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Aug. 13, 2009 - No Agenda
01:23:22
121: The Vivek Kundra "Hollow" Deck
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Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.
It's August 13, 2009.
This is your Gitmo Nation audio publication, episode 121.
This is No Agenda.
Coming to you from the Crackpot Command Center, embedded in the minimum security containment cell in the heart of Gitmo Nation, West San Francisco, California.
I'm your chief crackpot officer, Adam Curry.
Adam Curry.
And here in northern Silicon Valley, sitting here with a glass of pure lemon juice, I'm John C. Dvorak.
It's Crackpot and Buzzkill!
First, complete opener in three shows.
Oh.
We're getting there.
I'm no longer stumbling and bumbling.
Well, I blew the last one.
If you remember, it was just...
Oh, I'm John Dvorak.
Oh yeah, we all remember, John.
Oh yeah, I'm sure we all remember.
Yes.
Hey, good morning to you.
Yes, it actually looks like it might be a nice day today.
In the morning!
In San Francisco.
I didn't see any of the meteors last night I was supposed to see.
I think it was cloudy all around the world.
Of course, I couldn't see it from the city because there's too much ambient light and we had fog.
It's called light pollution.
Yeah, and I was reading that the UK had cloudy skies.
The continent had cloudy skies.
I'm just not reading.
I don't think many people saw it.
You know, I could see stars last night, but I just never saw any meteors.
You have to be out in the middle of Oregon someplace or out in the high desert.
Yeah, that's my next plan.
Yeah, not a bad idea.
To be out there somewhere.
Hey, John, we've got a lot to talk about today.
Actually, a lot and not a lot.
You wrote a piece yesterday.
Was it yesterday?
The day before yesterday?
Was it yesterday?
It seems like weeks ago.
It seems like weeks ago.
And this is actually about Vivek Kundra, the federally appointed chief information officer of the United States of America, which I think the...
The impetus for the piece was based upon last week's show where we wound up talking about this guy for a couple of minutes at the very end of the show.
Yeah, well, you still have my two clips from last week we didn't play.
Oh, I've taken your two clips and raised them five, my friend.
Yes, well, let's play the clip that...
I have a couple of clips there.
The clip that triggered my looking into the guy.
See, I had it all set up differently.
I didn't want to...
This is a no agenda show.
I've got my own agenda, not your agenda.
There we have it.
I do not.
No, I can play what you were talking about.
I think this was the clip you were referring to.
Actually, was that the one with the real-time data?
Was that the one?
Yeah.
This is it, I think.
Well, from my perspective, of course, we're seeing a huge...
I should mention, this is from the FCC broadband panel, which John and I, both by coincidence, I guess, or not, were watching separately.
Divine intervention.
Indeed.
And I had to pull a couple of clips from this because the CIO of the United States, he talks like, huh?
You just sit there and go like, what?
And wait until you find out what the guy's really responsible for.
Huge impact, I would say, on the IT dashboard where it's actually moving the way the federal government actually spends money.
And we're making decisions...
From a public policy perspective based on real-time feedback that we're getting from the public itself.
And the second part of that question was around data.
So on the data side, one of the things we recognize is that we don't really know which data feeds are going to lead to better analysis.
So what we're doing is we're trying to release as much data as possible, with the exception, of course, of information that may be classified or sensitive in nature.
In other words, nothing.
As a result of that, we're finding a lot of innovation happening out there.
A lot of people are spotting patterns that we hadn't seen before.
I mean, just flyontime.us.
Yeah, this is my favorite, flyontime.us.
This is a fantastic service from our government.
Just looking at the airlines, we have people who have come up to us.
Have you ever come up to someone?
Yes.
I'd love to come up to this guy.
Can I come up to you and say something?
This is fascinating.
We never thought this flight was actually always this late.
I love this.
We never thought this flight was actually this late.
I'm going to change my entire life around it.
We had to see it on our phone.
People are changing their behavior based on that.
But more importantly, I think what's happening is even at the local level.
In the District of Columbia, for example, based on where you're standing, if you have an iPhone, you can pull up an application and you can see what the closest metro station is near you.
Wow, isn't that called Google?
It's unbelievable.
And you can find a metro station, you know, without having to look at the big giant sign that says metro station.
Metro station this way?
And when the next train is coming...
Oh, who needs a schedule?
...both directions real time.
You could also see on the same app, crime near where you're standing.
And as you move, the data gets updated.
The data got updated.
I'm moving towards crime!
I love that.
Listen to that again.
That's fantastic.
The same app.
Crime near where you're standing.
And as you move, the data gets updated.
You can also see...
I love the...
I love the group.
Yeah, that's the group, by the way, that you're hearing.
Not me and Adam.
It's a group.
Climb up the...
Douche.
See the closest bars and restaurants and...
Which, by the way, is where crime happens to be, near bars and restaurants.
You can make some really interesting decisions based on real-time...
I need to change my behavior.
Yeah, let me rewind that.
I need to make some interesting decisions based upon this crime and bar data.
So you can make some really interesting decisions based on real-time information that you have access to.
And the idea here is if we could create a national grid around information, that it will influence...
Why didn't he add the...
The sex offenders database to that.
I mean, then you can really, really route your way to the nearest metro station that has no crime, lots of bars, and no sex offenders.
I mean, that would change my behavior, John.
He must have forgotten.
The way we act in terms of moving us towards making better decisions because we have access to real-time data and the government has made a decision not to keep that data secret but make it public.
When was it secret?
Secret bar data.
Secret data about the bars.
All right, so the reason why we've jumped all over this is because it's actually a follow-on to this $18 million website known as recovery.gov.
And you know what?
If there actually was some transparency, maybe we wouldn't even be having this discussion because we, of course, looked at all the documents and everything's been redacted pages and pages long.
Of actual information from Smartronics have been blacked out so you can't see who's really on the project, what the process is, because, of course, that is the type of data that is not supposed to be free and available because, you know, that doesn't involve bars and crime.
Actually, it probably does involve crime.
But they've redacted the crimeful parts in the Smartronics contract.
And so when you start looking into this guy, and there's a couple of guys we looked into, including the chief technology officer, you've just got to ask some questions.
And that's basically what your article did, John, is you looked at his claims of background, what he's done, and really why he is...
Not only why he's a candidate or why he was selected as the Chief Information Officer, but what makes him the best of the best?
Yeah, which is nothing.
He doesn't have anything.
And the fact that he's being defended by so many people, and we'll talk about that later, is almost mind-boggling to me.
I mean, this is a guy who's essentially, for all practical purposes, a He's a young guy.
He did a lot of campaigning, apparently, and he mixed it up with the right people.
And somebody picked him for one job, and they went back and forth, him and Chopra.
The other one.
The technology officer of the United States.
And I started looking at, for one thing, he claims to have a degree in psychology and biology, and there's no reference to biology in any of his transcripts or in any of his records.
His degree is in psychology.
It took him six years to get it.
They call him a whiz kid.
I'm wondering why it takes six years for a whiz kid to get a degree in psychology, which is kind of one of those degrees, like sociology.
Like zoology.
Yeah, in zoology.
And so that kind of caught me off guard.
Then we couldn't find his master's degree, which we did find, but it wasn't really at the University of Maryland College Park.
It was at the...
What the locals consider the kind of the Maryland's version of the University of Phoenix.
We got a lot of notes about that.
And so he does have a degree in information technology, whatever that is, but it's one of those, you know, it's not from Harvard.
I mean, his partner, Anish Chopra, has been...
Better chops when it comes to his academic background, but he's basically a bureaucrat.
Anyway, so we started looking into this, and then the thing that really got me was he was the CEO of this Creostar company.
He apparently worked for some other company that had the name Star at the end, so they sold to...
Exostar, I think, wasn't it?
Yeah, and they sold to some other...
No, the company that he used to work for, which was sold to Exostar, I guess they didn't keep him on, and he went off and started his own company out of his house, and there's no evidence.
In fact, somebody just sent me a note today showing that it was like the company basically folded because he failed to pay some fees, and he didn't rip the air.
And that's actually on Twitter.
I have a Twitter to that.
Wait, let me finish.
Here's the thing that bugs me.
He was keep calling himself the CEO of this company.
And if you're going to start calling yourself the CEO of a one-man company, or you and your wife, I think it's a little misleading.
And this is the problem that we're having in this country today, is the honesty factor.
And if anybody wants to defend somebody who wants to call themselves the CEO over and over in all their bios, and that's one of their stepping stones to this job, this great CEO position.
I'm the CEO! Welcome, CEO! I'm coming in!
And when you're just one guy in a sole proprietorship that's really got no business, why are you calling yourself the CEO unless you're trying to?
And I want to point this out to people like Tim O'Reilly who thinks that this Kundra guy is the greatest guy since sliced bread.
Hey, Tim, it's called being misleading.
He's misleading.
His entire bio, his background, the stuff that he says on these panels makes it sound like he knows something.
This is all part of a campaign to mislead the public.
It's no different than the banks saying, well, free lifetime checking.
A little mistake, and boom!
No ATM fees.
Yeah, no ATM fees.
Boom!
Where's the three bucks?
Why are we taking three bucks out?
I mean, this kind of thing is unacceptable.
We're sick of it, and this guy is just another example.
And why would anybody defend him?
And what gets me is...
And where's the biology degree?
So what gets me is the actual need for a CIO. Because this is actually a title that cropped up in the mid to late 90s as we had the dot-com boom.
And many companies had a chief technology officer.
Usually, if it was a new dot-com company, it was usually the co-founder, the guy who invented some technology.
And I will say...
CTOs are always inventors.
And myself, without any degree in anything, except a, well, I've minored in herbology.
I was the chief technology officer of a publicly listed company on NASDAQ, which I co-founded.
I do not consider myself to be a technologist at all.
I can hack together some Apple scripts.
But at a certain point, people started calling me the CIO when they were talking about our company.
Like, I'm not the CIO. And this was a new job that was created, and I kind of figured it out.
What the CIO at the time was, when this position was literally just made up, was they needed a guy who could translate mumbo-jumbo technology stuff into marketing speak.
That's essentially what a CIO did.
And so you had companies like Avon, and they have a chief technology officer at Avon.
They have huge, big iron back end, but then they needed someone who could talk, you know, marketing speak and Internet speak.
And so this chief information officer function was created.
But after a while, it kind of became the role of an accountant.
And I read from the White House press release, March 5th, 2009, one day, I will add, one day after he resigned as chief technology officer of the state, of the Commonwealth of Maryland, one day after he resigned as chief technology officer of or was it Virginia?
Virginia.
Probably Virginia.
On the very same day when there was a raid on the office and the people who reported directly to him were...
I think that raid thing was the D.C. office, wasn't it?
Washington, D.C.? That was the D.C. office, yes.
So he resigned on March 4th.
March 5th they raided the office, and we'll get to that in a second.
And President Obama...
Name is Vivek Kundra, the Federal Chief Information Officer, CIO at the White House.
This is a federal position.
So this is a part of the executive branch.
It's the real deal.
Yeah, you don't want a bunch of slouches in there.
Well, when you listen to what he's responsible for, the Federal Chief Information Officer directs the policy and strategic planning of federal information technology investments and is responsible for oversight of federal technology spending.
So he holds the budget.
He holds the money.
Yeah.
But that's billions and billions of dollars.
And I'll point out that not only he, but also his buddy there, Anish, they have a lot of background in medical IT.
And this, of course, is where it's all going to come to bear.
This is why people love these guys in the technology field, because all this money is going to be spent on health care.
And, of course, just like the United Kingdom, the first thing that always pops up is, well, we've got to automate it and get everything on digital records.
And it's got to be, you know, this is a great IT opportunity.
And in the United Kingdom, I think they've misspent by their own admission three or four billion pounds.
The whole thing is a complete failure.
You know, you get all these contractors and pull everyone together, and they build huge Oracle databases and all kinds of stuff, and then, of course, it never works.
It's never worse because there's never anybody in charge of it that knows what they're doing, and this is the problem that we have here.
You know, I've said this before.
If you took the employee directory at Xerox PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center, and put it up on a wall and threw a dart at it, you'd have a guy more qualified than this guy.
Well, here's what he's done to date.
By the way, I think people that work for companies like Xerox PARC must look at this and they must be shaking their heads.
Why does this person have this job?
In fact, I would say the same thing with Kundra.
Why do they have this job and why are they getting so much support from certain elements of Silicon Valley?
Well, I think that's very easy to understand.
It's all about the friendships.
It's all about the connections.
It's all about who you know.
And it's a big sales job.
This guy is the buyer.
That's essentially what he is.
He is the buyer for the United States government.
For everything we're going to do in technology, he's going to buy.
So here's this guy who's...
And by the way, that other outfit he worked for, that consultancy...
What was it called?
You wrote about it in your piece, actually.
I jotted it down.
Hold on a second.
Help me out here, John.
Somebody in the...
No, no, it's the World Cities Alliance.
All right, that.
So the World Cities Alliance, of course, he was a part of the Greater Washington Initiative, the GWI. What these guys do is they essentially, if you want to move your company into Washington in this case...
He's going to go set everything up for you.
So they're paid consultants.
And they make introductions.
Everything from housing, you name it.
But you look at who's on the board or who are the investors of this Greater Washington Initiative.
Oh, man.
Number one, the chairman, Wachovia.
Okay, that's where it starts.
We've got the Bank of America.
We've got Deloitte& Touche.
We've got SunTrust Bank.
Interesting, the Washington Post.
Not quite sure what they're doing on there.
But it's a club, right?
And everyone gets together and everyone's wheeling and dealing because you know if you get a government contract, that's good for life.
That's the beauty.
That is the best thing you can have ever is a government contract because then you can mooch and loot the people.
Well, there's that.
So then I don't blame these guys for kissing his ass.
Well, that's what it's all about, John.
That's all that it's about.
So he's the best.
He's the best.
So what has he done?
He's taken reports that were already available and basically put them into a WYSIWYG, a cool little interface.
In 1994, there's a report issued by then Senator Cohen that talked about billions of dollars that are being wasted on information technology projects.
So listen to what he's saying.
Billions of dollars being wasted.
This is a report.
Now listen to what he's done.
He's actually taken this report of billions of dollars and made it into pie charts.
Last year, there was a report that talked about $30 billion of IT investments that were in trouble.
Yet, the reporting that was there was a management watch list, which is a static list that Congress, the GAO, and the administration issued.
The president talked about a culture where we move away from secrecy, where we can change the default position of the federal government from secret to open and transparent.
So what we did is we built a dashboard that would...
This is a big Silicon Valley term, by the way, a dashboard.
Your company has to have a dashboard.
So the board of directors can look at the dashboard and know how the company's doing.
It is the biggest farce in the world, a dashboard.
So he's taken this data and built a dashboard.
Lift the veil on IT expenditures.
As soon as we launched this public-facing dashboard, which exposed every layer of spending from who was responsible for the project with actually the picture of the CIO on that project, so you could actually see who is running this project, which contractors are working on it, where we are in terms of milestones on that project.
And we saw a very...
He's taken this data, which was already available, which was out in a report starting in 1994, or 2004, and has put it into nifty little pie charts that you can click on.
Please go to the IT dashboard, because I spend half a day on this thing.
Oh, please try and find the recovery.gov spending.
Try and find the picture of the guy who's responsible for the contract, who's running the project, the contractor.
Find all the information he just mentioned, and it's just not there.
In fact, the majority of these projects have zero dollars, because there's little asterisks at the bottom of the page.
This is only based upon the information that was available.
So he's just taking the same stupid data that's not transparent, not being made available, and putting it into pie charts.
So useless data turned into pie charts.
So from this same conference, he unveiled two very important pieces of information.
He unveiled to us why the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is so fucked up, and an important piece of information about 9-11, which I wanted to play for you right now.
What we're seeing in the federal government is there are some agencies that have led.
Some because they were looking at broadband and teleworking as a mechanism to drive productivity and essentially make sure that they're attracting the best people, and others that are reacting to adverse circumstances.
So the Patent and Trademark Office is a perfect example where you have a federal agency that's got a program in place where close to 50% of the employees are actually teleworking.
No wonder it's messed up!
We got half of the PTOs sitting at home, they're probably housewives, reading through patent applications, saying, oh, this podcasting thing, let's give that to Volo Media.
It's so obvious.
Is that a success?
Is the Patent and Trademark Office a success, Mr.
Vivek?
Because 50% of them are at home?
He said it was a success because of that?
Yeah, he says it's a success.
Back it up a second.
Yeah, listen.
So the Patent and Trademark Office is a perfect example where you have a federal agency that's got a program in place where close to 50% of the employees are actually teleworking.
And the PTO, USPTO, will tell you that they're already seeing over $2 million in cost savings and 14,000 tons of carbon emissions that have been...
Oh, I'm sorry.
We have saved 14 million trillion tons of carbon emission.
I'm not taking into account these people sitting in their underwear farting at their kitchen tables.
You probably save money with teleworkers because you don't have so much...
So what?
It doesn't mean they're doing a better job.
Now listen to this.
What I'd like to highlight is the GAO. So that's the General Accounting Office, right?
That's the...
Yeah.
They're responsible for the expenditure?
Are they an oversight?
They're like the accountants for the country.
Oh, well, listen to this.
This is something I didn't know.
What I'd like to highlight is the GAO. After September 11th, the GAO had to vacate its building because of the anthrax attack of the Senate Hart Building.
Did you know that?
That puts a whole new perspective on the anthrax attacks.
For me, it does, at least.
Well, for you, it would.
I didn't know that specifically, no.
I don't think so.
I didn't know that the GAO, our government's bean counters, and what were the...
Oh, right, there was a Senate bill.
I guess their offices are there, and so they all left, and so people could go in there and cook the books.
Right.
Well, remember...
That's what you're thinking.
I know that.
Well, on September 10th, Donald Rumsfeld, and we have it on video, said, you know, well, we're missing $2 trillion from the Pentagon.
We're really not quite sure where it went.
You know, it's just an oversight.
We can't find it.
Boom!
All this stuff starts to happen.
And then not only does Building 7 go down...
Without a plane crashing into it, I might add.
But then we have anthrax attacks, where the GAO is, the guys who would actually kind of know where this money went.
I'm just saying.
They've got to have backups, tapes.
I mean, of course, if you have people that are running the information technology side of the country, don't really have a background in being like a CIO like Procter& Gamble might have a background in, it's possible to be completely ripped off.
I mean, this scenario is a bad situation.
So then I find this other clip of him talking about his start in public service, which I just love tying this all together, and I'm not making a conspiracy theory out of it, but just listen to his own words about how he got started in public service.
Hold on, here it comes.
I want to share a story with you in terms of how I got into public service.
It was on September 11th, 2001, and I was sitting in Arlington, Virginia, being interviewed for the job of Rectorate Infrastructure Technology.
And it was about 8.30 in the morning when the interview began.
In the middle of it, someone knocked on the door and said, we've entered a federal emergency.
I'm sitting and thinking about the public state here.
And suddenly, you know, we turn on CNN and we see the second plane going to the World Trade Center.
And there, you know, the CIA asked me to join on the spot and I accepted the job.
And that was September 11, 2001.
And interoperability was such an important issue back then.
So...
I don't know if you could hear that clip because it's kind of muddled.
So he was doing his job interview on September 11, 2001 at 8.30 in the morning when the attacks occur on New York.
What job was he asking for?
Because it says something about technology?
It's very hard to hear.
Because apparently he got his degree from that little college outlet.
It's like a factory outlet.
Hey, here's your degree!
In 2002.
So that doesn't make any sense in terms of the timeline, but you know, okay, go on.
But then, listen, so instead of, you know, this was horrible and what an atrocity, he's thinking, I must lay fiber.
How do we build institutional networks?
How do we get fiber from Arlington to D.C. to Fairfax and the entire region?
So what we did is upgrade the NCR net.
Now, you've got to go watch the clip, because when you see his lips move, you can understand it better.
We'll have it in the show notes.
So, basically, during the September 11th thing, he wasn't aghast.
No, no, he was thinking about, oh, I have to lay fiber between all these different...
Oh, what a crock of crap!
And when you see the insincerity as he's telling them, I go, okay.
I was thinking something else at the time, dude.
I don't know about you, but he was thinking, I need to lay fiber.
But it's an interesting story about how I got into public service.
It's one for the grandkids.
You know, the problem with guys like this who are the CEO of a one-person company is that they just...
I think they're just too loose with the facts and the truth and the way and the timeline and everything in between.
He's going to get himself into trouble.
I mean, my thing, you know, had a certain impact on a few readers, my article, which people should go back and read.
It's on the blog.
And...
But it had zero impact.
I mean, his minions got a hold of Om Malik, who runs a blog called GigaOm.
And Om's a friend of mine, so he didn't pick too much of it out, but he did run whatever they told him to.
Because it turns out that the group of people that are involved with...
Sponsoring Vivek and others, if you start digging deep enough, you'll find the financing of Ohm's blog is from this same group.
And people put that together before I did.
I didn't dream it up.
But anyway, so the guy says that they just had a blast of saying, my whole column was lies and slanderous, scandalous lies.
Yeah.
And if you read it for yourself and tell me you think it's a bunch of lies, I'm just questioning why this guy has the job.
And notice how you called the White House.
Did you call the White House?
Did you send an email?
No, you can't call the White House.
You've got to go through this email thing, which I did.
I went through a process.
Have you heard anything yet?
No, it goes into a pot of nothing.
So Omalik sends out the bat signal and he's got the Oversight Management Board spokesperson on the line.
I mean, you have no pull, Johnny Boy.
I'm a little disappointed.
After 25 years in the business, I mean, you have no pull.
I'm sorry.
Well, I don't have any pull because I guess I'm not a contributor to the Democrat Party.
I mean, if you look at all the people, if you read the column I wrote, you note the people that all praise this situation.
And Tim O'Reilly, you know, the great Tim O'Reilly says, nobody could be more qualified.
He's qualified.
No, you can't beat him.
Well, he's not...
There's all kinds of questions.
You know, the thing that has been severely underreported in the news was...
So, again, March 4th, 2009, he resigns from his post...
As chief technology officer for D.C. Right.
And there's a scandal with all the people he hired over there.
And by the way, as far as I know, it was in Virginia.
Remember when there was that break-in and somebody stole all the health records of everybody in the state?
Yeah.
And then they put an extortion note out?
Wasn't he in charge then?
That was exactly the same thing.
And so they arrested the guy who reported directly to him, Yusuf Akar.
He was the chief security officer.
Nice find.
I'm sure that O'Reilly would think he was a great choice.
Now, the second suspect who was arraigned on bribery charges, Sushil Banzal, was the CEO and founder of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp., which is a company that Vivek worked for.
You're just saying.
Yeah, but where's the follow-up?
Where's the follow-up?
What happened to these guys?
Did they ever figure it out?
I mean, and how come...
So Vivek was then put on temporary leave, and then a couple weeks later, boom, he's back.
You're the CIO. Yeah, but he wasn't under investigation.
Yeah, but he was in charge.
He was in charge of these jabronis.
Well, and then the curious thing, of course, is Vivek was caught for shoplifting in 97, which I think accounted for the fact that it took him six years to get a degree in psychology, because it was right in the middle of it.
It was, I think, the year before, probably the year he should have graduated, which was in 1997.
Hmm.
By the way, Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, 20 years ago, he says, 20 years ago, Vivek committed a youthful indiscretion stealing shirts from pennies.
It's like, let me put some more shirts on here and see if I can walk out.
It's a youthful indiscretion.
He wanted some shirts.
He's probably a snazzy dresser.
So I do have a theory, if you want to hear it.
Somebody just sent me a note that said there were no backup tapes in Virginia when the tapes were stolen by the hackers.
This is fine.
Of course not.
That's our CIO, ladies and gentlemen, taking care of business.
Yay!
No backup tapes.
And the other thing, by the way, that triggered this article was the fact that this guy kept, which is the reason I think O'Reilly and these others think he's great, he keeps talking about Twitter.
His Twitter feed hasn't been updated since 2008.
His Twitter feed is dead!
And Facebook.
We should be using Facebook more.
We should be using Google Docs for our government agencies.
It'll save so much money.
Go to his Twitter feed.
Is his Twitter feed dead?
Well, he must have a new one now.
No!
What do you mean?
Why would he have a new one?
Look up something new.
Just take a shot at it.
The great Kundra.
See if it's under that.
The real Kundra.
No, I'm looking at his Twitter feed right now.
It's twitter.com slash Vivek Kundra.
Last entry.
Tweet.
Last tweet.
11.58 a.m.
October 31st, 2008.
D.C. government publishes procurement data online for Apps for Democracy Innovation Contest.
He's had like five, no, four tweets total.
Maybe you can't find the on switch to the computer.
Leveraging the power of technology to improve service delivery, drive innovation, and bridge the digital divide to build a world-class city.
Thanks, Vivek.
Love it.
So this Yusuf Akar was busted, apparently, through an FBI agent who was wearing a wire.
And according to sources, okay, so this is Adam Curry crackpot stuff, but take it at face value, Akar also told the informant he could use his computers to create fake birth certificates.
I'm not a birther by any means.
I am not a birther at all.
But I'm thinking, this guy, he's named CIO for no apparent reason.
Then all of a sudden these guys get busted.
Vivek is put on the sidelines and then he's kind of ushered back in.
He's got to know something.
He's got to have something on somebody.
This guy is either going to rise to be the president in the future or we'll find him out back with two to the head.
One or the other.
Yeah, well, anyway, that's kind of the story.
This is going to be the first in a series of stories.
It's not about him.
I'm done with him.
Well, no, I'm not.
I want to play one more clip, John.
Well, no, I'm not done with him on the show.
I'm just done writing about him.
Okay.
More clips, the merrier.
Okay, this is the clip.
I just love this.
And you have to know, the guy got his start, according to the Indian publications.
I researched a little bit here and there.
In telemarketing.
So he was a telemarketer in India.
So I've probably talked to him.
I've probably had a conversation with him.
You've probably been sold something by him.
I've probably had a conversation with him.
So this is near the very end of the broadband panel sponsored by the FCC. By the way, the dude running the FCC is also a whole other interesting area we need to look into.
But just listen to the utter bullshit coming out of Vivek's mouth.
If I can add to that, you know, I think one of the biggest problems we see right now is the fact that so much of what we do online actually requires training.
Is that a fact, John?
Not that I know of.
I haven't taken any training.
Maybe I can go to that university and get some training.
Are you taking training to get the noagendastream.com working?
You'd have training for that?
It takes training!
You have training to learn how to use Twitter?
It's a fact!
Here it comes.
I think where you're going to see the greatest innovation in the coming decade is going to be around that human-computer interface.
Okay.
I love it when people get started on this, particularly with you, John, because I believe you were the one who 25 years ago said the mouse would never amount to anything, right?
I never said that!
You did?
Are you sure?
I can tell exactly what I said.
This is always annoying because people keep dredging this stuff up.
I'm like a senator that can't run for president because there's too much baggage.
What happened in 1984 when the mouse was introduced on the Macintosh, I had a laundry list of reasons.
I didn't think the Macintosh would do well.
By the way, most of those things I complained about were all corrected because I actually was challenged by an Apple guy who said, What do you think about this column you wrote back then?
And so I said, well, here it is.
And then I went item by item, and every one of these complaints of mine was changed.
But the one thing I said about the mouse was the following.
I said, there's no evidence.
There's a new device.
No one's seen it before.
There's no evidence that anybody wants to use these things.
Because there was no evidence.
It just came out.
I never said it was going to fail.
You know how it goes.
I have explained this until I'm blue in the face, but people keep cropping it up.
It keeps coming up now because every time I complain about it, they bring it up again just to annoy me.
I have to say, A, it's working.
B, I love reading the comments on your blog and with the knowledge that people just kind of hate you as much as they hate me.
So I feel very good about it.
Now let's listen because the humor...
Different kind of hate.
It's a loveful hate.
The human computer interface blows.
Vivek has an idea.
And think about this.
I know there are people on Second Life right now, but imagine a universe.
I love it.
Imagine a universe.
Wait a minute.
Stop, stop, stop.
He's doing a VC pitch.
Why does he throw the Second Life reference in at all?
He doesn't make any other reference to it.
He says, I know there are people on...
It's like I'm talking to you and saying, I know there's somebody eating cheese as you speak.
It doesn't make any sense.
Because there were people.
They had a whole table of guys, like, setting up in Second Life.
The guy has, like, a list, a checklist of things.
He has to just say it.
Oh, well, it gets better.
Okay.
People eating cheese out there.
Now, but imagine a universe where you have the Star Trek holodeck, where you could literally ask the computer to act or ask questions and get answers.
Oh, my gosh.
He just invented Google.
Unbelievable.
You can literally do that.
Google Voice Search literally does that.
Well, imagine a universe.
Imagine a universe with a holodeck.
It's like a holodeck, though, because you'd have to be able to walk into it, and you'd have things you'd see.
Computer.
Computer.
On.
Computer on.
Okay, now listen.
It gets better.
In the same way, if you look at some of these software companies, they've made it so complicated to interact with...
What's he talking about?
You evil software companies.
You've made it so complicated to enable us to interact with the data.
Listen, listen, listen to what he says.
Complicated to interact with their technologies, and at the same time, the underlying architecture and the platforms.
It's almost a chicken and egg question.
Okay, I love this.
At the same time, what did he say?
It's like he's standing in front of VCs pitching a really bad idea.
Now, the thing that he said there again, by the way, which got to me...
What does he mean by it's almost a chicken and egg question?
Well, let's listen.
What is he talking about?
Let's listen to it again.
Technologies, and at the same time, the underlying architecture.
The underlying architecture.
And the platform.
And the platform.
It's almost a chicken.
It's almost a chicken and an egg.
The underlying platform or the underlying technology of the platform.
Chicken or egg, John?
Which one would you like?
Because a lot of it was built and architected around bandwidth constraints.
Huh?
What?
Microsoft Word was built under bandwidth constraints and it made a big difference.
Well, you need training for it.
Windows 7 is a bandwidth constraint thing.
Oracle was built the way it was because of bandwidth constraints.
These things were all started as kind of, you know, network oriented.
None of this has to do with anything to do with bandwidth, unless you're talking about Twitter.
Well, stand by.
Therefore, you have to deploy technologies.
What he does in this case, and I've seen this happen time and time again, now it's just, I'm going to throw, in fact, I have to say, my partner Ron Bloom used to do this really, really well.
You just throw out all kinds of buzzwords, one after another, and then the audience is just, hey!
Confused.
Listen to what he comes up with.
That were much more complicated in terms of interacting and communicating.
Now, as broadband deployment, and more importantly, if you look at the megabits per second, how much information can we get through the pipeline is going to be so important.
And as new and new software technologies are being introduced, you're going to see a Huge change from how applications are architected with SkipLogic to...
Okay.
So I'm like, SkipLogic?
SkipLogic.
Remember I told you the guy was a telemarketer?
If you look up skip logic, skip logic is basically a tree structure where you go through a questionnaire and the first skip is, are you male or female?
I'm female.
Oh, we skip to the female questions.
So now he's just pulling stuff out of his ass.
Skip logic!
But it sounds really good, and it gets better.
Huge change from how applications are architected with skip logic to video.
Oh, skip logic to video.
And much more human ways of interacting with these applications.
Here it comes, John.
Rather than binary or cobalt ways of interacting with them.
Okay.
Yeah, right.
Binary or cobalt.
What is cobalt?
It's a cobalt way of interacting.
It's binary or cobalt.
What is that?
This guy's a genius, I tell you.
He's a whiz kid.
He's a techno whiz, according to the New York Times.
A techno whiz.
Binary or cobalt.
Don't look over here.
Nothing to see here.
Binary or COBOL. Does he mean like COBOL, the old programming?
That's COBOL, wasn't it?
No, it's COBOL. Let's pronounce COBOL. He got the pronunciation right.
COBOL. I've got to hear it again.
Actually, go back and play the whole clip without interrupting it.
Oh no, I can't do that.
Not the whole clip, just a part about skip logic to cobalt.
To get through the pipeline is going to be so important.
And as new and new software technologies are being introduced, you're going to see a Huge change from how applications are architected with skip logic to video and much more human ways of interacting with these applications rather than binary or COBOL ways of interacting with those applications.
Okay.
The guy is clearly a genius.
He's a techno whiz.
A whiz kid.
Nobody could be more qualified.
Oh my goodness.
We have the other guy, which I think got O'Reilly irked at me.
Anish?
Anish Chopra.
I was looking for some connections, because obviously there's an Indian connection here.
It's pretty obvious and understandable that expats help each other out in all forms of work and social life.
Of course, expats from the Netherlands from time to time get together and eat raw herring together.
It seems that expats from India give each other really cool jobs.
And there's got to be deals going on.
And I have to say, there's a lot of these guys at Amazon, and they're tied into many, many, many, many business ventures.
And I'm not against it.
That's all fine.
But I do...
I have my questions, you know, when we've got this guy responsible for potentially, as he said, 30 billions of dollars in spending, exactly, and he's baking pie charts of binary step logic and COBOL. Right, yeah.
We have to communicate until now.
We've had to communicate in binary.
Yeah, I sit there typing ones and zeros and ones and zeros into Twitter.
But interestingly enough, I looked up the owners of Smartronics, fully expecting to see an Indian ownership.
Much to my surprise, which of course blows my entire theory, Mohamed Arshad Javed, Is one of the three owners, it's him and the Paris brothers, known from Jesse James and the Paris brothers.
He's Pakistani.
That kind of blew my whole theory right there.
Yeah, the Pakistanis and you don't normally see that kind of, although in the U.S. it's not the Pakistanis and the Indians don't hate each other that much.
In terms of cultures, there's a similarity that's kind of hard to write.
Vivek can do a solid by unredacting the Smartronics deal.
So we can just read it.
I heard, by the way, that the whole thing is built on Drupal.
What?
Yes!
Oh, this is going to send them through the roof.
Are you telling me $18 million to build a Drupal website?
That's what I... No, it's not possible.
There's no way.
No, I was...
It has to be built for that kind of money.
This thing should be built from scratch from vestigial virgins.
No, I... I rolled on the thighs of virgins.
No, because I was reading some of the Blue State Digital who built WhiteHouse.gov and they did Obama's site and did a number of other sites and this is where Vivek's right-hand guy, kind of that pudgy dude who posted all the...
who runs the blog.
What's his name?
Oh, the guy out of Chicago, yeah.
Yeah, whatever.
Macon Phillips, I think, is his name?
Or Mason or something like that?
We need a wall of names that we can refer to.
So there was some chattering going on because Blue State Digital was pissed off they didn't get the Recovery.gov contract.
And my understanding is it's running on Drupal.
Well, I don't think Recovery.org is going to be a Drupal site.
Gov.gov.
I keep making that mistake.
Sorry.
Recovery.gov.
Stop it.
Stop it.
It's going to be run on Drupal because I don't see how they're going to announce or how they're going to rationalize that kind of money.
These new programs, software systems out there like Drupal or WordPress or any of them, our Squarespace that we use for noagenda.squarespace.com, all these things have made it...
Easier to do websites fast and extremely inexpensively.
So why would you all of a sudden have to spend $18 million for a website that really, you know, if it cost a million dollars, it would be pushing it.
And I keep getting emails and all kinds of messages on the drop from people about other governmental website revamps around the world.
Max, max, max half a million dollars is being spent.
Some of them, like in Germany I think, I should look it up here, they got 27 websites for like 400,000 euros.
Right, that's more like it.
I just got sent a link to fedspending.org, a project of OMB Watch.
Let me interrupt you.
In Germany, €300,000 for the new German Parliament's website.
The Parliament's website.
That's a big deal, too.
I'm sorry.
FederalSpending.org Smartronics Inc.
Contracts 2.
You can look this up.
Go to FederalSpending.org everybody out there and start looking stuff up.
Don't crash the site.
Smartronics Inc.
Federal...
Fiscal year 2000 to 2008.
The contracts that went to this company.
201 million dollars.
These guys know how to sell.
Yeah.
They do.
They made $53 million from full and open competition with only one bid.
For what project?
God knows.
I don't know if there's links to the project specific, but whatever the case is, this company is just amazing.
I mean, they have some hooks into something because they really know.
I mean, I'm not going to fault them.
For taking the taxpayers' money and every chance they get.
But I have to say, these guys know how to sell because they're amazing and they're not getting $18 million for one crummy Drupal website if it's Drupal.
I'm skeptical.
I would like to see documentation to prove that.
I would like to see it too.
Somebody just sent me some documentation.
Hey, by the way, boom, that was fast.
It's official on the Drupal website, drupal.org.
The website, it's official on Drupal.
Recovery.gov is on Drupal.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
Yeah!
Okay, guys, gals, this is a letter from the recovery.gov development team.
I can confirm one thing.
www.recovery.gov is on Drupal.
We were able to put this out pretty fast, and in the coming months, you're going to see how it's going to evolve.
A lot of dynamic data will be posted there, and you'll see a more powerful website on Drupal soon.
That may have to be the opening of the show, John.
Let me just mark down the time code.
Well, there you go.
An $18 million Drupal website.
Need we say any more?
You suckers out there who are working for $10,000 are idiots.
And think about all the great Drupal developers that are out there who would be great to have people.
I mean, we could create jobs.
I mean, there's tons of people who are really good at Drupal.
Oh, yeah.
And they make some slick stuff.
And they could probably out-slick Recovery.gov for $100,000.
But that's okay.
I just got a message from my friend.
Hey, I got an email from my friend, John.
Just came in fresh off the press.
My friend, David Axelrod.
Oh yes, I got the David Axelrod letter to you.
No, this is a new one.
It just came in.
It just came in.
It's a new one.
Just a second, because I got one this morning.
One hour ago.
Did you get it one hour ago?
No, no.
It was like two or three hours ago.
Dear friend?
That's my friend, David Axelrod.
He's the PR guy.
He's Goebbels, right?
I think he's more like Goering, personally, but Goebbels is okay.
This is probably one of the longest emails I've ever sent, but it could be the most important.
Doesn't it sound like a Nigerian email scam when it starts off like that?
And this is, across the country we are seeing vigorous debate about health insurance reform.
Unfortunately, some of the old tactics we know so well are back.
Even the viral emails that fly unchecked and under the radar, spreading all sorts of lies and distortions.
He's talking about you, John!
I don't send out email.
Well, people are sending emails about your piece.
Oh, yeah.
As President Obama said at the Town Hall in New Hampshire, where we do disagree, let's disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that's actually being proposed.
So let's start a chain email of our own.
Wow, he's starting to spam.
At the end of my email, you will find lots of information about health insurance reform distilled into...
Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right now, you probably...
You know...
Someone you know probably has a question for you about...
That could be answered by what's below.
So what are you waiting for for this email?
And of course, he has a link to Reality Check, which is something we were going to talk about based upon a previous email that came earlier this week from my friend David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president.
But he says...
P.S. We launched whitehouse.gov slash realitycheck this week to knock down the rumors and lies that are floating around the internet.
You can find the information below and much, much more.
For example, we've just added a video by Nancy Ann DeParli from our health reform office tackling a viral email head-on.
And I'd like to play this for you, John, because it is total doublespeak ministry of truth stuff.
You ready?
Yeah, I'm all ears.
So the title of the video is The Return of the Viral Email.
The Return.
The Return?
When did it stop?
The Return of the Viral Email.
Here she comes.
Nancy, take it away, baby.
Cue.
Hi, I'm Nancy Ann DePearl, and I'm the director of the White House Office of Health Reform.
I bet most of you...
By the way, this whole video is chopped up into bits.
It's like...
Have you heard of viral emails, John?
Hmm.
Hmm.
It must be something new.
All right, here we go.
Oh, come on.
Play.
One of the folks that I work with here at the White House...
It's fucking buffering.
It's buffering.
You have to hard-told me...
The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
Okay.
Here are the facts behind that.
First of all, I'm pretty sure that this whole effort here...
Oh, screw it.
Let me just pull it back for a second.
So, what she's debunking, and they actually use all these words here about debunking, all these lies.
So, this is from the...
From the proposed health care bill, at least the one that I've read, where the federal government will have direct real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.
Now listen to how she debunks it and what she actually says.
Here are the facts behind that.
First of all, I'm pretty sure that this whole effort here came from the administrative simplification efforts that the health insurance industry itself has asked for Congress and the administration to undertake.
Individuals, not the government, will be in charge of their bank accounts just like they are today.
The next charge in the email comes...
Did you hear what she says?
She says individuals will be in charge of their bank accounts just as it is today.
That's not the question.
The question is, will the government have real-time access to your bank account?
That's the way I read it, too.
But she's not saying they won't have real-time access.
She's saying, oh, you'll still be in charge of your bank account.
Do you hear the subtle difference, John?
Yes, it works like this.
You ask a question, well, I'm afraid that the government is going to be looking at my bank account for real time anytime they want to.
No, no, no.
You're going to have the exact same bank account you had before, and you're going to have the same, and you'll be using it exactly the same way.
Nothing's going to change for you.
Or as we say...
Don't look over here.
Nothing to see here.
Ooh, look at that!
I'll just play a little bit more of this.
The video's a little wonky.
This is another example, by the way, of this kind of deceitful thing going on constantly that people are getting sick of, by the way.
Yeah, and it's so blatant.
I don't understand how he can send a blast email to everyone.
For Congress and the administration to undertake.
Individuals, not the government, will be in charge of their bank accounts, just like they are today.
The next charge in the email comes from, they say, page 145 of the bill.
An employer must auto-enroll employees into the government-run health public plan.
No alternatives.
That's the quote from the email.
I've read the bill.
There's absolutely no such requirement in the bill on page 145 or any other page.
The email says that on page 239, the bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid, seniors and the poor most affected.
All right, so the bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid, seniors and the poor most affected.
So let's listen to the answer to this one.
Crappy video.
Physician services for Medicaid, seniors and the poor most affected.
Again, not true.
On the contrary, in this section of the bill, the health insurance reform legislation prevents a scheduled 21% cut in the Medicare physician fee schedule.
So she's talking about the fee schedule, not about the services.
It's one of these subtle differences.
And I'm just blown away.
I mean, even if they intend to say it, if they're really intending to debunk it, I'm all for that because I would like to have real answers as well.
By the way, I just found out that the insurance company that insures our company's Medical plan has raised our premium, our cost, by 17% for next year.
So it's not that I'm against reform or basically getting these asshole insurance companies out of it.
You have to now tell us what you said in the meeting.
No, I don't think so.
That's not a good idea.
No, I think it's funny.
No, I don't think it's very funny.
It wasn't funny at the time either.
But anyway, go on.
Well...
You wouldn't mind it if these people were honest and straightforward, and instead of trying to get criticized for this stuff, they'd be better off ignoring it.
If somebody wants to send out a viral email moaning and groaning about this, that, and the other thing, they can find the one or two things in there that are really genuinely wrong, and there's probably a couple, and just ignore the rest of it.
I mean, why are they going to say, oh no, you're going to still run your bank account the way you've always run your bank account?
The government's not going to run your bank account.
That's not what the question was.
Is the government going to be monitoring the bank account?
Do they have real-time access?
And I read it literally.
We read that on this show.
It literally says there will be, for debits and credits, there will be a real-time connection between the government and your bank account.
It says it, but she's not debunking it that way.
That just angers me.
Yeah.
Well, that's part of this dishonesty.
You know, I mean, you can talk honesty all you want.
I mean, it always reminds me of Microsoft in the old days.
They would keep using the word innovation.
I wrote a bunch of columns on this, you know, tracking the use of the word innovation at Microsoft because they had no innovation.
So they figured if they kept using the word enough, people would assume, oh, they must have, oh, yeah, Microsoft, Microsoft, oh, innovation comes to mind.
So if you're going to say open and honest and transparent, keep saying it.
Just say it a million times so when you think of Obama, you think of transparent because the word has been used a lot.
But it's bogus and the public are complete idiots for following along with this kind of a thing without being more skeptical.
This is one of the things that really bugs me, by the way, about some of the feedback I got on that column.
I don't want to go back to it, but I'm going to just mention this one thing.
Whatever happened when I was a kid...
Wait a minute, wait a minute, John.
Can we do the jingle now?
Oh, this will be a pet peeve, yes.
John C. Dvorak's Pet Peeve of the Day.
Yay!
The incomparable Jeff Smith, everybody.
Thejeffsmith.com.
Great.
Awesome.
I'll play it after you're done.
Okay, go.
So...
People moan and groan.
There seems to be some issue with anybody standing up and criticizing or saying anything about anything nowadays.
We're talking about sheep.
People used to mock it.
The good talk show hosts call them sheeple, and people use the term.
When I was a kid...
You know, in the 60s and 70s, there was a bumper sticker that used to float around.
And it was a bumper sticker that was mostly employed by liberals, democrats, progressives, you know, people who are radicals.
They wanted a revolution.
They wanted to legalize marijuana.
They wanted, you know, the Republicans out.
And the bumper sticker said, question authority.
And everybody drove around with this bumper sticker.
Question authority!
Question authority!
These same people...
If you question authority, they get in your face about it.
Because you're not supposed to question authority.
You're supposed to listen to, like, for example, what Tim O'Reilly says.
Because he's authority and he thinks Vivek's a good guy.
So don't question that.
So O'Reilly, of course, has 900,000 followers on his Twitter account.
I've got a mere 59.
He's got $900,000 because he's in tight with the Twitter folks, and in fact, for some unknown reason, he's got one of those qualified, verified, authenticated name buttons at the top of his site.
I have applied for this.
People are copying me, saying they're me, and they do it in the chat room.
I'm under kind of a constant attack.
They won't give me the authentication, but they'll give it to Tim O'Reilly.
And they'll also promote him to get his numbers up.
But he's an icon of authority.
And you don't question authority.
What happened to these same people that were running the bumper stickers that said question authority?
They don't question authority anymore.
They're a bunch of monkeys.
Brought to you by Alpo.
Hey, John, I want to congratulate you.
Sorry about that.
No, no, I like that.
I like that.
You know why it is?
It's because Tim O'Reilly promised not to sue the government and Vivek Kundra over the use of Government 2.0.
That's why he's in good graces there.
Because, of course, he came up with Web 2.0.
And he sues people who use it.
Yes.
That's sweet.
Yes.
John, I'm going to send you a link right now.
Congratulations.
You did it.
I didn't think you could actually pull it off.
I owe you a full bar of gold.
I can see that you've put together a wonderful crop circle.
This showed up on Woodborough Hill, which of course showed up three days ago.
Which is right near Wiltshire.
Great job, John.
You're welcome.
Once again, this is a beautiful crop circle.
The owl, you like that?
The owl, yeah.
I thought that was a dedication to the Bohemian Club.
Bohemian Grove.
And it's really good.
I mean, all the detail is there.
I mean, I didn't think you could pull it off in that short amount of time.
It didn't take long.
Dude, when will you start just...
Believing a little bit that this is not man-made.
These things come out every three days.
Owls from outer space.
Owls from space.
It's not from outer space.
I think it's harmonics from the earth.
balls from the balls.
My challenge still remains to you, my friend.
This is a beautiful one.
And, of course, the link will be in the show notes at noagenda.mevo.com.
It's just beautiful.
Meanwhile, of course, while the government is actually listening in on you, while we're being screwed left and right, the big news, or as I should say...
And now, back to real news.
This will be all over the techosphere.
Apparently the Palm Pre, if you're an owner of one, is uploading your data to Homebase, including your GPS location, which I think is pretty nice.
Why do these companies dream this stuff up and why do they do it?
You know, it's...
They always get busted.
But it's anonymized.
No one actually knows who you are.
There's a dot there they can take out with a black helicopter.
But, you know, this will be a huge story.
Everyone's going to be like, ooh, prompry, they're evil.
And all the other evil shit that actually goes on, people just don't look at anymore.
No.
They don't care.
No, but they're all wiped out about something the iPhone's doing.
I'm going Galt.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm looking for a place.
My plane is coming.
John accompanied me to the hangar yesterday, my new hangar at Oakland Airport.
First we had to take the beef out of it.
Yeah.
Bring along your bolt cutters.
But the plane will be ready.
I'm sure when I find where Gulch is in Colorado, I'll be flying there.
I don't think Colorado is a good choice.
I think it's kind of a radioactive state.
Although I don't think Wyoming is much less radioactive, but I think the opportunities for hanging out in Wyoming are much higher.
I think there's more...
Montana seems to have some interesting spots.
Montana, the problem with Montana, I've always thought about these states.
People go to Montana and they die way too...
they just drop dead.
I think the place is totally poisonous or something.
Copper.
Too much copper in here.
When you Google, you know, where is Galt's Gulch?
And of course, I'm referring to Atlas Shrugged.
I know you hate it.
Oh, here we go.
There's actually a lot of people who have built places where you can buy property called Galt's Gulch.
It's pretty interesting.
And they've got communities.
Well, you need a place, you need about 50 acres or more, someplace in the middle of nowhere that has the right kind of environment for a landing strip.
Yeah.
And then you just land there and you just park your car and, you know...
No, but of course the trick is we need to take all the great thinkers and producers and they all need to go on strike.
That's what has to happen.
So you will get an invite, John, no doubt about it.
And then go to the house in the middle of nowhere?
To go on strike, yeah.
To go on strike?
Yeah.
You read the book, didn't you?
No, I never read Atlas Shrugged.
You're kidding me!
You've been ridiculing me over this and you've never even read the book?
I read the CliffsNotes.
Does that count?
No!
At least listen to the audiobook.
It's only 56 hours.
Go read this book, John.
I don't have time.
I'll drop dead halfway through and I'll be so disappointed.
It's a great book.
I don't even want to read The Fountainhead for two reasons.
One, I like this one so much.
Two, you keep telling me that I remind you of the main figure in the book, the main character, so I'm already worried about it.
Yes, you're somewhat reminiscent of her type of character.
The big, tall, blonde Superman.
Oh, well, now I do have to read it.
I can't believe you've never read Atlas Shrugged.
This is a great book.
You read one of her books.
You've read them all.
That's the problem.
Well, apparently not, because we disagree.
But how would you disagree?
You've never read The Fountainhead.
No, but if you read Atlas Shrugged, and I've said this many times on the show, it is written in 1957, happening right now.
It is exactly what is going on with the previous four administrations.
It's probably been a build-up for a hundred years, if you think about it.
It's all about, really, what the military-industrial complex is, the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, and an actual solution...
To rebooting the world.
I like it.
You know, it's not doable or not easy.
There's the buzzword of the day, ladies and gentlemen, reboot.
I'm surprised Kundra didn't use reboot in one of his...
Oh, stay tuned.
Listen, I'm telling you, we need...
Instead of all this binary and cobalt skip logic stuff, we've got to reboot the world.
We've got a lot of...
By the way, we had a really paltry bunch of contributions this week.
For all the work you did, and you actually did do some work on this.
50% less than usual.
Really?
Yeah, 50% less.
And this is in the face of the fact that everybody loved our Sunday show.
Yeah, I got a lot of good comments as well.
People who haven't heard the Sunday show should go back and listen to it.
And I have to tell you that I myself spent this past weekend, Sunday night, donating to a lot of sites where I get information from.
$50 here, $100 there.
I think I probably shelled out $500 or $600 just on donating to sites.
Yeah, well that's less money than we got.
Oh, we got more than that?
No, I'm sorry.
That's more money than we got.
We got like nothing.
We got like one or two contributions for $50 and one for $120 and that's it.
The...
The thing you should note is that people should note is when, and actually it's not a bad practice, even though it takes a little getting used to.
Adam, when he's on the streets and there's somebody, you know, like a homeless person, some vagrant or a person that's just down on their luck, asks him for money.
Hey, buddy, you got a quarter, I got to take the bus.
He always gives them money.
He literally gives everybody that asks on the street five bucks.
And a smoke.
Well, they always say, hey man, can I have a smoke?
Say, yeah, you can have a smoke.
Have mine, because it's all rolled up, ready to go.
It's just tobacco, right?
And they always think, oh, it's a joint.
Yeah, I always give them money, absolutely.
Although I shouldn't, according to my guru.
You give somebody money, and people pull their cars over and start berating you.
It happened to me once.
I guess I'd say, what are you doing giving that guy money?
Well, then these are people, of course, who are no longer counted in our unemployment figures.
Once you're off unemployment, was it after six months, then you become a bum statistic?
Yes, you're not counted for anything.
You're done.
You're a dumb guy.
You're no longer a person.
I got a lot of emails.
Let me finish the pitch and tell people to go to noagenda.squarespace.com.
Give me the two names who did donate.
Let's shine a light on them.
I'd have to go dig them up now because I don't have a plan.
We'll do it Sunday.
We'll do it Sunday.
Yeah, Sunday we'll give them their kudos.
But the point is, noagenda.squarespace.com, there's a button there you can click on.
And then go to dvorak.org slash na.
We like to do three shows a week.
We can't.
And we're starving to death.
We're not quitting the show ever.
But the thing that you really want us to avoid, like the plague, is getting sponsors to sponsor the show because that is a corrupting influence on a political show like this.
It's not a corrupting influence on a show that talks about gizmos and gadgets and what happened in tech this week and the fact that Intel has a new chip.
It's not that corrupting there, believe me.
Oh, you're talking about Intel so much because they advertise.
No, no, that's not it.
On a show like this, where we're digging into all kinds of weird stuff, we cannot afford to have anybody sponsor this show.
You have to pay for this.
Now, I know there's a lot of people who listen to this show, and they listen to it every week, and we provide something like, if you do the numbers, if you do the numbers, and we do three hours a week of programming, three hours, people spend $20, $30, $40, $50, maybe more, to go to a two-hour movie, But the three hours that we provide, they are just saying, well, it's free.
Those two dummies can talk all they want.
I've got no responsibility for it.
Yeah, you do have responsibility for it.
So go to noagenda.squarespace.com or noagenda.medio.com.
I don't think we have a bug there, do we?
Or dvorak.org slash na.
And think about the fact that we're producing a movie a week in entertainment value for you plus information.
And think about the rest of 20 bucks a week.
Where's the 20 bucks?
I mean, we're not getting a dollar.
We're getting, on average, considering the number of people that listen to this show, about one cent per listener.
No, not even.
Not even.
I don't even think it's one cent.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
And believe me, the show is not going to be any good yet.
It'll still be the two of us joking around.
But if we ever have to bring sponsors in to pay for it, you're not going to like it.
I mean, you're still listening and you're going to be stuck, but you're going to only blame yourself.
Seriously, we need to step it up a little bit.
Now, let me give you some information that will actually be worth your donation.
I received many, many emails.
For some reason, this MIT study of the validity of tinfoil hats is circulating.
Did you get any of these, John?
I blogged this like three years ago.
I know.
It's literally from 2005 or 2006.
Someone found it again.
It's like, oh, here's empirical evidence, whatever.
Let me give you some tinfoil information that is actually good.
If you wear tin foil across your chest, Preferably with a piece of cardboard under it, and you'll know why in a second.
So a piece of cardboard under your chest.
Maybe do your back as well.
Now, this is only if you're going to a town hall meeting, for example.
You might want to use it for that.
Put the tinfoil, preferably three layers of tinfoil, over that and gaffer tape it, but not too much.
If you get tased, it will actually short out the taser.
You have a website that documents this?
Yes, I do.
I do not have a video that documents it.
So if anyone feels like documenting that the taser shorts out on the tinfoil, so the idea is...
First, do it on a dummy.
Right.
So the...
Well...
Or your brother.
Little brother.
Mikey.
So the idea is the taser darts go into the cardboard and they simultaneously are shorted out by the tin foil.
Apparently, it arcs out immediately and nothing happens.
Of course, you still have to spasm around to look like you're actually getting tased.
And you have to say, like, don't tase me, bro!
So that is some free information for you.
Some guy walking around in a tinfoil suit.
Yeah, you got nothing on me.
Boom, boom, boom.
That guy takes a lot of shots to bring down.
Free information.
We could do another maybe five minutes, John.
I mean, there's lots of stuff.
What's going on?
Actually, I did want to mention the Gitmo Nation Roundtable podcast, which I didn't know about this.
It's actually in episode number five now.
A couple of our listeners, producers get together on Skype after the show, and then they talk about a couple of the topics.
From that spun actually a Wayback Machine copy of George Sodini's website, Yeah.
So Dini, of course, being the complete crazy programmer who went into the gym and killed women.
So we've all seen the website the mainstream media attended us to, or brought our attention to, but when you see his actual resume from, what was it, 2006, I believe?
Wow.
It's really laid out nicely.
The formatting's perfect.
I mean, not an idiot at all.
Oh, really?
That's interesting.
I thought you were on that thread, man.
I thought you saw that.
No, I didn't.
I didn't see the old stuff.
That's interesting.
Yeah, one of our producers found that.
So anyway, so links to that as well as the Gitmo Nation Roundtable, which I think is Gitmo Nation, or G, I don't know what it is.
I'll put the link in the show notes, but it's on Mevio.
It's actually pretty good.
A couple of guys on Skype, and they're all doing research.
Here it is, gitmonationroundtable.mevio.com.
It's not bad.
Well, I have one piece of interesting news.
This kind of goes back into the...
I guess it's off-topic for today, but it should be mentioned.
I think you should play the real news theme.
And now, back to real news.
Zombie ants controlled by fungus.
Parasite manipulates infected ants into dying where fungus prefers to be.
In a bizarre parasitic death sentence, a fungus turns carpenter ants into the walking dead and gets them to die in a sport that's perfect for the fungus to grow and reproduce in a spot, actually.
Scientists have no clue how the fungus takes control of the brains of the ants so effectively.
I've seen this, yeah.
But a new study in September, an issue of American Naturalist, reveals an incredible set of strategies that ensue.
It goes on and on.
There's video of this as well.
There's a time-delayed video.
Yeah, it's kind of eerie.
It sounds creepy.
I wonder if it's got anything to do with it.
I wonder if those same fungus are trying to get control of the bats that they're killing.
Finally, from my side, listener producer Sefer Aman went to smallsteps.gov, which we talked about two or three episodes ago, which are these handy tips from your government and from the Health and Human Services about how you can actually live a healthier lifestyle.
We missed a very important one, John.
We missed number 40.
Remember, these are the tips like...
Get the newspaper yourself.
Or...
Don't eat portion...
Ow.
Don't eat a portion of food bigger than your hand.
Turn down your speakers!
Number 40.
Pace the sidelines at kids' athletic games.
No, I did that one.
I didn't hear that one.
That's like, act like a child predator.
Pace the sidelines at kids' athletic games.
That will make you live healthier lives.
That's weird.
I thought that one was pretty creepy.
To say the least.
It is, because it's exactly what you'd look like.
You'd be arrested following this advice.
But you can always print out the webpage and say, hey man, I'm just following orders.
Alright?
So on my blog, since we're doing a blog showdown, Massachusetts deputizes dentists to perform swine flu vaccinations.
I heard about it.
Not just dentists, but pharmacists and...
Paramedics, pharmacists.
Actually, pharmacists in California, many of them do vaccination.
Let me at least do one more, and this will be my final one, because I would like to say now, as an airman and a member of the aviation community, I would strongly advise you no longer fly with Scandinavian Airlines, known as SAS. And here's why.
Aviation Group Scandinavian Airlines Systems said on Monday it has designed a new landing method for aircraft which can slash fuel consumption and emissions of carbon dioxide.
The new technique involves planes gliding into land following an optimum route mapped out by satellite.
It could save around 100 kilograms of fuel in twin-engine jets.
Oh, God.
Listen to me.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we're turning off the engines.
We're gliding.
Listen, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.
This is what my grandfather used to have this.
He would coast.
He had this Volkswagen Rabbit.
And we'd go down a hill and he'd push in the clutch.
He's like, let's coast.
It saves fuel.
I'm like, Grandpa, this is fucking dangerous, man.
You've got to be like...
It's actually against the law in California to do that.
Coast?
Don't do that.
So now they're going to coast your jet into...
This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of.
Dumb.
And potentially dangerous.
Well, it saves carbon dioxide.
It can't be that dumb.
I feel it's potentially dangerous.
I really do.
This is dumb.
And by the way, it doesn't make sense because this is just not how approaches work.
You want to be in control and the planes are not designed for that.
That's called an emergency landing when you run out of fuel.
Yeah, that's basically it.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to make an emergency landing into our airport.
I hope you enjoyed the flight.
Do you have to lay the foam down for them?
Well, planes are designed to do that, by the way.
You're going to Europe on Saturday.
Yes.
So I will be doing the show from Amsterdam.
On Sunday, and then the Thursday show will be from another undisclosed location.
I'm actually going to be away for two weeks, but the show will continue, even during my so-called vacation.
You're going to be away for two weeks?
I think you're going to be away for one week.
Well, really, vacation for one week, and then I'm working the other week, but I'm in London and Amsterdam.
My daughter's birthday, she's doing...
So you'll be back on the air somewhere the following Sunday?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Dude, I wouldn't mess up the show.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
Here it comes.
No, I don't want to hear the dog again.
It's not the dog.
The dog's not in the room.
Coming to you from the Crackpot Command Center embedded in my minimum security containment cell in the heart of Gitmo Nation West, San Francisco, California, I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, where it's turning out to be a splendid day, I'm just finishing off my glass of sour, sour lemon juice.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
We'll talk to you again on Sunday right here on No Agenda.
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