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Nov. 8, 2008 - No Agenda

01:39:20

56: 100 Billion Dollars!

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	Two times in one week, we can't go on meeting each other like this.
	Coming to you from the eastern side of the nation formerly known as Gitmo Nation, now Obama Nation, in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
	And in northern Silicon Valley, I'm John C. Dvorak.
	John, how you doing?
	Good.
	Two times in a week, man.
	This is amazing.
	Yeah, we could probably do a daily.
	You mentioned that before.
	I was just thinking about that before the show.
	I'm thinking, if we just had a phone bridge set up or just something.
	I mean, the whole problem is just where we are at any given moment.
	But we should certainly be able to do something once a day.
	Yeah, we should.
	So it looks like the election, State Senate.
	There's a fact, by the way.
	State Senate, District 14 out of Denver.
	Okay, I have not been following this election.
	Yeah, the candidate bacon beat fries.
	Yes, I saw the picture.
	That was very funny.
	Bacon beats fries.
	Oh, man.
	It doesn't get any nuttier than that.
	Actually, it does, actually.
	I called you yesterday, man, and I said...
	Actually, I called you while it was taking place.
	I wanted to watch it with you.
	The first press conference by our president-elect.
	Yeah, I got to see some excerpts from it.
	It's hard to believe it was a press conference.
	No, it wasn't.
	It was a scripted hootenanny.
	And did you see Axelrod leaning against the wall the whole time?
	No, I missed that part.
	I'm sorry.
	Go ahead.
	He's there to, you know, he'll be the sergeant at arms and punish anyone who disobeys.
	Exactly!
	It was like Obama had, you know, the guy is so good at reading off of his notes.
	He just glances down and he's real, real comfortable with doing it and I've paid a lot of attention to it.
	And so he did the whole thing yesterday, I think pretty much just from his notes, no teleprompter, I didn't see anything.
	But even when it came to the questions, you know, he was kind of like, you know, like the presidents like to do.
	Yeah, go ahead, Helen.
	Yeah, Troy, you can say something now.
	But every single time, and I paid specific attention to it, he was looking down his paper.
	And at one point he even said, let me see who's next here.
	Yeah, Bill, you're next.
	And, you know, didn't call on any heavyweights like the Washington Times or didn't call on Fox News.
	That was pointed out, I saw earlier today.
	It was like scripted questions, scripted answers, and from time to time, he would actually look down at his notes.
	Yeah, it seemed like he was looking down a lot to answer the questions, which I thought was peculiar.
	Of course, the media didn't call him on this.
	Look, if you can get away with it, Let's say I'm Axelrod and I can say, look, why don't we just script the whole thing?
	Just only call the people we want and see what happens.
	I mean, you can assume that if George Bush pulled a stunt like this, the media would be all over it.
	Oh, they're crazy.
	They'd be yelling.
	They'd be so angry.
	Yeah, but no, these guys are all in bed with him.
	What was pretty funny is that he spent the most time answering the question about the White House dog.
	Yeah, you might as well trivialize the whole thing.
	So I'm listening to one of the right-wing talk shows, and this guy, Breitbart, who was doing this show for somebody, and who's got this website, and he was proud of the fact that he, and I just thought it was hilarious, he got the domain name, I think it's Barack Obama.
	Barack Obama.
	Barack Obama.
	I like that.
	Because, you know, he's always going, uh.
	You know, he's saying, uh, all the time.
	So it's now, uh, Obama.
	I do that a lot, too.
	That doesn't bother me.
	But you don't have the name, uh, Curry.
	Uh, Adam Curry.
	Uh, Adam Curry.
	What I loved about, and I'm looking at the Financial Times Weekend Edition.
	I haven't read it yet, but I'm just looking at the front page.
	The home page, as we call it.
	There we go.
	Barack Obama.
	And there's a picture of Barack Obama at this press conference yesterday.
	And I love the sign, the office of the president-elect.
	That's just too funny.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's just wild.
	There's no real office, is there, known as the office of the president-elect?
	That's humorous.
	A little presidential seal.
	Oh, man.
	What a show.
	What an amazing show.
	And have you seen these people who are in this transition team?
	Did you see these people?
	Yeah, they're all a bunch of old-style hard politicos.
	Hell yeah!
	I thought this was supposed to be some new change.
	And Rom, what's his name, Emmanuel.
	This guy.
	This guy.
	The guy looks mean.
	You know, he reminds me of Eyal, only evil.
	He does have an evil look.
	Yeah, a total evil look.
	And I believe that in an Israeli newspaper they were saying, oh, that's great, we got our guy in the White House.
	Because he's orthodox, I believe.
	And he fought in the Israeli forces.
	I don't know if he fought, he served.
	He quit his job, actually, at one point.
	And he was also, interestingly enough, on the board of directors of, I'm going to say, Fannie Mae in 2000, when there was three years of humongous scandal about losing trillions of dollars, losing track of trillions of dollars.
	This guy's been around for a while.
	This is no change.
	Yeah, it's a change back to the worst.
	Good times.
	They call him Rombo.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and he's going to run things.
	Oh, yeah.
	Because this is very Nixonian, this group he's bringing in.
	It's almost like he might as well be a Republican, and he might as well be Richard Nixon with these guys.
	And look at all that, because this is what we were talking about on Wednesday.
	Look at all the names that are popping up.
	Who's going to be Secretary of the Treasury?
	And they've got guys who have all been, you know, nothing new.
	It's all former Federal Reserve guys, Fed New York, former Treasurer Secretary.
	They're even talking about the governor of New Jersey who worked as CEO at, guess what, Goldman Sachs.
	And this is nuts.
	And this is...
	Here's my...
	Here's my takeaway.
	This is the big cover-up moment.
	While everyone's living in euphoria and we're taking our eye off the ball temporarily, all this shit is taking place.
	All kinds of stuff happening right now.
	Well, now in Obama's defense, if you remember when Carter was...
	Well, you probably don't because you were 10.
	No, I don't remember.
	But when Carter was elected...
	He probably did, and I think maybe Clinton when he first started, he did one of these, you know, let's bring in some outsiders and let's see what we can shake up Washington kind of thing.
	And they just failed miserably because they don't know the ropes.
	So at least Obama's not making the mistake of bringing in a bunch of amateurs that can be pushed around.
	Let's face it, with his Rahm Emanuel, he's not going to get pushed around.
	Mm-mm.
	The problem, of course, is that they just go off the deep end with intimidating people and pushing their way around.
	But, you know, they may need that against Nancy Pelosi, so I don't know.
	Yeah, I'm just a little concerned about what I'm reading and what I'm hearing and what the ideas are.
	Yeah, well, the ideas are probably not going to work out.
	So what?
	Thank you.
	I guess that's what I'm saying.
	Yeah, the ideas are not going to work out.
	Not going to be too good.
	But a lot of this crap, like the Office of the President-Elect and all this other imagery is really getting on my nerves.
	I did appreciate the change.gov website.
	The idea, of course, is really, really good.
	It's a fantastic branding exercise, extension of the brand Beyond Belief.
	Right.
	Really, really smart.
	Yeah, as if anyone's going to pay any attention to the probably, you know, 100 million suggestions they're going to get from every dingbat in the country.
	Oh, it's going to be, you know, a very sorry excuse for a feedback mechanism, but, you know, in the guise of being transparent, it's a good move.
	I'm actually waiting for Hope.gov.
	Ha!
	When's that website coming online?
	I hope they're reading my message.
	When's that message coming online?
	That'd be a cool site.
	Hope.gov.
	So I'm watching Bill Maher, who has turned back into his pre-9-11 hateful self.
	It's amazing.
	He got fired from ABC for going on about calling the Americans cowards.
	Well, actually, he said something different at the time, which I thought he was so spot on.
	He said...
	The terrorists were actually very, very brave to fly, you know, to believe so much.
	I know what he said.
	But I just want to tell people, because it's good to remind them, John.
	Give me a second.
	Yeah, but it was at the moment.
	It wasn't a matter of, you know, his wording.
	It was his intent.
	Well...
	I mean, because I saw him do it.
	I watched that show.
	I watched it, too.
	I saw it, too.
	He was extremely mean-spirited about the whole thing.
	He was angry.
	And he was angry at the United States for sending cruise missiles into, you know, Afghanistan or wherever.
	And he's right!
	I think that's what we should be doing.
	Wait a minute.
	You think we should be sending cruise missiles into Afghanistan?
	At the time, yeah, absolutely.
	You're kidding me!
	No, I'm not kidding you.
	What do you think we're supposed to do?
	Walk over there?
	Well, what are we doing over there?
	Well, they haven't done anything over here.
	We've been through all their countries a million times.
	No wonder they're pissed off if they actually did it.
	No, I don't think they did it, but the Taliban was the guys that were essentially keeping the Al-Qaeda folks in business.
	John, I just don't buy it.
	I don't buy it at all.
	I've read a lot about the Taliban.
	I don't buy what you're saying right now.
	They want to keep Al-Qaeda in business.
	I have no problem taking that side on this argument.
	We should have that argument.
	You know, I remember when the Taliban, before 9-11, we had a story at ZDTV or TechTV or whatever it was at the time.
	Yeah, that's where I turn for all my worldly news is TechTV.
	No, they were doing a story, because they did have a newscast, and they were talking about, this is just after the Taliban blew up all those Buddhist icons that were carved into the mountains.
	Oh, and you were so offended, it's like, let's go bomb those people because they blew up Buddhist icons?
	You wanted me to finish.
	So, and then, you know, they had banned, you know, meanwhile, Omar had banned dancing, he had banned kite flying, they were executing women in the soccer stadium, and most of the stuff was pretty well documented.
	So they were going to run this story that was kind of complimentary toward the Taliban.
	And I went to the news director.
	I said, you can't do this.
	And I read this laundry list of shit that these guys were doing.
	And I'm thinking, nobody's paying any attention to this stuff.
	These guys are terrible people, generally speaking.
	And I wasn't concerned at all when they threw a few cruise missiles at them.
	Pre-9-11.
	That was pre-9-11, yeah.
	When 9-11 came up, none of it surprised me.
	Okay, well then you're just a nasty American bastard.
	Well, you know.
	That's horrible.
	I totally disagree with it.
	It's not our business to be...
	Okay, so they're fucked up.
	That's their problem.
	Let them deal with it.
	They had bin Laden.
	We wanted him.
	We did not know about bin Laden pre-9-11.
	They did too.
	Oh, John, if they really did, then 9-11 wouldn't have taken place.
	Or the whole thing is bullshit, ergo your argument is bullshit about them having 9-11.
	Or having Bin Laden.
	Yeah.
	I'm not buying your kind of, as it skews off the road, as you go into the ditch with your notion that there's some sort of deeper conspiracy.
	It doesn't go off the road at all.
	We're not talking about that.
	I'm saying that...
	Do you think we should have done nothing in Afghanistan?
	If the Taliban is causing a problem in their own country, in their own region...
	What benefit does it give us to go over there and start to kick people around and set them straight?
	What benefit?
	So you think we shouldn't have gone into Afghanistan?
	No!
	To try to get Bin Laden and straighten those guys out?
	Trying to get Bin Laden is different than lobbing a few cruise missiles over, okay?
	That's different.
	If you want to go get Bin Laden, then you get your Delta forces or whatever and go find him.
	I mean, it is not impossible.
	We have the largest military and secret military operation in the world, and we can't find one guy?
	Come on!
	Didn't you read the Atlantic monthly material on the fact that the CIA and all that type of operation was gutted largely during the Clinton administration, and Bush couldn't reestablish that stuff because he just got there.
	I don't think a CIA or I don't think any of these people had the ability to do what you described at that point.
	Well, okay, then we don't do it.
	End of story.
	I'm sorry.
	Hey, you know, there's trade sanctions you can invoke.
	You can, the president come out and can condemn.
	So you're basically a justice, not vengeance guy.
	No, no, no.
	What's the vengeance?
	First you say the Taliban was bad, and I say, oh, what, so we have to throw cruise missiles over?
	Well, they were hiding Bin Laden.
	Same thing.
	We got to throw cruise missiles over?
	Well, we didn't have, the CIA had been gutted.
	So we got to throw cruise missiles over?
	Bullshit.
	Well, then what would you, what should we have done?
	Nothing.
	Nothing.
	Is what you're saying.
	No, nothing.
	I'd have done absolutely nothing.
	Yeah.
	There was a really interesting article written in the London Times by one of the professors.
	I'm sorry.
	If I was actually president, I would have had to do something because, hey, of course, and this is why it actually took place, our drug supply is over there, which the government is importing into the United States and Western Europe.
	So, of course, that's why we threw in some cruise missiles to go kick their ass and say, hey, we're taking over the drug trade.
	We're the new big boss in town.
	At that point, when we went into Afghanistan in 2003 or 2004, whatever it is, The Taliban had actually reduced the poppy fields down to almost zero.
	Now they're back up to full capacity plus.
	That's what that's for.
	Not to go find Bin Laden.
	So you think the whole thing was just a ruse to get our supply of heroin back up to snuff?
	And indirectly to maintain the support of our economy, yes.
	Absolutely.
	The drug money is a big part of our economy, which is Wall Street, which is where it all goes.
	Yes.
	So, what else is going on?
	I'm in a bad mood.
	You think?
	This is what pissed me off.
	So, Patricia's doing her show.
	She's doing a double shot.
	She did Friday night last night, once again, number one in the time slot, even larger audience than last week.
	And to milk it, to suck the teat, and to bash the competition, they're now doing a second show on Saturday night.
	Which puts her out for a couple days.
	So I'm home with a teenager, my 18-year-old daughter.
	Let's face it, I'm on the road a lot.
	I don't see all the time.
	We had a nice meal the other night we went out to dinner.
	And I don't mind her boyfriend staying over, which she didn't ask.
	They came in and he's staying over.
	But then in the morning, when she has to get up to go to work, and I've been working until 2 a.m.
	doing video shit, and she knows it.
	And her boyfriend has stayed over.
	And the smoke alarm goes off at 8 o'clock because she's cooking up a whole breakfast in bed for this guy.
	I like the guy, Dexter.
	She's cooking up a whole breakfast in bed, which she's never done for me once in 18 years.
	Never, ever!
	And then I go downstairs.
	The whole kitchen's a mess.
	She couldn't even have the courtesy to clean out the dishwasher and put the dirty shit she just created for her boyfriend back in.
	And I drank all the orange juice, which was a brand new bottle of orange juice.
	Didn't leave me one drop.
	I'm so sick and tired of it.
	Ugh!
	So because of this, you're now on the side of the Taliban.
	I'm not.
	Would you wash your mouth out with soap, John C. Dvorak?
	Don't say those things.
	Of course I'm not on the side of the Taliban.
	I'm against all evil, which includes throwing bombs at people.
	It's just dumb.
	Unless they throw a bomb at you first, and then we go kick their ass.
	That's different.
	So what did you tell her?
	Did you get mad or did you just sulk?
	No, I got mad and actually my voice started to crack.
	That's how mad I was.
	Wow.
	Well, because she gives me this attitude.
	I'll do it when I come home from work.
	I said, you have time to sit on Facebook, bake your boyfriend breakfast in bed, and you don't have time to do the dishwasher?
	Ah, she treats the place like a hotel.
	Now I know why Patricia's complaining all the time.
	Ha ha ha ha ha.
	So now I have to deal with it.
	That's the whole point.
	And I'm like running around.
	I'm like running a bed and breakfast.
	So Patricia's out of there.
	It's like, uh, gotta go.
	Gotta go.
	Patricia, gotta go.
	Oh man, it's like I'm running a fucking bed and breakfast here.
	And I'm cleaning up crap.
	No, actually, here's where it all started.
	I'm really mad.
	So, I'm working for like 14 hours in the city.
	It's almost a two hour commute to come back these days.
	You know, taxi, train, taxi.
	You take a car, you take the tube.
	It doesn't matter.
	It's all the same.
	It's always two hours.
	So, I'm in the cab at 6 o'clock.
	And I'd asked her one thing.
	One thing.
	When you come home from school, please feed the animals.
	Let them out.
	That's all.
	One thing.
	And she was home at 4.
	And she was going to go out to a party with her boyfriend at 8.
	So, all this time.
	So she calls me and says, oh daddy, I locked myself out because I was going to go get something at Dexter's and my keys inside and how do I get in?
	I said, well how do you get in?
	You wait until I'm home.
	So I'm running.
	I'm running through Waterloo Station.
	I'm out of breath to catch a train that goes 20 minutes earlier.
	I'm riding home.
	I'm texting her.
	I'll be there in 30 minutes.
	I'm at the station.
	I'm around the corner.
	And she's not texting me back.
	You know, so I'm running, and I come in.
	All her shit's on the floor.
	The minute I walk in the door, I'm literally falling over it.
	She hasn't fed the dog.
	She was there for hours.
	Hadn't fed the dog.
	Didn't let him out.
	I know the key was still out of the door.
	I mean, all of this.
	I'm just getting so angry.
	And then she doesn't...
	And I text her, and she's not calling me back.
	She's not texting me back, because it turns out she was busy doing her boyfriend's makeup for the costume party.
	Does any of this, you as a mature father with children of multiple whatever, you got like 29 kids from three wives.
	Does this sound familiar to you?
	Sounds par for the course.
	What am I doing wrong?
	Nothing.
	No, no, no, that's not, not hello.
	Sorry, what am I doing, hello, is this on?
	I want to make sure you can hear me.
	So that's it, huh?
	Yeah.
	Then they move out and, you know...
	Then you miss them in shit?
	Then they come in, and after they move out, then they start visiting just to take stuff.
	LAUGHTER What happened to the such and such?
	Oh yeah, he took it.
	That's already happening.
	She takes stuff and then she leaves it somewhere and forgets where she left it.
	They take stuff to their house.
	Oh, that's even worse.
	Well, the minute she has a house, I'm coming over there.
	I'm stomping potato chips into the carpet.
	I'm leaving my shit around.
	I'm leaving doors open, lights on.
	The lights on.
	The whole place is lit up like a Roman candle.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Does that sound familiar?
	Yes, because no kid thinks to turn the lights off.
	Taking showers?
	It's a muscle exercise and they don't have it.
	It's not in their body.
	This is insanity.
	This has got to stop.
	I don't know how to do it.
	Oh, by the way, I got something here, John, you're going to be very jealous of.
	In my hand, from my wonderful friend Paul Parkinson, he sent this to my house that arrived today, and he sent a couple of books as well, which I really, that's like, what a gift of love to give someone books, because it says so much about what they think about you as the recipient.
	I hold in my hand a 10 billion, no, I'm sorry, 100 billion dollar note from Zimbabwe.
	Oh!
	Ha ha!
	Because you only had a $10 billion, right?
	No, I only have a...
	What I have is a $10 million.
	I don't have a $10 billion.
	No, $100 billion expires on December 31st, 2008.
	So it's still good.
	It's still good for $100 billion.
	And it's a perfect note, by the way.
	Yeah, mine's perfect.
	These things don't get worn out.
	Make a scan of it and send it to me so I can blog it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	No, it is beautiful.
	No, no, no.
	I'm going to blog it, and then you can put a link to me.
	You crazy?
	I've got to get some link love.
	So what's your serial number on that thing?
	The lower right-hand corner should have some number.
	020-229-00.
	Oh, no, that's the one at the bottom underneath, bearer check.
	There should be a stamped black number over on the right down at the bottom.
	At the top.
	It's a...
	AA-5827653?
	Yeah, DA something.
	I have AA. I have the rare AA series, John.
	Well, of the 100 billion notes, yes.
	Does it actually say $100 billion?
	And it has all the zeros on it, too.
	It's really cool.
	And it says here, just like our money, pay to the bearer on demand $100 billion on or before 31st December 2008 for the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.
	Issued date 1st of July 2008.
	Yeah, that's...
	Do you...
	Now, if you hold up to the light, you should see two watermarks.
	I see.
	And also a security band down the middle.
	Yeah, one...
	Hey, it looks like a dildo.
	That's what I thought when I saw it.
	Or like a bong, almost.
	It's weird, yeah.
	And then there should be RBZ on there, and then there should also be that black line down the middle.
	Yeah, I got the black security line.
	Okay, you got the real deal.
	That's a real $100 billion.
	Congratulations!
	You win $100 billion!
	And I'm going to blog this, and you know what?
	I'm going to put it in a permanent spot on the homepage so every day I can be reminded of what our money will look like.
	What the dollar will look like.
	This is it.
	That's what it is.
	This is what happens when you give your government a printing press.
	This is what you get.
	This is what you get.
	My understanding is they're going to change the name from the dollar to the peso.
	Yeah, maybe.
	It doesn't matter.
	No, it's because the Amaro is still in play.
	Yeah, and this has been going on for a long time.
	But it doesn't really matter what you call it.
	If it's based on nothing, then it's not worth anything.
	Right?
	Well, then send me your money if it's not worth anything.
	No, it's worth something now.
	Well, that's just what I said.
	That's all that counts is now.
	Exactly.
	So right now I'm happy.
	Oh, I got sad again because I thought of two minutes from now.
	Obama is totally being seen as the president of the world.
	Yeah, that's interesting.
	Somebody was commenting on the fact that they've never seen an acceptance speech before, where there wasn't, you know, normally the acceptance speech, the guy's up there with his family, and they're in kind of a cozy room, and they're accepting it to their local hangout.
	And so he's doing it in front of a big audience with nobody around, and it's the same lighting, you know, it's another staged event.
	They thought that was peculiar.
	And then so apparently on Charlie Rose, now the media is starting to think of, they're actually using the term cult of personality.
	Oh, I played that song the other day on Daily Source Code.
	Living Color, remember that?
	Remember Living Color?
	Yeah.
	Not the TV show, John.
	The band.
	Yeah, the song.
	You remember the song?
	No, I don't.
	Then why are you saying yes if you don't remember the song?
	I remember the group.
	Okay, what did the lead singer look like?
	Because you're lying.
	You're full of shit.
	I don't remember.
	You would remember.
	If you remembered this group, you would remember.
	Did he look like one of these, you know, like...
	I can't remember these names.
	This goes back too far.
	Even I remember this.
	Well, yeah, because you were in the business to remember that stuff.
	Well, this was 19, I'm going to say, 90.
	You remember him because it was one of the first really hard-rockin' groups that had a black guy fronting it.
	Corey Glover.
	See, you don't remember.
	You don't remember.
	Hey, just listen to this.
	Give me an education.
	The language that everybody here can easily understand Okay Remember the song?
	No.
	Okay.
	Play it.
	No, I'm not going to play the whole thing.
	Well, play part of it.
	I just played part of it.
	Play some lyrics.
	Didn't you just hear it?
	It was like in the background.
	I could barely hear it.
	Oh, wait a minute.
	That's not right.
	It's supposed to be really loud.
	How come...
	Oh, let me see.
	Here we go.
	Can you hear that?
	I can hear that now.
	All right, a little bit of lyrics.
	Look in my eyes, what do you see?
	The cult of personality.
	Tame You know what I'm saying?
	Oh, you know, now I vaguely remember that, yeah.
	You probably have the CD right next to your New Kids on the Block CD. Yeah, yeah, right.
	I vaguely remember that song.
	It was a massive hit.
	They had one other song and that was it.
	And I actually wonder where the guy is.
	He's gone.
	So anyway, yeah, Cult of Personality.
	Completely.
	Because that's what we're looking at.
	100%.
	Yeah.
	I think we knew that from the get-go.
	Yeah, but it's so dangerous.
	Yeah, it tends to be.
	But, you know, it usually becomes a big disappointment.
	The problem with cult of personality is that when your fans turn on you, it's pretty ugly.
	Yes, it can get very ugly.
	But the really good ones...
	Look, all you really need is the media.
	You need the media in your pocket as much as possible.
	That's going to be interesting to see if the Obama administration can control the spin.
	Well, you know, they got some good people there.
	You know, the Axelrod and those characters are pretty, pretty, uh, and that, yeah, they're pretty nasty.
	Well, if they're already...
	They can control the spin.
	It's all, it's apparent already that...
	Wasn't that the cult personality guy?
	That's the guy with their big long hair.
	What?
	He's a long-haired black man.
	What?
	Wasn't that guy the singer on that group?
	Oh, yeah, you finally Googled him and now you're looking at a picture.
	It took you a long time.
	I can't Google with this because we lose our connections.
	You bullshit.
	Yeah.
	I'm googling.
	I like that.
	You're so busted.
	The European Union put out their October 29th communication.
	And green has now become a verb.
	To greenhouse?
	No, to green the economy.
	Oh, to green the economy.
	Yeah.
	Oh, that's terrible.
	Yeah.
	In fact, if you look at their communication, it's pretty much, you could put Obama-Biden on it, and you say, all right, it's the same thing.
	And more money going to the banks.
	Bloomberg, I read today, they put a Freedom of Information request for all the money the Federal Reserve had lent to the financial industry prior to the bailout, so outside of the $700 billion.
	And it turns out they have lent, in addition to the $700 billion, $1.5 trillion to financial institutions.
	Bloomberg said, hey, we'd like to know what kind of securities have you received against that.
	Because that's the deal.
	They lend you the money, and then these banks were already, apparently, before the bailout, were handing over their worthless paper to the government as collateral or as purchase.
	I'm not quite sure which.
	And that's the whole point.
	And so Bloomberg said, hey, can we take a look at that?
	Because we'd like to know what all of our money is being securitized against.
	And the Federal Reserve said, no.
	That's none of your business.
	None of your business.
	And by the way, we're a private organization.
	And your mama stinks.
	That's outrageous, John.
	Well, what's outrageous is Bloomberg.
	First, this guy talks him into letting him go for it.
	I'm talking about Bloomberg, not Bloomberg the mayor.
	I'm talking about Bloomberg the news organization.
	Well, owned by Bloomberg the mayor.
	I just want to make sure you knew that that's what I was saying.
	No, I thought you were talking about Bloomberg the mayor.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, tell us about Bloomberg the mayor, the guy who wants to extend his term.
	He's like Beresconi in New York.
	Exactly.
	So first, he talks everybody into this, and so he goes and he gets his re-elected.
	Then he says, okay, we're going to up the income tax for all you New Yorkers, and we're going to do this, we're going to do that, and he just slams it to them.
	New York is one of the few cities in the United States where you have to pay income tax to live there.
	Yeah.
	And so he wants to jerk it up to 15%?
	Or 10, at least.
	Well, he has to.
	He has to.
	Yeah, I know.
	The city's broke.
	It's completely broke.
	And now they're using the pension plan.
	Well, he's been there as long as he has.
	How did it get broke?
	Whose fault is that?
	Well...
	I mean, who's been there for two terms?
	Yeah.
	They can pay.
	Yeah.
	And so it goes.
	So then we have our...
	The crazy mayor we've got is Gavin Newsom.
	Newsom in San Francisco, yeah.
	That guy.
	He obviously wants to be president.
	Yeah, so what did he do this time?
	Oh, I mean, he's just essentially whining about the fact that Proposition 8 was passed, even though it's largely his fault.
	Right, so we talked about this previously, I believe it was a week ago, Proposition 8 was to ban gay marriage in the state of California, correct?
	It was to re-ban gay marriage.
	It had been banned once before.
	But it wasn't unbanned?
	It was unbanned by the courts and then the Guys like Newsom are gloating about it, which is, by the way, what I'm seeing a lot of on Obama.
	Yeah, Obama.
	Hell yeah.
	A lot of that.
	I mean, this is what the Bill Maher thing I brought up, even though it set you off into an offbeat direction that won't help your reputation much.
	But they're gloating.
	They're just gloating.
	And they're still pounding on Sarah Palin and McCain as though we're going to have another election.
	You know, let's just pile on.
	And the one thing that was interesting to me was the insincerity of it all.
	For example, on Mars' show, he showed the John McCain speech where he conceded.
	And there's some people in the audience booing.
	Boo!
	You know, when they mention Obama.
	And so McCain told them to shut up, and they did.
	And so Marr shows this, showing that the Republicans are a bunch of a-holes for booing Obama.
	And then he says, look at what Kerry did.
	And then he shows Kerry giving his concession speech.
	You know, and he just shows who knows what part of it.
	And nobody says anything.
	In fact, the room is deadly silent.
	And I'm thinking...
	What a bunch of bull.
	This guy's like, he's been in broadcasting long enough to know that if you don't mic the audience, people could be booing and who's going to know?
	And it seemed to me that the Cary group wasn't, the audience wasn't mic'd.
	I did a thing once in Las Vegas where we had this huge audience.
	I couldn't believe it.
	We had this huge audience and we're doing a live presentation and they didn't mic the audience.
	So I had some hilarious material.
	And the audience was going crazy.
	It was really funny.
	And they were laughing.
	You'd have to pause for the laughter.
	When I was doing TV back in the early 80s in the Netherlands, we did a whole season live.
	And so you get in a whole different crew and it's intense to do a music show live.
	You've got acts.
	And the acts, they all would lip-sync to their own track.
	But what the sound technician did, and of course I didn't know this at the time until I watched the tape of the show, and when I freaked out, is...
	So we had a studio audience, like 150 kids, and they'd stand in front of the stage, and the speakers were booming, and whatever megastar would be up there, it was like Duran Duran, I think, even at the time, who wouldn't be able to sing live even if we'd asked them to on a TV show, or at least not...
	You'd never have the combination of sound technicians and talent to make that work.
	So they lip sync.
	And it was a lot easier.
	Just less gear, less cost done.
	It's still a pretty picture.
	And the audio engineer, the minute the band started, he closed the audience mics.
	So you're basically hearing the record, watching like a video clip, and you see all these kids going nuts in front of the stage, and you didn't hear them at all.
	No room sound, no nothing.
	Completely idiotic.
	Oh, it is infuriating.
	Well, here's what happened in my situation.
	So you say something funny, you wait for the audience to stop laughing, and then you go back.
	But since the audience wasn't mic'd, when you saw the tape, what they broadcast, it was like a bunch of guys up there saying stuff, and then you'd say something funny, then there'd be this long pause of silence as though nobody was laughing.
	They might as well put a cricket soundtrack in the background.
	And you look like a bunch of fools.
	And so I went back and talked to the sound guy about what was the deal with not micing.
	Oh, well, it's too much work.
	I'm saying, what are you talking about?
	It's too much work.
	And so I told him I wouldn't do it.
	I wouldn't even go on again unless they, you know, fix that.
	And then there's too much work consisted of taking a mic and aiming it at the audience and turning it up.
	Turning it up, yeah.
	Oh, man.
	So anyway, so I thought Marr was completely, you know, just an insincere jerk about this whole thing.
	But he's just, you can just see, he's just like going back to his very mean, he's just getting a mean kind of a, I mean, he's becoming kind of the grouchy old man that wants the kids off the lawn.
	Well, I'm not quite sure where he stands on most things.
	That's a little confusing to me.
	And I'll add to that that I cannot watch it over here.
	There's just no way to obtain it unless I guess I crawl through YouTube.
	I'll make you a disc of this show and you can watch it.
	The only reasonable person on the show is this black woman from NPR who is making the commentary that, look, you guys are like beaten up by dead horses.
	I mean, you're making yourself look like idiots.
	Let's just get on...
	Why be so negative about winning?
	She was actually quite reasonable about it.
	She saw the problem that it was going to create.
	I'm tired of all of them.
	I can't watch any of that.
	I just can't watch anyone.
	It's all so superficial and so full of crap while real things are going on.
	The credit card bond markets collapsed Friday.
	Did you know?
	No.
	Tell me.
	No one's buying the bonds, so that's it.
	Credit cards will be closed down, and I presume credit lines will be tightened.
	I'm not quite sure how that works.
	I guess the way their contracts are written, they can do pretty much anything they want.
	So credit cards are now the next shock wave that'll be hitting you.
	I don't think anybody is not expecting that.
	Andrew Horowitz has been harping on getting out of Capital One for almost a year.
	Well, I'm not giving this as financial advice to people who invest, John.
	I'm telling this to normal folks who just listen to our show and don't live in cycles and reputations.
	Well, credit cards are bad.
	Yeah, but people have financed everything on credit cards.
	Entire movies.
	Entire startups are financed on credit cards.
	Where will Silicon Valley go?
	We'll have no more credit cards.
	We'll have no more credit cards.
	No more stories.
	I remember when I started the company on credit cards.
	Well, you know, our family has gone all cash.
	Yeah, ditto.
	But I've been that way for a long time.
	Are you talking cash as in absolutely zero plastic at all?
	Yeah, like cash.
	We go to the bank and take cash and buy things with cash.
	It makes a difference.
	It changes your spending habits because when you're actually putting cash down on the table, you think twice about it as opposed to just throwing a card up there.
	It's funny.
	I was talking about that very topic on the Daily Source Code.
	Where credit cards and even some of the smart card, debit cards that store money on the chip itself, money, listen to me, that set three bits differently on the chip, you can't just look at it and say, oh, I have 150 left, or I have 50 left, or 20 left, or whatever.
	There's no indicator.
	There's no readout.
	You have to stick it into a card reader and then...
	Type your PIN code and all that crap to see how much money you have left.
	And now Monopoly, someone left me pictures of the new box.
	Monopoly brought to you by Visa.
	You actually pay for your houses, your hotels, and everything with your Visa credit card in the game.
	What?
	Yep, there's no more money.
	What?
	You didn't know this?
	They had a huge launch in New York on, I think, the Today Show.
	They had a huge monopoly, you know, like 10, you know, like 100 times scale monopoly game.
	Yeah, I'll send it to you.
	Actually, go to drop.io slash daily source code, and you'll see.
	Here it is.
	There's two pictures.
	First one is Monopoly Electronic Banking.
	Uses cards, not cash, to store your millions.
	That one may be fake.
	The second one I don't think is fake, though.
	But I remember the Monopoly guy with the hat on, you know, he was walking around the Today Show and he said, oh no, everything's on credit cards now in the game.
	I find this hard to believe.
	No, it's true.
	Come on, man.
	i can't spell apparently i can't spell daily i love that keyboard You have such a...
	It sounds like you're still using your Wang keyboard, actually.
	Daily.
	D-A-I-L-Y. Source.
	Source.
	Code.
	That's it.
	Drop.
	I get a login.
	It says that's a login.
	No.
	Drop.io slash daily source code.
	You sure that it's not saying login or...
	You sure the URL is right?
	I have drop.io daily source code, and it says log into this drop.
	That's bullshit.
	I sent you a screenshot, and now it showed up.
	I swear to God, it just popped up now.
	Okay, all right, shit happens.
	Obama was not the first black president.
	Let's see.
	Zero coffee shops.
	You can just go to monopoly.com.
	Oh, here it is.
	I see it.
	I see it.
	Yeah, it's the real picture.
	It's the real picture from monopoly.com.
	It's not a Photoshop.
	You see that?
	Yeah, it's ridiculous.
	No, man.
	It's got a little device.
	Yeah, it's got a pin reader.
	Yeah, it's like an ATM machine in the box.
	Is this what you want your children to learn?
	How to use electronics?
	There's no concept of trading something, of something for value.
	It's sticking a plastic into another plastic thing.
	If anything, it should be labeled porn.
	Monopoly ditches cash, goes plastic according to Engadget.
	Oh, this is ridiculous.
	This just ruined the game.
	Yep.
	I wonder how this little reader, they got this little reader it comes with.
	I wonder if that's...
	That's the bank.
	That's the bank.
	Can you read other cards in that thing?
	All the cards.
	Read other cards.
	You mean like your own debit card?
	Yeah.
	I find myself, I do have a debit card.
	Debit card is really integrated here in the UK. And it's literally, if it's not in the bank, on that account, then it doesn't work.
	And I deliberately buy the weirdest shit at the weirdest places just to fuck them up.
	I'll buy a candy bar.
	And then I'll get like $20 from an ATM in San Francisco.
	Just to mess with them.
	Yeah, well, you're probably going to end up on some list and they're going to just have all kinds of weird fees.
	Well, we're going to have fees for everything.
	That's the problem with this plastic shit.
	And have you heard the meme yet?
	Paper to plastic?
	I'm hearing it.
	Well, if what you say is true about the whole credit card bond deal falling apart, they can't...
	Yeah, but that's the credit card part.
	You want a conspiracy theory?
	Here's one for you.
	Or a theory, not even conspiracy.
	So yeah, the credit card part, the credit part falls apart.
	So why wouldn't...
	A bank, the bank, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury for all I care.
	What difference does it make?
	Why would they set up a computer system and say, okay, now you can get the official guaranteed bank, U.S. federal savings and loan bank.
	You'll get a debit card issued.
	Oh wait, stop.
	It would actually be a debit card.
	You don't even have to go that far.
	Just have it a Federal Reserve credit card.
	There's a Federal Reserve on it, just like a dollar bill would have across the top.
	Yeah, and it has a little signature there from the Secretary of the Treasury.
	Right.
	So it looks like a miniature dollar.
	Yeah, and you could have your face on it instead of a president.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's right.
	That's perfect.
	United States and stuff, that little eagle holding the arrows and shit.
	Actually, the way they do it, by law, you'd have to have your face on it.
	It'd be a form of identification, in fact.
	Oh, of course.
	Without a doubt.
	Because it's your ID and your payment in one.
	And if you misbehave, they can delete you.
	You're gone.
	Your card does no longer work.
	You are an invalid You know, it's possible.
	That actually makes a lot of sense that they would do that.
	Jackie Smith, who is the Home Secretary in the United Kingdom, not a very well-liked woman, is now coming out in interviews saying, oh boy, they're handing out ID cards now, and they're going to start with workers airside at one of the large airports.
	I'm not quite sure which one.
	Which arguably for, of course, Homeland Security is an important thing to have, good identification.
	But this is the prototype and entered into the prototype database of the national ID card.
	So she's handing them out and she's coming out in the press now and saying, Wow, the demand has been so big.
	People are calling my office saying, Oh, we want one too.
	Everyone wants an ID card.
	We can't make them fast enough.
	She's literally saying that in the press.
	Like someone's going to call up, ooh, can I please have my ID card?
	It's so cool.
	I want it.
	Well, you know, the Americans have their Federal Reserve Bank ID card, and it is kind of cool-looking.
	Look, you can even have your own face on it, Tommy!
	Well, I don't know how far they're going to get with this plastic-to-paper idea, because, I mean, especially here on the West Coast, where we have so many Chinese that refuse to use anything but cash.
	And they run all their businesses on a cash basis.
	And then you have places, you know, like Peter Luger there in New York, you know, which is a big, giant restaurant that's very famous and they only take cash.
	Does that tell you anything?
	As long as those guys hold out.
	Does that tell you anything about the Chinese?
	You think you might want to follow their strategy?
	You are, actually.
	Yeah, I already am.
	I've always thought the Chinese had something on the ball with that idea.
	Meanwhile, Rwanda and the Congo have dropped off the news map.
	Oops, that's done.
	Yeah, I know.
	That's kind of interesting.
	There's been a couple of mentions here and there, but it's not news anymore.
	Do you ever go to our drop on no agenda?
	No, actually.
	Well, yeah, I do.
	Did you hear the guy do you eating on air?
	Somebody sent me a link to it.
	It was funny.
	Hey, I only eat on air once in a while.
	I didn't even hear it.
	It doesn't bother me at all.
	I don't hear it.
	People get so picky.
	He's eating.
	He's not supposed to be eating.
	That's disgusting.
	I don't want to...
	Apparently, many people find it disgusting to listen to.
	Somebody eating.
	You know, there used to be a radio personality that would be, I forgot who he was, but he was local.
	And he would, his whole show was him eating.
	He'd just be eating during the entire, he was a DJ. And he'd just be eating the whole show every day.
	Hey, it's Fat Sam with you, everybody.
	Hello, I'm KLSA, here at the bay.
	How you doing?
	And would he play records?
	Would he play records or not?
	Yeah, yeah, and then he'd be drinking something.
	You could hear him sipping on a glass of something or other, you know, drinking his coffee.
	The whole show was like that, and he'd be like, this guy's just chewing away.
	But he'd be talking while chewing.
	It wasn't like he would, you know, swallow then talk.
	He would be talking while he had something in his mouth chewing.
	Well, you're a reasonably pleasant eater to look at, I'll say.
	There are some people you're like, God damn!
	Oh yeah, there's some people that crunch up their face or their cheeks get all puffy or they just chew on one side.
	They chew weird.
	But there's a lot of...
	When I was at Cal, we always had to...
	I'm laughing.
	We're actually discussing this.
	Fantastic.
	Well, have you ever seen it once and every once in a while?
	Here's another thing.
	You go to a restaurant and they'll be like, sometimes maybe a good-looking woman.
	And then you watch her eating and you go, oh my God, no wonder she's still single.
	You've seen this, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It's disgusting.
	But the one thing that's interesting about the woman who has, or the guy sometimes, but there's always the women who are more fascinating because they do the weird stuff.
	Or they just chew with their front teeth and you can tell.
	Those are the bulimic ones.
	Or scrape their teeth on the spoon.
	Have you ever seen that?
	Scrape their front teeth on the spoon.
	That's weird.
	I think it's grosser.
	It's the person...
	Again, because I don't usually watch Guise, but you see these women who, they got a spoonful or a fork, and before putting it in their mouth, their tongue comes completely out.
	Oh, and it's not a pretty tongue.
	It's not a pretty tongue.
	Huge, long tongues that come out like reptilian.
	Just makes you wonder.
	And then the thing goes in and the tongue kind of wraps it up, you know, and as soon as you go, oh my God, what does a tongue have to come out like that just to put in some food?
	And it turns you off, man.
	You can't eat.
	You're just like, oh, I'll never...
	Go ahead.
	Well, I'm going to say, the one thing you have to agree with me on is when you see, you know, you're at a restaurant and you see somebody eating like that, or they have this weird characteristic, it's, you can't stop staring at them.
	No, no, of course not.
	And you know what you should do?
	If you go out to dinner, John, the next time, and it could be man or woman, but woman is maybe even better, and she has one of those disgusting habits, you know what you can do?
	Just lob a cruise missile at him.
	You just blow that bitch right out of the water.
	I'm John C. Effin' Dvorak.
	Who the hell do you think you are to eat like that in front of me?
	I got a reputation.
	The only thing you do that's weird, which we have discussed before, is you hold your fork incorrectly.
	And it is quite annoying.
	I'm used to it now because, you know, I love you.
	It's quite annoying.
	You're not holding your fork in the proper British sense of things.
	No, Emily Post prescribed that.
	My mama, rest her soul, My mama taught me how to eat properly.
	And if you're eating soup, then you are pushing the spoon away from you.
	And you tilt away from you, not towards you, away.
	At no point may you ever drink from a soup bowl unless it has two handles on each side.
	Yeah, tell it to the Japanese.
	You're not Japanese.
	I'm just saying.
	Tell it to the Japanese.
	Don't you know that?
	Agree with me.
	You hold your fork wrong.
	You hold it like a tool and die instrument.
	I hold it like an American.
	I don't keep the upside down fork where the thing is upside down and pointing toward China and kept in the one hand and never swapped back and forth.
	No, you're allowed to swap.
	You're supposed to swap, according to Emily Post.
	Well, I know, but most Europeans don't.
	No, I'm not saying that they're proper.
	I'm talking about you and I. This is between us two.
	And you hold your fork like you're stabbing someone to death.
	And you jam it into your usually rare whatever meat it is you eat.
	And it's really, it's like a psycho thing, man.
	I'm like, God, there he goes again.
	Can't you just, and by the way, you can exert a lot more control in the proper manner.
	I need to show you the proper manner.
	This is just not, this is wrong.
	You mean you want me to do it the foppish way in which you do it?
	I would like you to see if there's any benefit.
	I believe you'll find my manner of holding the fork beneficial.
	You have more food control, and there's a lot more you can do with the actual fork.
	You describe me as sitting there, ham-fisted.
	That's exactly what you do!
	With a grip around the fork, you're like, what?
	That's exactly what you do!
	You go, punk!
	Here comes the chainsaw.
	Woo!
	Jabs it in again.
	And then it's kind of like weird how it then turns, you have to turn your whole arm to get it into your mouth because you can't point it properly because you're not using the tool the way it was meant to be implemented.
	This is nonsense.
	I believe our audience will be the judge of that.
	Here's the deal.
	One time I had something.
	It was just like something I needed to like really force to fork into this thing because it was tough or something.
	Bullshit!
	And your eyes bugged open because you're normally just looking at your plate gobbling things down.
	You're not paying much attention to me.
	And so you saw this.
	Because you make me nauseous when you're killing, you're murdering your food.
	You just bug-eyed, your hair stood up, and you went, oh my God, what are you doing?
	And I said, this thing, you know, is going to slide off the plate if I don't do this, and you've been preoccupied with it ever since.
	It was the first time we ever ate.
	I saw it, and I went, oh God, but I'm not rude, you know?
	It was like a first date.
	No, you're not rude.
	You mentioned it on the spot.
	What, are you kidding me?
	It was the second date.
	What are you doing with this fork?
	I mean, it was.
	Maybe it was the first date.
	I wasn't looking to get laid.
	I gotta tell them because it'll just bug me.
	It's like someone has food on their cheek.
	If you don't say it, you're a dick, because then you're just looking at the piece, like, fall off.
	Make that piece of food fall off.
	You may be an optimist.
	I see it every once in a while, and you say, well, maybe it'll just fall off, or you're going to wipe the mouth.
	That's wrong, man.
	You've just got to say it, because you're wasting valuable time and space by waiting for food to fall off.
	So I just have to say it.
	I think it's a timing thing with the food on the face.
	I think you can't just say it immediately.
	Like you slob, you dick.
	I can't believe that you just shoved that all over your face.
	So you have to wait.
	There's a waiting period that's involved with calling people and telling them that they've got a chunk of food on their face.
	Is that based upon the conversation at hand or is that based upon actual seconds and or minutes?
	I love it the most when it happens in a meeting and the person who's speaking has something on their face.
	And I just start, I'm like, I wait.
	I don't say it anymore.
	Like, who's going to say it first?
	Who's going to say it?
	Because, you know, with Ron, we've been in business so long that sometimes I'll say, dude, score a frickin' Tic Tac.
	You smell like death out of your beak.
	This is horrible.
	And he knows it.
	And, you know, so I can just, and I actually carry peppermints for the poor man.
	But other people, they won't say this, you know?
	And they just sit in a whole meeting room for five minutes and everyone's sitting there like...
	They're not listening to what someone has to say.
	They're thinking, it better drop off.
	The crumb has to drop off.
	Oh my God, I can't look as a crumb.
	Well, on the bad breath issue...
	You ever run into these guys...
	Just give me your how many seconds for the brush.
	It's like there's the...
	There's different kinds of, you know, these guys with cigar breath and some sort of deep lung problem they've got, so within about a two-foot area.
	Well, their sphincter doesn't close properly.
	I know a lot about this by chance, but that's your sphincter, as it's called, in your throat.
	You have another sphincter, and that just doesn't close properly, and so basically your stomach acid is just kind of letting loose into the air out of your head.
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	I never heard this.
	Oh, many, many people have.
	But I do know there's a bunch of people that have this kind of problem, and it's like this.
	And the worst ones are the ones who are close talkers.
	Oh, and they lean up right to you.
	Hey.
	That's why I never go to concerts.
	And you...
	And you have to kind of turn your head because it's like, oh, yeah, and hold your breath.
	It's just horrible.
	Yeah.
	But they have to be real close.
	And then if you back away, you know, the worst kind of close talkers is if you back off, like, I don't want you this close to me when you're talking.
	Then they move over closer.
	And they move in.
	Yeah.
	They can't take a hint.
	How many seconds, John, before you have to tell someone they have a crumb on their face?
	I think you can go 15.
	15.
	Okay, that's not too bad.
	Unless they're talking, but you don't interrupt them to say, hey, No, you can do the motion thing, where you push, you know, you look at them with an unctuous look, and then you point at some part of your own face.
	I don't like that.
	And of course, they always go to the wrong side.
	The wrong side, that's why.
	Because they immediately go to the wrong side of the face.
	Exactly.
	I think we should have a code word for it.
	Chrome Alert?
	We really need that.
	Chrome Alert is not good enough.
	So when you're in the Middle East, by the way, everybody's a close talker.
	This is why I go to very few concerts and nightclubs.
	Because the people leading into you either smell of, A, puke.
	And the worst, of course, is women who smell like puke.
	B, alcohol.
	C, as you say, cigars, particularly backstage at concerts.
	Because everyone, well, it used to be that way.
	You can't smoke anywhere these days.
	But there's always the executives that are always smoking cigars.
	It stinks.
	And because it's so noisy, they have to come in close, like...
	And by the way, when you are talking to someone at a concert, and, of course, you come very close to their ear, please do not shout.
	It is sufficient to...
	You may even put your lips on my ear as long as you speak in a normal voice.
	When you shout, you are making me deaf.
	And this happens...
	And that's why I don't go, because people always want to come up and say something to me, like...
	Have you noticed, by the way, John, that you've been to the countries in the Middle East, right?
	Yeah.
	But also, if you look at Pakistan, but a lot of the Middle Eastern countries, why is it that their audio, when they have either a radio broadcast or a television broadcast, why is it always over-modulated?
	Yeah, it's over-modulated and often sounds like they're in a bucket.
	Here it goes.
	It's like...
	It's exactly what it is.
	You know, you run into that.
	It's not just there, but you run into that in Mexico.
	Yeah, Mexico.
	I know they're always shouting.
	Why?
	But it's actually overmodulated.
	Hey buddy, you've got a microphone, you don't need to shout.
	But it's actually overmodulated.
	I mean, it is technically in the red.
	You know, it's where it should not be because it's distorted.
	Is that just like, is that the sound?
	They like it?
	They think that the signal will reach further maybe if they shout louder?
	Well, they have, you know, throughout the Middle East, they have a call to prayer throughout the day from these large...
	From the mosques, the speakers all over the place.
	They have these spires that go way up, and then they have them loaded.
	By the way, I wonder, I would like a Muslim to explain to me, because you're supposed to not change certain things after the Koran was written and all this other kind of stuff.
	And there's all these rules and regulations.
	Where is it in the Koran that you can use, you know, 10,000 watts of amplification with speakers?
	Because they used to go up there, apparently, and give the call to prayer.
	Yeah, they'd have to yell it out.
	That's a very funny sound.
	I mean, it's not funny.
	It's just a funny, pleasant...
	It's something about, you know you're in the Middle East, let's put it that way, because they all start cranking up about the same time.
	And they all compete with each other.
	Somebody explained it to me.
	And they start loading up with amplifiers and speakers, and so they go up there, or they don't go up there anymore, they just get on the microphone and start, you know, chanting.
	And then the next guy down, the next mosque down the road, he tries to be louder, because he wants, you know, to be heard over the other guy.
	So there's a cacophony.
	A number of times a day, five or six times a day, whatever.
	Usually, it just all happens at once.
	And it's just everybody screaming at the top of their lungs on these speaker systems.
	And it's totally distorted because they've got them turned up all the way.
	And I think it's the sound they've gotten used to.
	The most prized possession I have from my trip to Iraq during the war in 2003...
	And you see them around now because, of course, so many GIs have been in and out, and you can buy these things almost everywhere, at every marketplace, every town.
	It's a plastic alarm clock, and it is a...
	I'm going to say it's about three-quarters of a foot long, and it's a mosque.
	And you set the alarm, and when the alarm goes, instead of the ring that we in the West might be used to, the lights pop on, and you hear...
	And it's my favorite, my favorite trinket that I brought back from Iraq.
	Yeah, it's not bad enough that when you're in one of these, you know, cities with, you know, 500 mosques all cranking out the call for prayer at the same time as loud as they can, that you'd have a clock to do it inside the house.
	Made in China, I might point out.
	That makes sense.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But they have, yeah, it's, anyway, it gets very noisy.
	Hmm.
	But you know, some of those guys can really, there actually are some, I've heard, some of these guys actually have very pleasant voices, it's very melodic, a lot of them just screaming.
	But some of these guys, wow, that's kind of cool, I should record that.
	But, you know, it's echoey, it's distorted, often.
	Yeah, the distortion bit just always kills me.
	It's like, dude, you're just distorted.
	I don't get it either.
	I don't know why they, you know, can't turn it down.
	I think that they like it.
	That they're like, hey, that sounds good.
	You know, the sound energy is going, hey man, dude, you had some awesome sound yesterday on your show.
	That was really cool.
	I'm telling you.
	That's what my thinking was when I, you know, because of these calls for prayers all being distorted.
	Speaking of that, did you see this thing, the...
	Oh, I want to say it's the Carina...
	Oh, now I've forgotten the name.
	It's an iPhone app...
	That is on the iPhone store.
	And you hold the iPhone up with the glass touchscreen side up.
	You hold it between your thumbs and your forefingers.
	Very much like you're getting ready to eat a sandwich.
	And you blow into the microphone.
	And then it has basically four keys.
	Of course, they're virtual on top.
	Yeah, actually, we blog somebody doing Stairway to Heaven.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Exactly.
	Maybe I saw it on your site.
	Yeah.
	Oh, man, that thing is awesome.
	Blowing on a microphone is not such a great idea.
	But the instrument...
	It's a space-age, cool-type instrument.
	For me, that was...
	I don't know.
	It blew me away.
	I'm like, wow, that's a really interesting instrument they've created there out of an iPhone.
	Yeah, it's amazing.
	That platform is just astonishing.
	So I went to Costco...
	Talking about platforms.
	So I went to Costco yesterday to get something.
	For the paper.
	And so I go past the, you know, I'm always, when you go to Costco, the first thing you do is you go and you look at all the flat screens and you go, hmm.
	And they have actually the 42-inch plasma from Panasonic on sale for 699 bucks.
	And I remember when the first 42-inch plasma was shown at a CES show, I don't know, 15 years ago or 10 years or whatever, some time back.
	They were $40,000.
	Oh, I remember, yeah.
	This was maybe only five years ago.
	I think it was a while.
	I think we're underestimating the time frame.
	But it was $40,000 because you'd ask them, well, we only make a few.
	They're $40,000.
	And these were the 42-inch because the original plasmas were only 42-inch and then they got bigger.
	So now I'm looking at the exact same technology.
	Probably improved quite a bit for $699.
	Amazing.
	I know.
	It's amazing.
	But anyway, so there's that.
	I still think a 50 is about the size I wouldn't mind having.
	Anyway, so I go around the corner and they have all these laptops for sale.
	And we just did a thing on Cranky Geeks complaining about, you know, how Apple is overpricing their laptops in a down economy.
	They're going to probably, you know, it's going to hurt the company.
	And they were, you know, I don't know what these things are selling for the Apple's because they didn't have any there.
	But there was a credible...
	Let me guess the price.
	Let me guess the price.
	Well, let me describe the machine first and then you tell me the price.
	It was a credible 15 and a half inch Full keyboard, full screen, beautiful machine with 250 gigabyte hard drive.
	But the double DDR memory, it was a gateway.
	And it was just, it was like if you were going to buy a laptop.
	What's the processor speed?
	Processor speed?
	It had a dual core sum.
	It was fast.
	I didn't have the exact speed on there.
	So this obviously did not qualify as a netbook, which is what everyone's talking about these days.
	No, it's not a netbook.
	They had netbooks there too.
	I'll say a 299.
	No.
	Well, that would be nice.
	No, it's $5.99.
	And I thought it was, for the machine, for what it was, and it also had kind of an enameled red case.
	It was gorgeous.
	And it was $5.99.
	Oh, yeah, no, I've seen these.
	These are the ones that you can get in all kinds of different colors.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, no, there's a big push for this.
	They're advertising them all over the UK. I think they're really pushing a younger market.
	Did it seem like that from the store model and the display?
	Well, they just had them all lined up.
	They weren't doing anything fancier than that.
	But the more expensive ones were like $8.99.
	They were loaded.
	And they did have a netbook there.
	And the netbook was $3.99.
	It wasn't $2.99.
	But they had a netbook for $3.99, which you could actually use.
	It was little.
	But...
	I'm thinking $5.99 for this laptop was like, wow!
	I stood in line for three hours for the Google phone, and that was a little throwback to you, my dear.
	You made a joke on Tech 5 about that.
	I did?
	Yeah.
	Oh, about people standing in line, nobody standing in line for the Google phone?
	Anyway, so I got the Google phone, and what I'm most impressed with, it's useless as a phone.
	I mean, it's no battery life, there's a whole bunch of things really wrong with it.
	But the operating system, interesting.
	Why?
	Well, my understanding is that the Android operating system is open source, which means it's transportable.
	That seems to me like a fantastic operating system for, let's just call it net devices.
	It could be a net book or anything.
	I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could actually get done with the operating system.
	Like what?
	Well, really, anything I would do on a computer because of the integration with the Google services.
	So, you know, I needed to create a Word document, you know, even though I know you're not a big fan of cloud computing, but I can see certainly, in fact, the other day, I don't use Google Docs very often, if at all, but I didn't have my computer with me, so I fired up a browser and opened up a Google Word doc and, you know, saved it, and it was quite convenient for the point that I was using it, which is, you know, not like real Office shared document type stuff, which is what Office contains, and links and integration, etc., but just to write something.
	And I can see how the Android operating system would fulfill the needs of maybe as high as 90% of all computer users.
	You know, you take all the...
	Well, consumer computer users, let's put it that way.
	Well, the thing is, you know, design...
	I mean, this is a...
	They realize that this is a platform, so yeah, that could happen.
	I mean, we can transition this sort of thing.
	I wouldn't mind it.
	If I had a little netbook-type thing that I carried around, this is the kind of stuff I would want it to do.
	I saw what happened with Windows Smaller, because I had that god-awful smartphone for a day, which I gave back to Chris Craven's crying.
	I said, please, don't make me do this again.
	So making Windows smaller, literally smaller in execution space or whatever, as well as display, just doesn't work.
	You need something that's built from a different mindset, and I think they've got something going there.
	I was impressed.
	Well, good.
	Steve Ballmer came out and said that it was a dead end and it could never make any money.
	Because it's an operating system.
	He doesn't want people to replace his operating system.
	Apparently not.
	Maybe he should replace his operating system.
	That's what I'm thinking.
	But anyway, so the phone, yeah, I haven't heard it.
	Nobody's buying these phones.
	I mean, you know, I think the phone has potential and it may sneak up on Apple, but it's almost like a replay of the history of the computing business, almost like a fractal.
	We have, like, Apple coming out, like they did with the Apple II, with a new device that is a, in this case, kind of a computer, a new type of computer, a new platform, the iPhone.
	And they, you know, kind of own the place for a while.
	And then the PC mentality comes along, a little more open, less rigid, you don't have to sell to the Apple Store.
	All the advantages, you know, you just need one or two, you know, killer apps.
	In other words, something that...
	In the case of the Apple II, it was dominated when it first came out.
	VisiCalc made the Apple II and started the personal computer revolution.
	And as soon as Lotus 1-2-3 showed up on the PC, the whole, everything shifted.
	Yeah.
	I had jazz.
	Those guys got fucked.
	There's jazz and symphony.
	Yeah.
	Those guys got screwed, didn't they?
	Well, jazz was also done by Lotus.
	Hmm.
	You're right.
	I remember when we took our company public in 1996, it was a huge problem because the entire legal and financial system would only work with WordPerfect 4.1.
	And it has to do with the formatting.
	And of course, we were all on Windows 95 and Office 95.
	And the amount of time and subsequently money that was spent on transcoding documents from an Office format to a WordPerfect format was hundreds of thousands.
	I'm convinced.
	Could be.
	Transcoding is a problem.
	That's never going to go away.
	I mean, we have to do that with our data.
	We're putting our stuff on, like, CDs.
	Every once in a while, I find some old CD. Oh, I forgot I even had this.
	It was a backup or something.
	You put it in the machine and you read it.
	I have tapes.
	I have our wedding tapes.
	I have...
	Many, many television shows.
	They're on USVHS or worse.
	I have some on U-Matic.
	I even have 2-inch and 4-inch BNC reels.
	You can't find players for them anymore.
	Right.
	I know everyone's scrambling to get those old Ampex.
	There's only a few of those Ampex, you know, those big two-inchers.
	Yeah, the two-inch forehead machines.
	I used to calibrate those, and they taught me how to do it.
	So you put your tape on, you get your bars up, right, and you get your scope going, because you had to calibrate it on an oscilloscope, and then you actually had to kick the machine bottom left, just a little, like, tap there, and then you started moving the knobs.
	And it worked, and that's how you calibrated them.
	We're the last few guys that can do that.
	Here's something.
	I was talking about the guys at our studio at Mevio headquarters the other day.
	They were like shining lights around and moving stuff and were shining into the camera.
	And I said, you know, there was a day when if you did that, if you've shown a light into the camera, you would probably have a camera operator come up to you and hit you in the face with a fist.
	Right down your throat.
	Because it would burn into the actual tubes.
	The Vidicon tubes.
	Yeah.
	And we had a guy whose job, he was called the shader.
	Remember those?
	The shader?
	No, but I know what they did.
	Yeah, the shader would sit in the control room, along with the vision mixer, as they called it then, and the director and the assistant director and the audio engineer and the tape ops, or sometimes tape ops were in a separate compartment.
	And the shader would have...
	Let's say you had a five or six camera shoot and he would have all of these almost like throttles on an airplane or a ship.
	These big controls.
	And he would sit there and he would be continuously making the light level.
	He would be shading the cameras so that you didn't have one all of a sudden that was really light and the other one was really dark.
	And also he would protect as much as he could all the other equipment from a big light burst.
	Back in the day.
	During that era, that's of course when they had a, you know, before we came up with CCD technology, which doesn't have this burn-in problem.
	Yeah, once it was chips, it was like, oh my gosh, we can do concerts.
	Back in the day, you can still probably rent old concerts where you see a camera move across the lights and then for at least 15 or 20 seconds, you'll still see the trails of the lights in the video.
	In the tube, yeah.
	I know it's a real problem, but that's where the idea of you can't wear white shirts.
	That's right.
	And so, oh, you can't wear a white shirt.
	You have to wear a blue shirt.
	And people should know this.
	Most people still believe this is true, but in fact, you can wear a white shirt.
	Well, let me just contradict you.
	It does change the aperture sometimes because a lot of this stuff is automated.
	Let me just jump in that for one second.
	We were watching the MTV European Music Awards two days ago.
	Kanye West, who always has to have some big production number, they put down their ballet floor, which was kind of in the center of the audience stage, was black the whole evening.
	They rolled out a white ballet floor.
	He came out completely dressed in white, except for a black tie, from head to toe, and he had white shoes on.
	He looked like a floating head.
	It was the funniest thing.
	Sometimes, if you're doing white on white, it doesn't work.
	I don't care what you say.
	Yeah, no, I'm sure you do.
	And I don't recommend people wear white.
	I'm just saying you can do it.
	But in the olden days, if you wore white, you'd burn out the tube.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And it would flare.
	The other problem was, you know, white.
	And there's still illegal colors that seem to have issues with even the CCDs.
	They're called illegal.
	And there's a red that you can't use because it flares.
	The camera can't focus on it.
	And the problem with some of these reds is they have a...
	And you'll see this if you look at...
	They actually call it a flare.
	Fuzzy edge.
	They call it a flare, and it does still occur, usually on location shoots, when the sun is coming from a weird angle and, of course, has all colors of it in the light spectrum.
	And you get a flare, and then you have to block it off somehow.
	But yeah, in the olden days, yeah, you're right.
	These guys were not happy when you put a light in the camera.
	No, they would literally knock your teeth out because they were responsible for it.
	So that, ladies and gentlemen, is our old-time broadcasting anecdote.
	Well, I've got plenty more.
	But it was fun because I literally...
	You were probably around when they still had three or four lenses on the camera and would twist them instead of zooming.
	Tell me it's not true.
	I wasn't on TV then, but I was a little kid.
	My wife was.
	Patricia was when she was 16.
	When I was a little kid in Chicago, I would go to WGN, I believe, because they had an open studio with kind of a gallery that you could go and watch...
	It was the first all-color station when they were making the transition from black and white to color.
	There's a station in Chicago.
	They went all-color right away.
	1951, I think.
	No, no, it wasn't.
	No, it was later than that.
	It was later.
	It was much later than that.
	I don't think the colors thing began until the mid...
	Mid-50s at least.
	About 56, 57 is when it started.
	Anyway, so I would go in there as a little kid, and I would just sit there and watch them do TV, but they had those old clunking...
	I mean, they had the first color cameras.
	Those things were huge, and they had the big crazy lens.
	They didn't have the zoom lens yet, which has changed things a lot.
	But it's a throwback to when they first tried to do HDTV, and if you went to the CES show, when they were doing analog HDTV, which never caught on.
	I think the Japanese invested heavily into it and lost their pants.
	But the HDTV cameras that were for analog were...
	Unbelievable.
	They would look like a 70mm kind of a...
	I mean, they were huge, monstrous monstrosities, and you could just see, oh man, these guys aren't good.
	Nobody's going to HDTV if they're going to have to buy these cameras.
	But it reminded me of these huge clunky color cameras that they used to use.
	Yeah, there's so much that has changed so quickly, and I've seen how...
	Patricia's gone through most of the change pretty well, because she always jokes herself saying that she's from the Bakelite phone era, which, of course, you remember those, John, Bakelite phones.
	I remember them.
	I had a Bakelite phone in my room.
	I still have one.
	Yeah, sure.
	No, we tracked one down.
	I mean, I think they're collectible.
	They're just the coolest phone.
	Yeah, and they're carbon-based.
	And, of course, it was rotary.
	Remember that when we had to turn a dial to connect to someone?
	Remember that, John?
	No, I don't.
	When was that?
	Remember prank phone calls and you just dial a number at random?
	That culture is gone, man.
	It's gone.
	Well, you can still dial phone numbers at random.
	Yeah, but people don't do it, do they?
	Because you can email people at random, you can text people at random.
	It's no fun.
	Our lives are too filled up with other shit.
	No time to play pranks.
	Unless, of course, you're calling Sarah Palin and pretending to be a foreign dignitary.
	Yeah, well, that was good for five minutes of attention.
	So, there's also a thing called caller ID and laws against prank calls.
	True, true.
	That's what I'm saying, man.
	The culture is gone.
	All the good stuff.
	All the fun stuff.
	We had joy.
	We had fun.
	We had seasons in the sun.
	Well, I guess we're running out of material.
	I'm still miffed that you say that I'm putting my reputation at stake by saying we shouldn't just throw bombs at people for no reason.
	No, I never said that.
	I said the fact that you're defending the Taliban, you're putting your reputation at stake.
	Here's the only thing I'm defending.
	The poppy fields were almost gone under the Taliban regime.
	When the coalition forces moved in, they moved back up to 120% capacity.
	That's all I'm saying.
	See any jets lately that crashed that had coke on board that have a government seal on the side?
	You should Google that.
	Yeah?
	Yeah, you should Google that.
	A jet crash filled with coke?
	But coke is not the same as heroin.
	It comes from a different part of the world.
	I'm sorry.
	You're right.
	We've got our hands all over that, too.
	No, that's the heroin coming from Afghanistan.
	And the other flights are always coming from...
	There's a whole scheme for this.
	For this drug running.
	It's Iran-Contra.
	It's the same thing.
	So if anybody wants to see a good movie...
	Check out.
	It's really fascinating, actually.
	The movie, it's a documentary called Cocaine Cowboys.
	Oh, do tell.
	Oh, it was on HBO recently.
	I watched it.
	It's just a jaw-dropper because it tells the entire story.
	Is this the Nina, Arizona thing?
	No, no, this is mostly about Florida.
	And including the era just before, I guess it was before Ronald Reagan, during the Carter administration, you could just basically fly tons of cocaine into the country land, and the cops were in on the deal, and you could unload with no problem.
	Yeah, this is what Doc McGee, Bon Jovi's manager, was caught for, and he had to do that benefit concert in Russia that I went to.
	Because his Learjet was flying shit into Florida.
	But they have a lot of the players that didn't get killed.
	And then they talk about this crazy woman who was like, boy, this is frightening, horrible woman who was like the capo de capo of the whole scene down there at one point.
	Who is just a bloodthirsty person.
	And it's just a really interesting documentary.
	But two or three of the guys that were obviously heavy into it, they went to jail and they came out and they were narrating a lot of this.
	And their anecdotes are just fascinating because it was just...
	One thing after another.
	And he also discussed the Miami Vice stories and how they were bold because this would never have been done that way.
	And with long descriptions of the mechanisms so he could bring something in and I could call it and no one could point the finger at you.
	It was very interesting.
	Griseldo Blanco, also known as La Madrina, the godmother, the black widow, and the cocaine queen of Miami.
	Yeah, her.
	Man, she looks gnarly.
	She looks like she could be on The Sopranos as a guy.
	She was a mean person.
	And she disappeared.
	So anyway, if you follow all those lines, was there any mention of the Bush family in that?
	Because the Bush family definitely had planes and all kinds of stuff going on there during that time.
	There's a lot of good stuff in it.
	Just watch it.
	But the Bushes, I don't believe, were mentioned.
	Okay.
	Would you burn that to a disc for me?
	If they play it again...
	Oh, you didn't record it?
	No.
	The reason I didn't record it is because I didn't catch the very beginning.
	So if it comes up again...
	So I can't get either my daughter, her boyfriend, or my wife to watch Chris Rock with me, so I had to watch it alone.
	They weren't interested.
	Huh.
	What did you think?
	It was okay.
	What I told you earlier in the hallway the other day, I didn't like that they cut between ten different concerts.
	Yeah, that was lame.
	That's no good.
	Because it's very difficult.
	It's hard enough.
	It's almost like turning the mic off during the audience reaction to the joke.
	Yeah.
	And he tells a joke and then they cut to a different audience reacting.
	That's wrong.
	It's a wrong rhythm.
	I didn't like that at all.
	Yeah, it seemed a little corny.
	I mean, what was the point?
	But, obviously, the way he ended up, that was very funny.
	You know, the takeaway.
	Which, basically, with all of Chris Rock's material is, women, you need to perform oral sex on us and ingest.
	That's basically the takeaway.
	It was funny.
	It was funny.
	Yeah, well once he got off the political stuff.
	That was not funny.
	I thought he was a little too political at the beginning and he was like preachy and I don't, you know, I don't watching a comic to be lectured to, you know.
	Well, it was less of like humor about the current situation and more like, you know, like he was really trying to tell a story.
	It was unnecessary.
	He doesn't need to do that.
	Just tell some funny jokes.
	So anyway, there's a couple other things that you need to watch.
	I'll try to get you some copies.
	Yeah, I don't know why I'm back though.
	The Cocaine Cowboys thing shows up again, which it should.
	I'll see if I can get a copy.
	We have to get some sling boxes between the two of us.
	Yeah.
	And with the code so we can look at each other's television sets.
	Well, particularly so that you can record stuff.
	That's really what's cool.
	If you can control my skybox or whatever, I'm going to set it up right on my end when we move.
	So beginning of the year, I'll have it all set up.
	I'm going to have one set up in Washington because I like the Canadian television shows a lot.
	This hour has 22 minutes.
	It's one of the best things on TV. I love that show.
	That's great.
	And so I'm going to try to get that, and then I'll hook up one here, and then you can...
	See, the thing is, because we're on different time frames, you could actually watch my TV remotely when I'm sleeping, and you could, you know, see what's on HBO or whatever I have.
	I have pretty much everything off the Dish Network.
	And I said pay-per-view.
	And then you could, you know, I think if I can do that, because you'll be sleeping if I could control your set, you know, because there's a remote control thing.
	Well, I'm giving you your own set, because I don't want to be watching my porn and all of a sudden John's like flipping the channels and shit.
	I don't think so.
	No, no, when you're up, you disable that.
	I mean, there's no reason for...
	And by the way, I'm not usually up at 5 in the morning or, you know, when you'd be watching TV. No, that's when I'm watching porn.
	Hey, you turned off the channel.
	Changing the channel.
	Don't be changing the channel.
	I'm giving you your own setup, dude.
	Okay, fine.
	I don't have a problem with that.
	I'm going to make it right for you.
	No, I'm going to make it right for you.
	It's just a flip a switch.
	So yeah, that's a good idea.
	I think people should just do that in general and kind of keep up and be a little more universal.
	That's what IPTV is supposed to give us.
	This is essentially a precursor to IPTV where I should be able to just go online and punch up what's going on on the English TV stations and get it right to my set immediately.
	I don't see why it's a big deal not to do that.
	Cost of the experience.
	You can get a British TV on your computer and it'll be a small screen, but to stream all that shit in reasonable...
	And we want it in high def, right?
	Because what do we have the high def TV set for?
	It's cost.
	We had this exact same conversation on Twit when I was last on.
	It costs too much.
	Eventually things come down.
	No, no, no.
	Eventually things come down.
	It doesn't matter.
	Things go down, things go up.
	Cost comes down, then oh, let's do HD. Then all of a sudden the cost is up again.
	I know what this shit costs, man.
	Bandwidth is not free, Leo Laporte.
	Bandwidth is not free.
	Attention, attention.
	I think standard definition is fine.
	Even for standard definition.
	And then you want the experience to be...
	You don't want any buffering when you switch channels.
	So you need humongous pipes.
	No.
	It's a...
	No, you're not...
	So you're the old man here.
	No, I'm not the old man.
	I'm being realistic about cost.
	I'd love that.
	Are you kidding me?
	I was streaming audio in 1993...
	On Sun Microsystems machines with the PCM codec on 56K modems.
	I built my first modem out of bakelite phones, actually, and cardboard.
	I had an acoustic modem.
	I built myself on my VIC-20.
	And before that, I was programming on my ZX-80.
	Most people don't even remember that one, the Sinclair.
	They know the ZX81. I'm the ZX80, dude.
	We call him Z. Yeah, but I'm international.
	No, that's British.
	Well, it's South African, too.
	As good as Clive Sinclair's computers were, man, that bike thing of his, that electric car, that sucked.
	Remember that?
	Well, he was a one-hit wonder from what I could tell.
	I met him a couple of times.
	He's a nice guy.
	I'm sure he is.
	But one of the best...
	One of the best lines, he had this interesting line, somebody caught him, one of the writers I knew, got him the following quote, asking him, because he was into simplicity, so they asked him, so Clive, why are you using an 8-bit micro, there was a transition taking place between 8 and 16-bit computing, and so he says, Clive, why are you using an 8-bit microprocessor?
	And he said, because I couldn't find a 4-bit.
	That's funny.
	Ah, those are the days.
	I have his original calculator.
	Oh, the Sinclair calculator?
	Yeah, a little bitty thing with a weird kind of display.
	I have a lot of cool old things.
	I still have the ZX80 somewhere.
	I've got my VIC-20.
	This is the stuff Patricia hates.
	She's like, you keep schlepping all that shit?
	Yeah, that's my museum.
	When I die, some kid will be like...
	If she die, she'll throw it out.
	Along with my high school t-shirts and varsity jackets from college, from the radio station.
	My uniform from Iraq.
	My camouflage.
	My stamp collection.
	It's all going to go.
	It's going to throw it all out.
	I have the first cell phone.
	One of those big giant bricks.
	Yeah, I got the big brick.
	The one that stands up?
	Yeah.
	Oh, I've been wanting to collect one of those.
	Yeah.
	It has a really puny battery in comparison to its size, and it never lasted that long.
	Right.
	I would love to get one of those big stand-up bricks and then kind of retrofit it with a real cell phone inside and use it.
	It's weird because this one, here's what I did.
	This one had a connector on the back, which was a standard RJ145 jack or whatever, for a car kit.
	And I found out that if you plugged in the Bakelite phone handset, actually that was not the Bakelite anymore, it was plastic, but just a regular handset, one of those black handsets that would be on the wall unit, or like on a payphone, and you plug that into that, because it had the same kind of jack, you plugged it in, it would work.
	And so I would be in my car and I'd be talking on a regular phone.
	On a regular handset.
	It was cool.
	That's probably safer for you than putting that big device up against your ear.
	Somewhere I still have my original, they called it a mobile phone.
	And I had this in 81.
	And the mobile phone was essentially a four-channel two-way radio with a huge wattage on it.
	It was like 50 watts or 30 watts or something, you know, reasonably strong.
	And you had this mounted in your car, and you have to call up.
	And you'd have to call up with your call sign.
	Mine was...
	Yeah, the mobile operator.
	Anton 3414.
	Yeah, 3414.
	And the mobile operator would dial the call, and then you'd be talking to someone, and you'd have to say, over.
	How you doing?
	Good, over.
	Half duplex.
	I'm on the way home, over.
	Yeah, that was the days of the mobile phone.
	Actually, that's one of the problems you have, you know, with mobile phones.
	They used to have these things before the cellular system was invented.
	These mobile phones, and they had high wattage, and people would buy these.
	These are very expensive.
	It's like thousands of dollars a month.
	Thousands, yeah.
	To have it in your car.
	And...
	And they were never very popular.
	I mean, because they were so expensive and inconvenient.
	What was the point?
	In fact, they were frowned upon by most.
	Oh, what are you, so fucking important?
	You need a cell phone?
	You need a car phone?
	Or a mobile phone.
	No, we called it a car phone.
	We called it a car phone.
	Right, a car phone.
	Yeah, no, and then what culturally changed, now you can't get people off these damn phones.
	They're just yakking all day, they're walking around.
	You can go around the city, everybody's got a phone to their head and they're not talking to each other.
	Everyone's zoned out.
	No, no, man, they've got the Bluetooth earpiece on and it's like a science fiction movie.
	People walking down the street, they're beaming in, they're checking in.
	I mean, don't we realize that we are living in Star Trek?
	It's kind of...
	I just don't...
	I'm not...
	I don't think you need to be that plugged in.
	I don't think it's healthy.
	No, it can't be.
	But anyway, so people are yak, yak, yak, yakking constantly.
	And if they're not yakking, then they got the two earbuds in on their iPod, and they got the sound cranked up so loud you can hear it across the street.
	And, of course, they'll be deaf shortly.
	And, you know, they're completely, you know, if you wanted to say something to somebody on the street, like, hey, watch out for that curb, boom, down they go, because they're not listening.
	Oh, yeah, the thing, I can't walk down the street not listening to the traffic.
	I consider it to be dangerous.
	And I said, take the train, first class from Waterloo to Guilford.
	And it's only one car.
	But no matter when you're traveling in this thing, but particularly going back like on the 730, it's filled with people, multiple, always they have a cell phone, a Blackberry, and a laptop.
	And they're on all three.
	Everyone's working.
	Everyone's jacked in.
	You know, the phones are ringing all the time.
	It's disturbing.
	It's totally disturbing.
	It's like, what are you getting out of this?
	You know?
	And they used to have a guy that would come by and he had papers and stuff, right?
	They don't have that anymore.
	No one's buying papers.
	I buy it.
	I still buy the paper.
	Now, the paper's actually more efficient than the laptop if you want to really plow through a lot of material.
	Hell yeah!
	It's lighter than the MacBook Air.
	Yeah.
	Except for the weekend edition of The Times.
	Yeah, actually, the fact is that we're building in inefficiencies and liking it.
	And it's kind of disturbing.
	Thank you, ma'am.
	May I have another?
	That's right.
	You know what we are?
	We're good slaves, John.
	That's what it is.
	We're good slaves.
	And we're ready.
	We're ready to be told what to do.
	Just send it to my BlackBerry, President Obama, President-elect Obama, and I'm ready to go.
	Just tell me.
	And I'm waiting for my small business credits.
	Yeah, there you go.
	That's what I'm waiting for.
	Well, I'm sure it was waiting.
	It's at the top of his agenda.
	No, it's at the top of his agenda.
	Credits, R&D credits for small business, creating jobs in America, doing all that, providing health care, doing all that.
	Check, check, check.
	Ticks all my boxes.
	I'm ready for my credit.
	Other people need help with a mortgage.
	I don't need that.
	Just send me my credit for the work we're doing as a small business.
	That's all I'm asking for.
	Then I'll be a believer.
	Yeah, you'll get your credit.
	On my tombstone.
	So I think while we're waiting for that, I think people are waiting for the show to end.
	Oh shit, okay.
	That's my cue.
	Hey John, let's bring that up another time again.
	That was kind of fun.
	Hello?
	Yeah, I'm in.
	I'm shocked.
	Why?
	I don't know if I'm shocked more by the lobbing guns at Iranians or the way you eat with your fork.
	I think the fork might actually have a slight lead.
	I'm going to take a small movie of my eating, and then we'll let the public decide.
	Yes.
	Oh, you like it?
	Thank you, ma'am.
	May I have another?
	You want to be slapped around by our audience?
	They will tell you.
	I will take a small movie of my fork utilization.
	Yeah, with a pinky up or down?
	In your ass, actually, is where I was thinking would be a good spot.
	Hey, John?
	Yes.
	I love you.
	Mean it.
	I really do.
	All right.
	Coming to you from the affluent suburb of Surrey in Guilford, where we use our utensils properly, my name's Adam Curry.
	And I'm John C. Dvorak, coming at you from Stab City in the northern part of Silicon Valley.

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