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May 30, 2008 - No Agenda

01:25:38

33: The King of Beers

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Time	Text
	You never can know exactly what to expect because, well, quite frankly, we have no agenda.
	And it's time once again for the program.
	It is this week's No Agenda coming to you from the Curry Manor in the United Kingdom.
	I'm Adam Curry.
	And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in Northern California.
	And we've got a new, this is something new for us, John, a little test.
	We've reversed the roles for once.
	Yeah, I'm up late.
	It's like 1 in the morning as we're doing this.
	And you're just, I guess you just got up recently.
	Yeah, I've been up for a couple hours, but it's about 10 past 9 in the morning.
	And it just worked out this way.
	I think we might as well tell the audience right off the bat that we're doing this on, what is it today?
	Is it Thursday?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, Thursday.
	So we'll probably won't get this out until Friday, so it's one day earlier.
	But if you're wondering why some of the topics may be about older news, like 24 hours old, that's the reason.
	We don't really talk about the news as much as we do about trends.
	Well, that's true.
	Okay, then let me start right off the bat with a trend, which is huge protests in Europe over the price of gasoline and, in particular, diesel.
	Have you followed this at all?
	But the diesel thing has fascinated me because even here...
	It started about a year ago, I noticed this.
	And I used to work as a petroleum chemist, so you have to, you know...
	You've got to understand these things.
	Well, I mean, I kind of get part of it, but there's a baffling aspect to it because this is not a normal situation.
	But about a year ago, the price of diesel started sneaking up and it became the same price...
	As premium gasoline.
	Well, I've made a study and I know why.
	At least in Europe, I know why it's happening.
	Alright, go.
	First of all, you have a regular increase just in the raw materials, so the price of a barrel of oil is going up.
	But what all these governments have done, and there was a big protest in the UK two days ago.
	The French fishermen are protesting.
	They're cutting off the Atlantic or whatever the hell.
	Is that all these governments have put extra tax, CO2 emission tax, on diesel.
	And it's an extra tax because, and of course I don't think this is true, because they say, well, diesel engines, they spew out much more CO2, which of course is related directly back to this global warming meme that is out there.
	And I don't know if that's the same in the States, but in Europe that's exactly what's happening.
	That's why that price has been driven up so far.
	I don't know of any increased tax on diesel fuel in the U.S. The prices snuck up to the price of premium, and then it started creeping above it, and now it's like 10 or 20 cents higher than premium gasoline, and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever so far as the carbon footprint of diesel.
	Which, of course, is probably not true.
	I mean, I think the diesel...
	Well, I mean, you get a lot of particulate from diesel fuel more than anything, but it tends to be...
	I don't see that as just producing more CO2 to be...
	I mean, just I don't see it.
	I don't know.
	I'm going to have to do a little reading and see what the heck's going on, because it doesn't make any sense.
	Well, what is happening is it's making everyone's livelihood kind of hard because, you know, when you get an increase like that in your basic, you know, the basics of your business, if you're a trucker or if you need diesel for any other reason, then, you know, that's a real big problem.
	That's straight to your bottom line.
	Well, that's passed off to the customers, and so it's a real issue.
	I think the only people that benefit from this, and I'm starting to notice this now, and this is kind of weird, too.
	There might be some connection.
	I saw an ad the other day, yesterday, as a matter of fact, for the railroads.
	They've been advertising on the radio for a while, but now I'm seeing TV ads.
	Bragging about how much they can carry tons of stuff for a nickel.
	I have never seen in my life that I can think of ads for railway transportation for products.
	I'm watching this going, hmm.
	In fact, if anything, it's only been commercials for transport of people.
	Well, here, actually, we don't see even that.
	I guess there's some Amtrak, occasional Amtrak commercials, but no, this was transporting cars in particular, but you could tell what they were getting at.
	They were talking about what does it cost per mile to move a ton, and it's like a lot cheaper than it is with a truck.
	So I don't know.
	There's something screwy going on.
	I'm sure it'll come out eventually.
	Well, it's interesting that that price of diesel, though, as you say, that you don't think it has anything to do with carbon emission taxes.
	But Gordon Brown, of course, the prime minister in the UK, is already under severe pressure.
	People are calling for his head, almost literally.
	I think it was yesterday's Financial Times.
	Actually, the Labour government here is saying, you know, we just may back off of that two-pence raise in gas taxes that's coming up in July because the truckers literally blocked off the West End.
	I mean, within almost 100 miles outside of London, traffic was messed up.
	They did a great job.
	Good for them.
	Yeah, and finally.
	He's like the French.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Finally, finally.
	And everyone's behind them, you know, because everyone else has their own issue with the price of gas.
	I'm just waiting for this to happen in the States.
	Well, you know, it just hasn't happened.
	I mean, I think everyone's complaining about it, but I don't think it's gotten to that.
	And it is expensive.
	It's amazing.
	I feel sorry for the people who bought those diesel cars, you know, thinking they were going to save money.
	Yeah, they have a good deal.
	Exactly, exactly.
	In fact, it may be a ploy to eliminate the possibility of diesel cars becoming successful.
	You know what we need, John?
	You know what we need?
	Remember this?
	Yeah, unfortunately, I do.
	Convoy!
	So talking about the craziness over there, I'm looking at this entry on the blog that we have here, which I put up.
	Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry carbon ration cards, say MPs.
	Have you read this story?
	No, no.
	Carbon rations?
	What's that?
	Yeah, this guy, in fact, this one guy in particular, one of your crackpot MPs, member of parliament.
	Who?
	I'm going to tell you who it is.
	We have his picture up, but I forgot to put his name up.
	I don't want to surf today because the bandwidth is a little iffy.
	No, I'm going to tell you who it is.
	It's Tim Yeo, even though he sounds like a Chinese guy, he's white.
	MPs led by Tory Tim Yeo.
	He's conservative, so he's in the opposition.
	Say the scheme should be more effective at cutting greenhouse gas emissions than green taxes.
	I'm tired of this, man.
	Governments all over the world are using this CO2 emissions thing to tax the living daylights out of everything.
	It's just an excuse.
	They've jumped on the bandwagon when somebody came up with the idea, hey, we can now tax people.
	And then, of course, at the end of this article, let me read you how the scheme would work.
	I'm going to list off the crap.
	Every adult in the U.K. would be given an annual carbon dioxide allowance, kilograms, and a special carbon card.
	The scheme would cover road fuel flights and energy bills.
	Every time someone paid for road fuel flights or energy, their carbon account would be docked.
	A liter of petrol would use up to 2.3 kilograms in carbon, while every 1.3 miles of airline flight would use another one kilogram.
	By the way, you'd be paying a lot for your legit private plane.
	Hell yeah.
	There's only three more of these.
	When paying for petrol, the card would need to be swiped at the till.
	It would be a legal offense to buy petrol without using a card.
	You think they were against the universe for rationing during World War II. When paying online or by direct debit, the carbon account would be debited directly.
	And anyone who doesn't use up their credit, this is the kicker here.
	Anyone who doesn't use up their credits in a year can sell them to someone who wants more credits.
	Trading would be done through specialist companies.
	You know what this is?
	I think this is two things.
	First of all, no, it's three things.
	First of all, it's fucking stupid.
	Excuse my language, because there's just not enough proof.
	This is part of the Al Gore scheme.
	Exactly.
	He runs one of these companies that trades carbon credits.
	Oh.
	It's a crock of crap.
	It's a scam.
	It's a scam.
	It's like trying to create a new investment market or something so you can make money on trading carbon credits.
	And I think it's also an underhand way of, there's another big debate going on here about the national ID card.
	Which, you know, I don't think the public wants it.
	Labor has been trying to bring that in so that, you know, basically all of your information is on a card.
	So it just starts with carbon emissions, I guess, and then you can, you know, attach anything to that card that you swipe through.
	I mean, that's just a matter of adding another database to it.
	It's unbelievable.
	So anyway, that's kind of weird.
	I mean, this thing is getting out of control.
	I mean, it's not doing anything to stop anything, and now, you know, who's going to set these limits?
	It's just the whole thing.
	I mean, they're completely blowing any possibility that we could actually cut emissions at all by just being jerks.
	I can just see what's happening.
	You go to a public restroom, you have to swipe your card, because, of course, if you're doing a number two, well, you know that's going to be a couple of carbon credits there, because you are emitting CO2 in a big way.
	I think every cow is going to have to have a barcode.
	Oh man.
	Oh well.
	That's a trend I'm not liking.
	Somebody, I'm looking at the blog and somebody named Grimbo has a comment.
	I got a bunch of comments on this posting.
	He says, he's obviously in the UK or Europe.
	He says, isn't there anything happening in the USA worth writing about?
	Because I'm, you know, we haven't gotten to this corny thing yet.
	I'm just trying to stave it off.
	Yeah, really.
	Here's a book I want to read, man.
	I'm sure you've heard about Scott McClellan's book.
	Yeah, there's a lot of controversy.
	In fact, all the right-wing talk show guys are all worked up about this.
	Oh, tell me about it.
	Let's just explain to the listeners.
	Maybe not everyone knows.
	Scott McClellan was the White House press secretary, I believe?
	Yeah.
	He was the first one, and he was the most nervous-looking one up there, and he was always like, you know...
	Sweaty lip guy.
	That's what I always called him.
	He was sweaty, yeah.
	And so he comes out with this tell-all.
	I mean, what is he...
	There's something fishy about this.
	He's making money.
	First of all, he made money telling the lies.
	Now he's making money telling the truth, I guess.
	I don't know how other way to look at it.
	Explain to people what the book's about.
	So the book is about his tenure as press secretary between 2003-2006.
	And in particular, he talks about...
	I haven't read the book, obviously, about how Condoleezza Rice is kind of like the Teflon dame.
	Everything just glides right off of her.
	She deflects things to other people.
	The importance of Rove, how Dick Cheney is pulling on the strings behind the screens, and then in particular, how the Bush administration lied to the American public to get into Iraq.
	Paraphrasing, of course, haven't read the book, but I think that's kind of what it is.
	Yeah, that's what everybody says it is.
	And everybody's upset about the fact that this guy, not because he's telling the truth, but it's like, where were you when you needed to be telling the truth?
	I mean, why would you be such a stooge that you would go along with the program for such a long time, and then because you need some money doing a book, now you're doing this?
	Well, I would say there's one other reason to do this.
	I'd say the other reason is protection.
	You know, to protect himself.
	To go public with it.
	Protect himself from what?
	From getting killed.
	By who?
	By evil forces.
	Yeah, I mean, no one wants this information out there, and if everyone knows that he's kind of on the fence or whatever, it could be one of these, oops, he committed suicide type things.
	Oh, brother, I think that's a bit much.
	I don't know, man.
	I mean, look, what's the difference between often one guy who might want to tell the truth about the lies about getting us into Iraq and actually lying and getting us into Iraq?
	Which one is worse?
	I don't know.
	All I know is I don't know anyone who's been killed yet.
	Well, hold on.
	Remember, and that's kind of died in the press.
	Remember the guy, this was in the UK. Wasn't it in the UK? I think it was the UK. The scientist who actually...
	What was it?
	That scientist who had something to say about the fact that the report was a crock of crap.
	And they ended up dead in a field or something while hiking or some crazy thing like that.
	One of those.
	I don't think that just died.
	I mean, they harped on that thing as some sort of a screwy...
	And then it just died.
	And then it just went away?
	Yeah, because people get sick of listening to this stuff.
	I mean, there's a bunch of connections, coincidental connections between Clinton and a bunch of...
	I mean, there was a whole website devoted to crazy people that had died, because of Foster, that had died during the Clinton administration with the implications that he had somebody killing him.
	Right, that was the Whitewater stuff, wasn't it?
	Yeah, a lot of that.
	I believe that happens.
	I believe in that kind of cloak and dagger stuff.
	I think that absolutely happens.
	I think it's funny that you would say that, not because maybe it does happen or doesn't happen, but because of the fact that when I mentioned that I thought it was a scam that Marie Osmond fell to the deck on national TV as a publicity stunt, you were completely, no, that couldn't possibly be the case.
	May I point out that I changed my position on that later after I thought about it?
	Yeah, you did.
	I'm just saying, though, you're normally kind of conservative with these kinds of thoughts, and I've never heard you come off the wall with some of these.
	You wrote the book to protect himself from being killed.
	Well, there's quite a jump, John, between writing a book to not get killed.
	By the way, if it was a mob deal, you write that book, then you will be killed.
	Well, at least he got it out then.
	But Marie Osmond, I saw her faint, and I thought it looked pretty realistic.
	Except for the back of the hand to the top of the forehead and the twisting fall with...
	You know, they were on Jonathan Ross, which is our big weekly Friday night talk show here in the UK. Like, seven of the Osmonds.
	So it was...
	And there's like two...
	There's a million Osmonds, of course.
	But you have Donnie, Jimmy, and Marie.
	And then you have the three older guys.
	And those brothers are like mid-60s.
	And they're on tour now.
	And they're selling out everywhere.
	Yeah.
	Oh, God.
	In England?
	Touring England?
	They did one small gig, and now they're doing the O2 Arena, and now they've set up a world tour.
	It's pandemonium.
	They're selling out.
	The O2 Arena for crazy horses.
	But think about it.
	They had a lot of hits, John.
	You can laugh about them, but Donnie and Marie had massive hits.
	Name one.
	Okay, Donny Osmond, Puppy Love, Put Your Head on My Shoulder, which of course Paul Anka classic.
	Donny and Marie had several, I can't name those off the top of my head.
	Alright, you got one, Puppy Love.
	The big one here in the UK, which was never hit in the States, I don't think, was Jimmy Osmond, who had this song called I'll Be Your Long-Haired Lover from Liverpool.
	No, I've never heard of it.
	And it was number one all over Europe, but particularly in the UK, for months on end.
	And he was 13 at the time, so his audience is now my age.
	And there's nostalgia.
	These chicks love it.
	Oh, brother.
	I'll be your long-haired lover from Liverpool.
	You know, I don't mind.
	I think there's something cool about seeing an old act.
	I went to see when they had the Venetian Room here in San Francisco until recently.
	I would, myself, my wife, and sometimes one of our kids, we'd go to see these classic acts because it was a small venue.
	It was a little expensive, but it was worth going to.
	So I got to see Lou Rawls in a small venue.
	I got to see James Brown in a small venue.
	And I actually went up to see Cab Calloway.
	Wow.
	In the same room with his band.
	Is he still alive?
	No, he's dead now, but he was alive then.
	In fact, we actually had drinks with him afterwards, curiously enough.
	He gave me his tips on horse race betting and also cooking corn at the barbecue.
	Anyway, here it is, Cab Calloway's Cobb recipe.
	No, there you have it.
	But anyway, the point is, I don't mind that kind of a situation.
	I mean, it seems like a logical thing to do if you want to see.
	Hold on a second, John.
	I think I just lost you there.
	Are you there?
	Yeah.
	Am I there?
	Oh, you're back.
	Okay.
	You know, there's been some problems with Skype.
	I just want to say there's been some problems with Skype over the past couple of days, I noticed.
	And I don't think it's just my bandwidth.
	I think there's some kind of problem going on.
	Particularly if you talk really loudly.
	Not you because you've got a compressor and limiter set up.
	But it just seems to drop out.
	I've been seeing this a lot.
	I haven't noticed it over here, but I don't use it that much.
	I mean, it makes sense to me that you would go see some of these acts if you have an opportunity, especially if you get to see them close up.
	But to go to a big, giant venue to listen to the Osmonds, you know, do nostalgia, doing a dinosaur act from 25 years ago, it doesn't make any sense at all to me.
	It's actually 30 years ago, maybe even 35, but I will say the culture in the United Kingdom...
	Of big concerts and festivals is huge.
	So it's, you know, and it's almost like a football match.
	And they all go there and they all sing the songs together and they drink beer, which of course is totally accepted.
	Makes it worse.
	No.
	Oh, please.
	Now you're just being cranky.
	No, I'm just saying.
	I don't want to go out with a bunch of old drunks.
	40 years old is not old.
	Give me a break.
	40 is not old.
	Oh, man.
	So, the drunks in the audience probably are.
	That's unbelievable.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	It just doesn't sound right.
	If it makes people happy, then it's right, John.
	Come on.
	We need some happiness.
	Oh, God.
	What a cornball you've become.
	I'll be your own hair lover from Liverpool.
	Yeah, once in a while.
	Look, I can bitch about carbon credits, but I do love Jimmy Osmond.
	I'm sorry.
	So what else weird is going on over there?
	We have Sharon Stone over here telling the Chinese that there's bad karma.
	That's the reason they had their earthquake, which cracks me up.
	Oh, really?
	Oh, what an idiot.
	She's a total idiot.
	Bad karma?
	Is that what she's saying?
	Why didn't she say this?
	Yeah, she made a big stink about it.
	She says she was at some event where she was actually talking to a Chinese delegation in public and made a big stink about his bad karma.
	When you do bad things, bad things happen to you like she's some sort of like a 12-year-old.
	Speaking of drunks, God, really?
	That's pretty messed up.
	I'm trying to think.
	Well, there is a European Parliament thing that they're getting into now.
	There's discussions about banning import into Europe of products that are a derivative of child labor.
	And so there's several countries that are saying, you know, yeah, we think we should warn them, but we don't actually think we should stop the import of these products.
	So there's something weird going on there, which I'm sure is China-related, probably India-related.
	Who knows?
	Maybe the old brick countries.
	That's going on in the European world.
	Well, there was a...
	You know, I started watching Newsnight, which I recommend to Americans if they get BBC America.
	It comes on Friday nights, and I think they repeat it on Sunday.
	That's a great show.
	Great show.
	Right, it's from BBC Two.
	And so I quoted something from it on a blog and somebody, I don't know, I guess we were talking about something on No Agenda and somebody sent me an email saying, hey, you know, you shouldn't note that this is the most reputable show on the British air.
	And so I started watching it.
	It's actually quite good.
	It's actually like a jazzed up or dramatized 60 Minutes.
	It's actually better in many ways.
	But they had a thing on.
	It was either last week or the week before.
	They took these people and these women that were fashion-oriented British girls that didn't think much about wearing something once and throwing it away and took them to China.
	Oh, and showed them how the shit was made, huh?
	Well, they made them work there.
	Oh, God.
	It was part of the job.
	It was like they had to do some of these things.
	They had to do some sewing.
	They had to do some this and that and the other thing.
	And all of them came back.
	They were so, I mean, amazingly disillusioned with the whole situation that it was actually quite entertaining to watch.
	Well, that's a good thing and quite topical because at this very moment, you know what the number one movie is going to be this weekend.
	If it isn't already in the States, it's going to be Sex and the City, which, of course, is filled with nothing but...
	Brand name, overpriced shoes, handbags, and clothing.
	I hope it's not number one.
	Oh, it's going to be box office bonanza.
	This is the equivalent for guys that like Debbie Does Dallas in the 2008 version would be released in theaters.
	We love porn.
	Most guys love porn.
	This is female porn.
	That's plain and simple.
	I don't know about your wife.
	My wife is certainly, she likes the porn, but she can't stand paying the prices for it.
	But in general, I think, I see women who absolutely worship Blahnik, whatever the, what the hell is the name of those shoes?
	Milano?
	Mahalo?
	I don't know.
	They worship these shoes.
	It's like $400 shoes, which are two slabs of leather with a stick.
	It's crazy.
	Luckily, my wife's not a shoe nut.
	How about handbags?
	That's another one that's just crazy.
	Well, there's actually websites dedicated to the handbags.
	Yeah, you know, you're right.
	Sex and the City will have tons of that stuff.
	But the thing is, it's like such a chick flick from the get-go that it's almost like a parody of itself right from the beginning.
	I don't even know if I'd watch it.
	I'm definitely not going to go see it.
	But I don't know if I'd even bother watching it on a DVD because, you know, I watched the series on and off, and it was kind of interesting because it was structured...
	And similarly to the Seinfeld show where they had got themselves into these kind of weird situations that were kind of amusing.
	And it was well written.
	But it was, again, I think the parody of it done on The Simpsons where one of the people on The Simpsons said, Oh, you mean that show where there was those four women sitting around the table acting like gay men?
	Yeah.
	Well, you know, it's written by gay men, the show.
	I don't know about the movie, but the show was written by, I think, the writers are gay men.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, that makes sense then.
	Makes sense, doesn't it?
	Yeah.
	So my daughter wanted to go last night, so that was a Wednesday night.
	It was sold out.
	I do have a theory, though, why there's very little criticism of this.
	Yeah.
	And it's kind of the Obama theory.
	I think that because Carrie, whatever her name, Carrie, so the character is Carrie, so Sarah Jessica Parker, I believe because she is living the dream of many journalists, you know, living your life, writing about it for a newspaper like the New York Times, you know, being kind of a celebrated journalist.
	I have a feeling that for some reason...
	Blogger.
	It's called a blogger.
	It's called...
	Yeah, so maybe that's why there's no criticism.
	I think people envy that type of lifestyle.
	I don't know.
	There's something...
	You know what?
	Commercially speaking, great freaking idea.
	Congratulations.
	Power to you guys.
	Whatever.
	I actually doubt that I'll even bother to watch it.
	I mean...
	I just need to know what the ending is, and I'm done.
	Does Mr.
	Big get killed?
	Who cares?
	I'd like to know, because if it wraps it up, at least I can have, if I don't have to deal with it.
	Okay, so we'll get a spoiler out there, but for the men listening to this show, without a doubt, is it guaranteed you'll get laid chick flick?
	I'm not sure of that.
	Well, let's do a poll.
	Okay, well, yeah, well, I'm just not sure that it's a get laid chick flick.
	If you take your girlfriend to this movie, you're getting laid.
	Alright, let's do a test.
	Anybody out there who listens to this show, email Adam with the results of the test.
	Yes, I'll put up one of those Google Docs spreadsheets.
	And no cheating.
	We're going to come and check on you.
	No cheating.
	None of this, you know, get her drunk and then get laid.
	No, it has to be.
	You go to the movie and then the next thing you know, you're just having more sex than you could imagine.
	And I think it only counts if it's like somebody who hasn't had sex with a person before.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, now you're putting all kinds of parameters in.
	I think it's much tougher.
	Okay, let's make it any sort of sex, but I want to hear the details.
	Okay.
	In other words, is it your wife?
	Someone else's wife?
	Somebody else's wife?
	Is it somebody you have sex with every night anyway?
	Now you're putting too many parameters in for this.
	No, I just want to know that you just say yes and no, things are not going to work for me.
	I just don't think it's effective.
	I think that whole thing's a myth.
	I mean, in the olden days when I was a kid, you know, you used to go to the drive-in theater, and you could watch these, and the movies that were supposedly, you'd get some action, these were the real scary films.
	Not somebody that brings, not a movie that brings the male to tears, because it's got, you know, tear-jerker elements that are designed to make anyone who watches it cry, which is like this pathetic.
	Ah-hoo-hoo-hoo!
	You know what I mean?
	Come on.
	Well, look, how many people got laid after watching Schindler's List, okay?
	You know, it's like, I think you got more chance with Sex and the City.
	That's what I'm just saying.
	Well, yeah, well, maybe.
	Hey, here's one for you, John.
	Someone sent me, you know, I've been using this drop.io.
	I know I showed it to you.
	Have you actually started using that?
	No, I've been watching it, though.
	Okay, so there's still an alpha.
	These guys gave me, like...
	Because I was out of my one gig or whatever within a week, and they gave me 20 gigs, and so people have just been stacking stuff up.
	But there's this link to a YouTube clip.
	It's of Mary Captur.
	She's...
	A Democratic representative from Ohio.
	It's about seven minutes.
	And in it, she even holds up charts.
	She's talking about this super NAFTA thing, which has been kind of rumored about for a while, where apparently the Bush administration is quietly...
	You know about the highway?
	Yeah, the highway.
	Oh, the highway.
	We blogged about that highway over a year ago.
	That's NASCO. You have to look it up.
	It's like NASCO Highway or NASCO something dot...
	You know, to find the information.
	If you look it up on the blog, if you type in NASCO, I think you'd find it there.
	But we have the maps and all the rest of it.
	It's not even a secret.
	But the thing that's really cool is this video that's floating around YouTube where the Manitoba, a guy who runs Manitoba, I don't know what they, what is he, a governor?
	I'm not sure.
	But anyway, he was talking about it in great detail.
	And then meanwhile, they're excoriating Lou Dobbs because he calls it the NAFTA highway when it's I think he's just referring to it in a generic sense.
	Instead of NASCO, the North American Super Corridor or whatever it is, organization.
	And this is not a secret by any means, but the fact that they're trying to pretend that it is...
	It's ridiculous.
	And we've been documenting this thing for over a year, I'm sure of it.
	In fact, the whole project's been going on for 15 years.
	So the recent developments, and this is what it kind of came down to, is that Ford is opening up a huge plant in Mexico.
	So, you know, a lot of jobs are going to be going to Mexico.
	And then there's these Mexican, I can't remember his name, Mexican billionaire who owns the Chicago Skyway, which is a part of this superhighway project.
	There's another...
	Right looking at the map, I don't see it going through Chicago, but anyway, go ahead.
	Well, it was one branch.
	You have to see the video.
	I'm sure Bubba will put a link to it in the show notes.
	Put a link, okay.
	Bubba will do that.
	But it was just interesting because the way she brought it, it was like she had some really good points, I thought.
	I mean, I agree with you, it's not a secret, but it kind of hasn't really been...
	Admitted to or discussed.
	No, it's not talked about, and they kind of pretend it's no big deal when it is a big deal, because essentially the Manitoba guy, I have to put a link to this thing, I'm doing a piece on how they're trying to, I haven't, I have to, it's going to take me a while to do, because it's actually going to be an elaborate piece on how I think the powers that be are trying to ruin Lou Dobbs, because he has, he's just not toeing the line.
	And, um, And anyway, so the Manitoba guy goes on about how what they're setting up is a port, a seaport, essentially, in Manitoba that has pre-clearances for the actual docking of the ships,
	Oh, okay.
	Okay, I get it.
	And if you start really looking into it, this has a lot to do with the fact that the Seattle, Oakland, And the Long Beach harbors that take in most of the stuff from China are going to either start charging too much or they can get a better deal by dropping the stuff off down in Mexico on these super tankers.
	And a lot of them can't take some of these bigger boats.
	I mean, there's some huge ships being manufactured now that are so monstrous.
	It's unbelievable.
	And so this is part of that too because you can save money if you go to Mexico to one of their ports.
	So let me ask you a question.
	Outside of perhaps 40,000, 50,000 jobs being eliminated in the U.S. and moving down to Mexico, is there anything bad about this idea?
	Well, there's, yeah, there's a couple, well, depending on what you think is bad or what you think is one, you know, bypassing, I mean, for one thing, it's kind of weird that the, you have to drop stuff off in Mexico to get it to Canada when they have ports up in Vancouver.
	Taxes, maybe quicker routes.
	There could be a number of reasons, but I still don't see why that's necessarily bad if we're a part of it and we're making money from it.
	I don't know that we're making any money from it except for the taxes on this big highway that's going to be going up and down.
	It's also going to...
	It's almost like having an easement is the way I see it.
	If you have some property and for some reason or another somebody wants to get to some other property behind your property and they decide that they want to run a two-lane road right through your property to get there, an easement as it would be called here, it's annoying.
	It's like now all of a sudden your property is cut in half.
	Right.
	So why are we volunteering for this?
	I don't know.
	There's a lot of issues I think that needs to be discussed more, but it's not being discussed at all.
	So we don't have any good arguments one way or the other.
	Having a bunch of Mexican trucks going up and down this road, bringing in illegals.
	It could be a drug trafficking problem.
	There's a job loss thing.
	The Canadians used to have car plants up there.
	Why are we making cars in Mexico to ship them to Canada?
	Okay, great.
	I guess it makes them cheaper.
	There's a lot of job loss issues.
	I don't know.
	It's really all about China.
	It's really not that much to do with Mexico and the billionaires down there.
	It's about China finding a cheaper way to bring their cheap stuff over even cheaper.
	You mean through Mexico?
	Yeah.
	For Canada, that is.
	Not for us.
	I mean, there's no benefit to us that I can see.
	We just lose a bunch of business on some of our ports.
	And we're just routing everything in an awkward way to Canada, which somehow is cheaper according to the way they do the numbers.
	I don't know.
	It's weird.
	But the thing that's weirder about it is the fact that there's so much kind of, oh, we don't want to talk about it.
	Let's cover our ears.
	I can't hear you.
	I can't hear you.
	You know, kind of thing.
	And it's like, you know, somebody like Lou Dobbs brings it up and they, you know, calls it the NAFTA highway or whatever he calls it.
	And then they just jump all over him and people, it's interesting to read the criticism.
	There is no such thing as a NAFTA superhighway.
	There is no NAFTA corridor.
	He's full of crap.
	He's a liar.
	Who's saying that?
	He used a different term than the real term.
	NASCO. N-A-S-C-O. Oh, so that's why they're debunking it.
	Or that's what they're using as a debunk.
	There's nothing called that.
	Right, they're saying he's full of crap.
	He doesn't know what he's talking about.
	He's a liar.
	And it's really weird in this conversation.
	And the weird thing is it's mostly left-wing media people that are doing this, not even the Republicans.
	I mean, that's the strangest thing about it.
	You'd expect exactly the opposite.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's like media matters and people like that who are all really pretty much left of center by a lot that are all over this thing.
	And it's just like, okay, I don't know.
	There's something screwy going on is all I know.
	It's like somebody sent out the word.
	And then you have like hit pieces that have come out in both the Washington Post and there's this writer, Joe Klein, who's come out with some negative piece.
	It almost looks like it was planted.
	And, you know, just to hit Dobbs with this kind of information, with this criticism, and linking to all the other people that were criticizing.
	And a lot of it started with an article in Salon Magazine, the online salon.
	And they had kind of an academic nasty piece.
	It's really, it's just like it all happened at once, as though somebody said, okay, let's get him.
	Which is probably exactly what happened.
	Yeah, no, that's what I'm thinking.
	I have a thing that I like to do, and I think people should all do this.
	You have to assume, and the funny thing was, I mentioned this to you before, and I think I talked about it on the show, but a friend of mine, I'll keep her name out of it for the moment, mentioned to me that she was, you know, offered a job with one of the major intelligence agencies when she got out of college, and her job was to be to...
	Work at a newspaper and they'd get her a good position and she'd move up the ladder over the years.
	And every so often she would be asked to drop in a piece of disinformation or a phony story or something.
	Not often, but once in a while.
	Well, that's what the CIA does.
	That's one of the main things their agents do, and I am reasonably reliably informed, is that they put people in, they give them a front, so you get like a, maybe it could even be a PR agency as an example, and you're in a country and you're working as PR, or you may be a journalist, and you're essentially, you're on the payroll and you're meant to influence the press.
	Right.
	Well, it's usually you don't think the press itself is part of this.
	By the way, and I think, this is my wife, I said, we should start like some sort of a, this would really get everybody worked up, by the way.
	Start some sort of a movement where members of the press need to take lie detector tests to assure the public that they're not working for an intelligence agency.
	And we could do that with Jerry Springer with that new show of his to tell the truth.
	That's a perfect combination.
	We put him on that.
	Okay, do you work for an intelligence agency?
	Well, they do a lie detector test.
	It would be funny.
	Anyway, so I... Even just to say to a journalist, will you submit to a lie detector test could be quite telling what their answer is.
	Oh, they go crazy.
	But anyway, the point is that one of the things I like to do is to try to figure out, and I have my little lists of guys that I... I love it.
	One specific way is that that book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which I don't think went over well with anybody that was involved in the books.
	I loved it.
	I loved the book.
	Well, what you want to do is you want to look at all the reviews of the book and find the people who criticized it.
	Right.
	Yeah, good point.
	And then you find out what they said in their critique.
	And then, now that gives you kind of a top list that you can now check these people out.
	And what you do is you look at each one of their records in terms of what else have they written about.
	And you can quickly see which of the group, and it's not all of them, but it's a good number of them.
	We're obviously working for an intelligence agency because they're putting out this kind of weird propaganda every so often and they do it consistently.
	And there are people that you should know who they are and you have to make your own lists and you should take what they say with a grain of salt or...
	You could even go further, and you should read what they write to see what the official line is, because you can kind of determine it.
	You can kind of reverse-engineer it by just reading them.
	So you've done this work, and you have a list of people you're tracking?
	I do it all the time.
	I mean, I do it constantly.
	When I'm suspicious of somebody, I'll do this.
	Because I have to, as a writer myself, I have to...
	I don't mind putting out the party line when I'm in agreement with it or when I think it's a good thing without being told, which is typically what everybody does.
	If you're working for a magazine and you're a writer for Time Life, you don't go writing negative pieces about your own company, for example.
	Right.
	Pretty typical.
	And that's why you don't see pieces on television, like on one of the networks, like on ABC, for example, that go into Disney hiring practices.
	It's just never going to happen.
	You're just not going to see it on that network.
	And you won't see it on the other networks either, because these are all run by giant corporations.
	And if you're at NBC, which is owned by General Electric, and you do a hit piece on Disney hiring practices, they're going to do a hit piece on you.
	And so it's a gentleman's agreement.
	Nobody does it.
	So corporations have taken over the media and we hear nothing.
	So I had this in a smaller version at MTV. It's like you could not say anything critical, bad, or even make an off-color joke about any artist whatsoever.
	The only people who are allowed to do that were comedians.
	That's what's interesting about the Lou Dobbs thing.
	It's actually his own company coming after him.
	And when you see that, then you get really suspicious.
	And that would be GE? No, no, that's CNN Time Life.
	Oh, Time.
	Time Warner.
	Time Warner, I'm sorry.
	Time Warner.
	Time Life.
	I'm living in the past.
	Yeah, Time Warner, they own CNN, and one of the pieces I saw against him was in Time.
	So when I came to MTV, so it was 1986, 87, and I hadn't even gone on the air yet.
	This was sort of the first week I stayed in a hotel.
	I was supposed to go on Halloween is when I did my first appearance on MTV. And I was young for 22 or whatever, but also very, very green in this type of corporate U.S. environment.
	And they set me up with an interview with TV Guide, which of course at the time was the largest publication.
	You can't do much better than to have a full page, even though it's small, but a full page in TV Guide.
	And the reporter was asking me questions.
	And I said, well, have you ever met Madonna?
	I said, yeah, I've met her a couple times, you know, back in the early 80s, and we did Hash Under a Glass.
	I didn't say that, but I'm telling the No Agenda audience.
	I said, what do you think of her?
	Well, I didn't really like her.
	You know, I didn't think she was really, no, she wasn't a very nice person.
	Boy, did the shit hit the fan over that one.
	And the press department hated me from that day on, because I had ruined it.
	I had ruined their relationship with Madonna, and now she may never perform on the Video Music Awards again, damn it.
	Huh.
	Yep.
	Yeah, well, that's the way it is.
	Yeah.
	Well, you know the infamous Michael Jackson thing, right?
	No.
	Oh, well, so he was supposed to appear on the Video Music Awards in his big heyday, and we were doing, as typically, you do a promotion around that.
	So the deal was we would debut his new video, also get the exclusive if we did a Michael Jackson weekend.
	And MTV is taped.
	Some programs are live, but most of them are taped.
	So what we do is on Thursday, you tape for Saturday and Sunday.
	And on Friday, you tape for Monday.
	So on Thursday, we did what we call a 48.
	That meant a long day.
	And we did this whole weekend.
	It was the Michael Jackson weekend.
	We all had to come back Friday and re-tape the entire weekend because we did not specify, as was agreed to with the Michael Jackson organization, Every single time you said Michael Jackson, it had to be followed by the words, the king of pop.
	That's hilarious.
	It was disgusting.
	So we all had to come back, and we had to re-tape every single segment, and when it was Michael Jackson, the king of pop, it was obligated by contracts.
	Who agreed to that idiocy?
	Probably Abby Conowich, who later went on to run Maverick Records for Madonna.
	Or maybe Judy McGrath, you know, who knows?
	A whole bunch of people.
	But that's how it worked.
	MTV was totally the record company's bitch.
	So meanwhile, you know, that reminds me of when I was doing Silicon Spin a decade ago.
	We were going to get Richard Stallman on.
	The open source dude.
	Free software, basically.
	Free software, yeah.
	So he wouldn't, you know, I've known, I know the guy, I mean, I've run into him a lot, chat with him, he's interesting, and he would have been a good guest because he has things to say that are unique.
	But he wouldn't do the show unless...
	Anytime we refer to Linux, we had to say GNU Linux.
	So we couldn't say Linux.
	Yeah, Linux or anything like that.
	It had to be GNU Linux.
	And he wouldn't do the show unless we agreed to that.
	I told him to screw himself.
	Richard Stallman, the king of GNU. He did write Emacs, didn't he?
	Didn't he write Emacs?
	I don't know what he wrote anymore.
	I mean, he's mostly just a guy who complains a lot.
	I like him, though.
	You need people like that.
	He's the one who responds to most of the newest aspects of the general public license and its onerous characteristics.
	But still, you need guys like that in every industry.
	You need colorful people like that.
	It's important.
	Well, you know, I'm surprised that he's so picky about, like, you know, you don't see him on doing a lot of TV or anything because he's got all these requirements.
	He's like a diva.
	He's like somebody who thinks they're a Hollywood star and they can make all these demands.
	I'm surprised he's not asking for special kinds of bottled water.
	And maybe he is.
	And maybe he is.
	We never got that far.
	Oy, oy, oy.
	Just sticking with the internet for a second.
	This story pops up from time to time, and just now that some numbers were put to it, and I have no idea if it's true.
	It comes from the register.
	You know, your buddy's over here.
	Which I must say, I have in pretty high regard.
	That now the European Commission is pushing very hard to switch at least 25% of the IP blocks that they either have indirect or direct control over to IPv6 because, and here it comes, they're saying that only 16% of the total IPv4 numbers remain available.
	That seems pretty low.
	Did I lose you, John?
	No, I'm trying to think about this because my understanding was they were running out of IP4 numbers like a decade ago.
	And then when they came up with this idea of rotating numbers, you know, in other words, you go on to one of the services and you don't have a number, you get one.
	So you get assigned numbers as they're needed.
	That kind of staved off the problem with IP4 and the limited number of numbers.
	Which you can figure out by just looking at an IP address.
	It's like, what?
	I don't know.
	Anyway, the...
	Well, it's actually not even IP address.
	I think, isn't it the MAC addresses?
	Isn't it one level lower than IP addresses?
	No, I don't think.
	I think it's the IP address that's the problem.
	What is this?
	7, 3, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 4.
	So you have like 1, 2, you got...
	I guess there's 100 million, I guess, possible.
	Something like that.
	4.3 billion total IPv4 numbers remain available.
	16% of the 4.3 billion total.
	Yeah, that's probably right.
	So Vivian Redding is the EU's Combative Commissioner for Information and Society, which, boy, I want that business card.
	She says, in the short term, businesses and public authorities might be tempted to try to squeeze their needs into the straitjacket of the old system, but this would mean Europe is badly placed to take advantage of the latest internet technology and could face a crisis when the old system runs out of addresses.
	You know what this smells?
	This smells like bullshit to me.
	It smells like it to me, too.
	Yeah, when you've got a bullshit title like, Combative Commissioner for Information and Society, either she's poorly informed or there's some lobby behind it.
	Oh, there's got to be something behind it.
	Yeah, the Cisco.
	Come on, Cisco money and all the rest of these guys.
	I mean, where are they going to go?
	Everyone's got their routers and everything else, and now they've got to go to IP6. You'd have to re-equip everything.
	It'd be worse than Y2K in terms of dropping all this money into the system.
	So yeah, it's got to be a router company or all of them.
	The growth of the internet in China and India is pressing the need to switch.
	Hmm.
	It has to be done by 2010.
	I'll look into it.
	You're probably right.
	It doesn't have to be done, but why does it have to be?
	What's the rush?
	Well, because we're running out.
	How many percentage you said were left?
	16?
	16.
	16%.
	16%, okay, so let's see, the internet's been really inactive since about 1995, even though it goes before that, but with the web and all, I think 1995 would be a good jumping-off point.
	So we're talking about in 23 years, it's chewed up like 80% of the numbers in 23 years.
	How many is that percentage on a year-to-year basis?
	Why would this thing all of a sudden chew up 16% in the next year When it's only chewed up 80% in 23 years.
	Does that make sense to anybody?
	No.
	Sounds like a scam.
	Cisco, I think you're right.
	I'll look into that.
	It's just stuff that I know.
	It's just another trend.
	So 100 nations have reached an agreement on a treaty which would ban the current designs of cluster bombs.
	You know, this thing, this kills me.
	This is all over the news in Europe, and everyone's so proud.
	You know, it's like, we've done a good thing here.
	I'm like, you've got cluster bombs?
	What the hell is that?
	We've got enough bombs and shit to nuke out the whole world, and now we're all patting ourselves on the back because these inhumane bombs have been banned?
	What the hell is that?
	Have they banned landmines?
	No, of course not.
	Have they banned any other kind?
	Cluster bombs.
	All evening last night on the news here, you see cluster bombs going off.
	And it looks like reverse firecrackers, right?
	You know, like reverse fireworks.
	It drops and then you see boom, boom, boom, boom, all these little explosions within the area of where the...
	Bomblets.
	Yeah, bomblets, yeah.
	You know, it's like, what the hell?
	Yeah, good start.
	I'm looking at the BBC. They got, like, pictures of how the cluster bomb works.
	Why is that such a big deal?
	I don't get it.
	It's a cluster bomb week.
	That's right.
	Hey, everybody, it's cluster bomb week.
	Congratulations.
	You get 35% off your milk in the supermarket.
	Cluster bomb week.
	You're right.
	Let's ban the landmines.
	That would be a better start than cluster bombs.
	Landmines are killing children worldwide on a daily basis.
	At least these things, when they go off, you're dead or you're not.
	It's not like five years later, by accident, you step on one.
	Whatever the case is, Britain's accused of cluster bombs.
	Britain bans dumb cluster bombs.
	We can only have the smart kind.
	Tackling Tajikistan's cluster bombs.
	Hezbollah denies cluster bomb use.
	There's a lot of cluster bombs in the news.
	I wonder why.
	I mean, when I start seeing like a flurry of one story, I point this out when I do Tech 5, by the way.
	Yes, I know.
	You do it all the time, which is at tech5.mevio.com.
	And I have learned, here's how it works.
	And you know, I'm doing this radio stuff over in the Netherlands.
	It's a very, very small country, very small community.
	But it's really made me, first of all, it's made me really sharp because I'm talking early every morning.
	But And I'm taking a lot of what I've learned on this show and on DailySourceCode, DailySourceCode.com, and I'm applying that to a whole...
	Thank you.
	I've learned that from you, John.
	I'm applying that to a whole...
	Ah, yes.
	It's time to snatch the pebbles from my hand.
	I'm applying this to these formats, and what I'm seeing is that here's how it basically works.
	The journalists of all the newspapers, what they do, and by the way, RSS has been fantastic in this regard, they subscribe or they visit the European Union website.
	In this case, it would be like the Dutch government website, and they have all these huge commitments to publish everything.
	Everything you can imagine is online.
	And at the EU website, everything is online in, you know, 26 different languages.
	And so, you know, so these reports come out or these initiatives, and then what happens is, you know, journalists will pick it up, you know.
	That's their primary news source.
	They'll basically make an abstraction of whatever the story is.
	And that, of course, gets copied by other things down the line.
	And then it's the evening news.
	But it all kind of stems from this stuff that is coming out on websites at the governmental level.
	And then it's just copy-paste as far as I'm concerned.
	So I think that's the way the flow is these days.
	Every single thing you see, like these cluster bombs, I guarantee.
	Let me go to the EU website.
	I guarantee you there's some initiative, some committee that came out with a report or something like that, and then all of a sudden it's top of the news.
	While you're doing that, I want to bring up another story that came out.
	Which I kind of ended Tech 5 with the other day, even though I didn't go into any details.
	Which seems to be another hot story.
	Monkey's brain controls robot arm.
	Monkeys have been able to control robotic limbs using only their thoughts, scientists report.
	Well, yeah, of course.
	And I'm sure we could do the same.
	Well, we can.
	How do you think you move your hand now?
	Oh, yeah.
	But this is a little more elaborate than that.
	I don't know.
	They got the probe.
	There's a probe in his brain or something.
	It's like something disgusting about these stories.
	It's Europa.eu, by the way, if you want to go to the European Union's website.
	Europa.eu?
	Yeah.
	And then you get to choose your...
	And I just did a search on cluster bombs.
	Or cluster bomb.
	41 matched.
	Let's see.
	Commission's Conflict Prevention Policy.
	Case Study UXO. Look at all the languages they have to put on this menu.
	Yeah, it's a lot, isn't it?
	Well, you know, it's the EU, dude.
	Mine actions...
	I don't see anything off the...
	This is a dull site.
	Looks like it was done in like the late 90s.
	Well, yeah, that's when they started it.
	The EU's been around for a while, John.
	Yeah, but they could upgrade the site.
	I mean, it looks like something from...
	I've seen better sites in local...
	Actually, this looks like something you'd find in a small Iowa town with a crate...
	Oh, shit.
	Oh, hold on.
	Go to the EU is fun.
	Oh, I see.
	Well, I've got the one that says Europe is fun.
	Yeah, Europe is fun, yeah.
	And then you get a little sound effect plays.
	A set of brand new games on the Euro.
	The hell was that?
	If you have...
	The Euro Kids Corner.
	Yeah, you're hearing all the sounds now.
	Oh, please.
	Oh, stop.
	You're killing me.
	It's terrible.
	Yeah.
	If you have one yellow, one orange, and one blue Euro note, how many Euros do you have?
	I don't know.
	A yellow note is 50.
	And what was the other one?
	An orange.
	Wait a minute.
	Orange?
	And a blue.
	Oh, shit.
	Let me take a look.
	I've got...
	What do I have here?
	I've got some euros.
	So blue is 20.
	Orange is 50.
	What's the yellow?
	Red is 10.
	What's yellow?
	The yellow must be 1,000 or something.
	No, I don't think there's only a 500 note.
	By the way, you can't spend anything over 50 euros in a shop anymore.
	Why?
	Because of counterfeit.
	The shops will not accept 100 euro notes, or the 500 for that matter.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	I thought those things were impossible to counterfeit.
	They're pretty elaborate.
	Oh, you'd be amazed.
	This is new money, you know.
	There's a lot of counterfeiting going on.
	New money is always subject to all kinds of counterfeit shit.
	Well, I can't find anything about cluster bombs right off the bat, unfortunately, but I'm sure there's something there.
	It's just two cluster bombs.
	It's...
	Maybe the BBC is behind it all.
	No, no, no, because I'm seeing the same thing in Holland, Germany, Belgium.
	Belgium, by the way.
	You probably caught that.
	The Belgian...
	Where the hell is it?
	We blogged about that woman?
	No, no, no, not about that.
	Oh, that crazy terrorist, you know, promoting woman in Belgium.
	We have a blog entry on her.
	And it's like the Belgians, and then the Belgians are suing, the Belgians are nuts.
	They're suing Google, that's what I wanted.
	Then they're suing Google because they're getting unwanted links.
	You know, people are going to their websites because of Google, and they don't want that.
	They don't want anyone showing up, apparently.
	Why are they even on the internet?
	I complained about this bitterly on the Wednesday tech5.medio.com Belgium has quite a number of problems of its own, John.
	Besides the fact that it's not a real country.
	Right now, there's been a decade-long rift between the French-speaking part and the Flemish-speaking part, and now they're really, really splitting apart.
	In fact, there was...
	The Dutch even, this is a story a couple of weeks ago, said, hey, why don't you, you guys want to join back up with us and you can be a part of us again?
	To the Flemish?
	Yeah.
	And the Flemish said, no thanks.
	Why not?
	I think that's a good idea.
	They don't like the Dutch?
	I don't think they like the way the Dutch country's being run.
	Probably.
	It's not conservative enough, you think?
	There's a lot of animosity between the two.
	So you think Belgium's going to split in two?
	I don't think the EU would put up with that.
	It's embarrassing.
	Effectively, it kind of already is.
	Yeah, I think that they're going to split in two.
	Yeah, for sure.
	Not that anyone cares, other than the fact that InBev is about to buy Budweiser.
	Did you know that?
	I'm sorry?
	InBev, I-N-B-E-V, is a huge beer manufacturer.
	They own Stella Artois, they own Duval, they own a whole bunch of Belgian beers, and now they're looking at, I think, a $50 billion acquisition of Anheuser-Busch.
	You're kidding me.
	No, no, I haven't heard this.
	You're shitting me, John.
	Come on.
	Take a look.
	Take a look at, I'm sure you can, that'll be on Google News.
	Hold on.
	Just do Anheuser-Busch.
	Wow, that's a big deal.
	That's not news in the States?
	I think I would have noticed.
	I mean, maybe it is, but I'm looking at Google News, it's not headlined anywhere.
	I usually keep up with the beverage industry.
	Yeah, so you can see the stories here.
	$50 billion?
	Well, you know, the funny thing is they'll probably improve the beer.
	Because they'll stop making it with rice.
	I'm always reminded of the story I heard years and years ago when the German brewer, I guess it's German, that had Lohenbrau.
	And Lohenbrau was introduced to the United States as an import, and it got really popular.
	I think this was like in the late 70s or something like that.
	And so one of the brewers, and I think it was either Miller or Budweiser, one of the two, probably Miller.
	Decided to license it, which happens a lot with quality products from Europe.
	Dubonnet, for example, if you buy it in the United States, is not really made in France.
	It's made in the Central Valley.
	Created under license.
	It doesn't say anything like Dubonnet.
	It's like Coca-Cola.
	Well, Coca-Cola at least sticks with pretty much the same formula.
	You can't do that with wine.
	Right, that's true.
	So anyway, so they decided to license the Lone Brow brand that were going to make it here, and so the Lone Brow people said to them, well, would you like to work with our brewmaster so you can get it so it's just the same?
	And the American company says, no, we know how to make beer.
	And that was the end of it.
	So what she ended up with was just a bottle of American beer with a Lohenbrough label on it.
	And eventually it just got taken out.
	I never saw it after.
	After about five years of that crap, people would say, what am I paying extra for?
	I should just buy the cheap stuff.
	So I think this deal will happen, and I'll tell you why.
	I know the Anheuser-Busch company pretty well.
	They were our first client in our previous business.
	And we built Budweiser.com products.
	I did a whole bunch of stuff for them, really quite a bit of work, and worked with Woody and Grindr, as they're known, which would be Woody is August Bush IV, and Grindr is III. Before you go on, I did find the story, and the best headline is the following, Budweiser to be remarketed as a paint remover.
	That's a What the hell is that?
	Anyway, go ahead.
	So I spoke to my buddy over there.
	We were starting up Mevio at the time pod show.
	We actually got a nice note from Robert McCauley who was our main contact at the time.
	He's moved up into a different part of the organization.
	He was really running a lot of the marketing.
	And he said, you know, this was before they launched that failed project, Bud TV. And he said, you know, we're really in trouble.
	Well, he didn't actually say in trouble, and I don't want to get him in trouble for saying what he said.
	But it was clear what he was getting at because of all these Alco Pops.
	It's just not cool anymore to drink beer.
	Go look at their sales.
	Go look at their stock price.
	I think it's absolutely a right time for them.
	I don't know if the price is right, but I think it's the right time for them to sell.
	Because the beer market in general is just not as cool for young kids anymore to drink beer.
	It's all about the Bacardi Breezers and all these vodka drinks.
	And that's what kids are turned on to.
	It's no longer beer.
	David Prosser's outlook in The Independent says his beer.
	That ran on May 29th, which is Thursday.
	He thinks the whole thing is a crock.
	Just maybe to pump up the stock price?
	Spook him.
	It says, InBev might like the idea of spooking Anheuser with talk of a deal to leave the Budweiser on out in the cold.
	This is another word for them to do something.
	They're going to buy Anheuser.
	I don't know.
	It's just a very interesting story, but it sounds like it's not going to happen from his perspective.
	But it's a speculation.
	It's an interesting idea.
	What amazes me is that this isn't all over the U.S. press.
	You know, I'm just telling you.
	The thing is, it apparently is because I'm looking at the...
	I think it's just buried, though.
	But I'm looking at, although most of these are international articles, but the number of articles that show up on the Google News site, 791 redundant articles about this.
	So it is floating around, but the Chicago Tribune has a story on it.
	Let's see, and it's just...
	And here's the image.
	It's downplayed.
	It just ran today, March 29th.
	Flat beer sales lead to talk of mergers.
	Anheuser-Busch faces pressure.
	It's just a boring story.
	Slow growth of beer and key markets coupled with an insatiable need to slash cause is sparking speculation about a new wave of brewing industry consolidation.
	Blah, blah, blah.
	It's not a big story here.
	It's the wave of the future.
	Consolidation.
	Yeah, well, my favorite company in that regard has got the right name, Constellation.
	It's a big alcohol company.
	Yeah.
	Well, the other big one over here, of course, is Diageo.
	They own a lot of the spirits.
	And they're a UK company.
	This is an interesting article, actually.
	It's...
	But again, it's poo-pooing the concept.
	I hate to say that.
	Sorry.
	I like it when you say poo-poo.
	I'm okay with that.
	Yeah, I know, but I kind of try to cut it back because of the complaints.
	But anyway, this guy's throwing a wet blanket on the story.
	Let's put it that way.
	Yeah, there was a really good conversation on Twit last week.
	I listened to that religiously.
	It was one of the best shows I've ever heard.
	You just listened to it because you complained.
	You thought that last week's show was one of the best?
	I really enjoyed that show, yeah.
	The one with Brewster?
	I like the orphan copyrights.
	Yeah, I thought that was interesting.
	Well, I know that was the interesting part of it.
	Of course, it was the letter he got.
	Oh, yeah, that was interesting.
	That was interesting.
	Well, I admire him.
	I mean, I've known him for a while.
	But I admire him for sticking up for the, you know, most of us, I think, you know, in this situation say, what do you need?
	You know, you give the guy's name, whatever it was, some guy's name.
	I'd be interested to know.
	You know how I figured out who it was, by the way?
	That Adam Curry guy up in Iowa.
	No, Nebraska.
	Or Nebraska, that guy.
	Here's what I'm interested in.
	And maybe you can ask Leo.
	What kind of reaction did he get to last week's show in comparison to other ones?
	Or was it listened to more or downloaded more?
	Because I'll bet you...
	That it had a much lower rating with the typical Twit audience.
	Because, you know, I think people really tune into that to hear kind of the gossipy...
	News, tech news.
	Well, it's like, you know, I'm sure like the Jason Calacana shows are the ones that...
	Oh, that was a fantastic show.
	Actually, I think it's when Kevin Rose comes on the show, you really get the...
	You get the dig audience showing up.
	Yeah.
	Kevin Rowe's a pretty smart guy.
	He's pretty intelligent.
	Anyway, I just want to say I thought that was a good show.
	You didn't mention me.
	That's too bad.
	I'm sorry about that.
	Now you're acting like Bubba.
	And I love it how Leo always, always, and I'm sure he's doing this on purpose, always mispronounces all your shows.
	So you've got the Take 5, and you've got the...
	Right, yeah, Take 5.
	He might be doing it on purpose.
	Of course he's doing it on purpose.
	It's fucking Leo, man.
	That's what happens when you do 25 hours a week of stuff.
	You start to talk gibberish.
	He's doing too much work.
	Yeah, I think so.
	Has he started those video things yet?
	I'm waiting for that to happen.
	I'm so curious to see if he can do that.
	Go watch the Chris Perillo show.
	That's what I recommend.
	Yeah, because it'll be Chris Perillo only with Leo.
	Essentially.
	I mean, it's like, you know, Chris sitting at the computer.
	Just, there he is.
	He's still there.
	Has he moved?
	No, yeah, he's typing something.
	Okay.
	I'm noticing this trend.
	If you look at the screen, it says there's 300 people watching.
	You go, why is anybody watching?
	Exactly.
	So I'm seeing this trend, this whole Ustream trend, which is more, and it's in conjunction with Twitter.
	And so I'll see, like, you know, hey, I'm streaming live!
	Everyone's like, I'm streaming live!
	And I'm like, who gives a shit?
	I've watched these things.
	Every once in a while, you see it on Twitter.
	Somebody says, I'm streaming live and they have a link.
	And it's a link to one of these streaming things that comes off of a phone.
	And Callie Lewis did one in Texas.
	And she says, we're having a meeting, some sort of a meet-up, as they like to say.
	A meet-up or a mash-up or whatever of WordPress users in some, I guess it was like a barbecue place in Texas.
	And so I clicked on it.
	And it's just a bunch of guys sitting around a table with their computers open.
	Meeting up.
	They're meeting up.
	They're not doing anything, from what I can tell you.
	She's trying to liven it up by floating around, you know, saying stuff to them, and they're, like, nonplussed about it.
	This stuff is ruining things.
	I agree.
	Let me tell you, this is blog.
	It's called Girl With A One-Track Mind.
	Look it up.
	GirlWithAOneTrackMind.com.
	And this girl...
	She was writing on her blog for several years every single one of her sexual experiences.
	And, I mean, really in graphic detail, but not in a dirty way, but really from her perspective.
	And she's kind of like a guy, you know, just wants to fuck all the time.
	And she got outed because she wrote a book.
	Her blog was published as a book.
	Big hit here in the UK. I'm not quite sure how it did in the States.
	And so she kind of got outed and everyone figured out what her real name was.
	And I followed her blog.
	I thought it was really fascinating to read.
	And now she's kind of fallen into this...
	And it's like, well, I'm doing a photo shoot tomorrow.
	I'll be streaming it through quick.
	Make sure you check it out.
	I'm like, stop!
	You're fucking ruining it.
	Write about sex again.
	I'm not interested.
	It's ruining it.
	So girlwithaonetrackmind.com comes up as a Parker site.
	No, hold on.
	So it has to be something else.
	You know, look at Abby Lee, I think is her pseudonym.
	Abby Lee.
	See, I subscribe to it, so...
	Boy, you're like a fan.
	Fanboy.
	Fanboy, Adam.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Abby Lee, girl with...
	I'll give it the whole...
	Go for it.
	The Google thing.
	I thought it was girl...
	Maybe it's.co.uk.
	Maybe that's where I'm messing it up.
	Girl with a one-track mind?
	You sure it's not?
	It should be girlwithaonetrackmind.com.
	Hold on.
	Well, it's not.
	That's pissing me off.
	Let me go look at my subscriptions.
	I don't see it coming up anywhere.
	Well, the one is lovereading.co.uk.
	She's got that site.
	Okay, hold on, John.
	John, I'm going to find this.
	One track.
	That's just about our book.
	Hold on, I'll get it for you.
	This is the thing with...
	It's almost like you don't know any phone numbers anymore because...
	Girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com Oh, crap.
	Okay, that's it.
	Yeah.
	There you go.
	Girl with a One-Track Mind.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, here it is.
	Here's what you're complaining about.
	Tuesday, May 27th.
	I thought it might be fun to try live streaming some video clips to explore what goes on behind the scenes at my photo shoot today.
	I'm off there shortly.
	Follow me on Twitter for updates or bookmark my...
	She's like got all caught up in this crap.
	I'm telling you.
	And she's in Second Life.
	She has an avatar and she's doing...
	And actually, I'm just looking at the...
	I'm going back to October...
	I'm going back to October now almost.
	And...
	Oh, wait.
	Okay, so the one was...
	Alright, March 11th of 2008.
	You know this is from South by Southwest, which is another thing that's ruining everything.
	You know how you're at the Tumblr party, drunkenly caning the free whiskey like there's no tomorrow, and then a sexy geek boy sits down and starts chatting to you, and before you know it, your legs are up in the air.
	So that's the last sexy thing she talked about.
	And now it's just all this blah, blah, blah, I'm streaming, come look at me.
	It's ruining everything.
	It really is.
	For you.
	No, but I mean, look, I'm just giving you one example, right?
	But this is rampant.
	And I don't understand.
	These companies are clearly going to go out of business.
	I mean, there's no business model unless people have to pay for it.
	I don't see how that's sustainable at all.
	So last time I had Scoble on the Cranky Geeks show, crankygeeks.com, he comes on and the first thing he does is he sticks his phone in my face and tells me he's streaming.
	Right.
	And I'm thinking, yeah, well, that might be, but It's just annoying because one thing is you should ask anyway.
	It's not rude to be streaming somebody.
	But the other thing is who the heck is watching it anyway?
	Five people?
	Five really bored guys?
	Maybe 500, maybe 1,000, maybe 2,000.
	But still, what is the value of that?
	It's reducing our productivity as an economy as far as I'm concerned.
	Well...
	I think there's something wrong with it.
	And people ask me all the time, hey man, you should put up a Ustream feed of when you do the DailySourceCode.
	I'm like, DailySourceCode.com.
	You don't understand.
	This is all about theater of the mind.
	I want you to imagine where I am.
	I don't want you to actually see the freaking piece of metal sticking out of my face that I'm talking into.
	That's not cool.
	It's about the soundscape.
	It's about the imagination.
	In fact, my dad used to tell me the story about his father, my grandfather, took him to see one of these radio plays when he was a kid, took him to the radio station.
	And it was, you know, Green Hornet or whatever the hell it was.
	And he said he never got over the disappointment of seeing how that was put together because he had this whole thing in his mind about, you know, the actors and the situations and the scenarios.
	And it was just a bunch of ugly guys standing in front of mics banging on pots and pans.
	Yeah, no, I know.
	In fact, there are movies of those, of many of those productions.
	But the weird thing to me about that, the radio play...
	Which are available.
	You can download a lot of them.
	The key word, by the way, that you want to look for if you're going to try to download stuff is OTR. It's not a word.
	It's the three letters.
	It means old-time radio.
	You can find a lot of stuff if you Google something and then type OTR in the cap.
	Can I just put a little plug in here?
	If you go to Mevio.com, right there on the homepage, you'll see the Old Time Radio Network, which this guy named Dennis puts together.
	And it's just collections and collections of series of radio.
	Actually, there's a lot of good stuff there.
	And I'll second that.
	But anyway, they would show these things.
	And these shows, many of them would have an audience, like what apparently your grandfather was watching.
	And then they would pack them in.
	But it's just like, why?
	I mean, it's just like there's no action.
	It's just all, you know, just people going up to microphones and reading.
	Usually they have a sheet of paper in their hands.
	It's not like they even memorized these lines.
	They were just good at reading.
	And, I don't know.
	I guess it was entertaining at the time.
	Well, this kind of brings me to another rant that I'm on.
	Because I'm just really noticing it, you know, this...
	I wrote a blog post about this 100 years ago, which is probably no longer on a server, probably can find it on the Wayback Machine, called The Copy-Paste Culture.
	And I get a lot of comments from people, voicemail comments that I play on my show.
	And what happens is people will read.
	This is what the Internet has become as far as I'm concerned.
	People read an article that's online.
	Of course, what the sourcing of the article is is probably dubious to start with.
	And then people just start commenting on it in their blogs and it just propagates on and on and on and becomes a game of telephone and becomes completely worthless shit.
	And things become truth at the end of the day.
	It's bad.
	We're not being very responsible one way or the other.
	It's just pissing me off.
	Well, it sounds like it's been pissing you off for a while.
	It's just, yeah, things are, you know, it's all new.
	You know, this is not, you know, Gutenberg was around for a long time before they figured out how to make books work, you know, besides just the Bible.
	I mean, it's what it was selling originally.
	But, you know, then the publishing business didn't really begin right away.
	Yeah.
	It was, you know, so we just, everyone's just playing around, but I have to say some of these things are duds or bad ideas or dead ends right from the get-go, and I would say the streaming, everything you do from your cell phone is one of them.
	It's just, it's like, you know, I don't need this.
	But of course, in a way, it's kind of training wheels for something else.
	I do think that there are things that this can be useful for.
	I'm not quite sure what yet, and maybe I'm wrong, but this is all just trying stuff out.
	All of this stuff is.
	This Twitter, this streaming.
	This thing on the blog, which I've done a number of...
	I started doing it with the rollout of the iPhone, which is called just a walkthrough.
	And I have these little cameras that I have, these little Kodaks, a 705 or 703 or whatever they are.
	Anyway, they're just little bitty cameras that have really good video and a good microphone.
	But they look like a little bitty, just a little dinky camera.
	They don't look like a video camera at all.
	Like the flip?
	Is that what you're talking about?
	Like the flip camera?
	No, no.
	No, it's the little dual lens ones.
	But anyway, the thing is I turned the video...
	Recorder on.
	And then I'll just go wandering.
	I'll walk with it.
	And then I'll just, through some scene, like a trade show or down an aisle or something, shoot about two or three minutes of this just walking around.
	And I get a lot of positive comments.
	I did one on Korea recently.
	I just walked down some street in Korea up to some place that somebody mentioned was where all the hookers were.
	And I kind of missed that, I guess.
	And it's just like, there's actually, and I look at it myself, I go, that's kind of interesting because, you know, you get kind of a feeling for the place and it's slightly educational.
	So I mean, I don't know.
	So there's something to some of this kind of content-less.
	We wouldn't say it's content-less, but it's just kind of random video.
	The ones I don't like is just where there's nothing really interesting.
	I mean, I've done a lot of these things.
	I don't post every one of them because most of them aren't very good.
	And the problem with these things like Quick is that you start the thing up and it's doing a live stream.
	You can't edit it.
	So I don't know.
	What you're saying there, like those little quick bits of Korea, so that comes back to something we talked about last week, which, by the way, a lot of people misunderstood.
	I got so much email from people saying that we're idiots and that all this stuff already exists.
	What we actually were specking out as a system was not quite the same as, oh, I have a camera that can geotag pictures.
	Yet, duh...
	I know that's out there, but the idea that I could be in Korea and I could pick up, or I could not be in Korea.
	I could plan a trip I'm going to make and I could then, from somewhere in the magical cloud, pick up some of your videos.
	That would be interesting if we had stuff geotagged like that.
	Right, yeah, because you would know where you were and all this other stuff.
	So you got complaints about what?
	I didn't get any email.
	Your audience is different than mine.
	Thank God.
	So what did they say to you?
	What did your crazy audience say?
	Oh, well, you know, what rock are you guys living under?
	This has been around for years.
	You know, you don't have to wait for the iPhone.
	What's been around for years?
	Well, they misunderstood.
	They think that we were talking...
	What's been around for years?
	GPS chips inside cameras?
	What camera has that?
	No, geotagging.
	The geotagging of pictures.
	We're talking about GPS inside the camera, so when you take a picture, you get the geotagging built into the file.
	Yeah, that's been around for at least two years.
	Where?
	Microsoft.
	Microsoft.
	Mobile phones.
	What camera can I go buy right now that's a cheap little camera I can take movies with and look normal that has the GPS built into it?
	Camera or cell phone?
	Camera.
	Oh, I'm talking about cell phones with cameras.
	We were talking about cameras when we were talking about GPS. I mean, I don't want to go to Korea and take a bunch of pictures with a cell phone.
	I mean, I bring a good camera with a good lens, and I shoot pictures that are professional grade in terms of at least the megapixels and the quality.
	Going around Europe, or anywhere for that matter, and taking pictures with my cell phone like an idiot, Yeah, maybe there's some GPS stuff in some cell phones, and there is, but that's not what we're talking about.
	I'm talking about having my collection of good photos being geotagged automatically with the GPS built into the camera.
	That was the premise of the discussion.
	Even I misunderstood it then.
	There are cameras with GPS, but they're high-end.
	They're high-end stuff.
	There's nothing really cheap.
	There are a couple.
	Ricoh has one.
	I think Canon has one, but those are more high-end.
	They're not cheap cameras.
	But of course, you know, a lot of these, I have to say, a lot of these cell phones now, you know, they got five megapixel cameras.
	That's not too bad.
	Yeah, but it's still, there's no zoom lens.
	You can't, you know, it doesn't have any kind of really fancy processing in it.
	The quality of the pictures are always mediocre.
	I mean, if you want to make a wall-sized print by doubling the lines with some software to get a big print out of it, you can't do it.
	I mean, it's not going to look very good.
	There's no depth of field.
	There's no contrast.
	I mean, it's a joke.
	Let me look at my Gmail.
	Let me see if I can find some of that.
	Probably not.
	GPS camera?
	Hmm.
	I must have gotten 10 or 15 emails.
	That doesn't matter.
	I just think it's ridiculous that people complain.
	We're just talking here.
	It's not a report.
	There's a lot of misunderstanding about what we're doing, John.
	Believe me.
	Yeah, I know.
	There's a couple of guys that moan about it a lot for some reason.
	Anyway, the point I still want to make is that if I had a camera that would geotag automatically, like a good quality camera, or one of these things like the little video camera, I would think it'd be a cool thing to have.
	And by the way, I did get a couple of notes from people, but they said that...
	They were in agreement with me about the idea being a good one.
	Again, your audience...
	Because I was always thinking that it was a bad idea.
	I thought it was just a waste of money to put a circuit in a camera that would have GPS capability.
	The Ricoh Pro G3 digital camera.
	This came out in 2005, actually.
	I'm just Googling some shit here.
	Digicam.
	So that does video and pictures.
	And it has a GPS in it?
	Yeah.
	Huh.
	Kodak had one out ages ago, it even says in this article.
	So I guess it's lost favor.
	It's gone out of style.
	So much for my theory.
	What time you got to get up, man?
	It's mostly a marketing thing.
	These things have to be marketed properly.
	It's getting late.
	Is it 2.30 where you are?
	Yeah, it's 2.30 in the morning.
	Oh, shit, man.
	Let's end this show.
	Hold on.
	Let me get the music in.
	That's too late.
	You need your beauty sleep, John.
	Yes, I do.
	Yeah.
	And I actually, I was going to fly at one.
	I'm taking my wife's bags over again to Holland because she refuses to fly with me.
	And I got to go because there's one storm front over the North Sea now and that'll end around 12 o'clock.
	So I got to get flying because there's another one coming up from France.
	I don't want to take the channel, but okay.
	Dude, you'd be doing it all day to take the channel.
	You do not want to take the channel.
	Okay.
	Hey, I think I'm coming over in a couple weeks again.
	I can't wait.
	We've got to set up another dinner date.
	I hope you're not going to be over here when I'm in Holland.
	Oh, crap.
	No, you're in August, aren't you?
	Oh, yeah, right.
	True.
	No, we've got June.
	We've got July.
	No, no, no.
	We're going to hook up in Amsterdam for sure.
	You're bringing your family over, right?
	We're hoping to.
	It depends on what the schedule is for my daughter.
	She's got all these projects.
	Theater projects.
	Now that and whatever.
	Oh, well.
	He's busy.
	Good to hear how involved you are in your children, John.
	It's always nice to hear a parent being proud of all the whatever the heck the kids are doing.
	I don't know what their kids are doing all kinds of stuff.
	All right, everybody.
	This was No Agenda for this week.
	Thank you very much for listening.
	Don't send us any email.
	We're just not interested.
	Coming to you from the Curry Manor in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
	And I'm John C. Dvorak here in Northern California.
	We'll talk to you again next week right here on No Agenda.

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