No Agenda - 19: Show Me the Money!

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March 1, 2008 - No Agenda

01:22:45

19: Show Me the Money!

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	It is time once again for that program, the one you recognize immediately because it has no music, no commercials, no jingles, no apparent talent, and certainly no agenda.
	Coming to you from the Curry Manor in the affluent suburb of Surrey, known as Guilford, I'm Adam Curry.
	And I'm John C. Dvorak coming to you from the less than affluent suburbs of San Francisco, California, Northern California.
	I'm John C. Dvorak, like I said a minute ago.
	At Dvorak.org slash blog.
	Hey, my friend, how you doing?
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Hey, I think I have to set up even more stable today.
	I'm happy.
	Yeah, you told me you blew it up.
	That's why it's more stable.
	Of course.
	Whenever you blow something up, then you can figure out what needs to be done.
	I can now even go to like a webpage, like a YouTube page, and I can play it and record it.
	So, anyway.
	Who cares?
	I'm happy.
	I'm happy it's working.
	Well, I thought we were going to do the show earlier, then I found out you were out shopping for a suit.
	Yeah.
	No, I wasn't shopping.
	I said to you, I'm picking up a suit.
	Let me tell you what happened.
	My wife is so smart, John.
	As most women are, of course.
	In that she got you out of the house?
	No, check it out.
	So I came home yesterday afternoon around 1 o'clock from the San Francisco flight.
	Would you fly through the night?
	And I have to say, I slept a couple hours, so I felt reasonably good.
	But basically, you lose a whole night somewhere and you get pretty tired.
	And my wife, man, she opened the door and she looked good.
	She dressed up in this black outfit that was really, really sexy and...
	And then she fed me and she gave me tea and then, of course, she made up for two weeks of me being away and then she said, come on, quick, throw on your coat and we're going to go buy some suits.
	How can you refuse at that point, right?
	It's like, uh, okay.
	I'm just asking, when do you wear a suit?
	You're not a suit person.
	No, you didn't see it.
	I wore a suit to Los Angeles.
	Ron and I went there for a...
	The reason why is because I'll buy a suit and I go up and down in weight very quickly.
	Not that you really notice it, but right now I've definitely lost so much weight that my wedding band slipped off my finger and is now gone.
	That kind of sucked.
	But all of a sudden...
	Wait, wait.
	What kind of a fluctuation are we talking about here?
	112 to 115?
	I go from suit size, jacket, 42.
	I was 42, now I'm 40.
	And my pants, my waist is 36.
	Huh.
	Yeah.
	So anyway, she had done all this pre-production.
	She had already picked out what she wanted.
	Ted Baker is where she had found something.
	And she had already worked with these guys during the week, measuring and thinking about what would be right.
	And so I walk in and literally, you know, it's like, try this one on, try this one on.
	Okay, we're going to go from a 42 to a 40 large, a 40 long, I'm sorry.
	And boom!
	And all that had to be done was just the seam needed to be, you know, obviously on the pants because, you know, they come at a full uncut length.
	You don't get a 40 extra long because they do have an extra long.
	No, no, I don't need it.
	The long was just perfect.
	So it was literally off the rack.
	Remember I was complaining that that was so hard?
	And, you know, I was so happy and all they had to do was just...
	You know, take the, do the seams on the pants, and so that's why I picked it up.
	But, you know, Patricia was so smart, you know, get him while he's vulnerable and schlep me out to town to go and buy suits.
	Was there a collar around you, Nick?
	Yeah, thanks.
	Thanks!
	Hey, by the way, you flew in the Heathrow.
	Are you familiar with the fact that they just opened this terminal in Beijing?
	That's the world's largest building.
	And it's the size of all the Heathrow terminals thrown together and was built in less than four years flat?
	You're kidding me.
	They've taken at least that much time to build Terminal 5 in the UK. Four years.
	And it's the world's largest terminal.
	It's two miles long.
	That's like Denver.
	Well, Denver's not quite that big.
	No, it's not two miles long, no way.
	But there's a, I posted a bunch of videos on the Dvorak.org slash blog for people who want to check it out.
	You might have to look it up by the time you get to it.
	But the, it was just astonishing.
	I mean, it's just amazing that they could, and the reason is because I was in China like 12 years ago and I was at the old, old Beijing airport from the communist era, which was a horrible place.
	And then they built a new airport.
	Now they're building it and then since then they've built another new airport.
	I mean, these guys are killing us.
	Where was the airport that opened up?
	It wasn't Beijing, but it was in Asia somewhere that from day one completely failed.
	Everything was messed up.
	I was reading about that.
	That's the Japanese one on the island.
	It was on some kind of landfill and it keeps sinking.
	Well, it wasn't just that.
	The logistics of the same thing kind of Denver had when they first opened.
	I think it's Japan.
	It could be Japan.
	Yeah, I don't really recall.
	No, I was not aware.
	Four years seems really freaking fast, man.
	Yeah, and the thing's gorgeous.
	Well, reason for a trip, I guess.
	Road trip.
	Let's go.
	And by the way, I can tell you this much.
	You can get a suit in China a lot cheaper than you paid for that one from Ted Baker.
	It was not that expensive.
	It was very, very inexpensive, actually.
	What's inexpensive to you?
	I bought two suits and two shirts for 700 pounds, so about $1,500.
	That is not expensive.
	I don't care where you are.
	That's just not expensive.
	It's not cheap.
	No, it's not cheap, but it's not like Armani where you're going to wind up paying $4,000 or $5,000 per suit.
	And you're right.
	I don't wear suits enough to even justify that to myself.
	And I hate it.
	I hate going shopping.
	My wife usually buys stuff, brings it home.
	She keeps the tag on.
	I tried.
	I have to do like a fashion night.
	See, that's more work than actually going shopping.
	I like to shop.
	I'm like one of those males who likes to shop who's not gay.
	Well, here's what I get into it, though.
	So what I'll do is I will almost come...
	I'll become very flamboyant, you know, because Patricia makes me walk.
	She's down on her knees with the guy, you know, putting the pins in the pants and making it just the right length for the boots, and she's really into it.
	And so I'll sashay back and forth, you know.
	I'll do the whole model thing.
	That's the only way I can really get through it is to...
	Kind of make fun of it.
	It's partially enjoyable, but I'm not a shopping guy.
	It's hard for me.
	My experience is that when you travel a lot, and I always am stunned by the amount of business travelers who don't adopt this policy.
	When I travel, I always rent a car, except in a couple of the big cities.
	I don't rent a car in New York City or Paris or London, but I'll rent a car in Boston.
	But I always rent a car, and then I hit the road if I'm not in meetings.
	I don't stay at the hotel.
	And then one of the things I do is I go scrounging for things to buy.
	Oh, well, I'm not like that.
	But until I met you, I was also not a guy who really went out to eat.
	First of all, because I have no one to go out to eat with.
	Yeah, that's another thing I try to do.
	When I'm traveling, I try to get somebody to go hit one or two of the trendier restaurants in whatever city I'm in.
	And I have some pretty good contacts in the food reviewing industry, if there's such a thing.
	And so I can usually get these places and find out what the place is that's going to be...
	So, about that, maybe we should just talk briefly about our dinner, which I thought was a great one we had.
	Was it Wednesday evening?
	Yeah, we went to Rubicon, which I haven't been to for a while.
	And we talked about this.
	And by the way, Rubicon's quality fluctuates a lot, and I thought the meal was quite good, but I was disappointed that they don't have their old wine sommelier, Larry Stone, anymore, and instead they've got some pretentious character who I didn't...
	Yeah, that guy was kind of dorky.
	He would have been good for the tourists, but definitely not for professional eaters like us.
	Yes, for sure.
	And I wonder what his real knowledge base is, because he didn't seem to respond appropriately to the things.
	Yeah, because one of the things people should know is when you go to a...
	If you want to get into...
	Wine, you know, you have to understand where these sommeliers are coming from.
	And essentially what you do as a customer is you test them with knowledge that you have and not just have but are intimate with to see what they think or to see how they respond as kind of a test.
	To kind of just set a baseline, okay, this is where this guy is.
	Yeah, then you can see if the guy knows anything.
	Right, right.
	My favorite sommelier ever was, It was in terms of blowing me away.
	Sommelier is the wine guy for those who don't know.
	The wine guy.
	The wine dude.
	The wine guy.
	The wine waiter.
	They sometimes have pins and they sometimes have the thing.
	Some of them are officially, some of them have degrees in it, some of them are just faking it.
	But anyway, there's this guy that was a French wine sommelier at a restaurant in New York City called City Hall.
	And he was very knowledgeable, and in everything I was testing him on, he would top me.
	He knew what I was talking about, but he would always beat me with, well, if you like that, then you'd like this kind of thing, and it would always be something I didn't know.
	So I had chosen a wine, and he says, you know, if you like that, you should get this.
	And he found one that was actually better, and I think it's the same price or cheaper.
	Have they done that yet in wines?
	You remember they used to have perfume where it would say, if you love Giorgio Armani, you'll love this?
	Do they have that in wine?
	Yeah, there's some elements to that, but it's all so subjective that it doesn't really work.
	Although I think there are certain styles that people like.
	Some people like the big wines and some people like thin, fruity wines or whatever.
	And some wine lists actually have categorized, instead of like, I don't like the type of wine list.
	I like a wine list that just gives me the area.
	Is this a Bordeaux?
	What part?
	I'll find the wine pretty quick.
	I've seen these wine lists that says robust yet fruity.
	Yeah, screw that.
	They have a whole bunch of these.
	I've worked with guys like that.
	Give me some information about the wine.
	That's the way I feel, but I think some people like the idea.
	You know, people that don't know anything.
	Anyway, so this guy topped the wine, this guy in France, this French guy.
	And he gave me a wine that was just much better than what I was going to get.
	And I was just impressed, so I trusted him after that.
	So he comes up at the end of the meal and he says, Would you like some after dinner drinks?
	He says, what do you like, General?
	I said, I'm a cognac drinker.
	He says, you don't like grappa?
	And this is coming from a French guy.
	Really?
	He's in Spanish?
	No.
	I'm sorry.
	Anyway, I said, no, grappa.
	Because my experience with grappa until then, this was a while ago.
	It's nasty.
	Yeah, it's horrible.
	It tastes like paint thinner.
	Yeah.
	With bits in it.
	With orange bits.
	The guy says to me, oh really?
	He says, let me give you one and then you tell me what you think.
	And he brought over this astonishing grappa.
	And it actually changed my whole attitude toward it because there is...
	Unfortunately, there's so many different ones, but there's like this layer of extremely delicious grappas that it's undeniable how good they are.
	And this guy, the fact that he turned me on to it, and I've since found other places that also have good selections, including this little place over here in Berkeley called Ecolo.
	They have a good selection of grappas.
	It just changed my attitude completely about the paint thinner thing.
	So what I like about having dinner with you is, you know, first we kind of decide on what we're going to have, and then we really talk about...
	Okay, well, we really...
	I mean, I listen, you talk, and you look at the...
	Look at the wine menu, and then, you know, okay, what's going to work with this meal, which is, you know, obviously the way to do it.
	And this was outstanding.
	We actually had two drinks.
	We had wine, and then we had an armagnacca after that.
	But the wine, what was it again?
	Because, of course, I don't remember.
	It was a Domaine Dujac, one of the 99 Kombats.
	It was most excellent.
	I had the baby ribs, and it was, oh, the combination was stellar.
	Yeah, that was a little expensive, but it was good.
	But now we're talking about it on the show, the benefits are obvious.
	It's a tax write-off.
	It's done!
	Taken care of!
	I can't wait to explain it during the audit.
	I love doing that.
	This is all part of the show.
	We only go to restaurants for this purpose.
	We have to start calling the show No Agenda, but a little bit of talk about wine.
	And then we can write it off.
	Wine and food.
	And then afterwards, what did you have to...
	You had lamb, right?
	Yeah, the lamb was killer, I have to say.
	It was a nice piece of lamb.
	It was an Oregon grass-fed lamb.
	It was perfectly cooked.
	You know, they have that restaurant.
	The restaurant is co-owned by Francis Coppola, I think De Niro, and a couple of other Italians.
	And it was done a long time ago.
	But it's not really an Italian restaurant, per se.
	No, no, it's a continental-style restaurant.
	It's fusion, not fusion, but Mediterranean, eclectic California kind of thing.
	And they keep changing chefs, so the menu changes a little bit.
	bit, but it's the same name as Coppola's Wine Company, and he took the wine steward, apparently, to the wine company Rubicon up in the Napa Valley, which is where he really puts most of his efforts nowadays, which is kind of a disappointment for the restaurant which is where he really puts most of his efforts nowadays, which is kind of a disappointment for the restaurant because this The waitress we had, I liked very much.
	She was from Spain, right?
	Yeah, she was very pleasant.
	They have a good wait staff there, generally.
	Yeah, and in fact, it was kind of funny because here we are with, what did it cost, 300 bucks, this bottle of wine, I think?
	No, no, it was 220.
	220.
	Oh, okay.
	And the wine dude, better known as the sommelier, came over and we go through the, here's the cork.
	And I love the way you pick that cork up, slap it back down.
	None of this fancy schmancy stuff.
	Just, okay, it's not rotten, that's clear.
	And he had it in, what do you call that thing, that holder?
	Yeah.
	Oh, we had a cradle.
	Cradle, yeah.
	One of these crappy looking things, which I detest.
	And we're like, take it out of the cradle, man.
	It's going to fall over in the cradle.
	Just put it on the table.
	Well, the thing is about, you know, I've always found the pretense of this, of the whole scene, a little annoying in restaurants that aren't, that don't really have the chops for it.
	I mean, this place has got, this is typical in California restaurants, especially these trendier places.
	They have paper tablecloths.
	They got a tablecloth underneath, but there's a piece of paper on top of them.
	Chez Panisse is the one who really popularized this idea.
	With crayons, so you can draw on it.
	Well, you know, a lot of these places, you do a lot of business deals in these places, and people will write out business proposals on this giant piece of paper and rip it off before they leave.
	I know.
	I've done that myself, too.
	But that kind of thing to me is not telling me that I'm at a three-star Michelin restaurant in Paris.
	I'm at a place that's almost a bistro, even though it's not quite.
	But in fact, the style of food, if people like to go out and eat and they go to Paris, they should go to a place called Le Procope someday.
	And that's one of the oldest bistros still in existence.
	I think it was built in the 1840s.
	And that's in Paris?
	Yeah, and it's a very famous place.
	I think it's Paris' oldest bistro.
	But as a bistro, it gives you a good feeling for what a bistro-style restaurant is really all about and what it's like.
	That's what this place is like.
	Yeah.
	And anything more than that is pretension, and that's why the wine cradle thing doesn't do anything for me, because what does it do?
	You've already sloshed the wine around.
	It doesn't have to be sitting around at an angle.
	Just stand the bottle up on the table and let the patrons pour it when they feel like it.
	Thank you.
	Let us pour it.
	Exactly.
	Much nicer.
	I mean, I don't mind guys who pour it if you're in a restaurant, a really great, like say the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco has a really attentive, or Florida Lee.
	They have an attentive staff, and so, yeah, they'll pour it because they will keep an eye on your glasses, and so if you finish off some wine, boom, they're over there pouring it.
	But most of these places, you know, they want to pour the wine, but they're never around when you're out of wine, and you're looking around for the bottle.
	It's ridiculous.
	And let's face it, you know, we're not there to impress each other.
	We don't want to have sex with each other.
	We're just there to enjoy the meal and the drink.
	So the cradle is just out.
	Yeah, so we made the waitress, who was a little reluctant to do it, because I guess this guy...
	A little reluctant.
	She was like, no, no, no, we can't, no, no, we should not do that.
	Come on, take it out, take it out.
	Oh, I cannot take responsibility.
	After the meal, I was pretty much good on the wine, and you suggested a cognac.
	I was like, I'll have some coffee while you have the cognac.
	And you said, well, let's have an Armagnac.
	Because I said, the cognac's just a little too burny for me, a little too...
	Jet fuel type of effect.
	And so you just said, let's have an Armagnac, which I don't think I've actually...
	I'm sure I've had one at some point, but I certainly can't remember it.
	Well, if you've ever been to France and you had an after-dinner drink, 90% of the time it's an Armagnac, because that's what they drink there.
	Yeah, which is much smoother, much nicer.
	Not necessarily, but this one was, because it was a 1900.
	It was literally a bottle from 1900...
	Do you remember the name of it?
	No, I don't.
	I'd have to look it up.
	We kind of chose it just because it was from 1900, right?
	You insisted, actually, when the guys came up with it.
	And the thing was, he was wrong about the whole...
	I said, is this actually a vintage 1900?
	Because in Armagnard, they make vintage...
	Spirits, as opposed to cognac, they tend not to so much.
	They do it once in a while, but not too often.
	But anyway, so they make this vintage arming yacht, and they do it mostly for people who want to buy one from their birthday or whatever, and they get pretty expensive when you get older.
	And anyway, so this one, and I said, is this really a 1900?
	And the guy goes on and on with some cock and bull story about how, well, it's kind of like, you know, there's some...
	Some stuff older and some stuff newer.
	And he's describing a Solera, which is a mix of things that happen to have a date on it when the Solera began, which would be the way they do in Sherry.
	And I'm thinking, I've never heard anything like this.
	This doesn't sound right.
	But anyway, because it wasn't that expensive.
	It was cheap.
	So we got a couple glasses of it, and I asked to see the bottle.
	So they bring the bottle over, and the bottle clearly says it was distilled in 1900.
	1900, yeah.
	So what he said was all bull.
	But then, of course, the cool thing was, there was this little...
	There wasn't enough to get another glass out.
	And so we're talking about it, and the guy comes over and like, yeah, that's really good.
	He said, but what are you going to do with this last bit?
	I mean, who are you going to sell that to?
	So I think I got like $15 worth of free Armagnac when he splashed it into my back.
	Yeah, then he dumps it in your glass instead of splitting it between the two of us, which galled me to no end.
	Yeah, that was wrong.
	But he knew who it was paying, John.
	Oh, he didn't know anything.
	He didn't even know what the distillation date was or anything else.
	He was just making it up as he goes along.
	He had no clue who was paying.
	Hold on.
	Let me get Bobby on the phone.
	Bobby De Niro.
	Let's have that guy fired.
	Bobby!
	Bobby!
	It's Adam, AC and JC. Got to talk to you.
	Hey, I wanted to, even though we have no agenda, I took some notes because I've been just messing around the house.
	Actually, something happened last night which really irked me.
	This falls into our shoddy journalism category.
	After this enormously taxing day I had, and I didn't just fall asleep after that watching TV. I passed out.
	And you know the difference.
	Why fall asleep when you can pass out instead?
	I mean, I passed out.
	My neck just went bleh.
	And my wife has seen this now, so she's no longer alarmed when my head tilts back like I'm dead.
	So she knows.
	She might check my breathing, but I was just passed out.
	So we go to bed.
	And all of a sudden, you know, everything, all my alarms start going off.
	And with that, I mean, you know, there's text messages, there's, you know, stuff popping up on my...
	Because I took my N800... I usually take my N810 and put it next to the bedside in case I want to check something, like Google something to get the answer for a game show.
	And...
	That is so nerdy.
	I am.
	Now, what had happened...
	Actually, I could probably send you the link.
	Silicon Alley Insider.
	Are you familiar with this pack?
	I know the guy personally, yeah.
	Let's see, who wrote this?
	Dan Frommer?
	I don't know him.
	I know the guy who runs Silicon Alley, though.
	Okay, so Silicon Alley came out with the news, and it's actually directly from the AP. So the AP writes, Akamai wins Limelight patent suit, $45.5 million.
	And I'll just read this briefly.
	Akamai Technologies says it won its patent suit against arch-rival Limelight Networks.
	The AP reports, Akamai said jury in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts ruled Limelight Networks infringed a content delivery patent asserted by Akamai.
	The jury awarded Akamai $45.5 million in damages plus interest.
	Akamai said it plans to ask the court to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting Limelight from continuing to sell infringing devices.
	By the way, the idea of infringing devices being sold means it's not necessarily about their core content delivery network business.
	I'm not quite sure what it is.
	And then, so here comes the editorialized part that Dan Frommer wrote.
	I didn't know they made devices at Limelight.
	They make a device?
	Well, this is my point.
	So it's about, it could be, I don't know.
	If they're making and selling something, and it's clearly not necessarily their core CDN capability, but who knows?
	But Dan Frommer writes, If the verdict holds up, it would be devastating for Limelight, whose shares are down almost 40% in afternoon trading.
	Last year the company lost $24 million on $66 million of revenue.
	And if the judge issues an injunction against Limelight, it might have to shut down its network.
	And...
	What happened is, and I'm going to get to your Market Watch column in a second, because it all has to do with this.
	So what happens is, this gets blown out there into the blogosphere, but this really happened on Twitter, which is probably even worse.
	So the first thing that happens is everyone saying, Podshow will be fucked if these guys...
	Sorry to say that, but that's literally what was being said.
	What's Podshow got to do with it?
	Ah, because our delivery network is Limelight.
	Oh.
	So, Limelight, by the way, they're much younger than Akamai.
	And by the way, it would be so hard to switch delivery networks.
	Wait, let me get the story out, of course.
	So, they're much younger.
	They're a bunch of radicals from Arizona.
	We like these guys a lot.
	We get a good deal from them.
	They really work with us.
	It's a tough business.
	And...
	So we stand by partners like that.
	Well, first of all, what's happening now is now people are posting blogs and Podshow will be fucked and here are all these other companies that will go down.
	So what happens is all our producers get freaked out.
	They're like, do we have to start changing URLs?
	Yeah.
	And I'm like, oh my God!
	Thousands!
	Thousands!
	And they're all antsy all the time.
	Yeah, and so they're freaking out.
	And I can understand, you know, they don't know what the hell is going on, but everyone knows.
	We're obviously spending too much time listening to Twitter feeds rather than doing the damn shows.
	You are now in charge of programming.
	Congratulations.
	So, you know, so, A.L. Chavit, who is our SVP of Engineering Technology Product, you know, he, of course, had spoken to Akamai, Akamai to Limelight, and they said, well, you know, yeah, we're disappointed, it sucks, but we're going to, you know, we're going to go back and we'll, you know, we're going to work on it, but no worries, you know, nothing to be afraid of.
	And, of course, it's true.
	I mean, you don't have, when this type of stuff happens, you don't have to sign a check the next second, you know, then you're not going to turn your fucking network off within three days or something.
	And by the way, your point is so well made.
	It takes us about five minutes to switch to any content delivery network we wish.
	Anyone?
	We could, you know, anyone.
	And in fact, we've always had it set up that way for very simple reasons.
	Sometimes you want bandwidth that...
	Maybe cheaper because you can take it from another provider for some streaming exercise.
	I mean, this is how you run a business, right?
	You never want to be locked into one provider, and you certainly don't want your URLs have to change.
	So anyway, the point of the story, and then I'll lead into your MarketWatch column about Google, is...
	Because of the...
	Where I said, doesn't the good stuff pop up to the top and doesn't all the...
	Don't you get to the real truth?
	These guys, they won't live down this going dark business for at least a year because everyone will be saying, oh, these guys are so screwed.
	And even when I posted on my blog at curry.com exactly what the status was, Even in the comments, people aren't even reading, just saying, oh man, it's always the little guy who gets screwed because all the little guys are on limelight.
	It was unbelievable how poorly informed people are and how quickly, it was literally Twitter crap and society of spectacle baked into one.
	And it really, really irked me.
	Well, it should, but the problem, of course, with you being, you might as well get used to it, because this kind of thing is getting worse than better, which is one of the kind of, the whole internet thing is creating this, I've always believed this was happening from the beginning, where you have the democratization of everything.
	You end up with a mob mentality just kind of all over the place.
	Pile jumping.
	Fucking pile jumping.
	They're still suckered by hoaxes, and it's unbelievable.
	So let me lead into your, because actually I was so wired, you know, and I tried to tap it out on the N810, but something went wrong with the JavaScript in a Google group or whatever, and so I had written all this thing painstakingly in the dark, and then it got lost.
	Pile jumping.
	Pile jumping.
	So I went upstairs.
	Now I'm awake.
	I'm going to type it out on the computer.
	I'm going to do a blog post, right?
	So I'm up for an hour and I'm like, oh man, now I'm wired.
	Now I can't sleep.
	And so I listened to a Tech 5.
	I hear you talking about your MarketWatch column about Google.
	And it's exactly the same thing.
	And let me just set it up and then you can correct and take it from there.
	Comscore, which is a company that has a panel-based system of tracking unique visitors.
	They track a number of things, but they're really a type of Nielsen for the web in more than one manner.
	One, because they use panel-based and don't rely on stuff webmasters have installed as a toolbar like Alexa.
	So, you know, like it or not, you know, you can like the Nielsens or not, but that's the rule.
	That's what's being used because that's what Madison Avenue uses.
	So we live or die by the ComScore numbers.
	Everybody does, including Google.
	So they came out with a story which...
	It was about the decline in click-through rates, a study decline in click-through rates that Google was having, and a whole bunch, actually a couple of different places, I don't know who really started off, I'm sure there was one like Ground Zero blog that drew the conclusion that Google is going out of business.
	And this spiraled into after-hour trading of market cap being chopped off by 15 billion.
	A lot of stuff.
	And it got so bad that they did something which I found absolutely amazing.
	On the Comscore weblog, the CEO and co-founder went into detail explaining what this really means to Google.
	Which I think is kind of out of the ordinary and, of course, draws up a whole bunch of questions about, you know, why would they do that other than someone saying, hey, dude, you know, the interpretation of your data just chopped off $15 billion of our market cap, so would you mind, like, explaining this shit to somebody?
	But it...
	First of all, if you do the research and take a couple minutes, you'll see that these, well, yes, the click-through rate may have gone down effectively.
	What they're making, what you can make on Google's AdSense AdWords system is probably more effective and generating more cash.
	But I'm just amazed by the zeitgeist now of online advertising is in trouble, it's all over for Google, it's not going to work, and you kind of had written about some of this on your MarketWatch blog, and I just thought I'd bring it up to you.
	Well, I wrote about...
	I actually made the conclusion that Google's in good shape.
	Yeah.
	But...
	And by the way, it's a column, not a blog.
	Even though now that they allow comments, which has just become, I think, is a mistake because I think the publication doesn't...
	The comments are useless, generally speaking.
	We don't get...
	For some reason, at least the commenters that I've been reading on MarketWatch are just a bunch of snipers.
	They're just like the typical ankle biters that are Mac users that hate me for one reason or another.
	Added no value.
	There's no value and there's no insight.
	I think they may kill it because one of the guys that consistently start sniping at maybe more than anyone is the editor-in-chief of the publication.
	Every time he writes anything, they just slam him and he's got to be annoyed by it.
	My real point to that article was that the media has been giving Google a free ride in terms of their coverage of the company.
	They're never ready to get into any in-depth.
	What's Google really up to?
	Google's very secretive about a lot of stuff.
	Nobody digs into it.
	Nobody tries to find out.
	Thank you.
	This is what I wanted to say is that if you really dig into what Google is doing, they control the buy and the sell side.
	They control this entire system.
	They're continuously tweaking the system to do one thing, and it's to generate more money.
	And it is a black box.
	You don't know exactly what you're getting.
	It's clearly still working.
	But where is the...
	Where are people delving into how this AdSense actually works?
	You can kind of figure out what's going on.
	It's an auction-bid-based system for AdWords.
	We use it quite a lot to market our programming.
	And, you know, they even have teams who will help us.
	You can call, you know, if you're a big client.
	And they'll help you tweak it.
	You know, it is their job to make more money and thus more money for them.
	But they control every single aspect, John.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's unbelievable.
	And, you know, I wish I had this guy's name handy, but I sat down and had lunch.
	With the guy who invented that system.
	Yeah, it was actually another, it was outside, Google had bought it from these guys, and this was one of the original engineers.
	And he gave me a couple of, and I'm going to have to track him down now, but he gave me, interestingly enough, a couple of real cool inside tidbits that allow you to not game the system, but to exploit it in ways that very few people do.
	He says he knows a few companies that do it.
	But he...
	And it was quite fascinating.
	But this guy would be...
	This is the guy that Yahoo should have gone out and hired.
	I don't understand Yahoo and Microsoft and these other guys.
	Didn't they buy that from Yahoo?
	Isn't that what...
	Didn't Google buy...
	Am I thinking Overture?
	No, they bought a bunch of stuff from Yahoo.
	But this specific thing was a standalone system that Google bought from these guys.
	And...
	They were, I don't know, I don't remember the story anymore because this was like over a couple, at least two years ago, maybe longer.
	But the point is, just sitting there talking to the guy because he was in some other company now doing something.
	And this is how much, this is my memory, by the way, going on me, I guess.
	Have another army yacht from 1900.
	I can't remember anything.
	So anyway, this is why, by the way, this is one of the reasons I'm such a good guy for like blowing out Because you don't remember who you're supposed to be protecting.
	Exactly.
	This guy says, look, I'm going to tell you this, but if I get caught, you know, if you're ever telling, you know, and I say, go ahead, tell me, because, you know, about two hours from now, I'm not even going to remember.
	I had this conversation.
	Do you remember any of the tricks that he gave for gaming the system?
	Yeah, I do, but I'm not going to talk.
	I don't have enough details, but I can just say it wasn't gaming the system.
	It was like...
	It was actually gaming the way it's presented to the reader.
	In other words, you know, on that little side it says, you know, if you're interested in corpses, find them on eBay.
	You see that?
	There's a way of changing the wording that customizes almost more closely to what the reader's looking for.
	Well, they're doing a lot of work on that now where vacation, they're doing more broader.
	So vacation will automatically trigger trip and air travels, all kinds of stuff that they're doing.
	Well, it's an interesting situation with that.
	But the thing that fascinates me the most about any of this is that the guys like this guy who I'm talking to him, why is he not working for a huge million bucks a year for Microsoft or why isn't Yahoo hiring him?
	Why isn't Microsoft trying to copy everything Google does, but they don't really find any way to get a hold of these executives who know how to do all this stuff?
	It's just baffling to me.
	Well, I would say there's one of three things.
	Either A, he is, and we just don't know about it.
	B, he's building his next thing to flog off to someone.
	Or C, he's incredibly wealthy and cannot compete in that arena after they bought the company from him.
	No, I think that the latter thing for sure, because they always have a non-compete, but the non-competes end after two years.
	And usually, generally speaking, in the Valley, what these guys do is they, yeah, okay, so they sign the non-compete, and assuming it's even enforced, half the time it's not, because it's like, you know, because these companies move on.
	They've got a right-to-work state and all that.
	all kinds of stuff.
	It's very hard to enforce.
	It's very hard to enforce.
	But let's say they do enforce it.
	The person A gets a non-compete for two years, sells to the company, does whatever he does.
	He goes immediately to somebody else and starts working on a new project.
	It's going to take two years at least to complete.
	So the non-competes are not that important.
	But my sense is not what you're saying as the reason.
	My sense is that these other companies just do not dig hard enough at finding competent people to do what they want to do.
	I just think that they do a crappy job of it.
	I know Microsoft has got a not-invented-here, generally speaking, strategy.
	And they always try to do everything in-house.
	And when they do get somebody from outside, like when they got David Cutler to do Windows NT, that was like a big deal.
	That was a great OS, by the way.
	NT.
	In fact, the guts of it are still running things mostly.
	But Windows 2000 is always still perceived as the best thing that Microsoft ever did.
	But anyway, it's just baffling to me that there's not more...
	They just hire people based on their resume.
	They don't really go after these guys who are the superstars, at least as far as I can tell.
	Yep, so not only do the companies suck, the journalists suck, and hey, everyone kind of sucks!
	And they're all making money!
	Hold on a second, we got a very important comment, John.
	Hi Adam, hi John.
	Okay, I've let it go on too long.
	The first couple of times you mentioned it, I let it go.
	But you guys keep talking about tea, and hearing two Americans talking about tea, it's like the blind leading the blind.
	Let's get a few things straight.
	First of all, PG Tips is not good tea.
	Even the PG Tips gold.
	It's soft southern Jesse tea, and it's too weak.
	You want to get some proper tea, that's either Tetley or Yorkshire tea.
	And the next thing is, I hear today you've been talking about putting milk in before the teabag, or sugar in before the teabag.
	Oh, my God.
	Just step away from the teabags, take a deep breath, and learn how to make tea properly.
	You put the teabags or the tea into a teapot.
	You pour hot water, boiling hot water, onto the teabags or the tea.
	You make the tea in the teapot, and then you put the milk in the cup.
	You put the tea from the teapot into the cup on top of the bag.
	All right, kill this guy.
	Here's a guy that obviously wasn't listening to the show, because I was complaining about putting the milk in first, and I was aghast at the fact that people were doing it, so now he's accusing us of suggesting that we do that?
	It's a complete bias the Brits have against the Yanks, man.
	They hate us.
	This guy's an idiot.
	Now, besides that, I got a letter here from a Michelle Gleave.
	This is actually more interesting than him.
	Okay.
	Mainly because he obviously wasn't listening in.
	And Tetley tea is not that good.
	But whatever.
	I agree.
	I like my PG tips.
	That's the most popular tea in England.
	I guess all the Brits are wrong.
	But anyway, let's go read this note.
	But this was actually kind of shocking.
	And this came from an American, too.
	She said something about true, true.
	Steeping completely depends on the brand.
	PG tips is strong enough after 30 seconds.
	What?
	That's what she says.
	But Marks and Spencer needs a bit longer, etc.
	There's nothing worse than when the teabags have sat and stewed for too long.
	Yuck.
	Although I let mine go for days.
	It was probably an American who did the milk steeping thing.
	No, it wasn't.
	Talk to a German and they'll look at you like you're insane for adding milk to any kind of tea, blah, blah, blah.
	She's probably one of those women who has the big gigantic teacup with the teabag hanging out, walking around the office all day.
	The kind I loathe.
	I'm reading her stuff.
	I can't tell if she's in English.
	She's got a...
	That sounds totally American to me.
	She doesn't sound English.
	The 30 second thing?
	Well, you know, maybe she doesn't really like tea because 30 seconds is like, holy crap.
	My son, who's a big tea connoisseur, he says that there's a bunch of documents that say that at the three minute mark is when you should pull it out because you get like, you know, he's got a timer, you know.
	But then here's something I see all Brits do.
	Because, of course, the teabags here in the UK have no string.
	I just want to point that out.
	They are basically sacks or pods or pads or whatever.
	Or a pyramid.
	Or a pyramid, right.
	I will see them take the spoon and squeeze the teabag against the side of the cup with quite a bit of force and then take it out.
	I do that, but I use my hands.
	I'm like, you know, I squeeze it with my fingers because I get it to grip.
	Really?
	I'm a spoon guy.
	I'm sorry.
	I just reach in there, grab it, throw the thing in the sink.
	Of course, in the sink.
	In the sink.
	For what?
	For Mimi to clean it up later?
	Is that what you do?
	No, we got a garbage disposal.
	Things go in there.
	You hit it.
	Boom.
	It's just tea.
	You know, come on.
	It goes in the sink.
	Garbage disposals rock.
	You know, in Berkeley, they're illegal.
	They're outlawed?
	They are.
	They're illegal.
	Why?
	They're not good for the eco-culture.
	What kind of BS is that?
	Let's not even get into it.
	I don't want a shitload of email talking about how we're killing the planet with our garbage disposals.
	By the way, I got one more letter from a guy.
	We were talking about wine earlier, I thought.
	He says he liked our show.
	Last Wednesday, I don't know, I guess he doesn't understand this when it comes out.
	That's why you listen to it.
	I have a quick question since I need advice from an expert.
	That must be me.
	What wine goes well with pasta?
	Anything.
	I'm looking at it.
	But in any sense, I'm looking at up to $100.
	Holy crap.
	You can get something for five, seven bucks.
	$100 wine.
	With a screw top.
	You know, if you pasta, you know, I would always like to match an Italian wine with it, and I would start looking for...
	Chianti?
	Checking out...
	Well, no, I would actually go upscale a little bit, and you get these Rosso di Montecinos, which are kind of the second wines of Brunello, which are, like, better than Chianti's and not as good as Brunello's, but probably almost as good and drinkable more soon.
	Can you spell the name of that wine so...
	It's just Rosso, R-O-S-S-O, meaning red wine, D-D-I, Montalcino, M-O-N-T-A-L-C-I-N-O. And I'm pronouncing it with no Italian accent, obviously, because I don't speak Italian.
	But anyway, that wine, generally speaking, whenever you see one, especially on a wine list, tends to be usually well-priced.
	And they'll get some respect from the wine stewards if you know what that wine is.
	And I've never really had a bad one.
	And he'll get laid for sure, right?
	Because he'll impress.
	Sure.
	And you can get them for $20.
	And they're very tasty.
	Did I tell you...
	You remember earlier, I think it was last week, YouTube went down for two hours because Pakistan blocked...
	You know, I never followed up on that to find out what happened.
	How did Pakistan, by blocking YouTube, actually bring down the system?
	Well, I can't explain that part, but I will tell you this.
	The Dutch press, and I'll just say that in general, is claiming that the reason that happened is...
	I think I've told you about the anti-Koran movie that this Dutch politician is planning on releasing.
	We blogged it.
	Oh, right.
	That's exactly right.
	Wilders is his name.
	Geert Wilders.
	He's from the PVV party, or the party of something freedom.
	And so the story is, is that they shut off YouTube because they thought that he was going to release this week, and they blocked all traffic.
	They intended to apparently only block traffic from wherever that guy's...
	Wherever he was going to upload or something like that.
	But essentially, they're claiming that the reason they shut it down is because of this movie.
	They thought it was coming out.
	Well, how did they...
	Is this like a cheap bunch of Christmas tree light bulbs?
	You know, the internet?
	I'm telling you.
	Yeah, well, it is.
	Have you ever been to Dubai, as an example?
	I went to Dubai.
	The three of us stayed at that ghastly hotel, the Burj Al Arab.
	That big one.
	Yeah, which is great for a day and a half, but we booked it for like a week and we were bored stiff.
	But anyway, there's nothing to do.
	There's nothing to do except spend money.
	Good food, I will say.
	Good food.
	Oh yeah.
	But anyway, so you get internet access in the room and I couldn't get to a whole bunch of sites and I asked a couple people and I started to investigate a bit and for Dubai there really is like a big gateway and it goes through one huge router I guess and there probably is only one ISP there anyway and they determine what you can and cannot go to and can and cannot see.
	Yeah, I know they do that in the Middle East a lot.
	I'm always checking with...
	I have some associates that are in Dubai and elsewhere.
	I have a guy in China.
	And I'm always asking to make sure that the Dvorak.org slash blog is showing up because I'm always concerned about it.
	Because we were cut off in the Middle East...
	about two years ago for a month or two, and I always felt it was because we have a lot of critical articles about terrorism, and I thought maybe that was it, but it turned out to be, I forget what the reason was, but it was some minor thing that was fixable, and it got fixed and we're back up.
	I'm always quite proud when we've been at banks many times in these types of legal and financial offices, And I'm always quite happy when you can't get to YouTube, you can't get to MySpace.
	can't get to Facebook, but Podshow pops up quite happily.
	It's really cool.
	Yeah, no, that's...
	You never know why they're cutting these various sites off.
	I mean, what's the big deal?
	I would say the video clip of TSA Gangsters would be one reason for it to be cut off.
	That's the one I showed you in the office.
	Yeah, that would be bad.
	But the...
	Facebook, I mean, what's...
	I don't know.
	Because it's a time waster, that's why.
	People just sit there all day Facebooking.
	Well, maybe.
	And I can see it.
	I have a Facebook account.
	Really, the only reason I have it is so that my daughter doesn't do email anymore, which is very interesting.
	Now, Facebook has its own email messaging system, and so you can either write something on each other's wall, which is kind of like a public posting place.
	or you can send email.
	And if I send her email, I know her email address.
	She just doesn't respond if I send her a Facebook message.
	And then to her is her protected environment, right?
	She can kick anyone off.
	She only receives messages from people she wants.
	And if someone wants, it's very interesting this.
	If someone wants to send her a message, then they have to friend her first.
	And they have to either give a good enough reason or she has to know them.
	And then you can receive the messaging.
	So, How is this any different than AOL Messenger or MSN Messenger or AIM or whatever these other IAM systems are?
	What's the difference?
	No, there's no difference except that obviously the email client that's built into Facebook has email type properties.
	IAM kind of scrolls and it's gone, and if you log out, you may not be able to see your previous messages that were incoming.
	It has more of a permanent message structure and all the other stuff.
	With Skype, which we use at Podshow, you can click on something and get all the messages you've ever sent to that person.
	Yeah, but it's...
	It's not good enough for structured following threads and stuff.
	You'll miss things, and there's always idiots who don't want to read their stuff, and maybe you miss something.
	I don't know.
	It's not quite the same.
	The email archive structure is just different than...
	I do like Skype when you reconnect.
	Of course, sometimes it's confusing.
	Reconnect after a 10-hour plane flight, and then all these messages come in.
	I'm like, oh, let me look for that document.
	And it turns out they sent the message 15 hours earlier.
	Yeah, well, that's like the Verizon messaging system.
	Every once in a while, I get a text message from you that's like two days old.
	Yeah, two days old.
	Believe me, that's AT&T, not Verizon, dude.
	I'm sorry, AT&T, right.
	AT&T is lame that way.
	It's very inconsistent.
	Sometimes it's like bang, bang, bang.
	You can actually have almost like an IM conversation with somebody with text messages.
	And then sometimes they just never show up for days.
	Well, that guaranteed delivery, which of course what SMS really is built on, you can even get a delivery notification report automatically.
	The system is set up for that.
	I think most carriers will let you do that.
	It's very disconcerting to me that I'm totally thinking I sent you a message.
	I think it was a back and forth we had one or two messages.
	And then I didn't hear from you.
	I'm like, oh, and it's worrisome.
	And now that I know that these messages sometimes just don't arrive, my trust is kind of waning on it.
	Yeah, no, it's disconcerting to say the least.
	And it's like, you know, and what's weird about it, sometimes you get, like, the one I think I got the last one from you.
	In fact, I sent you some messages I never heard back.
	I figured they're just lost.
	Same thing.
	Lost, I'm sure.
	Yeah.
	And so I got this message.
	I said, oh, call me now.
	You know, it's like, something called me.
	What the hell do you want me to call him for?
	You know, it's like 10 at night on Thursday.
	And so I'm looking and I track it.
	It's like a message that was sent two days earlier.
	Yeah, that sucks.
	And I'm sure the big problem with AT&T is roaming internationally.
	My voicemail never works.
	So when I'm over in the UK, it doesn't matter because I don't care about voicemail.
	Actually, I'm quite happy it doesn't work.
	But what you get is...
	The caller you've called is unavailable.
	Not even that.
	It's like, please enter mailbox number.
	I don't know.
	What is a mailbox number?
	I mean, it's horrible.
	Yeah, I know.
	I've heard that because I call you every once in a while on the phone when you're over there because you have a local number in the Bay Area.
	So I'll call it and I'll get like, the guy's not here.
	Enter mailbox number.
	You just punch some shit in and see what you get.
	You get nothing.
	And then I've done it.
	And then the alternative message with somebody with a deep British accent says, enter the phone number to which you'd like to send a message.
	So you have to redial the number, which I don't usually know because it's on speed dial.
	Of course.
	It's just a number on my phone.
	In the address book.
	You add them.
	Bing.
	Because that's the way most people use cell phones now that you have the numbers.
	So you'd have to scramble around to get the number, which you can't do without hanging up generally.
	And so it's like...
	On your Nokia E61 you have, you can actually just hit the address book button.
	Well, on this one, the button there on the one I have, where the address book button normally is, I suppose I can scroll to it somehow, but it turns the loudspeaker on and off.
	Oh, yeah, you can reconfigure those buttons.
	Who would think they need to?
	But you're hitting the wrong one.
	In the middle, you have your joystick, and then you have two little buttons to the left and to the right of the joystick.
	So the one to the furthest left is a little address book icon.
	I think that one is...
	You can't even reprogram it, so you should be able to hit that one.
	You probably have the other button.
	How about this for an idea?
	They should fix their crappy system.
	Why should they put all the work on me?
	I'm not their accountant.
	Dude, speaking of which...
	I had my typical Saturday morning, not bagel as Leo incorrectly said, but I was kicking back, drinking some tea, reading the Financial Times.
	Man, I'm sure you're aware of it, but having been in the States for two weeks, it's not common knowledge.
	But this problem with the banking system, which of course is all about credit and debt, you know, that's what banking is.
	Every single bank in Europe is now throwing out these huge write-offs, you know, two billion here, two billion in Switzerland.
	You know, of course, there was a problem with France, Société Générale.
	Yeah, they were totally toasted.
	But the rogue trading, it's all the same stuff.
	What I think is happening, John, is because it's not like, oh, this is because of just bad mortgages, subprime mortgages.
	This is much, much deeper.
	All these guys are fucked up.
	Everyone's been lying.
	They figure we might as well throw it all out now because, of course, they're discovering this stuff.
	Right.
	A road trader.
	And they're popping it everywhere, man.
	It's unreal.
	Royal Bank of Scotland, huge billions of pounds of write-down.
	Everyone is just saying, let's get rid of it.
	CEOs are resigning, getting fired left and right.
	It is pandemonium.
	You know, I was looking at, in fact, I was looking at some bank stocks thinking that I knew this was coming.
	I was thinking maybe there's some good, you know, puts and calls here.
	Puts mainly.
	Puts is an option.
	These guys, it's already done.
	I mean, UBS, you know, one of the biggest banks in Switzerland, is already down by 50%.
	I mean, how much further down is it going to go?
	These stocks are all getting pounded.
	It's amazing.
	So what's happening now, and I predicted this on one of our first shows, the sovereign wealth funds are bailing all these guys out.
	And what's happening is, it's much, much cheaper now to go raise some, and not just cheaper, and we'll get to another one of your favorite topics, It's much easier to go raise money from these sovereign wealth funds, which are now in the $2-3 trillion range of how much money is out there.
	This is China.
	This is the Middle East.
	It's that kind of money.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Back up a second.
	I don't know why, but I haven't heard this term.
	What does it mean?
	It's like private equity companies?
	No, no, no.
	So the country...
	It puts a fund together, a sovereign wealth fund.
	Like Dubai?
	Yes, Dubai and China.
	They literally set up a fund.
	And you can imagine a country, you know, you can get a trillion bucks together pretty quickly if you're China.
	And they are now investing in every single one of these banks.
	So all these banks are doing emissions, all kinds...
	And what's turning out is it's much more cost-effective and much...
	Much easier, of course, with Sarbanes-Oxley than doing an IPO in the U.S. In the U.K. now, this non-domiciled tax issue, along with some other taxation things that are changing, is literally, in the Financial Times today, being called the Sarbanes-Oxley of the City of London.
	So now all these banks that need the dough, because that's really what these IPOs are about raising funds, Money is all about.
	They're all going to take money from China.
	I mean, we're owned.
	We're biatches, man.
	It's crazy.
	What's funny about it is this is where privatization always ends up.
	Some other government, instead of your railroads being owned by your government and controlled by the locals, they get privatized.
	And then the next thing you know, they're owned by China.
	Yeah, well, Heathrow is already, you know, the BAA, British Airport, whatever it is, is owned by a Spanish company.
	You know, it's nuts.
	It's absolutely nuts.
	And I think this is just starting, you know, but you're not seeing the headlines, I'm sure of it.
	In the U.S., you're not seeing the headlines.
	No, they don't.
	You know, the problem with, yeah, we don't get the right news feed, generally speaking, as a country.
	You know, because our local reporters or their local media, local meaning, you know, like the New York Times, Washington Post, Any of them.
	I don't know what they're thinking in the editorial meetings.
	In a newsroom, you have a big meeting every day of all the city desk editors and all these guys get together around a big table with the editor-in-chief, and they start calling out what the paper's going to look like for that meeting.
	Next edition.
	You know, what's going to be on the front page and what's hot and what's not, what's coming up.
	And they make the decisions in that room.
	And I don't know what the deal is.
	Because, look.
	There's a lot of Britney.
	Oh, is Britney on the news today?
	There you go.
	Britney?
	What about Clemens?
	You think Roger Clemens is using steroids?
	Can we run that in front?
	If it leads, it bleeds, baby.
	You know the rule.
	Well, yeah, but Clemens isn't bleeding.
	Yeah, if it bleeds, it leads.
	Fucked it up.
	Yeah, same thing.
	But I am a little bit hurt that you never heard the term Sovereign Wealth Fund because I remember I did this whole rap about it.
	You laughed at me.
	Yeah, but that's because this is what you were so deeply into something or other that was killing me.
	I had to tell you to stop.
	This is the one.
	Well, now I'm more interested.
	Hey, John.
	It's timing.
	Blow me.
	All right?
	Thanks a lot, pal.
	Timing.
	Timing.
	Oh, you're so happy when you're calling something early.
	Isn't that what journalists do?
	Well, I said this in 1912, and I was right.
	A lot of people do that constantly.
	It's very annoying to read it.
	You do that.
	I've never done it.
	I rarely do it.
	You do it constantly.
	What are you talking about?
	You put it differently, though.
	You'll say, I wrote about this six months in my MarketWatch column.
	John, you always say these things.
	I only say it for clarification.
	You're killing me, baby.
	No, I'm telling you, I only say for clarification or to assure someone that I, you know, because it may be part of a premise.
	It's got nothing to do with what most of these guys do.
	It was, well, I was right again.
	I predicted last week that I'd write another column this week.
	And here it is.
	Listen to this.
	Adam and Dvorak.
	Here's a message for you guys.
	Chris from Leathertown.
	There actually is stuff still made in America.
	It's hard to find, but it's there.
	There's a fantastic television program on the Travel Channel.
	I'm pretty sure it's the Travel Channel.
	It's called John Ratsenberger's Made in America.
	I haven't seen that show.
	You know, I think I may have seen it a couple of times.
	It's mostly about candy manufacturing, if I'm not mistaken.
	Well, I've been keeping my eye on it.
	So, first of all, I did come up with something that is iconic, although completely unimportant for a gross domestic product.
	We still make Harley-Davidson.
	Yeah, and that would have been, by the way, for your investors out there, would have been a great investment during the period of time when they were about to go out of business.
	When they were AMF Voight, remember that?
	A Voight company or something?
	That was horrible.
	They made shitty bikes, like a sportster.
	You're not a motorcycle guy, are you?
	I used to have a bike.
	Yeah, and you remember the sportsters?
	Yeah, I didn't think they were that bad.
	They were fine if you put a teardrop tank in a nice seat and everything.
	Yeah, you could customize them all right.
	I'm more of a fat boy type guy.
	Oh, you like those big hogs that they like to call them?
	Yeah, I love the hog.
	The hog is awesome.
	Here's another thing to add a little bit to what we were talking about last week.
	E-Ads, that's the company that makes Airbus.
	Right.
	I'm sure you read this.
	They were awarded a 35 billion pound contract to create super tankers for the U.S. forces.
	Super tankers?
	Yeah, over Boeing.
	So Boeing lost out.
	Yeah, 35 billion pounds, so it's 70 billion dollars.
	I wonder what that's all about.
	Why are we buying European products from the United States when they're obviously overpriced because of the value of the dollar?
	It doesn't make any sense.
	It makes no sense.
	I totally agree.
	So it has to be politics.
	It's got to be some reason.
	Politics has got to be corruption.
	There's no reason for this kind of a deal.
	We should be buying only Boeing products because of the value of the dollar.
	It costs $1.50 to buy a euro now.
	$1.51.
	Lowest ever in history.
	The lowest of the dollar ever.
	Yes.
	Yeah, lowest value of the dollar in history.
	Yeah.
	And so now we're buying European products with that low dollar, and we've got a company called Boeing?
	This is a fucking outrage.
	Yeah, this pisses me off.
	I haven't read the article yet, but I'll look into it and find out what's going on.
	Someone pulled a boner on that one, I agree.
	The U.S. should be outraged.
	It's for our own military-industrial complex.
	It doesn't make sense.
	I'm going to have to start blogging.
	You know what it could be?
	Maybe it's what we call a Wiedergutmacher.
	And otherwise, kind of a makeup for...
	Remember, there was the big dispute about government subsidy for the creation of the new Airbus, and the U.S. said, well, we're still going to support Boeing, and they had that whole anti-competitive thing, and everyone was pissed off about it because...
	You know, countries aren't supposed to support their aircraft manufacturers.
	Does that ring any bells with you?
	Yeah, vaguely.
	But, you know, there's been a bone of contention on both sides since the beginning of this little...
	What I'm saying is maybe they let them have it.
	Maybe they said, here, you guys take that and we'll take something else.
	Maybe there was that kind of scale of deal in the back end.
	Yeah, they may have done a deal where we bought a bunch of their crap and then they bought a bunch of ours.
	This reminds me of the freeway around here.
	The freeway, the traffic in the Bay Area has gotten so bad.
	I go to San Francisco in the morning and it's crowded.
	Actually, in the afternoon, it's even worse.
	If I wanted to go to San Francisco at 3 o'clock, it's just as hard to get there as it is at 8 in the morning.
	And I'm looking.
	I'm seeing traffic stop dead at 3 or 4 or 5 in the afternoon, going both ways.
	So obviously people are commuting in both directions at the same time.
	Why don't they just move to the other location?
	It's just something about this guy's coming to San Francisco to come over to here to work, and I'm going from here over to San Francisco.
	Why don't we just change houses?
	A derivative, a swap.
	A swap.
	So that's what I'm...
	Possibly this is what's going on with this plane deal, but it's still, you know, it shouldn't be sitting...
	It's wrong.
	It's wrong.
	Yeah.
	You were harping most of the past two weeks that I was in the office about...
	And I've heard you on a couple of other shows...
	Talking about, you know, the Nelly Schmidt-Kruz, who, of course, is the EU competition guru, czar, and, you know, how Microsoft, of course, received this, you know, billion-dollar, more than billion-dollar fine.
	It's pronounced Nelly, right?
	It's Nelly.
	That's her first name.
	And her last name...
	I can't pronounce it Nelly.
	I guess that's wrong.
	Nelly.
	Okay, Nelly.
	Schmidt-Kruz.
	Like in Nail Her, only Nelly.
	And then Smith Cruz is hyphenated.
	So it's Sierra Mike, India Tango, Smith.
	Kroos.
	Oh, it's Smit.
	Smit Kroos.
	And that's Kilo Romeo Oscar Echo Sierra.
	Smit Kroos.
	Naley Smit Kroos.
	Yeah, try the Kroos with a rolling R. Kroos.
	Naley Smit Kroos.
	Not too...
	Don't put the K in there.
	It's Naley Smit Kroos.
	I'm sorry.
	I blew it.
	I'm trying to help you.
	No, you'll get that.
	It's cool, wouldn't you?
	Naley Smit...
	See, I keep wanting to say Schmidt.
	No, she's not Schmidt.
	Naley Smit Kroos.
	Yeah, but you've got to connect the Smith-Kruz into kind of like one...
	Naley Smith-Kruz.
	There you go.
	Fantastic.
	The crowd goes wild.
	I'll work on it.
	But anyway, so Naley was reading a couple articles, and one of the things I didn't quite rave about...
	Rave about was the fact that I was reading an article in one of the business journals saying, well, when she got the job, they expected her to be a pushover, and she was a weak person, and she was always pro-business, so this was a big shock to everybody.
	But meanwhile, we had talked about her, and you always said she was a hard-ass from the beginning.
	She is so hard-ass, it turns me on.
	I can't help but find her sexy.
	So why was this analysis so wrong by all these journalists that keep saying that she was supposed to be a soft touch?
	Because she's a woman.
	Because she's a woman, I'm sure.
	Dickhead journalists.
	And they didn't do any research into the shit.
	She's done a lot of heavy shit.
	I mean, if you just Google her.
	Hey, journalists, I got an idea.
	Google.
	Look for some shit.
	Anyway, my question to you, my friend.
	Who actually collects that money and where does it go?
	Doesn't she get a piece of it?
	Obviously, other companies were at a disadvantage, so these companies were disadvantaged, and ultimately the consumer, of course, is disadvantaged.
	That's why this exists.
	But where does that money go?
	Same thing like, I heard that a couple record labels are now suing the RIAA because they want to know, not record labels, artists and their managers.
	Because they see all this money being collected.
	There's definitely millions of bucks from infringements and all these lawsuits.
	Yeah, from kids.
	Where's the money going?
	Well, that's a damn good question.
	Because they say they don't see it going down to the artist, and they're looking at the statements.
	In Europe, where does that money go?
	Does it go into one big pot?
	And then what?
	Who gets it?
	Does the consumer ever really get it?
	I mean, that's what I'd like to know.
	I'm going to find out.
	I got the title.
	I got the column already.
	Show me the money.
	Show me the money!
	I love it.
	Now you don't have to write it now that we have a title.
	That's so cool.
	That's true.
	Now it's done.
	That's a callback for you people out there.
	So here's the story of the week.
	How much time we got left, by the way?
	I think we have time for the story of the week.
	So I'm watching a...
	There was a shooting in Berkeley.
	Some black policeman shot a black woman who had a knife to somebody's throat.
	But everybody's up in arms about this because, you know...
	Certainly you mean African-American, John.
	Right.
	Well, whatever.
	So they had a big fuss over the city council, and they were blaming everybody for being a bunch of racists, even though the guy was black.
	I don't know.
	But there was an interesting new term that cropped up, and I'm always on the lookout, and I listen to free speech TV and...
	I listen to right-wing talk shows, left-wing talk shows.
	I listen to the extremes to look for new buzzwords that are going to try to slip into the public consciousness so people all of a sudden all start thinking along some line of thought.
	And I'm always reminded of Bill Moyers who gave a speech to a bunch of...
	Left-wing, literally left-wing journalists at some conference.
	And he was talking about how the Republicans are always making up words that they, you know, in terms that, you know, they try to exploit the dumb Americans.
	But meanwhile, of course, the Democrats do even more of this, you know, with, and I mentioned to you a couple of my old favorites, like Gravitas and Truth to Power is my all-time, most recent favorite.
	Truth to Power?
	What does that mean?
	Truth to Power.
	Truth to power is a term that came up about, I first heard it maybe two years ago, maybe three years ago, and it is a, it doesn't mean anything to me, but what it's supposed to mean, I think, is that it's like you tell, you confront the power of what, you know, like the president, somebody who's actually the power or the CEO of a company, with raw truth.
	With the truth.
	Right, and that beats power.
	And that's supposed to do something.
	I don't know why.
	Maybe it's magical.
	It's like Harry Potter.
	It might be.
	Maybe it makes the guy disappear.
	Poof.
	So the one I ran into is this woman who was complaining about this, and she was defending, I guess, the dead woman.
	And she says the phrase, she says, well, as a skin-privileged white woman...
	And so as soon as I heard this, and I've mentioned this to my wife, and she just lit up like I did, which is the term skin privilege.
	Skin privileged.
	Which is actually a, it's not a positive thing.
	It's like, oh, well, you can say that because, you know, it would be used like this.
	Oh, well, Adam, you can say that because you're skin privileged.
	Oh, my gosh.
	It appears to be a derivative of white skin privilege.
	There's a whole bunch of entries on Google, a whole bunch of hits I'm getting here.
	That's messed up.
	But now it's being used in a very interesting context.
	Well, everything, you know, this is actually the modernization of the kind of epithets against quote-unquote old white men.
	Oh, so it's politically incorrect to say old white men.
	Now you have to say skin-privileged aged gentlemen?
	I don't think it's politically incorrect.
	I think it's not trendy.
	It's old-fashioned, which I guess would be politically incorrect at some level, because old-fashioned.
	You've got to keep up with these terms, and so the new term would be skin-privileged.
	That means that you're hip, that you're using the right terminology.
	You know, most of these things are code.
	I've always found most of these kinds of terminologies when they come and go.
	And you can listen to them.
	And you can actually read them.
	A lot of columns.
	You know, if you see, for example, the word chilling is always a word used by someone identifying themselves as a left-wing writer.
	So when I say Sebastian Rupley is a show shill, then...
	No, there's no codes there.
	No.
	That's actually a callback joke is what it is.
	That's what it is.
	But there's code words that people use in their writing and they use in their speaking to identify themselves as part of a subculture.
	A club.
	A gay.
	There's a lot of gay terms.
	and things you can do.
	There's a lot of left-wing, there's a lot of right-wing stuff you can say.
	And you run into these, and people sometimes don't even know they're in the milieu, but they've adopted all these terms, and you can identify them as being in the milieu, even though they're not trying to make it clear.
	A lot of people are trying to make it clear, some people aren't.
	Milieu is such a nice word.
	It reminds me of a situation that took place some years ago when I was visiting Boeing and some guy had written something for PC World, which was at the time a very politically correct operation.
	And the guy was a writer and he was talking to me about some copy editing issues that he had because he was...
	He got something that he wrote kicked back, and the editor, a woman, said that she wanted him to use a term, company spokesperson.
	Oh, instead of spokesman?
	No, instead of representative.
	Oh, interesting.
	That's what got me, and I was baffled by this.
	I said, what's wrong with the word representative?
	It has no sexual connotations whatsoever.
	Well, no, no, no.
	It is different.
	A representative.
	In fact, that's what he asked him.
	And the woman copywriter says, no, you don't.
	She says, no.
	She says, we use spokesperson because we don't want sexist language.
	And he says, well, how's representative sexist?
	She says, you don't get it.
	We use spokesperson to make it clear that we don't use sexist language.
	Jeez.
	Unbelievable.
	And that was like, to me, was like the, you know, like, wow.
	Well, I will say, though, man, that's, you know, particularly when it comes to the sexual harassment horse crap, you know, and, you know, obviously there is a line where it is sexual harassment and where it isn't.
	But the lawsuits, particularly if you're a public company, you know, you've got guys waiting outside just asking, hey, did anyone make you present yourself as a representative?
	Hmm, I think we can go make some money.
	I mean, that's the world we live in.
	Well, unfortunately, a lot of that has to do with the way the law is being interpreted.
	But anyway, the point I was making is there's these code words all over the place.
	So whenever I hear one, because I'm always on the lookout for them, because it's kind of what I do.
	So when the skin privilege one came up, I was just like, wow, this is an absolutely astonishing term to be floating around.
	Because it's just...
	So have you cracked the code of it?
	Do you think you know where it's coming from?
	I mean, the code is obvious.
	It means you're a progressive.
	If you use that word, you're identifying yourself as a member of the progressive movement within the Democratic Party, which is kind of beyond liberal, but not anything like a neoliberal.
	You're not a neoliberal, which is a certain type of liberal, which is a globalist, and who are hated by these people, by the way.
	You are a certain kind of progressive-style, old-fashioned, 1930s, borderline socialist.
	Well, let me just say that as a skin-privileged man, I'm insulted by the term.
	I am.
	Well, you should be.
	Yeah.
	All right, my friend.
	That was good.
	That was fun.
	We had a lot to say, honey.
	Please.
	You've taken your skin privilege to an extreme.
	There's got to be some other kind of sex privilege.
	Alright, one of the longest shows ever.
	Sorry.
	It's not your fault.
	I think we do keep it rolling.
	I had some thoughts about this.
	I was thinking, you know, maybe if we did talk to each other every single day, we could actually set a time limit.
	We could say, alright, we're going to talk for 30 minutes and this is what we're going to talk about.
	But it's because we don't talk every day that all this gushing waterfall comes out.
	I think it's better.
	Doing it this way?
	The everyday thing, I think, if we had a huge audience and we could monetize the show, yeah, we could do it every day for a while until we got sick of it.
	I'd never get sick of talking to you.
	That's Howard Stern's secret.
	He likes talking to those people.
	That's why the show works.
	But the point is that people seem to like this longer format, and we can do it for as long as we can.
	Maybe we might want to try the begging for money thing.
	That would be good.
	The Leo Laporte monetization system?
	Well, this show, of course, it's unsponsorable.
	Well, yeah, we should do a drive, because this show is, without a doubt, unsponsorable.
	It just won't work.
	We could, I believe, that this type of show, if we got into people's mainline, and just looking at my ego filters and stuff that's getting trapped, I think we are.
	I think a lot of people are tapping in, and they do find some time, maybe on the weekend or Wednesday.
	Yeah.
	To listen to the show and they take their time with it and it just works for them.
	I do believe that we could make this a for-pay program.
	Could be.
	Like The Economist.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't see why not.
	I mean, it's not that, you know, it does work to a point.
	I don't know what Leo's numbers are, because I know he begs for money, but I know they're good enough that he keeps doing it.
	And public television and public radio have made a career out of this.
	In fact, there's networks of these things, and they're just basically playing on people's guilt.
	Look, you like this show.
	Can you give us some money?
	We'll keep doing it.
	Well, they do it a little differently.
	They do it a little bit differently.
	Some friends of mine have done this.
	Have you ever seen, they do the pledge drive, and first they'll broadcast a concert.
	Well, they don't always do that.
	Sometimes they do auctions too, but I know what you're saying.
	I hate that, by the way.
	They talk and talk and talk, or they show something, and then they cut right into the middle of it and then make you watch for 15 minutes as they keep begging you for money.
	I'm not a big fan of that.
	Well, this Dutch guy, for some reason his name is just not popping into my head, who, by the way, the entire Dutch show business industry has laughed at for years.
	He's making so much money with this kind of...
	He has like 150 people.
	He's consistently on the road.
	It's a classical music concert, but really popularized and done as a fun, entertaining evening for everybody.
	You recognize all the songs.
	It's not stuffy.
	They...
	You know, they dress up in the clothing from the 1800s, you know.
	And so his show is one of these shows, and he makes so much money from that because they're selling the DVD, you know, for $100.
	Obviously, most of that's going to NPR or whatever the public broadcast organization is.
	But he gets to pre-sell an incredible amount of these DVDs.
	It's just, it's bank.
	It's big-time bank.
	Wow.
	So we could do that, or we could have celebrities in the telethon.
	We could do a telethon.
	That would be fun.
	And actually, that might actually work.
	And it would be entertaining the way we do it.
	And there's also the opportunity for grants.
	I don't know that any podcasters have actually thought about getting a grant from the Ford Foundation.
	Although I think in this case, forget it.
	But it's always a possibility that some foundation would find this to be something grant-worthy.
	That's a good idea.
	Well, in the Netherlands, actually, I do know there's this outfit called, oh man, my brain is mushed today, Fab Channel, fabchannel.com.
	And if you go look at Fab Channel, they got, I think, a couple million euros in seed money from the Amsterdam, a grant from the Amsterdam municipality.
	To record live concerts and put them on the internet.
	Concerts that are made either in the Paradiso, which is a famous venue, or the Milky Way, another very famous venue in Amsterdam.
	And now these guys have got some kind of deal with Universal.
	But it started with a grant and they were, in effect, podcasters.
	Huh.
	Yeah, interesting, huh?
	That's a good idea.
	I'm actually Googling that, see if anyone has thought of that.
	There must be tons of money out there.
	Well, I know there's tons of grant money.
	In fact, I did some research, not for this particular thing, but on grants.
	And there's a lot of online resources now.
	And then when you start looking into it, the amount of grant money out there is just out of this world.
	But there's a trick to it.
	It's called grantsmanship.
	And grantsmanship is the ability to get the money.
	Yeah.
	There are whole companies that you can hire to go get grants.
	I mean, this is big business.
	Yeah, it's a little different than the normal salesmanship.
	There's a lot of forms you've got to fill out and a lot of promises you've got to make, but you can get the dough.
	Here, a podcasting grant goes online.
	That's interesting.
	For schools.
	Yeah, they've got grants for schools, but then it's all for equipment.
	That's not the same thing.
	It should be for content.
	It should be for content.
	You know, we could talk to Naley about that.
	I'm sure there's some EU money floating out there that we can get our hands on.
	It just came in from Microsoft.
	Give me that Microsoft check.
	Just sign your name on the back, Naley.
	Don't worry about it.
	We'll put it to good use.
	But then people are going to hate us because then we're making money off of this.
	And we're still going to do long-form format.
	No, you know what?
	That's bold.
	Nobody hates people for making money.
	Yes, they do.
	They hate me incessantly for making money.
	They just hate you for other reasons.
	They don't care about your money.
	I'm not a likable guy.
	Yeah, well, that's what you say, and that's what you play on, and that's why they hate you.
	It's not the fact that you have a lot of money, and I don't think people know how much money you have.
	If they did, then they would hate you, but that's beside the point.
	Thanks.
	Thank you, my friend.
	All right.
	Well, let's think about that, because, I mean, we don't need to do it now.
	We need a ton of listeners.
	We need a lot more than we have now.
	Oh, yeah, no, we need to get into the hundreds of thousands, I think.
	Yeah, we need a lot more.
	Well, wait, let's ask the listeners that do listen, that eavesdrop, hey, tell your friends to listen to the show, you know, it's not going to kill them.
	Yeah, really, thank you.
	That's our pledge drive for today.
	Tell your friends to listen.
	Put it on your blog.
	Twitter it.
	Please.
	Jaiku it.
	Pounce it.
	Dig it.
	Stumble upon it.
	You know any more?
	Reddit.
	Reddit?
	Ooh, good one.
	Good one.
	We had a huge hit on the blog last week from one Reddit thing.
	Is that like a Dig thing, Reddit?
	I've never really looked into it.
	It's something like it, but you know, the thing is, Dig has been getting us, you know, we get these episodes where all of a sudden, boom, some crazy post has gotten the attention of stumbled upon Dig, Reddit, or whatever.
	And right now, stumbled upon and Reddit give us much more, they give us stronger spikes than Dig does.
	Really?
	Interesting.
	Because I hate you.
	Because you don't know what you're talking about, and you don't like Macs.
	You mean the dig kids?
	Yeah, the dig crowd.
	Yeah, the dig kids.
	They hate you, man.
	Alright, John, let's wrap it up.
	The dog has been barking for the last half hour.
	He's hungry.
	He's pissed off at me.
	You've been listening to No Agenda.
	Coming to you from the Curry Manor in Guilford, Surrey in the United Kingdom.
	I'm Adam Curry.
	And I'm John C. Dvorak.
	This has been the Extended Edition.
	I'm in Northern California.
	And we'll talk again next week on No Agenda.

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