We here in the United States are very sorry to hear about the passing of Kerry.
Yeah.
We just found out.
We just found out because we don't really follow anything.
By the way, I'm trying to get out of Nigeria, and if you could send me $100 million...
So we know exactly what Britney Spears is up to, but do we know that Gary Packer's dead?
No.
No, we don't.
It's so true.
And here I am, you know, the media guy, you know, and I don't know.
You know, I probably did know, and it just, for some reason, I just didn't...
I just wasn't thinking clearly.
But your point is so well made.
And I'm thinking his name is Parker, for God's sake.
It's even worse.
That's even worse.
I posted the Wikipedia definition of bread and circuses earlier in the week on my weblog.
Because that's what we're living in, man.
We are so in bread and circuses.
Who gives a shit about what's going on in the world?
As long as we know who's in the top 24 on American Idol.
That's all that matters.
Well, you know, one of my favorite shows in the U.S., and I actually have dubbed, I have like hours and hours and hours of this.
It's one of the few things I kind of record and save in an episodic manner, which is Jay Leno's special that he does once every couple weeks called Jaywalking.
And he goes into the street, and it's actually, it was funnier, you know, a few years ago than it is now, because now he's trying to fancy it up, but he'll go into the streets, and he'll just walk up to, first he tries to find people that are like, you know, professors at USC, or teachers in high school, or even some, you know, and then he also picks up some dingbat students, and he goes up to a person, he'll say, so where is, uh, What country is Mexico City in?
And they'll answer like...
Oh, I've seen this.
The answer will be even more ludicrous than not knowing where it is.
They'll answer, what country is Mexico City in?
Indiana.
I mean, that...
I swear to God, and it's one thing after another.
It's just astonishing.
I've seen this.
Can you name a country that starts with the letter U? And people are going, how about United States?
Like, oh yeah, that's a good one.
But, you know, that's all edited, so you don't know how many people they have to find.
Oh, no, it's totally edited.
I know someone's phony, and every once in a while you know he's asked the question, you yourself, as you watch it, can't answer it.
But generally speaking, yeah, it's edited to death, but the fact that somebody would answer Indiana, to what country is Mexico City in, is just, I don't care how edited it is.
It's just unbelievable.
That's great.
That's so funny.
Ah, yes, we're a fine bunch, aren't we?
One of the things he likes to do on that bit is he'll have pictures of people and he'll have a famous person.
He'll put the president's picture up there and he says, who's this?
And they won't identify him.
And then they'll put a picture of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton in there and identify him.
He does that gag a lot and it's always the same.
Nobody can recognize anybody except a small number of overhyped celebrities.
Hey man, I'm going to work on our game show.
This is a good idea.
We could be like the Regis and...
What's the new name?
Kathy.
Kelly.
Kelly.
We could be Regis and Kelly.
And we could do our own game show.
Well, my legs are better, so I might as well.
That's true.
Not that I would know.
So, I think...
It has a possibility.
Now, there was something done like this on Internet Tonight, which was a tech TV show.
Oh, really?
That was probably the best show that they produced at tech TV ever, and it was killed by Paul Allen personally because for some reason he didn't like somebody on the show.
Really?
Yeah, it's a weird story.
But anyway, they did something like this where they did a Google showdown about trying to find as many of something...
As they could, but it wasn't quite what you're thinking.
I think it should just be whoever has the answer the quickest.
You throw out a question, something really ridiculous.
If you're going to do it that way, then it has to be done.
You have to use the game show format.
You would have three people standing there as though it was Jeopardy.
And with laptops.
Yeah.
Or whatever.
And then the question would go out and then the three of them would grind away on it.
And these would have to obviously be questions that they just can't answer on the spot.
Oh, so what you do is you have a set amount of time and then you have the, everyone has their answer written down and then you reveal your answer one by one.
Is that what you're thinking?
No, I was thinking that there would be a race, but then I'm thinking about it could be boring just watching people type into a machine.
There has to be some way of eliminating the boredom factor for the viewer.
Well, I think it could go pretty fast.
I mean, you know, it took you, what, 15 seconds to find the answer to that?
It didn't take long.
Yeah.
Well, let's work on it.
I'm looking at it.
Oh, this is even funnier.
I'm looking at the search I put in.
Yeah.
I typed in Carrie Passerker, P-A-S-R-K-E-R, Australia Mogul.
And then it came up with the Do You Mean Carrie Parker, Australia Mogul.
And then, even without having to click on that, it had the Carrie Packer dead at the top.
Fantastic.
So sometimes screwing up completely...
Can actually be beneficial.
It works better because Google's always looking for your screw-ups and trying to correct you.
Interesting.
Yeah, no, I think it would be fascinating, especially if it was combined with a website that explained how people were doing the search to get the answer, because there's something about learning how to do searches properly to get results quick.
Yeah.
I think it would have a big draw in itself.
And it's a real skill.
It is a skill.
It's a skill that we should be teaching our kids, so it could be the spelling bee of the naughties.
Yeah, no, I agree.
I think the kids in school should be learning how to do elaborate Google searches for obscure information.
Boolean search, baby.
Boolean search 101.
Boolean search 101.
Yeah.
How many kids don't know what that means?
They don't know what that means.
I said my daughter doesn't know what that means.
She doesn't know about typing a plus into Google or a minus, which a minus is even better than a plus often.
So you can omit certain type of keywords from the results.
That's the great stuff for your filtering.
Yeah.
No, there's a lot of little tricks.
There's books.
We take it for granted, man, that people know that.
People don't know.
No, it's always amazing to me that people don't, you know, every once in a while I get a letter from a reader or a fan.
Once in a while, John gets a letter and it goes like this.
Dear John.
I'll have somebody say, you know, do you know how they ask me a question about something, about, you know.
You get that in a letter through the U.S. mail?
No, I'm just, I mean email.
Email, okay.
Oh, I get questions all the time.
Like that.
So I get it.
Yeah, and there's always some dumb question.
And what I always do is I do a Google search that they should have done for the exact...
And I don't even do much more than take what they wanted to know and put it in the Google box.
Then I cut and paste the Google URL that gave me the answer, and I give them the Google URL. So when they click on it to get their answer, they see it's a Google page that I had simply taken their stuff and put it in the Google thing, which is saying to them, you can't do this?
So...
Here's what I do.
I just don't reply.
I answer all my emails.
You answer all your emails.
Every single one.
Well, I mean, there's some that gets by me and I don't answer.
You have an empty inbox?
Are you an empty inbox guy?
You empty it out?
No.
If I'm too busy, sometimes it'll pass over.
Some stuff will just be in there forever.
I'm always amazed when I do a search.
I'll look at you sometimes, Adam Curry.
Because you sent me a note the other day, so I wanted to see it.
So I'll just do a search on the box, and I'll find it, and there'll be every message you ever sent me, and then I'll see two or three of them in there that I never looked at.
Uh-huh.
Or you set them to unread.
Do you ever do that?
You're like, I'll set this to unread and that will make me go read it again, which of course never happens.
Yeah, no, I've already given up on that idea.
But I'll see a couple and I'll click on them and I'll say, oh, that's what he was talking about the other day.
Thanks for reading.
That's nice.
Hey, it's not that often.
You don't send that much out, so it doesn't happen to you so much.
Well, I've learned a long time ago, the less you send, the less you receive.
Yeah, there is that.
Alright, I'm done.
I think so.
And my wife has been surfing porn throughout the second half of the show.
Well, she's bored.
She's very bored.
She wants me all to herself for the weekend before I leave.
She knows it's going to be a while.
I think you should change your flight plans and come in through Chicago.
Yeah, I don't think so.
Come in through Chicago.
You know what would be cool?
Come in through Vancouver.
Hit Vancouver BC and then come into Seattle from Vancouver, from Europe.
That would be interesting.
Why?
Just to see if I get into trouble?
Yeah.
That's no fun.
I don't want to do that.
I don't.
Maybe I'll get into a lot of trouble this time.
How about going to Mexico and then coming across in a cab from Tijuana?
In the trunk.
See if that works.
Well, no, that is getting carried away.
But I think it'd be cool.
You fly from London to Mexico City or someplace in Baja.
I guess you can get to Tijuana somehow.
Get to Tijuana, take a cab across the border to San Diego and see what the experience is.
Okay.
Well, if you don't want to do it, somebody should do it who's also being harassed.
Okay.
That'd be interesting.
I don't want to do it.
I really don't.
I just want to get on with life.
Well, it would be a good story.
You can probably put a book around it.
Hey, do you ever get this?
The application PubSubAgent quit unexpectedly.
Ugh.
Wow.
PubSubAgent.
What do you think that does?
I don't know.
Probably we have to re-record the show.
No.
Quick, let's stop it while it's still good.
Alright, sign off.
Alright.
Well, apologies for the sound quality.
I'll work on that for next week.
Coming to you from a dark Friday evening in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm out here in sunny California.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
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