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March 15, 2008 - No Agenda
01:09:09
21: Sooty Emissions
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Time Text
And it's time once again for the program that comes to you once a week.
And you can't wait for it because you know it contains no commercials, no jingles, no music, no talent, and certainly no agenda.
Coming to you from the affluent suburb of Surrey known as Guilford in the United Kingdom in the Curry Manor, I'm Adam Curry.
I'm up here in Northern California.
And actually, it's a sunny day again.
It's supposed to rain.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
Hey, John.
How you doing?
It's raining here in the UK, of course.
Good.
Yeah, we've had...
Let me see.
It'll be...
If it continues to rain through tomorrow, it'll be a solid week of rain.
It's been really, really...
Yeah, it's been bad.
It's been just crap.
It's good weather for ducks.
I used to say that when I was a kid.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Good weather for ducks.
I don't understand what the point of it was.
You know, I think you've pretty much since yesterday or the day before yesterday, you've been in a very foul mood.
And I understand why.
And why is that?
Because your computer blew up on you.
Yes, I know.
Of course, I've had nothing but suggestions, none of which work.
I think the hard disk just blew up.
Here's what's weird.
When Vista first came out, I got a hold of Microsoft.
I said, I need a couple copies of Vista because I want to test it.
They sent me two copies of the Ultra.
Then I put them in a drawer or somewhere.
That was almost a year ago, so now I can't find them.
And now you need it desperately, right, to reinstall?
Well, no, not to reinstall.
I figure I should put a Vista installation on top of the open.
That way I can get a feeling for what people are complaining about.
Oh, you're not running Vista?
What are you running?
XP. Oh, okay.
I'm sorry.
I thought you were running Vista.
No, no.
But I'm going to be running Vista, but now I can't find the disks.
So if it's not one thing, it's another.
It's not, you know...
Yeah, but I was listening to...
You were ranting on Tech 5.
I think Tech 5, actually, three minutes of Tech 5 was about your computer problems.
And I was just listening to it, and I'm like, yeah, man, I remember that.
I remember that before I went back to the Mac.
I've never had any of that problem with a Mac, ever.
It's...
It's a slow news week anyway, so I figured I might as well rave about it.
And the thing is, when the show's only five minutes or so, people listen to you ranting for a few minutes, and if it was a 20-minute show and I kept doing it, I'm sure I would lose my whole audience.
Yeah.
Hey, listen, I was over in Europe earlier in the week, continental Europe, that is, and I think I've got a scoop, a minor scoopage.
Alright.
Remember the story that came out about the iPhones, that half a million iPhones had never showed up on the AT&T network and they were presumed that they had been sold to China?
Or whatever.
Yeah.
So I'm in Holland, right?
And I kid you not, John...
Every third cell phone I saw was an iPhone, unlocked, working on a local network.
Everybody has one.
There's no official deal in the Netherlands, and I'm sure that it's the same in surrounding countries.
Of course, Germany, I think, is it available in Germany yet?
Maybe not even officially.
I don't know.
I tell you, those 500,000 iPhones, they went to Europe, man.
They didn't go to China.
Everybody's walking around with one all unlocked.
Just slipping their own SIM card.
Did you talk to anybody about where they got one?
Did you, like, bump a guy and say, hey, buddy, where'd you get this?
Yeah, in fact, I was visiting a friend of mine who has a television production company, and they were in New York for, I don't know if they were on a shoot or a conference or something, and they bought 50 iPhones for the entire company and just brought them back.
You know, it's really cheap, obviously, now that the dollar is, you know, it's $1.
In the toilet, right?
Yeah.
In other words, the Europeans get the phone for essentially half the price we have to pay.
Right.
Half the price and you're not locked into any network carrier because you just unlock it with...
What are they?
They're using SimZiff or something.
There's some package out there that you buy once and you can unlock any iPhone you want with it.
And I saw women walking around saying, hmm, something's wrong.
I can't figure this out.
And then some guy would walk up and say, oh, don't worry.
I'll just unlock it again for you.
It's culturally accepted.
Everyone's unlocking these iPhones that they buy in the States.
Well, in Europe, of course, most phones are unlocked, or you can get them unlocked pretty easily.
And people do buy just a phone, and when you just buy a bare phone, it's unlocked.
Well, that's not entirely true.
I mean, carriers still try to lock you into a subsidized phone.
The main difference is you have the right to buy it unlocked, so it'll cost you more.
In fact, you can go to the Nokia store.
There's one in Guilford, and you can walk right in.
You can get any of their phones with a contract, which makes the phone cheaper, or you can buy it completely unlocked and put any SIM card in it that you wish.
But people, I think, in Europe are more aware of the locking thing.
I think only the techies in the United States know anything about it.
Yeah, well, people are aware because most people by now, you know, in the evolution of cell phones, they've had certainly more than one.
And so they've already gone through this, you know, also number portability, you know, that has to carry over within a set amount of time.
And there's pretty good about that here in Europe.
That's all Naley's business, man.
She worked out all those competition things.
So, yeah, she's the thorn in our side.
No, she is not.
I tell you, she's a very smart woman.
Somewhat aggressive, perhaps, in what she does, but she's not a thorn.
Anyway, at least the...
And the worst part about it, they're making these fines in euros.
They should do it in dollars so we can get a discount.
Was it $1.56 now?
$1.56 to the euro?
It might as well be $100.
It's crazy, John.
It's already too ridiculous to go to Europe.
I mean, you have to spend twice as much money, because they have the normal inflation that we have here, so the prices are comparable, but it's all based on the euro, so thus we have to pay twice as much for everything over there.
When we used to have a discount, because it used to be 80 cents for a euro, now it's about 56.
Yeah.
So it'll double.
So it'll get to 160.
It'll completely double within memory.
Because I think it was about three years ago, longer than that, maybe five years ago, in the first Bush term, that you could get the euro for 80 cents.
But then, you know, after...
GW sunk the economy.
Yeah.
I remember when a dollar was five guilders.
So five guilders would be two and a half euros today.
Isn't that amazing?
What a reversal.
So I'm fooling around on the DISH network.
I'm going through all the different channels.
And there's a channel that cropped up.
In fact, if people have the DISH network, I think there's the same thing with all these satellite systems.
Sometimes you have to scan through it and you find sample channels and experimental channels.
I found something buried.
And they're always buried.
Like in the 900s and the high numbers?
Yeah, high numbers.
In this case, 9,645.
Yeah.
What are you doing up there, John?
Isn't that where all the porn is as well?
You're sampling something else?
I don't subscribe to the porn.
I think it was in the hockey or something.
But anyway, if anyone's got the addition, go to channel 9645.
And the channel is called LF1. And I have no idea what that means.
But what it is, what they're showing is a non-stop, it's about a six, I didn't time it and I should have, but it's less than ten minutes long, but it feels like about six or seven minutes.
A short movie that they keep looping over and over and over again, which actually has interactive features, which I thought was interesting.
You can click on something and then you can interact with it.
On your remote, you mean you can press a colored button?
Actually, you press the enter button, even though it's kind of vague which button to press.
And it loads an application that allows you to order a CD and do some other things if you want a copy of the CD. And I think you can just get a copy of the CD at the website.
But it's a movie by Shell Oil.
And what the hell's the name of it?
I don't got the name somewhere.
It's got some stupid name.
Is it a movie or is it like a long-form commercial?
It's not a commercial.
It's an actual movie.
It's a drama.
It starts in 1986.
It starts in a board meeting.
And then these guys sit around and say, well, I know we can do better.
We don't need...
And this guy says, well, we've got this new idea.
We gotta get the soot down.
It's about soot.
And there's a bunch of holes in this story.
But anyway, so they have this meeting, and the next thing you know, in this semi-romance, there's a guy and a girl at the beginning, and they walk off, and the guy says, I think we can improve our product.
And the girl says, I think we need more public pressure.
And so she goes and becomes a public person.
She actually disappears from the story until the very end.
And then he goes up and says, I think we can work within the system.
Yeah.
This thing moves really fast, by the way, because it's only five minutes.
So anyway, so then the guy moves along somehow, and somebody invented something.
There's this invention, and they're making it in Malaysia called GTL. Yeah, it's Gas to Liquid.
Yeah, Gas to Liquid.
Yeah, apparently Shell came up with a process to turn natural gas, which is a commodity that should be used for its...
As natural gas, it seems to me, I don't think they should process it to make gasoline.
Well, no, there's all kinds of advantages.
I've actually talked, a buddy of mine knows about this.
Yeah, it's propaganda.
Yeah, my buddy is full of propaganda towards me.
Hey, you know, I'm telling you.
It's just, it's GT. There could be advantages, but it's pointless.
You know, if you just do better refining of their other fuels, you'll get the same product.
There's a thread here.
You have to remember, I used to work at Union Oil.
Yeah, of course.
A little known fact.
Yes.
There's a thread here I found.
New channel, 9645LF1. Apparently...
The same movie is showing up on TiVo as well in some video on demand.
So the thinking here is that Shell has bought space and is spamming.
Yeah, but who's going to see this thing?
I mean, it was a flute that I even found.
Of course, not everyone who watches or listens to us might check it out.
But you just laugh at it.
Anyway, so GTL, blah, blah, blah.
So anyway, so they released the GTL. So here's the story.
The story moves on real quick.
Next thing you know, we're in the future.
That says something like 15 years later.
And the guy says, the guy's giving a lecture, the guy who's working within the system.
He says, we've got this new fuel and it produces less soot.
And there's a voice in the background that says, when will this product actually be manufactured?
And the guy says, turn on the lights.
I want to see who this is.
And meanwhile, I'm thinking, what is this?
The guy's a KGB. So they turn on the lights.
It's the girl.
And so he says, oh, it's the girl.
Now they're friends again.
He wants to take her out to dinner.
So he asks her out for dinner, and everyone chuckles in the audience.
And then so next thing you know, he sees her at dinner.
And then before they can even eat, she says, oh, the babysitter called.
I've got to go.
Boom.
The guy goes limp because the baby says she's married.
So all those years have passed, and they've gone in different directions, and now she's gone one way and he's gone the other.
But Shell and all the scientists at Shell...
But they've saved the world.
They've saved the world.
But meanwhile...
So here's the big hole is this.
At the beginning, they say it's a synthetic alternative to diesel.
Hmm.
And then in the later part of the story, I swear to God, there's no way they're using this in diesel engines because they're testing it in everything, especially in Los Angeles.
They kind of indicate that it's being used in cars as gasoline as opposed to diesel.
So that's kind of confusing.
And then there's a thing, apparently the factory that was making it blew up or something.
I guess that's a true story.
And it says...
And then there's a thing that flashes on the screen that says the following.
And tell me what is wrong with this...
What stands out in this statement that...
What stands out like a sort of...
And here's what it said.
I wrote it down.
Following the new restart...
And that's referring to the refinery.
The new Bintulin GTL fuel...
Was trialed in LA, Shanghai, Delft, Berlin, and London.
Delft?
Yeah, Delft.
Delft got...
Wait a minute, let me go over the cities again.
I can answer that one, John.
I can answer that.
Shanghai, Berlin, London, and Delft?
Let me explain.
Delft is home to a very famous technical university, the TU in Delft.
And Shell is a big spender on the university.
All their research projects are done there.
Delft is quite famous for...
For its research.
Fine.
And for its Dutch, Delft's Dutch Blue, of course.
I believe that there's some executive in Delft and he was getting free gas.
The movie's on YouTube, by the way.
It's called Clearing the Air.
Right, that's the name of it.
So anyway, you can also get a DVD with it on there.
And it says, based on real events.
This cracks me up.
So anyway, at the end it says, sooty emissions, and there's another quote on the screen, sooty emissions from cars fell by 40%, or it says by up to 40%.
And then there's like a little disclaimer, like it was a drug commercial at the very bottom.
And it says, it's actually 40%.
If you have an erection for over four hours, please contact your doctor immediately.
Actually, what it says was it's only between 20% and 40%.
And the joke of it, it still says 20% to 40%.
But the joke of it is you can't read this disclaimer.
I mean, I had to actually do some video manipulation to get to the thing so it was readable.
And that's what it said.
Well, that's like all the disclaimers on the car commercials.
You get that final screen, and the screen is filled with letters that you can't read.
There's no time to read it.
It's like a Yuba.
So they're building a new GTL plant in Qatar.
They mentioned that.
And I don't know.
I just thought the whole thing...
But what was interesting, it was a fast-moving story, even though it was filled with this weird hole about the diesel versus gasoline.
And it was a dumb story, but it was well-produced in terms of a five-minute movie.
And I think it's a model of short dramas to be used as propaganda.
People should check it out for that purpose.
Advertising.
Advertising.
Propaganda, advertising, maybe the same thing.
I'm going to take a look at it.
Maybe we can acquire it, get the rights to it, and sell commercials against it.
Yeah.
Crazier things have happened, man.
You never know.
And talking about corny, like the Delft thing, so I had to load Skype.
I'm using the laptop because, as you know, my machine is down.
And I had to load Skype.
I had to get a driver for the fast track.
God, it took like half an hour just for you to be able to hear me.
Yeah, and then when I did hear you, there doesn't seem to be any explanation as to what changed.
It fixed itself.
Yeah, when that happens, that's why I was waiting for this computer to do that diet.
I keep rebooting it saying, come on, you can fix yourself.
You've done it before.
Good luck.
So anyway, so I go to the Skype page, and now I guess eBay took it over, so they got this corny page.
People should just go to the Skype page.
You know, download Skype.org download page or their first page.
There's this corny picture of a granddad bottle feeding a baby and some girl, I guess his daughter was standing over there.
It's the eBay creative team, man.
They're the ones that are doing that stupid shit.
It's like the corny piece of crap.
What's it got to do with anything?
What does it have to do with anything?
They're trying to show happiness and a dream of togetherness and connectivity, John.
Don't you understand that?
Well, they're doing a crappy job because I found the picture to be highly offensive.
It is offensive.
It's insulting, is what it is.
Like, why do I have to look at that?
That makes no sense.
Do you remember I told you about the...
I was just switching gears here.
The auction rate securities market.
Remember we were talking about that?
About those auctions that were failing?
So I pick up an article on TechCrunch, and apparently 20% of venture-backed startups have been advised by financial advisors in the Valley to put it, you know, and if they have any spare cash that they raised, which a lot of companies will do, you know, you raise money and then all of a sudden there's millions of dollars in your bank account.
You know, you don't put it in the checking account.
You put it where you can get some interest off of it.
And so 20% of the companies in Silicon Valley have put money into the auction rate securities.
And, you know, they have auctions every 7 days, 28 days, or 35 days.
And now they can't, you know, the auctions are failing, so now they can't access their money.
How crazy is that?
Isn't that awesome?
Well, see, this is something, this is good that you knew this in advance.
You wouldn't be suckered into that stupidity.
No, no, I would have said, uh-uh, bad idea.
And, oh, by the way, Bear Stearns, holy crap.
This thing's coming apart at the seams, man.
These guys can only...
These guys can only scam the world for so long with this craziness.
The gig is up, but what's so funny is it's still being called the subprime crisis.
Horseshit.
This is so much more.
It's going to be half a trillion dollars.
No, but apparently the government, Bernicke and his boys, are bailing out a lot of these guys.
Yeah, they're printing fucking money.
I mean, it's not a coincidence that they literally print $200 billion.
Yeah, they say it comes from some kind of reserve, but that's not transparent and no one can check on them to see if it's true or not.
And then the dollar, of course, devalues another notch.
I mean, duh.
200 billion in the marketplace.
Right, it's like issuing more stock.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like issuing more stock in a company.
Everyone gets diluted.
Yeah.
If everybody looked at the dollar as a share of stock, there's so much of it out there, and if they add more to it, the money's worth less.
Yeah, they just print more, and then, oh, okay, so automatically, all the markets just...
It's almost a computer process.
It's like everyone understands how that works in the financial world.
Who's getting screwed?
Why?
Because he's...
What I do like, by the way, is it's not like they're giving the banks money.
They are printing the money, which that's where the devaluation comes from.
But they're lending it to the banks for like 28 days or something like that.
And other banks still won't do business with them, even though they have the money for 28 days.
It's not like they're giving it to the banks, but damn, look at what they're doing to our dollar, which is in essence a hidden tax, I guess.
If your money devalues and the government does it, isn't that just another form of tax, taking money out of our pockets and giving it to banks to use?
That's actually a really good point.
Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
That's an interesting point because the Bushies have this thing about no taxes or lower taxes.
And then meanwhile, you're having this happen.
I mean, if I have to pay twice as much for something, that's a 50% tax.
Yeah, and I wish you could take credit for that.
That's actually a Ron Paul line, but, you know, it's true.
It's a tax.
Pisses me off.
So my favorite thing, though, is that a lot of these executives of these big companies that are being folded left and right are giving themselves big bonuses.
Yeah.
It's a great business.
That's what it is.
I've done such a wonderful job.
I've got to give myself a $100 million bonus for ruining the company.
Let me just go out on a limb for a second.
Come on, you've met bankers.
Oh, I know where you're going to go with this.
I don't think you do.
Yeah, go on.
Okay.
I've lived and worked in New York.
Bankers Trust was one of our big clients back in the day of Think New Ideas.
And, you know, those are my clients and so, you know, you take them out.
And bankers, particularly those that are in this business trading, the ones who, you know, who make all the money, all these big bonuses because they're putting together these structured deals, they're managing credit and risk and using derivatives and they're just, you know, it's basically all electronic money and it clears somewhere in the background, you know, after these guys have gotten their check, you know, months later is when all the The clearances are done and all the money is actually paid, if ever.
But these, they're like horse traders, you know?
It's a certain type of guy who does this.
And first, I'll say they're not, in my humble opinion, not super intelligent.
You know, they're sexist, usually.
It's the guys you see at strip clubs.
That's who's doing this.
I mean, come on.
Can't you see that this is a big scam?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
It's those guys.
Those sweaty, kind of a little bit overweight, coked out guys.
That's who's doing this shit.
And they're buying huge mansions.
They're buying sports cars.
They're buying women.
Who knows what else they were buying.
And if you've ever seen the movie The Smartest Guys in the Room, which is the documentary about Enron, and you hear them when they were controlling the energy and creating rolling blackouts throughout California for their own benefit and profit, you can hear it's these kinds and you hear them when they were controlling the energy and creating You know, I knew that when those rolling blackouts were going on, I immediately, again, worked in the oil industry.
It looked like a scam to me from the get-go, and I just knew it was a phony bunch of blackouts.
These things were fake.
We have to conserve more.
Don't use your air conditioning and all this other crap.
And I've been watching these things happen week after week after week.
Luckily, I was on a grid that's part of the police department's grid, so I didn't have to deal with it.
But every time it happened, it was like, this was the phoniest thing I've Oh, of course!
They didn't do any actual research into it.
They don't know what the hell they're writing about.
They're just writing.
Just writing.
That was it for me during that rolling blackout period.
The fact that nobody could see that it was obviously a scam.
Yeah.
I mean, I could see it.
It was an obvious scam to me.
And I don't think it's because I worked at an oil company, but it was just so artificial.
It just happened out of the blue after privatization.
It seemed like a bad idea to begin with.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, man.
Well, you know, you take it right from there over to Spitzer.
Gosh, that's been a fascinating story.
Well, you know, there's a new twist on the Spitzer story.
Let me just, let's just recap this for, I'm sure many, although the story actually is spreading to, you know, spreading internationally because essentially I think everyone gets the basic idea.
This is the governor.
Wasn't he also attorney general before he was governor?
Yeah.
Not Attorney General.
Well, he was some law guy.
Yeah, some law guy.
He's got a good name, too, for a law guy, you know, Spitzer.
We should look it up.
So anyway, he was responsible for stopping payola in the music business, which, of course, pissed off a lot of people, particularly in New York.
He's busted up all kinds of, you know, I think organized crime as well, or You know, real cartel-type stuff.
And he's this hard-nosed, you know, I'm going to kick everyone's ass into shape, and then he gets caught in a prostitution ring where they bust this prostitution ring, and he was client number nine.
And I love it when these guys get busted for that.
He was a New York State Attorney General.
Right, Attorney General, exactly.
And then he does this big thing like, I'm sorry I let my family down.
And why do their wives stand next to these guys clutching their pearls every single time that happens?
My wife would be like standing next to me with a knife on my dick.
She would not be clutching her pearls, I'm telling you.
Doesn't she do that anyway?
Only because I like it.
But, you know, what's up with that?
What kind of deal do you have to make for your wife to, you know...
It's like...
How do you get away with that?
Well, there's the thing I'm...
I'm going to link to this on the blog, Dvorak.org slash blog, but you may have to look it up because it will scroll off by the time anyone hears the show.
But there's a reporter that linked the Spitzers to, like, there's a belief among some reporters that...
Because Spitzer went so hard and heavy against the bankers, specifically over these usury laws, because during this period of all these balloon payments, all the rest of it, we used to have laws in this country that prevented people from being loan sharks, essentially, officially.
If you wanted to go to a loan shark, you had to go to a mob.
Now you can just go to the corner.
The money store.
The money store.
And so there's some thinking, and it's documented a little bit, that he was actually set up on this.
Oh, I'm sure he was.
There's no doubt it was a set up.
It's perfect.
But obviously he wouldn't have been set up if he hadn't had these predilections, if you know what I mean.
Of course.
So, I mean, if you're a whoring type of guy...
You can easily be set up.
If he would just play it a little closer to the vest, it wouldn't have been something that he would have got caught.
But then somehow they suckered him into doing money transfers in his own name or something.
I want a dick.
The thing is, it's just one of these...
And of course, this is what the human nature loves this.
When there's someone who's holier than thou, when there's someone in authority, someone who clearly stands above the rest for whatever reason...
We love it!
We fucking love it when they topple down.
And that's actually the story that I'm reading over here and even further east.
It's not about the background.
No one gives a shit about what he did.
All they care about is, hey, here's a guy who had a big attitude about putting everybody else in their place.
That's what it is.
That's the news.
Film at 11.
Right, but let me read you this little entry from Wikipedia that somebody dropped in here.
As Attorney General, Spitzer took cases relating to corporate white-collar crime, securities fraud, internet fraud, and environmental protection.
He most notably pursued cases against companies involved in computer chip price fixing, investment bank stock price inflation, and the 2003 mutual fund scandal.
He also sued Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, claiming he'd failed to fully inform the board of directors of his deferred compensation package, which exceeded $140 million.
Wow.
So if you're going to go be this kind of guy...
Yeah, then you've got to keep your dick in your pants is the basic message.
Exactly.
How stupid is that?
So he essentially was a do-gooder that probably was a benefit to the world.
The public at large who essentially took himself out of the picture because he's a jerk.
And don't you think that attitude is just rampant throughout all administration, John?
Isn't that obvious what's been going on for decades, maybe centuries, maybe all of humankind?
We'll make everything okay for everybody and shut up and do what we say.
In the meantime, I'm going to start filling my back pockets.
Yeah, well, especially in this era.
I mean, they could do it.
The thing that bothers me, I think you're probably right, but the thing that's kind of bothersome and worrisome is that how blatant does it have to get before the public actually gives a shit?
Well, we've been numbed and dumbed down.
Again, that's what it is.
It's a society of spectacle.
We want to see just people getting in trouble.
We don't care if it's David Beckham, Britney Spears, or Spitzer.
That's our entertainment.
No, we're not thinking about what it really means.
I mean, I grew up in a generation that just got so numbed by rhetoric and confusion.
Nowhere in the world have I ever been in any type of election that was clear how it fucking worked.
Look at the American process.
The rest of the world is like, is it over yet?
Is that guy the president yet?
Or what happened?
It's like the primaries were hyped so much that it's like everyone's confused.
They just don't understand.
Well, now I think they kind of understand, but all right, we'll forget about it now.
It looks like it's going to be between those three.
And people just don't care, man.
They don't care because...
We're taken care of so well.
These things don't affect us anymore.
I think governments have figured out, keep the trains running, don't even have to be on time.
Keep some money flowing, and everyone will shut up.
Well, that's apparently the case, unfortunately.
Yeah.
That's why, that is why, my friends, you need to start supporting this program.
Yeah, you know, that's what we're going to have to, you know, I was thinking about that.
I was looking at some public TV stuff.
And of course, we have gotten some notes from people saying, yeah, well, you know, I might kick in a dollar.
No, people are like, Leo's model, which is like two bucks a month on a recurring payment schedule.
I mean, come on, that's 50 cents a pop.
So, I was looking at a couple of the public broadcasting people, and it's interesting, one of them had a breakdown of how they financed themselves.
And it was 55% were personal contributions, 40% were grants.
10% was the government, and there was a bunch of, you know, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and these.
The funny thing is about that, of course, is that the 10% or less, in fact, I think it was 8, is the stuff that they squawked about the most.
the most all these public broadcasters and when the corporation for public broadcasting you know got taken over by the bush administration and they've you know got rid of the the left-wing do-gooders and put in the right-wing do-gooders and so everyone's squawking but i'm thinking this is not where they're you know this is just a piece of it well the the real power the real power in uh in public broadcasting is with the affiliates and I was following a story a week or two ago.
Where all of this money that has been spent on podcasting and interactive stuff and websites is now all being reappropriated and the money is going back to the affiliates.
They have some ultimate power over this process.
I'm not quite sure how it works, but they clearly can tell Homebase what needs to happen when they group together.
Well, I used to have a public radio show, and it was a painful experience to get anyone to pick up the show, which I think is generally true where it's wide open.
It's like syndication as opposed to networks.
Right.
And the problem in the radio, and I think this is what's interesting about this podcasting thing, is that the people that figure out how to use it, especially automate it, really like it because it gives them a different perspective on things.
In this case of our show, there's no commercials.
But the thing is that the guys in radio, and I don't think the public generally appreciate this, even though if you listen to Jim Rome, he's always bitching about what he calls monkeys that run these stations.
Right.
And he'll go on and on.
In fact, he had a great story the other day where he wanted some affiliate...
He was bad-mouthing some city.
Not really bad-mouthing.
He was quoting from a newspaper article in that city.
And the local, what do you call it, the radio monkey got on and said he has to apologize to the city.
I think it was Baltimore or Philadelphia, somebody.
Oh, gosh.
And he says, and we're giving him 48 hours or we're going to pull the show.
We're going to pull the show.
And Brom said, oh, yeah, I'm pulling the show.
And he just killed the show and moved it to another station because he's in high demand.
Yeah.
So this guy shot himself in the foot, but the public in general doesn't realize that in radio in particular, the guys that run these stations, from the station manager to the program director, are extremely stupid.
Yeah, they're like bankers.
It's the same kind of guy.
They all hang out together, too.
Drinking and whoring.
Well, I wouldn't put them in the same league as bankers, because to be honest, I don't think too many of them go to strip clubs, but they're stupid.
I mean, in a really funny kind of way that is indefinable.
And they'll talk like this.
Hey man, how you doing?
I heard I shift this morning.
They sounded pretty good.
John, don't make me hotline you, man.
Yeah, well that's different than the public radio guys.
The public radio guys aren't the jive talkers that you're thinking of.
They're just guys who would like to have been in college.
Yeah, the president of NBC is what they want to be.
They want to be that, or a professor, and they think highly of themselves, and they just love the fact that they have power, and they make decisions, programming decisions, based on what they perceive as the public need.
And their decisions affect people's lives, not just of the station operators, but also those of the public at large.
I have the power.
But anyway, so it's very disappointing to work in that media.
The TV guys are much better, but they're at least got something on the ball, and they're better looking.
So to bring it back, though, to bring it back, so I still am hoping that someone comes up with some grant somewhere, because I think that's the most elegant way of funding this program.
But I'll certainly take donations.
Yeah, that would be good.
Well, we have to come up with some scheme.
Yeah, we really do have to.
I mean, we put a lot of effort into this show.
How much...
What is our listenership currently?
Do you have any idea?
Yeah, I'd say...
Yeah, I am.
It's growing, but it's between 15,000 and 20,000.
An episode?
Yeah, per episode, yeah.
That's about the listenership of a reasonably popular local radio show.
Well, that kind of depends on transmitter size, depends on market.
I mean, that's not entirely true.
But I think we should be able to get this to 100,000.
I mean, that should be possible.
Or at least it should be growing consistently month over month, which it is.
Well, if we get 100...
Yeah.
We should get to 100,000.
At 100,000, 1% of those people will probably chip in.
Yeah.
I mean, can't expect much more than that.
That's 1,000 people.
Yeah.
So, you know, and we don't want, and somebody said, well, you know, whatever you do, don't do, you know, telethons or whatever it is.
I think we do good stuff.
Put a PayPal button.
We'll do good telethons.
Yeah.
It would be funnier than most.
We could do an auction.
We could do an auction.
We could have celebrities on taking calls and taking money.
There's nothing like a celebrity to come on the show and take money.
Or just one person has a lot of good voices.
No, we can get some celebrities.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, I'm sure we can get celebrities.
Who would you want?
Let's go after one.
You tell me.
I'm sure within one week we can track down anybody we want and they'll come on the show.
Well, let's see.
Well, first they'd have to be interested in some...
No, you're working backwards, man.
Shoot for the stars.
Who do you want?
I'm sure we can get to them.
Well, who's the hottest stars right now?
Let's get Tom Cruise.
He's not hot.
He's lame.
He's totally lame.
Let's get Angelina Jolie.
Now she's pregnant.
Tom Cruise is off the...
I don't know.
She might like to do it.
Um...
You know, that's a good question.
I'm not a big celebrity maven, so I'm not, off the top of my head, I'm not thinking, oh, you're that person I'd love to get them on.
I like talking to you, man.
I don't think there's anybody I'd really be interested in talking to.
Well, no, of course, there are some people.
George Clooney sounds like a guy you'd like to have a beer with.
Yeah, I like him a lot.
George?
Yeah, I don't know him personally.
He does seem very personable.
No, I see he's personable.
Yeah.
And he's kind of like old Hollywood.
He's on the short list.
He's kind of like old Hollywood.
That's what I like about him.
You know, he kind of has that Cary Grant kind of vibe, you know, like, don't worry, ladies, George will take care of you.
No, he's a pretty cool guy.
Yeah, no, he plays that.
That's just the role he's playing.
Yeah, of course.
He knows that.
He's milking it.
Yeah, and your point would be...
He's a smart guy.
He's probably fun to have a beer with.
Okay, who else?
That'd be cool to have on Elliot Spitzer.
I can get, what's that guy?
Murray Sabrin, I can get him on.
He's running for Senate.
I know.
It's one of your crackpot nut balls.
I haven't spoken to him yet.
How about?
He wants to be on the show.
How about to see if we can get Steve Ballmer?
Hey, what are we going to, you know, talking of nut cases, man, it's a nut case, man.
I have nothing to ask him.
What, Balmer?
Yeah, but I have nothing to ask him.
I'm not interested.
Yeah, you know what?
Let's get him on the phone and ask him...
No, let's ask him how you delete that stupid file that's making your laptop or your computer crash.
Let's ask him that.
It's the registry.
Yeah.
Here, Steve, could you come over and fix John's registry, please?
He really needs your help.
Okay, so you don't like Balmer?
I didn't say that.
I'm just not interested.
What about one of the Google?
No, not interested.
Not interested.
I'm interested in worldly affairs.
No, no tech guys, please.
Although I do think if you got Steve Jobs into the right zone, into the right spot, which it's just never been done.
It's never been done, exactly.
But that would be interesting.
I'm sure that would be entertaining.
It probably would be, but I've been blackballed from his talk-to list for 20 years, at least.
Really?
What did you do?
Years ago?
Oh, well, he has a long memory, and he has a short list of blackballed people in one of them.
And what happened was when he quit the first time, back in the John Scully era, I was writing for the Inside Track column for Infoworld at the time.
This was the early 80s.
And I had written the headline, Steve Jobs, Good Riddance.
And that was it.
Even though I welcomed him.
I'm sorry?
I was going to say, I can see where that might be a little problem.
So, but even though I have praised him since, because I think he did a good job of turning the company around, he's not the type of person who, he's not a forgiving type of person who's ever going to talk to me.
So that's the end of that.
Oh, well.
But, hey, I don't hold back.
I mean, I got a band.
I got this thing here.
I got to put this on the blog.
This is kind of funny.
Let me see what I find.
It's in my piles of paper.
Oh, where is it?
It's a memo.
Here it is.
I got some copies.
You know there was this case, Combs versus Microsoft?
No.
What was that?
It was one of these IORs, some little place sued Microsoft.
They didn't think they got enough money on the antitrust settlement, so they sued Microsoft for continued violations of whatever.
And they went into discovery and picked up even more documents that nobody's ever seen before.
And so I have my...
I'm on a list, curiously enough, with Mark Perkell, who's my computer time sysop for the blog, which is weird.
But it says it's a plaintiff's exhibit number 1386, Combs vs.
Microsoft, Microsoft Windows MS Beta Programs.
And it says at the top, do not send or give any information to the below.
And it says John C. Dvorak.
Amazing.
No, they left the sea out, which is kind of annoying.
But they have me in there with some crackpots, which is kind of weird.
That's kind of weird, though, man.
That's like a communist list.
Mark and I are the only two people that are, except for Al Alamia, Joe Battaglia, and Joan Brewer, who was essentially kind of a stalker.
Because she had, and she says Brewer's alias is Joan Jett, Redmond Rose, William Tell, Vogue Image, blah, blah, blah.
She had a crush on Bill and was making him crazy.
And I guess she was an employee or something.
Anyway, then he's got...
So those are the, that and then Mark Perkel are the, and then Gerard Franken of BHV something, some company in Germany or Netherlands.
Do not give information to GeoWorks, go, IBM. Profound Computer, which was funny about the IBM thing since they were partners at the time.
Yeah, right.
Puzzle Systems, Santa Cruz Operations, and they have the names of the people who, except for me, they say who told them to put them on the list.
Sun Microsystems, Veritas, and then it says, do not give any information about MS-DOS, 5.0, ROM-DOS, which I don't know if that ever came out, to Apple.
Computer Time, Mark Perkel, CompuThink, Digital Research, GeoWorks, Go, John Dvorak, IBM, Multisoft.
You're in good company, my friend.
That's a good list.
Excellent.
Congratulations.
No, you know, that's what I'm thinking.
I mean, at least, you know, it shows that I'm not one of the, you know, normally corrupt types who cover this stuff.
There you go.
Proof is in the pudding.
Because one of the things is I'm always busting them, too, because they used to do this meeting down in the Hood Canal.
Bill Gates has a mansion somewhere in the Hood Canal area of western Washington.
And they would invite all the boys to...
To spend the night with Bill in the big lodge.
And this would include John Markoff and Walt Mossberg and everybody that you can think of that writes about Microsoft.
And they'd bring them in and they'd have a song and dance and they'd brainwash them as best they could, put them up and feed them.
And fly them out.
I think most of these guys would have their own company fly them out because it was unethical for them to get a free airplane ride.
Anyway, which is part of the whole scam.
But meanwhile, they're there schmoozing with these guys and feeling good about it.
So anyway, I found out about these meetings once a year because I was never invited.
And I just blew the lid off the whole thing.
Told them what they were doing.
What were they doing?
Water cannon fights?
Water balloon fights?
Pillow fights?
Hot dog eating contests?
Beer guzzling?
I can only imagine.
It seemed like a corrupt practice.
Of course.
Where did you write about that?
I wrote about, I think, in PC Magazine and Insight Track.
Oh, that's funny.
And I just pretty much outlined the whole thing, who was there, and I didn't name all the names, but I made a point that this was like a corrupt practice, and that was the last time they did it.
Oh, man, that's why you were uninvited.
Which probably broke everybody.
Yeah, of course!
No, this was just 10 years earlier.
So, uh, this thing, this non...
Well, you totally, you're a party pooper.
You spoiled it for everybody, Dvorak.
You're off the list.
I am a party pooper.
You are a big-ass party pooper.
Nice.
So, being a party pooper and all, uh, that's why Steve Jobs is not gonna come on our show.
Hey, you know, uh...
You know, Homer, actually, I do correspond...
Go ahead.
I do correspond with Ballmer once in a while.
I mean, I'm still on good terms with him.
I know Bill took a dislike to me some years ago, and he acknowledges me when he sees me.
He says, Hi John, how are you doing?
And that's the end of it.
But he's not a big fan of mine.
Ballmer probably doesn't necessarily like me, but we're civil.
Yeah, I have about a once a year, three email exchange with jobs.
Oh, really?
Yeah, once in a while he'll send me, I mean, it's happened twice, right, since I met him, that he sent me something, and I've sent him something, and it's usually one of those, you know, thought you would enjoy reading this, blah, and I'll say thank you, boom, and it's over, right?
Or the other way around.
I like him.
He's, yeah, I thought he was an okay guy.
Most people don't.
The...
He has his little short list of people that he will send...
Observations, too, hoping that they pick him up and run with him.
I can't remember the last time he did this, but it was recently.
It would always be some sort of a zinger.
He'd send a zinger out to specific people, hoping that one of them picks it up without attribution.
He doesn't care about that.
He just wants the zinger, which is usually a one-liner that's highly critical of a competitor, to be used to get into the public domain.
And not too many CEOs do that.
I don't think that many even think of the idea.
But generally speaking, I write my own material.
That was earlier this afternoon.
I was horsing around a little bit, surfing around a bit.
And I happened upon that South by Southwest interview that Sarah Lacey did with Mark Zuckerberg.
Right.
Yeah, poor Sarah.
We're getting her on Cranky Geeks.
And I also watched Cranky Geeks where you indeed mentioned you were going to try and get her on maybe for next week.
And I was looking at that video and I'd seen her on Cranky Geeks maybe two months ago.
I'm just guessing it was about that long ago.
And I remember we had a conversation and at the time I said, you know, she's not really my type.
But for some reason at South by Southwest she looked pretty hot.
Something's different.
I don't know that you could even see her that close.
I mean, the one thing I thought was weird is that whoever was shooting that video, they had at some angle, she was, I don't know, she had her legs on a hammer.
Her legs were way up in the air.
Her knees from the camera angle were like at face level.
Yes, that ticked two of the boxes.
Yes, okay.
Uh-huh.
And so, well, that's probably what you were looking at, being the leg man that you are.
No, there was some other ancillary video.
You know, people interviewed her after the fact, and there's some YouTube stuff, and she just looked good.
She looked really sexy.
Well, she's a very flirty girl, and I think it didn't go over well with that audience of, you know...
Right.
Metrosexuals that go to that S by Southwest thing.
Have you ever been to Southwest?
I've never been myself.
No, I don't have time for this stuff.
I mean, I can't even clean up my office.
I should be going down to Austin.
It's just a party scene.
I should spend a couple thousand dollars going to Austin to listen to a band and drink beer.
I can do that in San Francisco for a lot less money.
But then you're an interactive dude.
You've got to be hip and interactive.
John C. Interactive Dvorak.
Interactive with what?
With other people.
With a bunch of people you're never going to see again?
That happen to live down the street from you?
I mean, the thing that bugs me the most is you go in and it's like, oh, hey, I haven't seen you for a long time.
Yeah, yeah, I blew you.
Oh, you're in Berkeley too?
Yeah, we're both.
I'm two blocks away.
Oh, cool.
We should do lunch.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
We're going to do lunch.
Cards get exchanged.
Year goes by, nothing.
Yeah, that's funny.
That's exactly the way it is.
I hate it.
You should come this year.
Oh, wait.
You should be my guest.
I want you to come to the Portable Media Expo.
It'll be in Vegas this year.
This is what was the podcast expo.
I think it's in August.
You have to come.
I mean, you think conferences are strange?
Wait until you see this one.
What's so strange about it that I haven't seen something similar to, like the game developers, for example?
The audience at the Portable Media Expo is just fantastic to observe.
It really is...
Because, you know, you have to understand that everyone who's there is probably a producer, and everyone who's there is also listening to all the other people.
So everyone is a star and a fan at the same time.
And you just see all these dynamics going on.
It's a fascinating thing to watch.
It really is.
Because people are getting props, too.
Like, you know, when someone comes up and says, Hey, look at your name badge.
Hey, you're the...
You're the dude from the Pickle podcast.
I also see that you're wearing the podcast Pickle suit.
I listen to you.
And that's a big deal.
When people say, I listen to your show, it makes you feel good.
And it gives you some kind of, I don't know, chemical reaction.
Offset usually by lots of alcohol.
Yeah, well, you know, maybe if they invite me to speak, I'll come.
Dude, you should do the keynote.
They're always looking for a keynote.
I've refused it every time.
Isn't that the guys who charge you to do the keynote?
I think they've figured that one out.
I think they've changed that.
And I'm sure they'll pay you.
They'll pay you to come and do the keynote.
That would be hilarious.
Yeah, well, maybe I can get somebody to throw something at me.
I'm going to investigate.
I'm going to get you a keynote at the PME. You'll be great.
Well, I do have a few speeches.
No, we have to do a new one.
You can't just use something you've used.
I could do a new media speech from scratch.
It's not a big deal.
Well, the only thing it has to be about is how to make money.
Because that's really the only thing anyone ever talks about.
Oh, well, let's get our begging thing going together and then I can explain how that works.
How to make money.
Yep, that's what it's all about.
Monetization, my friend.
It's all about how to make money.
People love doing this shit.
They just want to get paid for it.
That's it.
It would be better.
Yeah, it makes everything better.
And the fact of the matter is if you have like 100,000 listeners, it seems to me there's money to be made.
There's got to be.
But again, I think the grant, I think that's the way to go.
I mean, everyone pitches in because it's your tax money or whatever.
And it could be a private foundation, I guess.
That's handing out a grant.
There's got to be one out there for some current news affair program.
There's probably a ton of them out there.
The problem is you have to be a grantsmanship person.
There's people that specialize in this as a business.
I know.
We've mentioned this before, but we need someone to step up.
Step up to the plate with your grantsmanship and get us a grant already.
Yeah.
We do.
That would be perfect.
We'll have to keep begging, I guess.
I just want to beg for a grant.
That's much more interesting to me than little bits and pieces.
I'm all for it.
I think we should get a MacArthur.
Where are those people when we need them?
Or the Arthur Daniel Midlands Company.
Oh, well, I don't know if I want to take their money.
Of course not.
Well, I probably wouldn't.
Aren't they military industrial complex guys?
They're the ones who are like, you know, making us grow corn, and so now their wheat prices have jacked way up.
Oh, right.
I mean, Arthur Daniels, those guys and Monsanto are not companies that...
You want to do business with.
Well, I don't think they're doing anybody a favor.
Let's put it that way.
I mean, they're doing what they do.
I mean, they're shareholders, I guess.
I'm sure the executives get paid well.
The people in Monsanto sued a couple of journalists down in Florida or someplace.
I should look that up and refer to it, because it was kind of disgusting.
These people were just bitching about the fact.
I think it had to do with the BST, that crap they give the cows and make them produce more milk.
They were trying to blow the lid off of something or other, and these Monsanto guys decided to sue them.
And, you know, just as a harassment suit.
And that was the end of that.
So, I don't know.
Just as an update, final update, I guess.
PricewaterhouseCoopers got back to me.
They now have the new tax rules that go into effect April 8th here in the United Kingdom.
And this, of course, is the non-domiciled...
tax status that I'm most interested in.
Right.
Okay, so they've changed a few things.
It is going into effect.
It'll affect people who have lived in the United Kingdom for seven years.
So I have a couple more years to go before all of it takes effect, but some of it takes effect immediately.
But essentially, you will be taxed worldwide unless you pay 30,000 pounds per year to basically have the UK say, okay, whatever you want to make outside of the UK is your business.
However...
Here's the interesting thing.
Regardless, and this actually starts now, regardless of whether you're domiciled or non-domiciled, regardless of whether you pay your $30,000, if you make capital gains outside the United Kingdom and you want to bring money in, you will be taxed again.
So, to make a real long story short...
What they've essentially said is, okay, if you want to live here, that's fine.
And I think the whole thing with double taxation, they've worked all of that out.
They've even come to an agreement with the state.
So all of that's kind of cool and won't really make any difference, I don't think.
But if you want to bring your money into the United Kingdom and you want to invest it or you want to use it to shop or you want to buy houses or cars or whatever, that's fine, but there's an admission fee at the door to our store.
That's essentially what they're saying, is you have to pay for the right to spend your money in the United Kingdom.
And so, again, the papers today are full of...
What was it?
There was like three companies have just announced they're moving to...
Geneva and or Zurich, they're all leaving.
Actually, it was Yahoo, Google, and one other online company, I think it was Yahoo, who said they were moving to Geneva.
So they're all leaving now.
It's stupid.
It doesn't make any sense.
You want people just to drag their money over and spend it in England.
Whoa, hold on a second, John.
You just started to sound like...
Yeah, you sound kind of funny, too.
Let's do a reconnect.
Okay, hold on.
Okay.
That was cool.
No one even noticed it.
So where were we?
I don't remember.
It took so long to reconnect, I completely forgot.
Well, I think it was having to do with the fact that you have to spend $30,000 to spend money when it's a smart thing to do is to let people spend money in your country.
Yeah, it's nuts.
And really, this whole thing has been spun so out of control, it has nothing to do with people not paying their fair share of taxes.
That's really not what it's about.
But now it's like, okay, I can buy stuff anywhere I want.
I can invest in any country I want.
I might choose not to spend 18% just for the privilege of bringing my money in.
That's crazy.
It doesn't make any sense.
Oh, well.
We'll see.
You know, if you go to San Francisco and roam around, it's like we're welcoming anyone to come in here and drop every nickel they have.
The place is crawling with Europeans.
Yeah.
Asians, too.
Yeah, there's some, yeah, that's true.
Well, everybody's coming to the States.
It's cheap.
It's a great destination.
Yeah, it's half off for the rest of our lives.
Come on over, boys!
I mean, they're coming over here and buying stuff that they can't even get in their own country at these prices.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Although international air travel has not really gone down.
That's kind of offsetting a lot.
Do you think $110 a barrel of oil has anything to do with that?
Gosh, I mean, I predicted the $100 a barrel of oil, but $110?
I actually believe this year we get a new president.
I think we'll see.
I'm going to make a prediction right now.
I think we'll see $200 before the end of the year.
I think that's going to be tough to sustain.
Because right now, it's just at the point where people are going to go...
I mean, I think people look at their...
Especially these Americans who drive these gas guzzlers.
You go and you fill up your car and it's like $75.
So, you know, unless you're going to...
And just, you know, after a while, you go, well, if you have to fill it up typically once a week if you're commuting, maybe more.
And that's like $150, $300 a month right off the top.
I mean, jeez.
I'm not saying that people will be able to afford it.
I think it's going that way.
It's just like there seems to be no floor for the dollar.
There's no ceiling for oil.
No, we'll see.
Gold's jumped over $1,000.
That's kind of interesting.
Is that the first time ever it's been over $1,000?
Yeah.
I think it hit 900 once, maybe.
I don't know.
I'd have to look at some old charts.
But it wasn't doing anything for years, and now it's just been rocking and rolling.
So I've always wondered about this, and you might be the right person to ask.
So if you look at gold and you look at diamonds, both substances that come from the earth that have a value attached to it, and people know the value, and with gold it's even very, very precise.
But what can you actually do with gold?
Is there any real good use you can use for it?
Yeah, it's used on connectors.
For headphones?
No, seriously, it's used for it.
You have to use it for that.
For semiconductors and things like that, they use a lot of gold because it's a good conductor of electricity.
That's what you use it for.
And there's a big market in that?
I mean, there are people buying gold to use?
Oh, I didn't know that.
And then the other thing is teeth.
You know, people have gold teeth.
And then the rest of it is jewelry.
And how about diamonds?
I mean, the jewelry factor just doesn't work for me.
I mean, that's not a necessity of life.
We need gold teeth.
We need to be able to make semiconductors.
Diamonds are used in the industry to an extreme.
I mean, most diamonds are not ever cut into jewelry.
They're ground into powders that they use for cutting through steel.
And they use lots of it, tons.
Hmm.
I thought it was pretty useless myself.
But I guess it's quite part of the industrial system, huh?
Yeah, you really care.
There's a lot of things that can't really be done effectively without diamonds.
And then mainly cutting.
Okay.
I'll have to change my feelings then about diamonds.
Yeah, it gives them something to do with all these.
You know, most diamonds are not, you know, commercial.
They don't become jewels.
But the ones that do, I mean, those are obviously worth a lot more than a powdered up stuff.
And then there's the problem they have with diamonds, and they can now artificially make them, although they tend to be a little too perfect in some situations.
They glow in the dark.
But with gold, gold's pretty much what you got.
It's what you got.
You can't make it.
Do you buy diamonds for your wife?
She's not a big diamond person.
And her stone is not a diamond.
It's a green sapphire or blue sapphire or something like that.
And that's what she likes.
Oh yeah, but diamonds are a girl's best friend, John.
Not hers.
She has other friends.
Jackson?
Guys like that?
I remember the time that I first met Melissa or Melinda.
Melissa Melinda.
I can't remember.
I guess Gates' wife.
Is it Melinda or Melissa?
Melinda, I think.
Yeah, it is Melinda.
I met her once.
Maybe twice.
But I met her once after she was officially Bill's girlfriend.
And she was still working at the company.
And she was wearing the engagement ring, which I guess somebody told her to stop wearing, because I heard that you don't get to see it so much.
The thing was...
It looked like the stone was the size of a small golf ball.
Yeah.
And it was quite flashy.
But that's a big deal with the Silicon Valley guys.
I see lots of them have wives with huge rocks.
Some of them are second or third wives, but all huge rocks.
Big deal in the Valley.
How about that and the Rolex?
Gotta have one.
The Rolex is almost, if you find somebody in Silicon Valley, the semiconductor guys are the most identifiable in Silicon Valley because they all have a Rolex, generally a Rolex President, gold.
And they wear khaki-colored pants and a blue shirt that's probably the color blue of like three seasons ago.
It's never the current blue, which tends to have a lot of other colors in it.
The newest one being, by the way, a blueberry, which is fantastic looking.
You had a very colorful and light and airy ensemble on Cranky Geese from this week.
Like a yellow striped shirt?
Oh, right.
This is my famous yellow striped shirt.
This is a shirt I got years ago.
That shirt's pretty old.
And I used to wear it on ZDTV, that particular shirt, because Harry Fuller, who was one of the executives there, hated it.
And I could never figure out why, because it really looked great on camera, especially when you didn't have a jacket on.
And Fuller would always go, oh, that yellow shirt.
I can't stand that yellow striped shirt.
And he'd just moan and groan about it.
So if I knew he was going to be in the area, I'd always make sure to wear that thing.
Kind of like your WAMVC. So anyway, I had it in storage.
And I was going through some shirts because I ran out of shirts.
I said, oh, God, I have to bring out an old shirt.
And I ran into that one.
I said, ah, this will work.
So next day I've worn it twice.
Well, it looked good on you.
It suited you quite well.
Yellow works great since I'm so pale.
Yeah, do you ever go on vacation, man?
Do you ever, like, go sit in the sun on an island somewhere?
I used to go to Hawaii once in a while, but now I kind of make my vacations part of my...
So if I go to Europe for some business thing, I'll stick around for a few extra days.
For a conference, right?
You talk at a conference and then go hang out.
Yeah.
What a wonderful life you have, John.
Yeah, right.
So I got the music playing, man.
Let's end the show.
We're like an hour and ten minutes once again.
Yep, got to get done.
And it's taken us five hours to put it together with all the stops and configurations and shit.
Unbelievable.
Alright, coming to you from the Curry Manor in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak in Northern California.
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