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June 28, 2008 - No Agenda
02:03:51
37: Where's The Beef?
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Time Text
Hey everybody, it's time once again for the program that comes to you once a week, and you never know what it's going to be exactly.
Except for the fact that there's going to be us two guys talking about something.
Coming to you from a sun-drenched Surrey in the United Kingdom in the Curry Manor, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in smoky Northern California where we've had 1,200 fires and the whole area's just smoked in.
Wow, you really can, the smoke is noticeable?
Well, it's because the wind has been blowing from the north and the south and the north and the south, and it's accumulated.
And if I look at it right now, you'd think it was fogged in, but it's mostly smoke.
Yeah, it's very noticeable.
The first day of it, this weather, when I woke up, I said, what's that stink?
You could smell it.
Now we've been in the smoke now for so long that you can't even smell it.
You've been...
It's kind of acclimatized to the aroma.
Is that all the way into the city or is it just out where you live on the other side of the water?
No, no, it's all over the place.
I mean, it's very hazy because of the smoke.
Is this from the Santa Ana winds that fire everything up and all of California burns?
Those cause the worst fires, these winds that blow from the west.
I mean, from the east to the west, they blow in the wrong direction, and it's a dry air that heats everything up, and it's terrible.
But this is mostly north and south winds.
The wind goes from the north, and it goes from the south, and it goes to the north.
It's just going back and forth and washing back and forth all the smoke, because there's no fires around us at all.
It's all Southern California, isn't it?
No, no, there's a bunch of them in Northern.
They're all over the place.
They're all by Shasta.
They're everywhere.
This happens like every single year.
Is there anything left to burn down in California?
You know, it rains, things grow.
Mostly weed fires.
It's not like weed fires.
Anyway, so it's smoky.
But no houses have burned down or anything horrible like that?
Oh, no, yeah, no, plenty of houses have burned down, too.
Hundreds.
That sucks.
So...
That's pretty...
You're right.
Every year, it's...
Yeah.
What's going on in the U.S. of A., John?
I haven't been there.
Well, it's been two months now.
I can't...
I think July 23rd I'm coming over for two weeks.
You won't recognize the place.
No.
I bet.
So, a couple of things.
So, I'm listening to the show last week.
Every time I listen to the show occasionally, and I notice there's something that bothers me, which is that there is a Skype lag since we're going from England to the United States.
Yeah.
And so, you get this impression.
It's not as bad as the satellite thing you see on the cable channels.
You know, they get the satellite feeling.
I know exactly what you're going to say.
I know exactly.
Yeah, so Bill, what do you think of the situation there in Syria?
And then this is like, one, two, three.
I didn't hear you there, Jim.
What?
And then they talk at the same time.
You go.
You go, sir.
Right.
Well, we did a bunch of that last week.
But the way it sounds, because at the beginning of the show, you do most of the talking at the beginning, and I kind of liven up when I finally wake up.
And all the punchlines have a 0.8 second delay before someone laughs.
Exactly.
Right.
But the way it sounds is the following.
I mean, if you were listening to this and didn't know there was a Skype lag, it's like you say something like, so what do you think of that, John?
And then there'll be this long delay as if I'm actually either thinking...
You actually give a shit what I'm saying.
I know.
It's fantastic.
Right, there's almost this moment where you listen and it sounds as though you're saying something and I, because of these long pauses, am thinking to myself, is this guy a total idiot?
No, first of all, I'm sure you think that from time to time.
But in general, I think those pregnant pauses, I would call them, I think they kind of make it interesting because it actually sounds like you're thinking and processing, boy, Adam has once again asked a fine, interesting question.
How shall I respond?
But when there's a joke, of course that works both ways.
No, actually, because the recording is on my end, if you crack a joke, my response is instantaneous.
But of course, all the good jokes...
Have that delayed laughter from you.
Like that one.
Are we listening to a different show that would have good jokes?
No, you know what I mean.
So if it annoys you, get an ISDN set up, man.
I'm ready to go.
I don't know if that would help because we're still so far away.
John, it has nothing to do with...
The delay has nothing to do...
Well, actually, it has a little bit to do with the fact that it's not a direct full-time circuit.
It's packets that are flying around the Internet.
Skype has to buffer all that shit.
So it's never going to get any less, that delay on this type of technology.
But I don't think distance has that much to do with it.
When you come to ISDN, it's just IP packets.
But it's a direct circuit.
Well, you know what?
Why don't you get one?
We'll try it out, dude.
Well, you know, we got a couple of emails for people to say that it's not as clean necessarily as you like to make it out to be.
Yeah, but I've been using...
From this distance, from London to here is a long haul.
Let's give it a shot.
It can't be worse than Skype.
Well, that may be true.
It'll certainly be better quality.
Yeah, well, the quality would probably be better.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, okay, we'll do that.
Hold on, let me write this down.
Yeah, and put it on top of the pile of other notes of things to do.
Get Skype.
No, get ISDN, not Skype.
Oh, I'm sorry.
See, I made a mistake already.
Just get a Talos thing or whatever.
Make sure you have the AAC codex loaded.
Oh, they all have the same thing.
Yeah, well, something.
I got ISDN in the condo now.
I haven't tried it out yet, but I do have it.
In the Congo?
In the condo.
The curry condo.
Over in San Francisco?
Yeah.
I had it put in.
So, what's going on over there in the EU? Well, a lot's going on.
As far as I can tell, from our news coverage, nothing's going on over there.
Okay, you guys hear this little thing called the big 90th Nelson Mandela birthday bash in Hyde Park?
Nope.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, Nelson Mandela celebrated his 90th birthday.
In fact, half of the U.S. show business is here.
Let's see, Will Smith was here.
Jay-Z was here.
I mean, it's a huge, huge party.
And, of course, it royally messed up all traffic for most of the week in the city and coming in and out of the city.
So that was pretty big.
So is Will Smith some sort of old running buddy with Nelson Mandela?
I mean, what's the connection there?
Is that the only thing?
No, didn't he play Nelson Mandela in a movie?
Or wasn't he in a Nelson Mandela...
Yeah, I thought he was.
I know he played Muhammad Ali.
Okay, well that would explain it.
And also, Will Smith's a social thinking kind of guy.
And he's a great performer.
Did he perform?
Yeah, yeah, he performed on stage.
And so Jay-Z is...
He's a rapper.
Who?
Nelson Mandela?
No, Will Smith.
So is Nelson Mandela into rap?
Really?
Nelson Mandela into everything.
It's all kinds of musical acts.
I don't think the guy doesn't give a shit.
He's 90.
When you're 90, you'll say, oh, look at these young people doing anything on stage.
You're happy.
I mean, come on.
Whatever the fuck the guy's doing.
But Will Smith is kind of an ambassador.
He's a very positive, very energetic type of guy.
I met him...
In 1988, we did a gig together.
God, it was in Pennsylvania, I think.
It was like a Nintendo launch or something of Super Mario Brothers or whatever.
And he was still doing Parents Just Don't Understand with DJ Jazzy Jeff, which of course were his roots.
His partner, yeah.
And even then, I was like, really nice guy.
Nice guy.
And Jay-Z, so they were all on Jonathan Ross last night.
Jay-Z is headlining, this is kind of controversial, Jay-Z is headlining Glastonbury this year, which traditionally is more like a, kind of like a rock concert, and it didn't sell out this year, and the critics are saying that that's because Jay-Z was chosen as the headliner.
Very controversial issue, you understand.
So let me tell you, the United States, the way we handled this.
What, Nelson Mandela?
Yeah, I'm looking at the news rundown.
Here it is.
Top of the news, which was actually really only run in India.
The U.S. approves a bill that removes Nelson Mandela from the terrorist list.
From the no-fly list.
Yeah, I read that.
I read that.
Yeah, right.
That was a birthday gift.
Well, there's a lot of things going on here that, actually, I wanted to ask you about.
Let me bring up one more story, though.
Okay.
Just because this will interest you.
This is the way they handled the headline in Fox News.
Singer Amy Winehouse takes the stage at Nelson Mandela's birthday show.
Thank God we got an Amy Winehouse reference in.
Damn it, now and now it's newsworthy.
That's got to be top of the headlines, everybody.
Cocksuckers.
Anyway.
So, I've been trained now, partially due to my own investigation and work and experience, but certainly in the past 36 episodes of No Agenda, I've been trained to be very suspicious of big headlines, and this Zimbabwe thing really has all my bullshit meters going off.
Have you been following this?
Yeah, I think that has been covered over here to some extent, mostly by the news hour type shows or the ones that get into it in depth.
The regular news, of course, is just that this guy doesn't want to leave office and they beat the crap out of his opponent's supporters and the opponent took off and said, I'm out of here.
But I think we've got the gist of it.
Well, because what is the gist of it?
That's the part that is the bullshit.
I mean, this guy has been around for decades, this Mugabe.
And whenever I hear, oh, it's an undemocratic process and we have to go in and peacekeeping troops have to keep watch over the democratic process and the voting has to be democratic.
Whenever I hear that, I'm like, okay, what does this country have that we need?
And I know it's not oil, but what I have discovered is that I think 70 or 80 percent of all British vegetables come from Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe.
And tobacco.
All the good it's done yet.
And tobacco is another big thing.
But of course the economy over there has collapsed.
A loaf of bread costs 45 billion Zimbabwe dollars.
No kidding.
It's in the billions now.
Yeah, you know, I've got a call out.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to score it.
It's really irking me to no end.
I got one more source, I think, for this before they go away.
But right now, they're paying for everything in Zimbabwe in bricks of money.
Yeah.
Further along than they did in the hyperinflation.
These various countries have had hyperinflation.
Germany, of course, in the 30s was famous.
But more recently, of course, Brazil, 20 years ago, was hyperinflation.
I have a couple 500,000 cruzero bills.
Yeah, awesome.
So like 500,000, the equivalent of dollars, 500,000 is a bill.
And it was worth, like, I think I went to Brazil when that bill was around, and I think the bill was worth a dollar when I got it, and two days later it was worth ten cents, something like that.
So in Zimbabwe, they've got these...
Go ahead.
Well, I'm just going to say in Zimbabwe because they're not printing these high notes.
People buy with these bricks of money.
So you have a brick of money.
It's like piles.
And the brick is the equivalent of, you know, a couple bucks.
And I've been trying to get somebody to get me some of these bricks of money, especially the ones that have Mugabe's picture on them.
Because personally, I think they're collectible.
No, I think you're probably right.
There were like four stories in the Financial Times yesterday, which I read on the train into the city, that I actually circled.
Let me just find the one about Zimbabwe, because they said, it was a pretty funny line, it was more expensive, because they've limited what you can take out of the ATM machine, just because there's not enough paper can come out.
So it was actually more expensive to drive to the ATM for the amount of money you could withdraw that people are no longer going to the ATM. They're giving up on money in general.
But it was dominating the headlines so much, John, and there's all kinds of other stuff going on.
It was for three days straight, non-stop, all over Europe, at least what I could see because I did skim around a bit.
I was like, this has to be for some other reason.
Why is this the most important story?
It's like, no one gives a shit about Zimbabwe for years, and then all of a sudden, surprise, surprise, this guy who I've never heard of, who supposedly is his opponent in the undemocratic elections, And then you kind of look into the history.
It was known as Rhodesia before it was Zimbabwe.
And of course, basically, the white man came into the country, fucked everything up regardless.
No matter what you say, that's the root of the problem.
But I was just interested.
It's like, why are we so interested in this country?
What is the deal?
Now...
Add to that Nelson Mandela, of course, you know, and there's, you know, there's like millions of Zimbabweans are now fleeing Zimbabwe into South Africa.
I don't know, man.
It's, I don't know, I really don't understand Africa.
It's just a lot going on.
Have you ever been there?
Dude, I lived in Uganda for three years.
What are you talking about?
Three years in Uganda?
Yeah, I was very young, but yeah, we lived in Uganda.
Three years.
Before Idi Amin came in, it was, at the time, Abote was president.
Who, by the way, was just as corrupt as the rest.
Have you been back?
Do you go there?
Do you visit?
Do you have old reminiscences?
Or what do you do?
Yes, I have reminiscences.
And my dad was a Super 8mm nut.
So we have just tens and tens of...
Oh, now we're talking stuff that should be posted.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
And you know what?
I'm going to go talk to Bob.
That's my mom's second husband.
I know he has all that stuff.
And I should get that transferred.
Of course, it has no sound.
It's only...
You can do a voiceover.
I really should do that because it's tons of wildlife footage and family stuff.
You've got to do that before that stuff deteriorates.
It does deteriorate.
You know what?
I'll make that a point.
That'll be a project for sometime between now and the end of the year.
I'll get that done.
And we do have lots of, you know, we have an ivory elephant tusk, which has been completely carved, you know, back when you could still, you know, when it was still legal, obviously.
We have zebra skin rugs.
We have lion skin rugs.
We have a lot of stuff, spears, some paintings.
We have a lot of African artifacts that my parents collected in those three years.
Oh, well, that sounds like a, that sounds good.
I still don't understand the country, though.
Well, let's, you know, it's...
It's a crazy place.
My sister was born there on January 1st.
And it was a nightmare in the hospital.
I'll bet.
There's a lot of people that...
I was talking to somebody the other day that was going to Africa and I warned them that one of the problems that I've noticed with people who go to Africa a lot is that they get addicted to going there.
There's some addictive mechanism about Africa.
I always found Africa to be, you know, people say, well, you just imagine different things.
It's largely savannas, at least most of what I saw, as opposed to the jungles that we imagine to be there, which are mostly the kind of jungles that we visualize are typically Amazonian in South America.
And the place is teeming with light.
Like, if you look on the ground, anywhere, it's just, there's bugs.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
It's just, there's so much wildlife.
There's bugs and there's birds that you've never imagined before.
And it's just, like, you know, it's kind of, I find it kind of distressing to be.
I'm not a big fan of Africa.
I don't have any desire to go back.
I think what people feel is, you know, the kind of, it's real Mother Earth, you know, the real pole, maybe.
Because that, of course, I think is where people really came from.
Maybe that's it.
Maybe it's just a human DNA connection.
But indeed, you're such a cracker-ass white man.
I can understand where you have no affiliation with that.
Exactly.
Eastern European stock.
We, you know, we were invaded by the Mongols kind of thing, so it's like I have no real affinity to Africa.
Yeah, you have no roots.
I have to say, I mean, there's parts of it.
It's a nice place, but there are people that just go back.
In fact, a friend of mine who lives up the street who used to be a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Greg Zachary, who's part of the Spengler Club, he's in Africa now, as far as I know.
I got a note from his in Kenya, and I don't know what the hell he's even doing there.
Yeah.
Well, you know, Africa is developing as well.
I was talking to a guy from Nokia yesterday.
He says that in Africa and also India, honestly, he did mention two countries, but he said that there's 60, that's 6-0, 60 million new cell phone subscribers coming online every month.
What?
Yeah.
No, that's not possible.
He said in India, if you take India and Africa combined.
That's what he said.
He said all of a sudden, look, these networks are just opening up.
It's not a gradual thing.
It's like you open up a whole new area and you can sell a million of these candy bar phones.
Absolutely it's possible.
You said $60 million a month.
Yes.
At the current...
Right now.
That doesn't mean it's going to be $60 million in three months' time because it'll be saturated, right?
The new markets.
But these new markets are exploding.
How do they even make that many phones in such a race?
Dude, they make one million phones...
They sell one million phones a day.
We should be in the phone business.
No, you shouldn't because, and this is very interesting, they have a per unit price and how much they make per unit.
And I think Nokia is one of the smartest companies around.
They understand very clearly what Apple, of course, is telling everyone is it's about the services.
So if you can get the right services that people want, And you can put those on your phone.
Many people, for the first time in their life, are experiencing the Internet, but it's not on a computer.
It's on a handheld device.
So, no, no, no, no, no.
But the margins, it's almost nothing, I'm sure.
I mean, this is just plastic, John.
You get throwaways.
I mean, we're not talking like smartphones or anything in India.
We're talking, you know, the gross is just the phone.
And maybe you have a little mobile browser on there and some text messaging.
But it doesn't have, you know, not big smartphone capabilities.
Hmm.
So, when was the last time you were in Africa?
1967.
I gotta go back.
But, you know, Russia...
You don't have that addiction.
Maybe you shouldn't go back.
Maybe you'll pick it up.
But I'm telling you, there's these people that just basically go to Africa constantly.
And they can't get away from it.
They just love the place.
Yeah.
I kind of like...
I don't know.
There's no pull, let's put it that way.
Nor do I have any kind of pull, like I want to go to Asia desperately.
I do want to go check out...
You should at least want to check out Asia.
You've got to go to Shanghai.
I've been to Asia.
I've been to different places in Asia, but I don't have that wanderlust.
I did so many documentaries for television.
We talked about this already.
You were burned out on Asia.
I just burned out.
I did Australia.
I think Australia I'd love to go back to.
I'd really love to go back to Australia.
I did a documentary there.
I did the Caribbean.
And I've been back to Jamaica 15, 20 times since that documentary.
So you like Jamaica then?
I fucking love Jamaica.
Oh, I could live there.
Never mind.
Let's not even go there.
No, no, no.
It's not just about that.
No, it's not just about that.
That whole vibe.
I've always had something with reggae music.
It's everything.
It's the food.
It's...
Yeah, I know a lot of people there.
And by the way, this is in the north.
I'm not talking Kingston, but on the northern side.
So obviously very calm and touristy and laid-back kind of life.
But yeah, I dig it, man.
I totally, totally dig it.
Why don't you get a place there?
And we've considered it many times.
You should get a place there.
You could probably rent it out to people.
Well, there's a setup there.
Okay, it's interesting you bring that up.
And it's called Round Hill.
And Round Hill was set up in the 50s.
In fact, a lot of the architecture...
It's basically, there's a round cove with a hill, and there's, I think, maybe...
35 or 40 villas are built into this hill at Round Hill.
And so it's a closed community, but the deal is you buy your house, you model it, you put all your own stuff in it.
Every single house, everyone is different, but every house does have a cook, a housekeeper, and a gardener.
And, you know, there are locals who come in and work, but they're assigned to a specific house.
And so there's central management.
But then, even if you buy the house, no matter, you know, what you do with it, but everyone has to bring it up to certain standards, you know, the deal is that it has to be rented out X number of weeks per year.
And so, of course, you can choose when you're going to be there.
You know, it's one of those typical type of deals.
But what's interesting is that people who have houses there, so by far the largest who's been there for, I don't know, 10, 15 years is Ralph Lauren.
But Bob Pittman also has a place, and I've rented his house several times.
He has a beautiful house there.
So it's all people who basically, anyone who has a jet, who can take three and a half hours to fly down from New York or hop across from...
From Florida.
They all have these houses there.
And it's spectacular.
It's absolutely beautiful.
And many, many times I've considered buying one of those.
But I never really take advantage of it.
It'd just be stupid.
Well, let's go with the Pittman House.
What does it cost to rent it?
Well, of course, that depends on the season.
Obviously, if you want to go now, you can get it pretty cheap, but you'll die of heat exhaustion.
But in peak season for Jamaica, I think at the time, I'm sure it's more now, last time I went was three years ago.
I think it was $10,000 a week.
$10,000 a week to rent a guy's house, so that's $50,000 a month or so, $40,000?
Yeah, if you wanted to rent it for the whole period, yeah.
That seems high to me.
Because you can get a place in Spain, which is probably pretty spectacular for a lot less than that.
Or Portugal, which is where most of you Brits go.
But don't forget, you...
You know, you get your breakfast and lunch and dinner.
You can decide what you want to do, but, you know, it's all cooked for you and everything.
I mean, it's really, it's a great personalized service.
And so the house, you know, will sleep like six people, you know.
So if you do the math, it's probably not that expensive.
I mean, within context of me, okay, I don't want to sound stupid.
Yeah, no.
No, it's probably, if you did the math, you're right.
If you loaded it up with a bunch of frat boys or something like that, you could probably split the bill and split gas money.
It's not a frat boy type of place, John.
That's not exactly what it's like.
No, not exactly.
I just want to get a feeling for it, you know.
But it's very Casablanca type vibe, you know, 50s.
You know what I mean?
Like white picket fence type wood stuff and blue and white stripes.
So you rent it.
Okay, let's say you got the Bob Pittman house and you have it for a week.
What are you going to do?
What do you do?
I mean, it's like you're not in Paris.
No, but each house has its own swimming pool, or most of them do.
So you've got your own setup.
It's open living, basically.
So you're overlooking the ocean.
You've got a swimming pool there.
You've got anything you need.
And what I usually wind up doing is first hammering out of my head for three days straight, just trying to calm down and relax.
And then I'll hook up with my friends and there's restaurants in the woods.
It's not a restaurant that says restaurant, but it's where the locals go when they go out to eat.
And so I'll hang out with them.
Do you have to crap in the woods too?
I mean, how does that work?
No, they do have toilets, but not plumbing.
Just saying.
You make it sound as though it's like...
Well, it's primitive.
You know what the problem is?
It's primitive.
I'm going to tell you what the...
No, here's the problem with you and everybody else out there, including all of these listeners.
Okay.
Me and everyone else.
Nobody brings a camera...
Nobody brings a camera.
Nobody takes pictures.
You know, except the Japanese, so I give them credit for this.
It's a show, it's a blog.
I mean, you've got a blog.
You know, you have a blog.
It's called curry.com for anyone who wants to find it.
John, John, John, John.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Calm down.
You have no photos in there.
Calm down.
Nobody knows what your wife looks like.
Nobody knows.
Are you, dude, do you even ever look at my fucking blog?
Yeah, I do.
Dude, there's a little thing there called search.
You want pictures of my wife?
There's pictures of my wife.
You want pictures of Jamaica?
There's pictures of Jamaica.
You want pictures of me in Iraq?
There's pictures of me in Iraq.
Are you kidding me?
I always take pictures of stuff like that.
I'm going there now.
But I didn't even know you then.
And by the way, it may be on some other blog somewhere that died.
I don't know if it was all imported.
Now you're making excuses.
Here's what I get.
First picture I get is a picture of you holding a rocket.
That's the artwork for Daily Source Code.
I'm such a rebel.
There's a few Tech Fives.
There's a picture of Britney Spears.
Another Tech Five.
There's a YouTube video of George Bush.
Excuse me, John.
I've been kind of busy lately.
You know?
And a Coke bottle.
Let me reiterate that one.
Okay, let me do a search.
Hang on.
Why are you doing this?
Just because I don't have 30 ass-licking lackeys who post for me all day long doesn't mean that I don't have my shit together.
Patricia, I'm typing in.
Let's see what she looks like in these pictures.
Nothing.
I got nothing here.
I got no pictures.
No, you got to go to previous posts because I mentioned Patricia a lot.
This is all shows.
Why don't you go to my Flickr page, man?
Go to my Flickr page and look at...
I've got tons of pictures.
I'm just saying.
In fact, they were so good, my pictures, that Gossip Magazine stole them and reprinted them, and I had to sue them over it.
I mean, come on.
If you were even remotely interested in that story, which of course was a huge coup for the Creative Commons copyright, which you pretend like you actually know anything about that case, then you would have gone and looked at the fucking pictures that the whole case was about.
I might have.
You don't know that.
You're accusing me.
Hell yeah!
So what's your name on Flickr?
Adam C. 1999.
Well, no wonder.
You know, your name is Adam Curry.
Here I am.
I'm looking at AdamC1999.
There isn't anything available to you tagged.
I'm looking at tags.
The Flickr sucks.
It's great pictures on my Flickr.
I'm always uploading stuff.
You know, I can't, you know, it's ridiculous.
I mean, you can't find crap on Twitter.
Adam C, 1999, and there's all kinds of beautiful pictures.
Well, I'm not getting there.
I'm just hitting the tags thing.
Oh, well, maybe it's too advanced for you, John.
Hold on, let me Skype it to you.
Damn.
Oh, here we go.
I found something.
No, I didn't.
No, I just sent you the link in Skype.
Please click on that and then take a look.
I did.
Okay, let me go over.
People should take this, by the way.
Look, there's a whole...
Go look at that.
It says right on the right-hand side, I have a beautiful, what do they call these galleries or whatever, a collection of my wife.
You have a picture of your daughter's car.
Look to the right.
You have a backlit picture of a cat.
Look to the right, right next to the cat picture.
You see that beautiful woman there?
PP Glossy, it says.
The picture next to the cat that I'm seeing is a picture of your backyard and it was snowed in.
No, no, no, no.
On the right-hand side, there's collections.
The little icons.
Little icons.
Yeah, yeah, I see these.
You got Christina's Twingo, wet iPhone resurrection, which I think was five years ago.
Keep going.
AC gets shaken down.
And there.
Christina porn.
Oh, it's a private picture.
That's why you can't see that.
It's not Karen, it says Christina Prom, you schmuck.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Christina's a prom.
Look, look.
Oh, man.
I'm not seeing anything worth it.
Thanksgiving, here's a picture.
Well, why don't you click...
From 2006.
Yeah, you're keeping up.
John, those are collections.
Carol and Timson and me.
Yeah, but that...
1986.
Now, stop it!
Look, just click...
Go down the bottom and click...
You know what?
I don't give a shit.
You know, I got plenty of pictures.
I got more than enough pictures.
Alright, if you say so, I'll take your word for it.
I obviously have not run into them.
You know what, I... But it seems to me there's a lot of stuff that you could...
Because I've never seen you even with a camera.
I use my phone with my cell phone.
Well, I guess that explains it.
But if you go through this, all kinds of great pictures.
This is from our vacation, the family reunion.
There's all kinds of stuff.
Dr.
Cockney here, I see, and there's my...
Oh, there's all kinds.
Just go to the second page, man.
I think those are all private, because I'm not saying...
No, they're not.
They're not.
No, it's not mediocre.
You've got to go to the second page and the third page.
I have 51 pages of pictures.
923 items.
Well, the Isle of Wight.
Now, here you have a picture that would interest me.
Now, this is the kind of picture I'd take.
Which one is that?
The Crab and Lobster Inn sign.
Yeah, that's...
Where are you seeing that?
It's under the Isle of Wight set.
Oh, let me see.
Oh, that's when I... Okay, that was when Patricia and I went to the Isle of Wight.
And you go there mainly to eat at the Crab and Lobster Pub, which is overlooking the ocean.
Oh, there's a picture of Patricia with her sunglasses on.
Yeah, she's gorgeous.
Thank you.
And let me read this sign because it's kind of funny.
Crab and lobster in...
See, this is the kind of stuff that I like to blog.
You should be blogging this.
Well, you should have.
Crab and lobster in glasses, crockery, and cutlery, etc., must not be taken to the beach or away from this area.
It's just a funny, you know, ridiculous...
It's a good sign, isn't it?
You know what, you're stealing the cutlery.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But Flickr has a nice thing where you upload your pictures and if you want to blog it, it's just one click.
So a lot of these have been blogged because that connection works.
In fact, that's the same thing that we've been talking about using.
Flickr connects to any weblog.
Well, see, here's a problem I have that irks me.
So, you know, Google bought...
One of the things I did with Flickr, I'm not a big fan...
Yahoo bought Flickr, not Google, Yahoo.
Yahoo, I'm sorry.
But I'm not a fan of all these public photo albums, even though I'm giving you crap for not having one.
I actually don't like doing them, because I think it's like, who needs to know this stuff anyway?
Except that, you know, I'll take a picture of that sign, but I don't want a bunch of family pictures everywhere.
But I did do a public photo album of all the...
I take a lot of pictures with a camera.
And when I was at ZDTV, I took pictures of the staff and everybody who's ever worked there and people who came through and people that were on shows.
So I took like hundreds of pictures at ZDTV and I was in the process of posting them all because, you know, for people who want to reminisce or whatever.
And then Yahoo buys them, and I can't use the uploader, and the password doesn't work.
So basically this whole album is stuck, kind of frozen in limbo because of Yahoo taking over the operation, and so I just gave up on it.
I like it.
You know, it's worked okay.
I have Flickr Pro, which gives you a whole bunch of benefits.
Actually, you know what's funny?
I was flying, I was at the airport on Monday.
I was going to go over, I had some family business to take care of in Holland, in Amsterdam.
And so I'm at the airport, and this guy, Hugh, who has an imaging company, an airborne imaging company, he does imaging of power lines, And he's been a listener for a long time at the Daily Source Code and he listens to No Agenda.
And he came out and he said, you know, I was thinking about what you guys were saying.
And he says, you know, so there's the new chipsets, the new GPS chipsets are really important for, you know, what we were talking about, having a camera with a GPS in it and geotags, etc.
And he showed me this setup, you know, that has these new chips.
So the minute you turn it on, it immediately fixes, or almost, within like three seconds, it has a signal, which is what these new chipsets are going to be able to do.
But he also had another sensor in it, so not only did you know the exact position where the picture was taken, but also you had the compass direction the camera was pointed.
How cool is that?
That's totally cool.
I mean, I was like, wow.
Of course, we're a couple of obvious nerds.
Yeah, but he has an azimuth, so he knows the altitude, right?
He knows the compass direction.
He knows the exact location.
I mean, that's hot shit.
I mean, now think of what cool stuff you could build with that, man.
That's awesome.
Well, one of the things you can do, you know, this was presented by, I think, a Microsoft guy originally, or maybe somebody from MIT. No, this guy makes it himself.
This is a guy who makes it himself, John.
This is a home-built...
No, but I'm saying that technology is obviously something that should be in all cameras, right?
Yeah.
And what it leads...
This project, I have an underlying project that's being worked on, kind of in the background, where you just load, if you have enough of this information, you can just load every photo you can get your hands on that has GPS data on it, and recreate the world in a virtual space.
Yeah.
So I could bring up a map of Paris and then say, what is it like on this blog?
Kind of like the way the Google guys have been doing by driving around.
Yeah.
And pretty much have, you know, limitless photographs.
Well, clearly that's the way forward.
I mean, the Google street mapping stuff, it doesn't scale.
You've got to get the community doing this.
That's the only way to really make it happen.
Right.
It doesn't scale.
Unless they buy more Volkswagens.
It was funny.
You called me, and I was just driving back from...
I picked up the newspaper, and I rounded the corner onto our road, and I see this Google sign.
And it said, like, A3 fencing, Google fencing.
U.S. and had the Google logo.
I'm like, man, maybe it's...
And I actually stopped the car to get out and take a picture, believe it or not, John.
Do you have it?
Well, hold on a second.
So I park the car, I take my cell phone, I go over to take a picture, and I'm like, I'm sure this is like some kind of marker for Google street maps, right?
They're finally hitting my town, and this is interesting.
So I go over to take the picture, and then I realize it's actually...
An ad for the fencing company.
And it's not Google US. It's A3 fencing, Google us.
Google us.
But it took me, you know, my mind went immediately to, oh, this is secret.
It didn't say Google isn't, you know, it said Google, but it was the Google logo and the words Google spelled out.
So I was like, that must be some kind of marker, but it was just an ad.
If you want to get A3 fencing, go ahead, Google us.
Seems like some sort of a violation of copyright.
They used a logo.
No, I'm sure it is, but who gives a shit?
So anyway, I visited a friend of mine because I went down to Livermore the other day to look at some software he's developing.
And he gave me his address, so I punched it into the Google Maps.
And this is on the middle of nowhere.
He didn't even know this, but they had Not only that street, in that, you know, they have the view, Google View or whatever it's called, of the actual photos of the houses.
But I could find, you actually could find his house in high def.
And, you know, there was his place and I went and saw it and that was it.
And I just thought it was...
It's kind of creepy, isn't it?
It's useful and creepy at the same time because I have a total mixed feeling about it.
It's handy.
I mean, it's cool because then you don't have to drive around so much looking for something.
I can see where it could be very useful.
But it's like, do we really need all of our houses?
It's almost as though it's like for the invasion of the Nazis or something.
I mean, it's like, what do we need?
I don't know.
Like I said, I don't know.
How do you feel about it?
Because I can't Come to any kind of a conclusion.
I understand what you mean because Patricia has the same feeling because I've introduced her to Google Earth and she's looking at houses right now in the city.
And so I said, well, you just get the zip code or postcode as they call it here.
You just enter it in and boop, you zoom right in.
You can zoom in, zoom out.
And she's really, really enjoying that process.
But whenever I show her our house, she's like, well, that's kind of creepy.
Well, yeah, you get the good with the bad.
Now, personally, as an aviator, it's awesome because the whole idea of flying to an airfield you've never been to before, and you can see a picture.
Most airfields and airports have pictures now, aerial pictures, they have websites, so you can get some information.
But when you can actually fly an approach with Google Earth, it's like, okay, here's where I'm going to be coming in from.
Oh, okay, it looks like that.
Boy, it gives you such a self-assured feeling.
You really understand the layout.
You have the situational awareness from a much richer data set than what you typically have in aviation, which is maps and charts and symbols and warnings.
I think it's good.
I don't mind.
Look, the government can see what I'm buying with my credit card.
What the fuck difference do I care if someone can see my house?
It's all over.
There is no privacy.
It's a joke.
Well, it is a joke, but I think we need to fight.
For our rights to privacy anyway.
Well, that thing about the credit cards, that's bugged me.
I've been watching, no one is talking about that.
Not even on blogs.
Where is that?
Where's the outrage over that?
Oh, about the fact that they can tell everything and, you know, the...
Yeah, the credit card companies have to report all transactions to the government.
They say they're not abusing it, you know, but they go, yeah, no...
But you're right.
The thing about, you know, that's weird.
I mean, we blogged it and there's nobody, oh, well, it's just terrible.
It's gotten to the point where they're just hounding us to such an extreme, you know, taking away our rights and putting cameras everywhere.
We're giving up.
We're giving up, John.
We're giving up.
I think it's pathetic.
Someone sent me a quote.
I've got to play this for you now, because I thought it was actually really fucking brilliant.
And even though I played it on the Daily Source Code, listen to this.
Hold on a second.
Let me see if I can play this.
Hi, Adam.
This is Justin from backandbuzzpodcast.com.
And you've been talking about lately why people won't stand up for their liberties being stripped away.
Well, I figured it out, and it's like this.
Um...
All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations.
And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere.
Because being without general ideas, they can only focus on petty, specific grievances.
That's from George Orwell, 1984.
All right, man, they work for us.
So...
That brings Britney Spears back into the picture.
What do you mean?
Yeah, exactly.
It is exactly right.
Britney Spears, you know, distractions.
Distractions, and Britney Spears is one of the...
And Amy Whitehouse.
And Amy Winehouse, yeah.
Well, who's, you know, on a death spiral.
Oh, hold on.
We did that.
We named last week's episode, what did we name it?
Yahoo!
Microsoft equals Britney Spears.
Yeah.
We did that to see if it would jack up the numbers.
Let me just check.
Because I haven't actually looked.
I haven't looked in a while.
Huh.
I had a couple people write in about that, saying, what is that supposed to mean?
Even though, I'm thinking...
Did you listen to the show?
Yeah, did you listen to the frickin' show?
Get the hell out of here.
If you listen to the show, we explain in great detail what it means.
Jeez Louise.
Oh, fuck, I don't have my password.
So you sent me a picture of your airplane, which I should blob, by the way, unless you don't want me to.
Yeah, yeah, it's okay.
It's a Photoshop job.
Obviously, my wife isn't actually on the nose of the airplane.
Oh, see, I was not aware of that, because I was thinking, the joke was, no wonder she won't fly with you.
Well, that's why someone made that Photoshop picture for me.
Oh, it's a great Photoshop job.
That's good, isn't it?
Yeah.
No, it's not.
Well, I mean, even being told it's Photoshop, I'm not...
I'd have to really...
I'd have to have a bigger blow-up to see that it was a fake.
That's pretty good.
You maybe should have somebody, except for the type font being used there, I don't like that particular font.
I know what it is, too, and it's just old-fashioned.
You should really go really old-fashioned and do some font from World War II. Yeah, that would be even better.
For people out there who want to know what we're talking about, I'll have this blogged.
It's a picture of Adam's little airplane.
I'll have my people blog this for me.
Yes, John.
Bubba will do it.
It's a picture of...
Bubba can put it on the cage match.
It's a picture of Adam's airpin, but it has one of those World War II painting of a pin-up girl on the front, like the bombers used to have, with the name The Lady Patricia stenciled on it next to it, and it looks real.
Yeah, it's a good one.
I've seen my new plane, John.
I can't wait.
It comes out in 2010.
What is it?
Are you gonna buy a Dreamliner?
No, it's Cirrus.
There's been a lot of talk about this, and there were some, like, sneak shots, finally.
It's about to make its first test flight in the actual model and, you know, the configuration that they're going to sell it in.
It's called The Jet, is what they call it.
And it's a...
It's really, it's a five-person, but it can be...
It has two jump seats, so it can be a seven-person personal jet with one jet engine.
It has...
Approach speeds similar to that of propeller airplanes, so you could land it on smaller airstrips.
It does about 300 knots, but the price tag is what's amazing.
It's going to be like $1.3 million.
Of course, in 2010, that may mean nothing.
It might have to be $10 million, but at today's price is $1.3 million, which for what you're getting airplane-wise is just a lot of plane.
What does a jet normally cost?
Well, it doesn't work that way, but what do you want?
Which model?
The 25?
The 35?
The 45?
The 55?
Just give me a price range.
Well, how many people do you want to move and how far?
It doesn't work by...
That's the only way it works.
How far do you want to go and how many...
No, but there's got to be a price for the cheap one.
What's the cheapest jet you can buy?
Well, okay, let's look at...
It only goes five miles.
I mean, I don't care about that.
But that's what it's about, John.
You can't give me a price.
You're like one of those sales guys.
No, no, no.
So what do I have to pay for this car?
Well, you know, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
Okay, I'll give you a range.
Okay, I'll give you a range.
So the Cirrus Jet will be $1.3 million.
Its range will be about 1,000 nautical miles.
And let's just say you can take five adults sitting down, not walking around the cabin.
Okay?
Now, on the other end of the spectrum, you have Ray Lane.
I think it's configured for 14 people with a bedroom and a shower and a stand-up cabin.
That's like $57 million.
So if you're looking at anything comparable to this Cirrus jet, it would be more in the $3 million range.
So it's an incredible price reduction.
Okay.
All right.
Even if you were to get a turboprop, King Air, you know, it's going to be $2 million for a very comparable airplane.
But this one will actually fly cheaper because it only has, not only does it not have a prop, it only has one engine.
It's a new power plant.
You know, this thing is really tiny.
Yeah, it's phenomenal.
And what I like about it is they modeled the airplane after a car, after the conveniences of a minivan, which I've been saying for years.
The flying car will not happen.
It's called an airplane.
You know, it's the image of a flying minivan.
I'm going to have to do a Photoshop job myself.
How do you spell this Cirrus thing?
Go to CirrusDesign, C-I-R-R-U-S-Design.com.
You know, you're in a sour mood today, by the way.
No, not at all.
Not at all.
I'm just fighting back.
I'm just not going to take any shit from you.
No, I think so.
I think you're something.
You're accusing me.
Cirrus plus Garmin equals revolution.
Yeah.
Were they hooked up with Garmin?
Yeah.
So is this the SR-22 you're going to get?
No, no.
Not the SR-22.
Go to the Jet.
So the SR-22 is a very successful model they made.
Oh, there it is.
It's called the Jet.
Yeah, the Jet.
Look at it, man.
Look at how pretty that thing is.
It's got a V-tail.
And the jet engine sits on top of it.
It's a really pretty thing.
If you go deeper into the site and it talks about the history, because they've been developing this thing for like 15 years, you'll see how they came up with the V-tail solution and why.
It's a lot of thinking.
It's really a fascinating story.
And that whole company has just been amazing.
These Cirrus airplanes, although I won't fly that one because I don't like their fiberglass, plastic-ass wing that just feels dinky to me.
I'm definitely more a sheet metal and rivet type guy.
Which brings up the interesting story, which...
Curiously, I was thinking about earlier, because I'm holding a piece of plastic that fell off of something I have around here in the messy office, which needs cleaning, by the way.
That's some sort of composite thing.
And I was thinking about how, you know, with tennis rackets, they went from wood rackets To aluminum rackets, to graphite composite rackets, which essentially now they're all high-tech rackets, which is the same progression that we've had with airplanes, which is wooden planes, to aluminum, to now the Dreamliner from Boeing, which is what I thought you were buying, is there's no aluminum on it.
Yeah, it's all composite.
I don't know.
I mean, do you trust that?
I mean, does that scare you?
No, no.
No, because when I was flying helicopters, helicopter blades used to be made of metal.
In fact, at one point they were made of wood.
They're all composite now.
No, that shit is strong, man.
The fiberglass stuff that Cirrus is doing, I don't know about that.
Because, you know, if you shake one wingtip, the other one really rattles up and down.
It just doesn't feel right.
And by the way, any aircraft manufacturer who...
Includes a parachute with their aircraft.
It just doesn't sound right.
Is this the planes that have the parachute, that the whole plane gets parachuted down?
Yeah, it's called...
Are you familiar with that, right?
Yeah, that's what this is.
It's called the ballistic recovery system.
Right.
So in other words, the plane craps out in the middle of nowhere, and you just pop the chute, and the entire plane is parachuted safely to Earth.
Almost every new plane, all small airplanes.
You don't like that?
Don't you think that?
Well, let me explain.
Is the jet going to have that?
Yes.
So this is, obviously, it's a new development and now all these aircraft are being outfitted with it.
But it's, you know, from an aviation standpoint, first of all, it's heavy, adds a lot of weight, there's a lot of extra, you know, there's some downsides to having the system on board.
But what is happening, and this is why aviators think it's kind of lame, is that it's not because the plane is crapping out.
The planes are flying.
It's because people now are pushing themselves into situations they really shouldn't put themselves in because they're just not experienced enough because they think they have this ultimate backstop of a parachute.
Ah, yes.
This, by the way, is the same aircraft that Corey Little killed himself in when he crashed on the east side of the New York River.
I think it was either a 20 or a 22.
But that's really what's happening.
And if you look at the statistics of people who pull the parachute on these planes, it's because they got into a situation they never should have been in.
And they are pushing themselves too far.
And at a certain point, I look at Corey Little, the parachute's not going to help you.
That accident was a terrible, terrible underestimation.
A bad, bad judgment call.
Yeah, we talked about that before.
I can't remember the details.
Well, I'd be happy to tell you, but, yeah, if you want to go through it.
I'm looking at the interior of this jet.
I'll go for a ride on this thing.
How hot is that, huh?
Oh, it's gorgeous.
Yeah.
And you see how little that engine is?
It's a very tiny engine.
Yeah, I know.
It looks like a...
It's so cute.
I mean, it's like a jet fighter.
This thing looks very futuristic.
It's a very pretty plane.
And for the price, I'm sure, is a deal.
Oh, it's an incredible deal.
Because I've been looking, you know, I've been thinking, you know, in a year and a half or so, maybe, you know, maybe I'll have a little more time.
Who knows?
I definitely want to do some more, you know, flying at altitude.
So you want to have something that's pressurized, particularly my wife.
Altitudes don't work well with her and her circulation for her heart.
And so I've been looking at the Piper Meridian, and that's a single-engine turboprop, which is smaller than this.
Much smaller, in fact.
That's $1.8 million.
You look at a King Air, $1.9 million.
And this is a revolution.
The pricing is just an outrageously low price.
Well, you know, the thing that I, every once in a while I consider this, is that with small general aviation planes, these little one-engine prop jobs, you know, the jets have long since been, I mean, for commercial aviation, nobody uses planes.
Can I just interrupt you and tell you that since the Cirrus came out, there's a whole revolution in air taxis.
These things are being used all across America as air taxis for commercial aviation.
Well, you know, the prop planes are being used by Horizon and all these little puddle jumpers for small airports all over the place.
But I've always been of the opinion that that's because they have never shrunk the jet engine enough.
Yep.
You're absolutely right.
Because if you do the math on how, you know, the two engines work...
These jets are just superior to props.
Oh, absolutely.
Well, that's what this whole VLJ category is about.
They're called very light jets, and they're all using these new smaller turbines.
Honda, they're coming out with two engines, but it's also a very light jet.
It's also going to have a very low price.
It's different.
It's much more of a corporate-type, get-me-from-A to-B-quick type of thing, whereas this Cirrus thing looks kind of like a family roundabout.
In fact, you'll see, when you look at the site later, you'll see a picture of a minivan and how they modeled...
You know, everything.
Even the doors open up like a minivan.
You know, gull wing doors opening up on both sides, easy to get into.
That's the future, man.
I mean, yeah, it's still expensive, but look at how cheap that's.
It's a 50% or 100% reduction in price in just a few years.
Well, 50%.
The 100% would be free.
I'm sorry, 50%.
William, the thing that intrigues me here is the jet again, and not so much, because I can't afford one of these, obviously.
I don't fly.
But I'm looking at this as like, there's an interesting investment opportunity for people making these small jets.
So the company making this little fan jet, the FJ334A-19, it's a company called William, and what do we know about them?
I don't know much about them at all, except there's a whole story there as well.
The engine companies to me are always Pratt& Whitney, General Electric, and Rolls Royce are the big boys.
Well, it's all this new technology to be able to create this shit in your garage.
It's interesting.
Hey, here's one for you, John.
I just wanted to read this.
This was the front page of the Financial Times yesterday.
This was kind of amazing.
So Gazprom, which of course is the Russian gas and oil company, who I think they pretty much stole everything from every other company and person who owned anything that had to do with gas and oil in Russia.
Isn't that kind of what's been happening for the past five years?
There's some kind of corruption we don't understand.
Yeah.
So anyway, the CEO said, he came out and said, OPEC doesn't determine the price of oil anymore.
He says, you know, even if they raise production, the price of oil still goes up.
He says they have no real influence on prices.
Not a single decision has been passed of late that would really influence the global oil market.
And here it comes.
In the coming years, Gazprom will not just Will be not just a major company in the world, but the most influential in the energy business.
Adding that its target was to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion.
And goes on to say, check this out, competition for gas and other energy resources was growing.
And he stood by his prediction the price of oil would hit $250 a barrel next year.
Wow, that's a good one.
That's good.
And the front page, man, I was like, holy crap.
I haven't heard the 250 thing.
I know they're pushing the 200.
So I was doing Andrew Horowitz's show today, because he had Michael Greenberger on.
Did you do this really early this morning?
Yeah, I feel great.
Was that video?
Maybe I'm the grouch.
No, it was just an audio thing.
But Michael Greenberg is the guy who's been testifying in front of the Senate.
He's a former regulator about the fact that these oil prices are fixed.
They're rigged.
There's a phony baloney market that has no supervision, and nobody knows what's really going on in the background.
And the president of Shell came out the other day saying, hey, the oil prices are bullshit.
The price should be around 80 bucks.
Meanwhile, Barrasso, the president of the European Union, said it has nothing to do with traitors, but he has started an investigation.
They will report back in December.
Yeah, when we were broke.
When we're broke, thank you.
You know, the fact of the matter is this all stems from a 2000 writer put into a bill in Congress called the Enron loophole.
And I tell people you can go look it up and read all you want on your own.
And this loophole's never been closed.
It's what caused the Enron crisis.
It's what's caused the fact that Morgan Stanley now holds monopoly powers over most of the heating oil that's going to be going into the Northeast.
And not heating oil, but the natural gas that people use to warm their houses when it gets cold.
And there's all these other elements of just out-and-out corruption based on the fact that there's an unregulated trading market that is essentially fixed.
There's no supply and demand problem like all these...
Writers are putting out there because if there's a supply, you'd be able to transparently see if there is.
But if somebody's telling you, yeah, yeah, yeah, you want to buy some futures contract for oil, it's a 140.
And that's it.
You've got no choice because they're making it up.
And then it's 142 tomorrow.
Then it's 150.
So while you just said that, I googled Enron loophole.
The top link is something called stopoilspeculators.com.
Yeah.
Have you seen that one?
I haven't seen that.
No, I haven't.
Interesting.
No, but people should be catching up to this stuff.
They should be aware of this.
Yeah, this is great.
And this is happening in London.
We talked about this last week.
It's happening in London.
And most of the actions in Dubai, which is a conflict of interest in it, and the argument is, oh, Dubai is regulating.
You shouldn't have to worry because they're regulating this and they're not.
Yeah, here it is.
Why would they?
The so-called swaps loophole.
Financial investors can game the markets for pure profit by buying up positions in the energy markets without any limitation on the size of the positions they can take.
One recent estimate suggested that they now control one-third of the commodities markets, or $150 billion, a 1,000% increase in less than five years.
It's the money maker.
But here's the deal that Greenberger made clear.
He was bitching about a couple of New York Times columnists that are also on the wrong side of the argument.
But he says that right now, these guys...
It's the various investment houses.
Morgan Stanley, the other one.
Anyone who's in commodity swaps, basically.
Anyone who's in commodity swaps.
He says that right now they've got so many lobbyists, because the Congress is knowledgeable about this, but they're still not closing the loophole completely, and it needs to be done.
And there's a million lobbyists that are in Congress right now trying to talk people into not taking that position anymore.
Just, you know, let it happen.
Free market, you know, this whole free market absolutism, which is like screwing us, because it's not a free market when it's rigged.
And the public has to start writing their congressmen and their senators and bitching and say, look, we're watching you.
If you vote with these guys, you're voting against, you know, you're just voting for high gas prices.
Yeah, screwing us over.
And so the whole thing is a scam.
So, on the lines of something similar to that, if you have a chance, John, listen to yesterday's Daily Source Code.
I know you have no time and you're busy a lot.
I almost listened to it yesterday.
Okay.
Because I interviewed Vivian Redding, and she is the Commissioner of the Information Society and Media for the European Union.
She is in what I call Starfleet Command.
She's at the same level as Nayli Cruz, the woman who has fined Microsoft billions of dollars.
Yeah.
And so, I spoke with her and she did something really interesting.
In Europe today, we still have roaming pricing when you go from one country to the next.
And of course, we're trying to pull Europe together to be one entity, you know, United States of Europe.
So when you go from the UK, of course, to anywhere on the continent, but even if you cross the border from Holland into Belgium, and there's not even a sign, as far as I can recall.
It's not like, welcome to Belgium, all of a sudden you're there.
Or if you keep driving to Germany, you don't have to show your passport, any of this.
But then you're on roaming prices the way it used to be in the States until the big networks really got created.
But even if you have Vodafone in the UK and there's a Vodafone in every one of these countries, you're still paying for incoming calls up to like 20 euro cents per minute.
Outgoing calls are like 60 or 70 euro cents per minute.
Text messaging, 50 cents per...
Oh, shit.
Did I lose you, John?
Yeah, it sure sounds like it.
I knew that was going to happen.
Hold on, we'll get John back.
Let's see.
Hold on.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, yeah, I got you.
Boy, that was...
Fuck, Skype, like, completely crashed and started whining and all kinds of stuff.
Yeah, you know, you went offline and everything.
Yeah, no, it crashed really hard.
Anyway, so we're back.
I don't even know what I was saying anymore.
All right, well...
I do.
I know exactly what you were saying, and you can cut right into it.
You were saying it was 20 cents to get an incoming call, and it was as much as 60 cents to get outgoing roaming.
So anyway, and then for mobile data, if you want to use the internet from a different country than your home country, 15 euros, right?
So that's almost 30 bucks per megabyte.
So obviously this shit had to stop.
What?
Yeah, it's a fucking outrage.
So this Vivian Redding, In February, she said, alright, you guys can't be trusted.
I'm going to slap down regulation on voice calls.
So she did.
And the calls have actually become reasonably affordable.
36 Euro cents per minute for an outgoing call.
It's just a start.
But anyway, so I start following this woman and all the stuff that she's doing.
And she's really bringing the hammer down.
And she's saying to every single one of these operators, she's saying, you better bring down your text messaging and your data pricing.
By July 1st, if you don't, then I'm going to kick your ass and I'm going to put regulation into place.
And so I called her up.
And right now they even have this, her current pricing demand is 28, just as a benchmark, is 28 cents if you send an SMS text message while roaming, which is still, of course, an outrageous amount for the resources it takes.
And so I'm talking to her and I said, well, you know, here in the Netherlands, not a single one of these operators basically blowing the whistle on them.
It was really cool.
And man, she's going to hammer them.
It was a fascinating, it was only like eight minute interview, but fascinating how much power she has.
And it was really interesting to hear her talk about Europe.
And how we have to harmonize these markets and you get these operators and they're all like, no, let the market work, it'll be okay.
And she's like, bullshit.
She almost said bullshit.
I was really endeared to how she was speaking.
And just the power that emanates from her words, I'm like, that's really interesting.
There's your government doing something for you.
Of course, if it gets turned against you, it's equally as scary, but...
Yeah, no, that's the one good side, I have to say.
I mean, the Neely woman and this woman, obviously, I mean, they're consumer-oriented, and there's nothing wrong with that.
And I'm not, you know, I'm sick of the deregulation and the free market absolutism, which is...
You know, there's a reason for governments.
We're not a bunch of anarchists.
I mean, if you take everything to a logical extreme, the free market, we should have no laws that the free market decide.
And if you don't like your competition, you can shoot them, and they can shoot back at you.
I mean, that's what it really boils down to.
Well, no, you have to have laws against murder.
Well, if you have to have laws against murder, you have to have laws against other things, too, don't you?
Or just have no laws, and we can just shoot each other.
So the whole thing makes no sense from a logical perspective, and the fact that we're getting screwed over by these operators that have essentially quasi-price-fixing and manipulative powers, it's ridiculous, and there's something that has to be done about it, and obviously the public doesn't give a crap because they don't do anything but complain to each other, maybe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I called her up and I complained.
I said, these guys aren't complying.
And she says, well, I did give them until July 1st.
She said, maybe a miracle can happen.
I said, yeah, and maybe the Dutch will win the European Cup.
And anyway, she taught me a new word.
Because I was basically...
I wanted to see if she really understood what the actual costs were of mobile data and 140 characters in a text message.
So I launched into this thing about...
This is a scam.
It costs nothing.
Once you're connected, the data is so minimal.
The only reason they jacked up these prices is because they want you to keep using the phone, the voice.
How can you, as the information society commissioner, stand by and watch this shit happen?
Then she said, yes, it is an anachronism.
I was like, holy crap.
What's that?
It was a good word, though, which basically means something not of this age.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, it's a classic.
Well, you know, the funny thing is I have to bring up just kind of an American side to this, which has always kind of fascinated me.
You know, I've always thought when the mobile phone business began in the U.S. and we didn't have a lot of competition, And it was almost like the key business where one guy had a whole area to himself and you're kind of stuck with it and that kind of thing.
And there's a lot of competition in Europe.
There's a bunch of different companies.
But when you start looking at the actual prices that you pay per minute, it seemed to me that when I already talked to people in Europe, they were paying always more.
Yeah.
Especially when they were roaming.
I mean, it's like ridiculous amounts of money.
And they seemed to be on the phone more.
I mean, how did they afford it?
Yeah, well, you know, so nationally, you know, you can get some pretty good deals, obviously.
So when it's all traversing a national network, you know, if the whole family has T-Mobile or Orange or whatever, you know, obviously they have great deals in that.
And they have, you know, bundles, you know, it's all about the marketing, trying to, you know, to give you something that you really need and then charge a little bit extra for something you don't really want, but then maybe will you use it?
I mean, at this point, I mean, look at America.
This is also my conversation with some Nokia folks.
And I think everyone pretty much knows that Nokia has a proportionally small corner of the market in the U.S., which is maybe, I think, 10% or whatever.
And the reason why is that we're a production company.
We make stuff, and then we have to go market it.
But we can't market that in the States because the whole phone experience, everything that is marketed to you is about...
The network, you know, your network is with you.
You've got more bars, you know, more places for reception.
None of it's about anything but that.
It's never about the phone.
It's always about the network.
These guys are just breaking it in left and right.
It's, you know, duopoly or whatever it would fall under, but, you know, it's totally unfair pricing.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I never thought about it.
But except for Apple, when they market their phone by themselves without the help of anybody.
Right.
You're right.
But look how far that got them.
Now they have to cut deals, subsidy deals with all the carriers.
So they're kind of slipping into the same pattern as everyone else.
Right.
But now that you mention it, I never thought about this.
You're right.
The only ads you see are for the quality of the network.
I'm sorry.
I didn't hear you, Ron.
John, what did you say?
That's an interesting Freudian slip.
You're right.
The only ads that you see in the United States for cell phone business tends to be...
Well, actually, there's two kinds.
One is the network.
You're right.
In fact, that's all you see.
Who's that there?
Oh, that's my network.
Although the group of people...
Right, the group of people have followed, which is, you know, a good barrier.
Can you hear me now?
Is it part of that?
And then the other one that you do get is the phony baloney, you know, sign everybody up.
Your friends, your favorite five.
You get to call your top five as much as you want.
And, you know, we have that plan.
It's bullshit.
Oh, really?
I mean, there's still all these weird charges and you can't figure out what the bill means.
I mean, this is why I personally tell people, look, get a disposable phone.
The little phones that they give you for the disposable business, you know, they're actually quite powerful.
They're in color now.
They've got a lot of features.
They're pretty.
You have SMS on them.
Well, I mean, I'm saying, you're talking about a phone that costs 20 bucks.
Yeah, I know.
And then you buy these little, you know, you buy some time every once in a while, and you last a whole year.
I mean, I don't get a monthly bill that's indecipherable.
My wife uses the old, you know, regular system.
She gets bills for hundreds of dollars, and I'm, like, putting out, like, 12 bucks every once in a while.
I mean, the difference is ridiculous.
If you want to go through the trouble, it's a hassle.
Yeah.
Well...
You know, you and I probably aren't the typical phone customer.
You know, not the mass market.
You certainly aren't.
No, I know, because I don't like these things.
Actually, the curious thing about this is my daughter, who's 13 now.
She's going to be 14 soon.
She doesn't like yakking on the cell phone all the time.
Maybe that'll change.
No, no, Christina uses it for text messaging.
That's really what it's for.
Actually, my son, who's 20-something, he's still just finishing college.
He's in it with a group of people and all they do is text message.
They're just constantly typing to each other.
I never see him talk on the phone except once in a while he talks to his girlfriend and has a short conversation, but generally speaking.
But they're not only text messaging, but they're text messaging constantly.
Yeah, it's an ongoing conversation.
I know.
My daughter is almost 18, has the same behavior.
And what's really cute is my wife and daughter together.
You know how moms are, and they want to know where there's a connection.
We always want to know where they are.
Moms and daughters, it's something special.
And she's always texting back and forth with Christina.
Here's what I got to tell you something that's funny.
So we should probably do this reconnect here on Skype.
Or maybe I should try calling you.
Just a minute ago, I couldn't hear you at all.
I've never heard this on Skype ever, and I'd like to get an explanation for it.
I didn't hear you at all.
And then you came on.
I didn't miss anything.
You came on at high speeds, like a fast forward, talking really fast.
Oh, John, I've been listening to you that way for the past hour almost.
We've had the shittiest connection.
I didn't want to say anything.
But what it does is it tries to do a catch-up.
And so it's actually pretty smart.
So you don't really lose any of the conversation because of the degradation of the connection.
It just speeds up to catch up in real time.
It's smart shit.
Yeah, apparently it's buffering.
Yeah, it's really smart shit.
But I'm listening and saying, wow!
That's the way the whole show should be.
It should be in triple speed.
There you go.
Well, you know, you could run it through a process to do that.
Did you see that I encoded at like 64 kilobits to make a much smaller file size on last week's show?
It sounded the same.
Yeah.
Well, because it's just my voice and the crappy Skype, so you don't need much more.
Yeah.
So what was the size?
What's the file?
Yeah, because the show was so long.
Well, I know people want to put it on thumb drives and they want to burn it as an MP3 onto a CD. The length, of course, determines that you still need two CDs.
But I have gotten complaints in the past.
People say, you know, it's just unnecessary.
They're like, yeah, that's a good point.
Yeah, no, that is a good point.
I'm one of the types who burn things on CDs.
Yeah, I like that too, honestly, for in the car.
Well, it's because I can throw it in the car.
You know, I don't have a hookup.
I mean, it'd be cool if I had, you know, a USB car.
I mean, the new BMWs, they have USB connectors to their stereo system.
No, it's not even BMWs.
My daughter's Renault Twingo has an MP. So it has a regular 3.5mm audio jack.
It has an iPod connector, and it has a thumb drive connector.
So you can just connect a thumb...
Stick a thumb drive in?
Yeah, a thumb drive, and it'll play it right through the system.
And this is a little cheap car.
You know, I think probably most of the cars should be having that if they don't already.
I haven't kept up.
I don't have a new car currently.
That's kind of my point, because I think it's become, you know, it's the culpolar of the year 2008, you know.
Yeah, it can't be too expensive to implement.
But until I get that, yeah, thumb drive's the way to go.
If I could put this thing as you get the file on a thumb drive, the thumb drive I carry around is 32 gigabytes.
Yeah, wow.
So there's lots of room.
And so I would, or I'd just take any old thumb drive.
But anyway, I'd put it on just as the download file, an mp3 on a thumb drive, and I'd stick it on the car and listen to it.
I think this is an untapped...
People still have mixed feelings about...
Audio podcasting.
But I still think that this is really what, because this is what I prefer listening to in my car.
I'd rather listen to lectures about stuff that I want to hear about.
I'd rather hear one of these shows that doesn't have a lot of commercials and it's personalities that are more contemporary than the typical radio personalities.
No offense to you guys.
And, you know, it's not like, you know, I'm a kid.
But I'd rather have that stuff.
And I wonder if, you know, how many people are out there, obviously thousands, that have already moved over completely and they just stop listening to the radio.
You know, I was just talking to Leo on one of the shows recently, who's a radio guy, and he just thinks radio's been dead for years.
Yeah, it is.
So first of all, I totally agree.
Second of all, this reminds me, I think there's a company called Poddango.
I think that's what they're called.
And I always like what they had set up.
And they have some marginal success.
I'm not quite sure exactly what they're doing.
I haven't tracked them, but I think they got some funding.
And the idea was just good.
They distribute thumb drives that includes player software.
So you stick it into any computer.
It kind of auto-recognizes, up pops a player, and there's kind of like your on-the-go radio experience.
You can plug it into almost any computing-type device or any device that will understand how to play the files.
And I pretty much exclusively listen to audio shows.
I've set up a couple of channels, so my iPod always has the latest episodes of stuff that I want to listen to.
I will say, though, that I find that I probably have about 40% what we call mainstream in there, so stuff like...
The New York Times front page or I do listen to On the Media is another NPR show I like.
But the rest is all pretty much independent.
In the UK though, the radio...
I mean, like Radio 4, it's still pretty damn good.
I mean, there's some really interesting shit they're doing on radio.
I mean, they still have a radio culture here, which is pretty deeply embedded.
And it's not, you know, it's just, you know, it's just not all top 40 or whatever genre music, you know, with...
Yeah, but you don't have the commercial interruptions, which really changes the flow.
People who listen to me on any of these things know that I do listen to the radio, but I tend to be a fan of the worst kind of radio, although it may be the best kind of radio, which is sports talk radio, Which is, you know, brain dead.
A lot of people don't get, but it's like, you know, I listen to it.
And I also listen to political right-wing chatter, which I find to be highly entertaining and kind of interesting.
I probably don't listen to anything else.
I do listen to some college stations once in a while when I'm close to them.
They're very low power, typically, because they don't have any commercials.
And I will listen to NPR once in a while.
But NPR, I think, is a very slow-moving...
And it's ponderous, and it's got the voice.
It's always, you know, the guys talking like that.
They have this certain kind of a sound to it.
And there's a kind of a fake gravitas that's slightly annoying when you listen to it.
But I will listen, too.
I'll get on a public radio station, and I'll stay on it for a while.
But generally speaking, they still aren't as good as some of these podcasts, and most of those guys are doing podcasts, too.
So let me ask you a question.
Do you have a system set up?
Do you use iTunes?
Or do you just grab something at random?
Do you find yourself repeating downloading things?
I mean, I basically have a channel set up on VVO, and that's always synced to my iPod, so I always have the latest things.
I can tell you what I'm listening to, but do you have a set number of things you listen to?
No, I don't.
I'm more of the hunter-gatherer type.
Instead of automating it like I should, that would limit my exposure to weird stuff.
I'm like one of the worst guys.
I'm like the kind of guys who visit my blog, which they show up once in a while, but they're not coming every day.
And essentially what I'll do is I'll find a cache of interesting podcasts.
Right now I'm plowing through the stuff that's been done over the last number of years.
Ad tech conferences.
Oh, right.
I heard you talking about that.
Right.
They have a slew of podcasts.
They're all hour-long because they're essentially presentations.
You miss out because you can't see the PowerPoint, but usually you don't need PowerPoint.
That's just there to...
You know, I have something for people to look at.
But I've been downloading those things and listening to those, like, constantly.
And I mean, hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of this kind of thing.
Because I'm kind of like a marketing hobbyist.
And so I'm listening to all these, you know, what the trends are and all this other stuff.
And I'll go through probably most of them.
And it'll be taking a month or two.
And then I'll go scrounging around and I'll find some other website with some interesting podcasts.
I'll sample a couple.
And if they interest me, I'll burn them on the seat.
And so I'm not a normal listener, and if I'm just going to listen to something casual, I'll listen to probably some crap on the radio.
You want to hear my list?
Because it's always the same.
Go.
Well, I mean, it changes, obviously.
And by the way, you can subscribe to this, so you can get the same shows in the same order.
So first of all, something that I don't have publicly available is there's a guy I met online, a buddy who puts up the Howard Stern show all four or five hours every day.
So he records it off of Sirius, and then he puts up a little feed, a little private feed, and so I get that.
Sometimes I'll listen to two hours of Howard Stern, but most of it just stays there unlistened to, but I do like to see who his guests are.
But anyway, so I have New York Times front page.
I have a test thing called the Robot Weather, which is a...
A robot voice weather transcoder for the Guilford region.
Then I have Tech 5, Meet the Press video, NewsPod, which is the...
That's a great...
You should listen to that one, John.
The BBC NewsPod, which is...
It's highlights from all the best...
BBC News?
Okay.
Yeah, it's highlights from all the best BBC radio programs and, of course, talk shows from the previous day.
And it's about...
It's 30 minutes each time.
It's like a great catch-up.
That's perfect.
Yeah, I think you'd like that.
Buzz Out Loud, which I haven't been listening to a lot recently.
It was for a while.
I listened to it every day.
Then Pacific Coast Hellway, On the Media, In Business, which is another BBC show.
It's Peter Day, another great one.
Then I have...
I have heard that one.
That is good.
Yeah, that's good.
The Gilmore Gang, which I kind of stopped listening to.
I was listening regularly for a while.
That went away.
I've got Lost Tapes.
Then I've got Newsweek On Air.
Then I have Twit.
BBC Breakfast Takeaway, another one you might be interested in.
It's the morning news segment from BBC Breakfast Show.
It's a video.
Then I have Dope Fiend, the Cannabis Podcast Network.
I have CNN Marketplace Update, New York Times Music Popcast, and I have the Jazz Suite, I Love the Company, Irwin's Podcast, NPR Fresh Air, Dr.
Cockney, The President's Weekly Address.
I love listening to that.
That's always funny.
Hey Mr.
Jesse, it was a great music show.
Advice with Don, that's Don Maselli from the hills of Florence is my sister in Italy.
And then there's the stuff at the end that I may not even listen to on a regular basis.
There's a couple more, it goes on a bit.
But that's kind of my regular list and as you can tell a lot of it's shorter form, most of it.
Yeah, well, I mean, you don't listen to that every day, though, and it rotates out, right?
Yeah, whenever there's a new episode, it comes in, and if I miss it, then I just miss it, and I don't even catch up on those things, most of all.
Well, at what point do you, and I always worry about this, because I do a lot of these podcasts myself, I do, you know, this one here in particular is the most experimental, because it's so damn long.
Yeah, we're an hour and a half almost, John.
Oh, actually, it's shorter than that, because there's a piece I gotta cut out when we lost the connection, but yeah, it's long.
It's a long show, and it goes on and on and on and on, and nobody complains about the length, generally, and that makes it worse, because then we don't feel obliged to keep it to something.
I know, I'm like, I'm not done yet.
It's almost an hour and a half.
Let's break the two-hour limit.
We can do it, Johnny.
Let's don't.
No, you're right.
But anyway, so, we will anyway, you know that.
So...
So what is it that gets people to the point, like you said, you don't listen to Gilmore Gang anymore, and Buzz Out Loud was a...
I remember when you first discovered that you were, like, jacked up about it, and you listened to it constantly.
Yeah.
And I wonder, because I... You know, this is not my listening habits that are different, because I listen to mostly lectures.
And...
But what is it that happens, and I wonder about this for just anybody, because you have to assume that some people have been listening to No Agenda, maybe for the first 20 episodes, and then at some point they just stopped.
What happens?
What is it about?
Do you get sick of the two jerk-offs?
I can't answer that.
Are you repeating themselves?
What is the sociology here?
Well, there's a couple things at play, and I'm speaking partly from my experience in radio.
It has to do with the regularity of it.
Here's the trends I detect.
When people get hooked, it's like mainline.
If they can't listen to something during one day, because what gets in the way, of course, is life.
Not everyone's life is exactly the same.
Your commute is not exactly the same.
Your mood is not exactly the same, which is why we have choice and why you can listen to different things.
But if you're jacked into a show which is a longer format like this one or Daily Source Code or Twit is another perfect example.
When you're jacked into that, you're mainlining.
You can't miss out on the conversation because something happened in a previous episode and you have to catch up.
So the shorter form stuff is much easier to dip in and out of.
But that long form stuff, yeah, at a certain point, I think you just get tired of it.
And by the way, it's okay.
Come back in a couple months.
When I lived in New Jersey and drove to New York, every single morning, five days a week, every morning I'd listen to Howard Stern, religiously.
Even the replays when he was on vacation.
And what would happen every single time after...
X amount of weeks or sometimes days, you're like, I don't feel like it anymore.
It just changed.
But you come back, you go in and out.
It's just life, John.
That just gets in the way.
Now, what I've taken away from it is my daily source code is no longer daily.
And I found that, unfortunately, the name doesn't fit anymore, but people kind of anticipate.
So now I do maybe two or three shows a week.
This last week was horrible.
I only did one.
But I know that it'll be good because I've got all the energy together and that's kind of the other side of the equation.
When we do this one show a week, I look forward to it.
It builds up.
I'm excited about doing it on a Saturday.
But my life also changes in this dynamic.
So, you know, I can just roll out a show.
I can schedule time every morning at 9 to record, but it's going to suck because I won't be in my element, you know?
So I think the fluidity of it is really important.
Not that I've cracked anything on that yet, but yes, it's from both ends.
Well, let's distill that.
There's a couple of issues here that you've kind of touched on.
One of them, by the way, for people out there, we have to do the next couple shows on Sundays, because I'm going up to Washington for the 4th of July.
I'll be back on Sunday, or Saturday night, actually.
The week after that is my daughter's birthday, so Sunday's going to...
Because people complain to me on email that, oh, you know, where's the show, where's the show, where's the show?
And we occasionally do the show on Sunday, and sometimes on Thursday.
I'm...
But they're always stunned when you don't post it.
Where's the show?
It's late.
Yeah, it's like, come on, give us a break.
But I think that's cool, actually, that people are that into it that they would complain about not being there when they needed their fix.
But the thing that, let's go back and look at your commentary about, well, you know, you got sick of that and then you came back here and people can come and go, you know, they can listen to the show for months on end and then they can stop listening because they hate it and then they'll come back.
The fact, in the classic sense of marketing, and this holds true for blogs too, is that once you lose a customer, the rule has always been it's harder to get a lost customer back Yeah, absolutely.
Oh, 100% certain of it.
Yeah.
Oh, they definitely come back.
Well, fuck the old rule.
I'm just saying, it's a violation.
There's no reason.
There's something else at work here that they would do that.
In other words, they never really quit the show.
Now, I think that you've probably quit the Gilmore gang.
No, no, no, no.
I disagree.
I have temporarily.
Also, it's a very long show, and it's almost every day, so I just don't have the time.
But Twit, even though sometimes this wasn't really a show for me, it's not going to make me quick because I know next week it could be extremely exciting.
It could be right on the money.
There's a lot of excitement depending on who the guests are.
I'm totally mainlined on that show, no doubt about it.
But if it's...
If you have a couple in a row that don't work for me, I may quit.
Well, let's stop there and bring this issue in.
Years and years and years ago, when I was at the University of California...
Can I just say one thing, John?
I'm sorry.
I just want to add one dimension to it.
Don't forget that quitting listening to the show is not the same as unsubscribing.
Particularly with these audio shows, they still may be coming through on someone's iPod or on iTunes.
iTunes might even temporarily disable it, saying, hey, you haven't listened to this in a long time, so I'm not going to update it.
But that doesn't mean that you're not just one click away from jacking back into the show, which is a little different from the type of marketing speak scenarios that you outline.
No, you're right, because apparently it's always there, so you can be tempted.
But...
I want to bring up an interesting point, which is a lecture I heard at the Wheeler Auditorium some years ago by Phil Spector.
He wasn't the crazy Phil Spector he later became, but he was still a little weird.
They used to have these famous people that would come into the University of California after hours and give these lectures.
In the big auditorium, Wheeler would hold 1,000 people, and they'd pack them in.
And I went to a lot of these things, and I get to hear a lot of people, and afterwards you can hang out with them if you wanted to.
And Spector came in to do his hour, which lasted three and a half hours.
And it was three and a half hours of riveting anecdotes and observations.
at the singles business back in the day when they were 45s and they had to hit single.
And he says the key to success for the hit single business was that you could, as long as you had, never had two singles that were dogs in a row.
You were out of business.
You had to have a hit single, and then you had to have a hit single, the ones that they would play on the jukeboxes.
Then you had to have a hit single, and then you could have a dog.
You could be excused one dog in a row.
Then you'd have to have a hit.
The next one had to be a big hit.
And I've always felt that this model is actually what I use when I write columns.
Because not every column is a gem.
But if I ever write a crappy column in one of my publications, and I know it's crap, I will go out of my way to write a gem the next time, because I'm aware of this two dogs, and now when you do the two dogs, you've lost customers if you've not lost your job, as it would be in the record industry.
And so I wonder when you have these shows, and you talk about Twit and our show and other shows that people listen to, and it's more risky with a longer format, obviously.
If you can really get away with having two crappy shows in a row, does it really set you back?
And unfortunately, there's not a lot of good metrics on this stuff.
Yeah, I think that is a very interesting point.
And I would say that it feels right that two shows in a row that are crappy, that that would warrant a temporary suspension.
But that is, of course, what's completely interesting about this medium is you don't have to do a show.
It's not like the airtime is scheduled and waiting for you and it has to be filled up.
And that, of course, is the downside of a regular program.
And you can probably say more about this than I can because you actually do a show five days a week and you have a fixed format.
And sometimes, I'm pretty sure, it must feel like a chore, like, oh, crap, I've got to do that.
And you fit it in either before you go to bed or whatever your schedule is.
Whereas with Daily Source Code, I know I'm going to do a couple a week and I kind of live towards it.
And sometimes I have a shitty show, or at least that I feel is a shitty show.
And you're absolutely right.
I never go back and review a shitty show.
I'm just like, hey, there'll be another one next time and I'll do twice as good.
But to have two dogs in a row, I think you're right.
And that is the danger with...
With regularly scheduled programming, where even being late on posting something can piss off your audience.
Right.
They're fickle, this group.
And that's the reason I went to team blogging, too, because I knew that the problem with blogs, although I wasn't the original team blogger by any means, Boing Boing, which is one of the most successful blogs in the world, is a team blog.
And more of a publication now.
But I went to that because the keys to blogging, and I tell people this all the time, is that you have to post a lot or people just won't come back.
And it has to do with maybe the two dogs theory, which is you go to the blog, you say you have a blog you like, you follow it, and the next thing you know, And you know this when you go surfing.
You go back to the blog and you look at it and it hasn't been updated for months.
You never go back.
Basically, you may go back one more day.
That's it.
You've got your two dogs.
You went there.
It hasn't been updated.
You go back.
It hasn't been updated.
You never go back.
And I think that's the reason that most blogs have lousy attendance.
I mean, they just can't keep up.
I'm always amazed by guys like the Jaywalk blog, Welcome Bush's blog, which I'd love to just have them just talk them in the same blog.
Why don't we just come over and we'll do something else, do a team blog.
This guy, for a while, I was competing.
I thought I was competing with him because I was doing the blog by myself, and I'd look at his, and he was a much better blogger than I am.
I mean, he really gives really good stuff.
He's got a lot of interest.
He's got a good insight on things.
But then I look at his blog and he's like blogging himself five, six, seven, eight times a day.
Holy crap, you can't keep up that kind of pace.
And when I first started blogging, by the way, I wasn't even putting up that much.
I was putting up like five posts maybe, which is not enough to make people come back, by the way.
And I would get letters from people saying, Dvorak, you just started blogging.
You're going to burn yourself out.
You're going to be like everybody else.
You're trying too hard.
You're blogging too much.
And I'm thinking, wait, there's a conflict of my thinking here.
One, you have to blog a lot to keep people coming back, but I'm blogging too much and I'm not blogging enough.
So that's when I said, forget it.
I'm bringing in some guys who, you know, that want to get the, because I have the numbers.
And so the people that get that blog with me, the editors, they are getting a lot of attention, which they wouldn't be able to do on their own single blogs.
Well, it's the quick hit mentality, you know.
And by the way, I don't actually go to blogs anymore.
I use Google Reader.
And so, you know, it just pops up, right?
Oh, there's something new.
So I'm not wasting any time going around to blogs.
I'm basically looking at headlines and finding stuff that interests me, which is severely underrated, by the way, the title of your post, because that's how a lot of people...
With email, the same thing.
Subject line, most important, marketing.
If you want me to open up an email, that subject line better say something interesting.
No, actually, one of the things we emphasize at the Dvorak Uncensored blog, which is dvorak.org slash blog for anyone who hasn't been there, is headline writing.
In fact, we go memos.
You know, I used to do a monthly memo on headline writing because it's important.
And I'll go in there myself and default.
As far as I'm concerned, people, if they're doing blog posts and they want to learn the headline writing, they should get a subscription to the New York Daily Post.
The Post newspaper in New York City.
It's got good headlines.
And also, there's a lot of those tabloids that are at the checkout counter.
The Star, the Inquirer, and places like that.
Those headlines are outstanding.
This is a little game Ron and I were playing yesterday, because this is a conversation that we're having internally inside the company as well.
Do you have a magazine just laying around, just any random magazine?
John?
Yeah.
Just pick it up and just read.
It's funny when you do it.
I just picked up a random magazine here, so I'll go first.
I'm just going to read what's on the cover, which is basically marketing me to buy this magazine at £3.70.
Michael Stutz, Dream Destination.
WT-9, Dynamic.
Mighty Microlite.
Aircam, Lightweight Twin.
Splash, Show Report.
Hovering Out of Wind.
Binder EB-28, The Ultimate Sailplane.
You know, that's good shit, man.
Well, there's a couple of things that you should always note.
American magazines tend to be subscription oriented and they don't have the great headlines of the European magazines, especially the ones in Great Britain, which tend to be newsstand oriented in terms of getting their circulation to a certain point.
And what I always tell people who are in the magazine business, if they happen to be traveling in Europe, especially in England, where they can understand what the headlines are saying, you should go to the newsstands in England and look at the racks and take a look at these covers because you see dynamic grabbing you should go to the newsstands in England and look at the And the only time that shows up in the States happens to be with Felix Dennis' magazines.
Maxim is one of the great magazine covers that you'll ever see because it's British.
But yeah, but the bloggers have to learn this because you're right.
If you're getting that little laundry list from Google Alert or whatever it is you're talking about, not Alert, but Google Reader, it's a list of headlines and most of them are so dull, you know, you don't want to click on any of them.
Nope.
That's another thing, man.
Album art.
Anyway, we could go on forever about all that.
Are we done?
Do we have anything else?
God, no.
I mean, God, yes, we're done.
Yeah, hold on.
Let me just see if I had anything else.
I was going to talk about the Mexicans invading the United States, the Mexican army, killing some people in Phoenix.
Oh, really?
Yeah, there's really some weird shit going on nobody's talking about much.
Well, give me some more info, man.
What's happening?
Well, it's on the blog, actually.
I have to bring up the story.
Well, there was a murder in Phoenix and the perpetrator seemed to be in the Mexican army working on the behest of the drug overlords, which seemed to have taken over most of the border towns in the United States.
And they've definitely taken over all the border towns in Mexico to bring drugs into the country.
And besides the murder in Phoenix, which nobody really covered much, There's another story that developed where one of our U.S. congressmen had a relative that was kidnapped from her store in Juarez and held for ransom, which is, by the way, a serious problem in Mexico.
And this has been going on for a long time.
This happens all over the world, man, kidnapping.
But you actually pay the money and you get the person back.
I mean, it's a business.
Yeah, you pay the money.
It's extortion, kidnapping, extortion.
To the point, I mean, in Mexico, for example, I was told a long time ago, because you don't, like, you go to Mexico City, some of the best parts of the time, and you don't see many really cool cars.
And somebody mentioned to me, well, you know, the thing is, if you really got a lot of money in Mexico, you buy a clunker.
Yeah, I don't want to know.
Yeah, and people will think you're just some bum, you know, and you got, like, you know, missing hubcaps, and the thing's, like, crabbed, and it needs paint, you know, you got it made.
So you don't see a lot of Mercedes and you don't see anything cool.
And in Brazil, where they actually do like to have nicer cars...
It was the last time I was there, which was like a year or a year and a half ago.
We go past, we're driving around looking at stuff, and we go past a car dealership that's just apparently very popular.
It's a huge car dealership.
But it had this weird Portuguese name for these cars.
I can't remember what it was, but I never saw this word before.
So, oh, that's a car dealership that's bulletproof cars.
For the rich people.
So you'd buy a Mercedes in Sao Paulo that would be, like, ruggedized.
I mean, essentially, you know, the door, you push a button and everything locks up, and they can't shoot through the glass.
Armor-plated, yeah, the whole thing.
The car weighs a ton, right?
And I'm thinking, well, that's how they handle it.
But, you know, that hasn't gotten into the U.S. yet.
But I'm always worried that it will.
Because, you know, now we had a congressman buy the freedom of somebody.
And we're supposed to be the country that doesn't deal with terrorists that way.
But meanwhile, you know, and the U.S. government was, like, involved in this negotiation.
I'm just like, it's not a good sign.
All right.
I got last one, last one.
My Uncle Don was in Korea this week.
And the result of his work is in the paper.
And what is it?
Oh, you didn't hear about this?
Yeah, they released the information about their nuclear program and everything they've done since the 60s, and President Bush said, oh, well, now I'm going to take you off the axis of evil.
And your Uncle Don had something to do with this?
Oh, hell yeah.
Oh, yeah.
He's a major negotiator for the U.S. and both South and North Korea.
He's the president of the Korea Society, which is, I'm sure, some kind of front for something.
The guy was ambassador.
Yeah, he was ambassador in South Korea, so he knows a hell of a lot.
In fact, he even wrote a New York Times op-ed on, I think, the 17th.
Where he said, hey, you know, and it's so funny because I didn't quite understand what it was about.
He said, you know, don't mess with the Koreans with their beef.
You know, don't mess with their beef because they get really emotional about it because this is what their parents and grandparents have always made their living on.
And it's kind of like a holy topic.
And, you know, Condoleezza Rice, sure shooting, like I read in the paper this morning, she's saying to the people of Korea, well, you know, please consider trying our beef.
Well, you know, when I went there, which was just a few weeks ago, I'm reading the newspapers over there and watching the TV, and there's all these riots taking place about American beef and how everybody thinks of being poisoned and all that.
There wasn't one peep of this information in the U.S. media.
Well, except for my Uncle Don's op-ed.
He said, do you remember in the 80s, I think, when people attacked the U.S. Embassy in South Korea?
Yeah.
Okay, so my Uncle Don was the ambassador at the time.
And he wrote about that.
I'll send you the link to his op-ed piece.
He wrote about it.
He said, you know, when people got so pissed off, so angry, they broke into the embassy, caused $35,000 worth of damage.
It was about the freaking beef, he said.
You've got to leave them alone.
They do not want foreign beef.
It's a whole cultural thing.
And this is what the guy understands.
Well, that's interesting, because I didn't think...
That's interesting because I know their beef is a staple part of their diet.
All their great dishes of Korea are beef dishes.
I'm sure some vegetarian will write.
That's not true.
They do vegetables too.
For the most part, it's a beef thing.
When you go to a great Korean restaurant, you're eating beef.
You know, it's usually a thin slice.
Gorgeous.
I mean, it's beautiful.
I mean, the food in Korea is really nice.
In Korea, the Korean copies that we have over here are always kind of lame.
Well, so I think that...
I mean, I wouldn't have known any of this.
I'm looking for this letter now.
Hold on.
Here it is.
Let me just...
It's a short one.
Can I just read this?
Do you mind?
Yeah, go.
Okay.
To the editor.
Regarding South Koreans assail U.S. pact shaking leader, front page June 11 about the large demonstrations in Seoul.
In October 1989, six Korean college students broke into the American ambassador's residence in Seoul and did $35,000 worth of damage before being arrested by the Korean police.
I was the ambassador and the issue was beef.
Modern Korean society still has deep roots in its agricultural traditions and Koreans can get very defensive about any issue that seems to threaten the livelihood of grandpa and grandma back on the farm, even if this causes them to pay twice as much for inefficiently produced Korean beef as they would for foreign imports.
This is a delicate issue that needs to be handled with sensitivity by leaders in Seoul and Washington, so the question of beef does not derail the important free trade agreement with South Korea being considered by Congress.
The issue also needs to be placed in a broader context.
South Korea is a tremendous ally of the United States.
It sent more than 300,000 troops to help us in Vietnam, was a quick and generous supporter of Desert Storm in 1991, and for several years had the third largest deployment of troops in Iraq following our invasion of that country five years ago.
Notice the word, following our invasion of that country five years ago.
Without our strong alliance with South Korea, our influence in Asia would be vastly diminished.
Let us keep the fact clearly in mind as we deal with the fractious beef issue.
Interesting.
I love it how he sneaks that in.
That explains a lot.
That invasion thing.
Yeah, and he's like Mr.
Republican.
He hates Georgia W. He hates this whole thing.
He's so angry.
Yeah, a lot of Republicans do, but...
But that explains a lot.
That's interesting.
Because when they were having the beef fries when I was over there, they were rationalizing it as our beef was tainted with mad cow.
Well, it probably is.
I mean, dude, are tomatoes of salmonella?
Have you been following this bullshit?
What's going on with that shit?
Those tomatoes are coming from Mexico.
What's going on with that?
How can tomatoes have salmonella?
Is that something exclusive for le chican?
This is the way it was explained to me that it doesn't get a lot of coverage, and I'm sure there's more details.
Somebody knows more than this, but I'm going to give you the basics.
We began to use recovered wastewater from sewage treatment plants as part of our agriculture.
And figuring that it was a fine use for everything.
In fact, I think one of the processes is washing tomatoes at the end of a processing plant.
It's not the kind of tomatoes you get from a farmer's market.
Basically, shit water.
Yeah, but it's been processed, so you could probably drink it and it wouldn't be a big deal.
But we don't drink it because we don't like the concept.
No.
But it's fine for agricultural purposes.
Now, it's believed that the exact same kind of factories that manufactures mass-produced tomatoes that are never really fully ripe, they're the crap you buy in the crummy stores.
It's not the stuff you get at a...
at a farmer's market or in a good vegetable store generally.
The Mexicans decided they're gonna do the same kind of processing, and they used the recovered wastewater, but unfortunately, they never treated it.
So it's just loaded with God knows what, And the problem is these tomatoes are already de-stemmed.
And the stem hole, where the stem was, that part of that tomato usually cut off, it still will absorb water through it into the tomato.
During this process of washing, and so you'd have these tomatoes rolling off the line, being sprayed to wash them off a little bit, and the water would get on top of that little area, and it'd go soak right into the tomato, get sucked in, because the tomatoes don't look at this.
Fucking Mexican poop water in my tomato.
I mean, that's what they think is what happened, but nobody wants to say that, and here's one of the reasons.
One of the reasons is because there's been a...
And this is the problem that you can blame on Monsanto, among other companies.
They don't want to make it so we label the country of origin when it comes to, like, a tomato.
It wouldn't cost much, by the way, because these machines that label nowadays, these little stickers that you put on fruits and vegetables, it's just, you know, it's nothing.
But there was a movement, a consumer movement, to like, where's this tomato from movement?
And I want a sticker.
If it's a foreign tomato coming in from Ecuador, I want to see an Ecuador sticker on there.
If it's from Florida, you know, I'd like to know.
And no, no, we can't do that because it's too much, you know, it would hurt relations and all this other crap.
So meanwhile, we don't know where these tomatoes are from, and they can't really say it's the Mexican tomatoes causing this problem.
And they're trying to point the finger at Florida, right?
Which I find hard to believe.
Well, it could be Florida if you read the news.
Yeah, I did see that.
I can tell you what it is.
It's a bunch of crappy farmers.
Mexican poop water tomatoes.
That's one way of putting it.
So salmonella is a result of poop water?
You know, that doesn't make a lot of sense because salmonella is not necessarily in poop water, but apparently whatever this...
Wait a minute, John.
Please tell me that in 1972 you were actually an expert on poop water.
Please, give me one of those.
You're an environmental poop water specialist.
I was an air pollution specialist.
There you go.
But you know, when I was working at the, fine, I did coliform testing, which is kind of poop-water oriented.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
When I was at Union Oil, we had to test for coliform.
Of course.
One of the things, the effluent that goes out into the San Francisco Bay from their oil refiner, if you're one of the chemists at the place, you have to test the water for coliform, which is an indicator for poop.
Because you don't want to put too much poop into the bay.
And so you do all these tests, you know.
So I'm kind of an expert, but I'm not that much of an expert.
I'm just telling you what the risk is.
I'm going to have business cards made up.
Mevio, John C. Dvorak, poop expert.
Yeah, anyone can be a poop expert.
All right.
But anyway, that...
So that's outrageous.
And, you know, they put made in China on every single iPod.
They might as well put, you know, made in Mexico on every tomato.
I mean, I agree.
It's just, that's horseshit.
We deserve to know.
We deserve to know where the food is coming from.
That's an absolute...
I never even thought in those terms.
You're absolutely correct.
If you have to put made in China, which you do on all this junk that the Chinese ship us, and, you know, I'm good quality, too, by the way, like the iPod.
I've got some quality products made in China.
But if you have to put the label on there for stuff that you're not even eating...
Yeah, you're putting shit in your face.
Mexican poop water infested tomatoes, we should at least know.
Yeah, I don't get why there should be a label on...
Yeah, we're eating this stuff.
We're not eating iPods.
I don't care.
Yeah, well, you mentioned Monsanto, and if you know anything about...
Has anyone ever emailed you about the Codex Alimentarius?
No.
You've never heard of the Codex Alimentarius?
I have, but I don't know if I've ever looked at it.
Okay, so this is not for this show, but let's both do some research on it, speaking of no agenda.
Now, the Codex is something that the World Trade Organization put into place in, I think, let me say the 50s.
So, it's basically a trade agreement about what is in food that is imported and exported amongst countries that are a member of the WTO. Now, this has now become pretty much law.
In fact, in Europe, so all the recommendations...
Which are, you know, what can and cannot be in certain types of foods and what can or cannot be sold, literally, has resulted now.
And in Europe, this is already starting where, and I'm sure you've heard about this, that you can't get certain vitamins over the counter anymore.
Homeopathic medicines are being phased out.
And Monsanto is one of these big companies that's behind this Codex Alimentarius.
Of course.
And I believe that January 1, 2009, it will be ratified as the Code.
I mean, Codex Alimentarius literally means the Food Code.
It will become the Food Code of the United States as well.
Or at least that's on the schedule.
I think it's the 1st of January 2009.
And the European Union is already harmonizing it with all laws.
And of course, if you look at some of the conspiracy theory videos, which I'm an expert at...
This is really, really bad shit.
In fact, it will probably...
Some people say it could easily kill 3 billion people within 50 years or something.
Malnourishment.
That's taking it to the extreme, maybe.
But it is very clear that there is going to be a food code that the government is going to set and will tell you what you can and cannot eat.
That is what the Codex is all about.
You know, it's funny.
It's like I'm always complaining about how Brussels is pushing the Europeans around with all these laws that they're doing.
But I think it's even more pathetic if Brussels is pushing us around.
But anyway, let's go back to my...
Just before we finish the show, we might as well go on a rant about Monsanto in some way.
Yeah, go for it.
So it's a company that a lot of people dislike.
They actually...
Essentially broke the backs of a couple of journalists in Florida who were trying to blow the whistle on the company for being behind much of the laws that, for example, these laws, or most of them, at least I don't think they apply in California, but they were attempting to make it so you could not put...
Again, we're going back to labeling laws.
You could not put on a carton of milk that the cow's milk in that carton was a result of an animal that had been treated with the bovine growth hormone that makes them produce 25% more milk.
It was like, in California, you see no BST or whatever it's called is in this, you know, it was, none of these cows made this milk.
And in fact, if you taste the milk from a cow that does that, that has been pumped up with this stuff, it's kind of watery.
It's watery.
Yeah.
It's crappy.
But anyway, so Monsanto was behind them.
You drove these guys out.
They were really tight with the government.
They get a lot of these laws.
That's why probably Monsanto's kind of mentality is behind where we don't know where the tomatoes are coming from.
Meanwhile, here's what I'm predicting is going to happen that's going to be really interesting.
There's a number of...
Of countries in South America who have banned the use of the Monsanto genetically engineered Roundup resistant wheats and some of these crazy seeds that they've invented.
Genetically modified stuff, yeah.
Right, genetically modified stuff, which is illegal here and there, but the stuff is getting into the wild.
Now, you know, in fact, where they've grown a lot of these crops, the pollen from these crops goes into the neighbor, and the next thing you know, the next year, they got, you know, half the crop is this stuff they don't even want.
And now there's, I forgot what country, but it was on one of these world reports that Bolivia, maybe Ecuador, someplace, you know, they had to change the law because this stuff is, you know, these genetically modified, you know, pollens have gotten out, and they're essentially changing everything.
I suspect, because The whole genetically modified business is a patented one.
One of these days, Monsanto is going to walk into a field in Nebraska or someplace else and take a sample, kind of like the BSA does with software, make them do an audit, and they're going to find genetically modified products that are growing there that were not licensed.
And they're going to sue the farmer.
Oh, really?
And make them pay a fine for having that in there, even though the farmer's going to say, well, you know, listen, you blew over, and the documentation says, well, it can't blow that far.
And you watch, there'll be some really crazy lawsuits over this genetically modified stuff, because those guys have got it locked down.
Wow.
I'm not, you know, this is one of those issues that is so big and so broad and, you know, of course there's a deadline coming up that lots of people are starting to at least talk about it and I'm just not schooled enough in exactly what's going on but, you know, once again,
you know, there's lots of lectures and YouTube videos of some pretty serious looking people saying, you know, this is a real problem and, you know, you can take it to the extreme and, of course, you know, The second part of the video is always, and this is what they've always wanted.
Right.
That's the problem with a lot of these guys.
Instead of presenting these things in a logical, orderly way, many of the people that present, and I wonder sometimes, I've always believed this, by the way, if you want to make a point, and you're on the bad side of an argument, and you want to kind of keep people from beating you up,
You put a debate on where you have the bad side of the argument, you know, whatever it is, with a reasonable person who is very professorial, and then bring on a guy who's against you, who's on the right side of the argument, but is clinically insane.
And so you have this, you know, I've seen debates, I've seen TV debates like this, where you have a Republican and a Democrat, and you know that one of the two sides put the whole thing together, because you have one guy who's very reasonable, and the other guy who's like a fanatic maniac.
A nutcase, yeah, of course.
Well, anyway, it's something we should look at.
We should look at it, John.
I'm sure people are going to send us all kinds of links and information.
Yeah.
It's our No Agenda topic for a No Agenda show for next week, if we remember.
Precisely.
We might not talk about it at all.
I'm just pulling the brake here.
I mean...
How can anyone listen to this shit for two hours?
I don't know.
I can't.
I certainly can't.
I can't really do it for two hours.
It's been two hours.
I'm playing the music.
You don't hear the music?
Yeah.
Do you or don't you?
You should hear it.
Yeah, you hear it.
Barely.
Well, it's soft.
You know, it's called like a nice, gentle fade.
And at the end, I bring it up.
It's the end of the show.
It's all done in real time.
You know, no joke here.
Are we going to say goodbye?
Yes.
Thank you, John.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I can think of no better way to spend a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon.
Well, I wish it was less than a couple of hours, but I'm John C. Morgan up here in Northern California, Smokeyville, and I'll be smoking some meat tonight.
And I'm Adam Curry at the Manor in the United Kingdom in Guilford, soaked in sun.
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