A lot of dynamic data will be posted there, and you'll see a
more powerful website on Drupal soon. Adam curry, John C.
Dvorak.
It's August 13 2009. This is your gizmo nation audio
publication episode 121. This is no agenda coming to you from the
crackpot command centre 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.
And here in Northern Silicon Valley, sitting here with a
glass of pure lemon juice. I'm John C. Dvorak, Raglan buzzkill,
the
first complete opener in three shows. Oh, we're getting there.
I'm no longer stumbling and bumbling.
I blew the last one to remember it was just on John Dvorak. Oh,
yeah,
we all remember John. Oh, yeah,
I'm sure we all remember. Yes.
Hey, good morning to you.
Yes, it's actually looks like it might be a nice day today. In
San Francisco, I didn't see any of the meteors last night. I was
supposed to see. Yeah, it was
cloudy all around the world. Of course, I couldn't I couldn't
see it from the city because there's too much ambient light
and we had fog and light pollution. 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 you know, but I just
never saw any meteors. You really have to test it. You have
to be out in the middle of Oregon someplace or about in the
in the high desert.
Yeah, that's my next plan. Not a bad idea. Be out there
somewhere. Ah, John, we 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?
Seems like we're
like weeks ago about and this actually about executive Kandra
the Federally appointed chief information officer of the
United States of America, which I think the the impetus for for
the for the peace 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, the one we had you still have my two clips from
last week. We didn't play
Oh, I've I've taken your two clips and raise them five my
friend. Yes. Well,
again, let's play that clip that I have a couple clips there.
That clip that triggered my looking into the guy.
See, I had it all set up differently.
I didn't want it no agenda show.
I've got my own agenda, not your agenda. There'll be I do not
know I can I can play. I can play what you were talking
about. I think this was this was the clip you were referring to?
Actually, was that the one with the the real time data? Was that
the one? Yeah, yeah, yes. Is it? I think so.
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.
We're watching separately,
divine intervention, indeed.
And I had to pull a couple of clips from this because the CIO
of the United States is just He talks like, Huh, you just sit
there go like what? And wait until you find out what the guys
really responsible for
which 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
recognise 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. Yeah, 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 fly on time that us yeah, there's
my favourite fly on time.us. This is a fantastic service from
our God looking at
the airlines. We have people have come up to us
and have you ever come up to someone? Yeah. We have people
coming up to us. You know, I'd love to come up to this guy. Can
I come to you and say something?
This is fascinating. We never thought this flight was actually
always displayed to people.
I love this. We never thought this flight was actually this
late. I'm going to change my entire life around
the seat on our phone for change. Do their behaviour based
on that. But more importantly, I think what's happening, I'm
changed, I have to change my behaviour is even at the local
level in the District of Columbia, for example, what
exists and 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
metro station this way. And when the next train is coming, oh,
who needs a schedule, both directions real time, I You
could also see on the same app, crime near where you're
standing. And as you look at the data,
the data got updated. I'm moving towards crime. I love that.
Listen, again, that's fantastic,
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. Not me and
Adam. It's a group global douche a that 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 behaviour, let me rewind that I need to
make some interesting decisions based upon this crime and bar
data. And
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 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 behaviour,
he must have forgotten
the way we act in terms of moving as 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 about the bars? All right. So the 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 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 of actual information from smart
tronics 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, but actually, it probably does involve crime. But they're
not the redacted the crime for parts in, in the smart tronics
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 just got to ask some questions. And
that's basically what your article did. John, as you 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, there's he doesn't have any anything.
And then the fact that he's being defended by so many
people, and we'll talk about that later. is almost, it's
just, it's mind boggling to me. I mean, this is a guy who's
essentially some you all for all practical purposes, a kid who
was a, you know, just out of school for all, you know, he's
very young. He's a young guy who did a lot of campaigning
apparently, and he mixed it up with the right people. And
somebody picked him for one job. And he, you know, they back went
back and forth him and Chopra, the other one and the technology
officer of the day. And I started looking at for one thing
he has, he has a master's he has he claims to have a degree in
psychology and biology and there's no reference to biology
in any of his transcripts, or to 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 a little
kind of a you know, one of those degrees, like sociology, like
zoology, yet XO or zoo ology, and so there's a so that's 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
considered the kind of the Maryland's version of the
University of Phoenix. Yeah, 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 it's not which is
not from Harvard. I mean, his partner a nice Chopra has better
chops when it comes to his academic background, but he's
basically a bureaucrat. And anyway, so I so we started
looking into this. And then the thing that really got me was he
was the CEO of this Creo star company. He apparently worked
for some other company that had the name star at the end. So
they sold EXO star, I think, wasn't it? Yeah. And it's so
they sold to some of the or no, they come to the he used to work
for which was sold to EXO star, 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 really
care. And that's actually on Twitter, have a Twitter to that.
Now. 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,
where 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 to CEO over and over and all their
bios, and that's one of their, you know, 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 the people like Tim O'Reilly, who
think, thinks that this Qudra guy is the greatest guy and
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 on these these panels, makes it sound like he's
no something he's missing. This is all part of a campaign to
mislead the public is no different than the banks saying
we're all free lifetime checking.
And we're no ATM fees.
Yeah, no ATM fees, boom, where's the three double whammy 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 biology degree. So what gets me is, is
the actual need for a C I O, because this is actually a title
that cropped up in the mid to late 90s. As we had the.com,
boom. And you had many companies had a Chief Technology Officer,
usually, if it was a new.com company, it was usually the co
founder, guy who invented some technology.
And I will say my CEOs are always inventors,
and myself without any degree in anything except Except a life
minored in herb ology, 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 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 to marketing speak
and, 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 5 2009. One day, I will add one day after he
resigned from the as Chief Technology Officer of the of the
State of the Commonwealth of Maryland, was it Virginia?
Probably Virginia, Virginia,
on the very same day when there was a raid on the office, and
the people who reported directly to him were
well, I didn't know I did that that red thing was for the DC
office, wasn't it? But Washington DC it was
the DC office? Yes, yes. But that was so he resigned on March
4, march 5, they raid the office, and we'll get to that in
a second. And President Obama name is Vivek Coonrod, the
Federal Chief Information Officer, CIO at the White House.
This is a federal position. Okay. So there's a part of the
executive branch, it's the real deal.
And here's the you don't want a bunch of slouches in there.
Well, when you look nobody'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 is he holds the budget, he holds the money. Yeah, yeah. But
that's, that's billions and billions of dollars. And I'll
point out that not only he, but also his buddy, they're a niche.
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, you
know, if you're, you know, that 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 as 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 missed spent by
their own admission, three or 4 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. So
this guy,
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 Centre, 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 today. 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 his why
does this person have this job? Fact? Why didn't we, I would say
the same thing with Qudra. 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, 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 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 and 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, and I actually jotted it down hold on a second
helped me out here, John, somebody in the Nether.
It's the world cities Alliance. All right. So the world cities
Alliance, of course, he was a part of the greater Washington
initiative, the G wi. 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 that paid
consultants and they make introductions, you know, they
they everything from housing, you name it, but you look at
who's on on the board, or who are the investors of this
Greater Washington initiative. Oh, man, it's number one, the
chairman walk oviya. Okay, that's where it starts. We've
got the Bank of America, we've got Deloitte and Touche, we've
got SunTrust Bank, interesting, the Washington Post, not quite
sure what they're doing on there. But it's all it's a club.
Right? And, 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 could have ever as a government contract, because
then you could Mooch and loot the people.
Well, there's, 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 wiziwig. A cool little
interstate 94.
There was a report issued by then Senator Cohen that talked
about billions of dollars that are being wasted on information
technology projects.
So So listen to what he's saying billions of dollars being
wasted. This is a report. Now listen, what he's done. He's
actually taken this report of billions of dollars and made it
into pie charts.
Last year, there's a report that talked about $30 billion of IT
investments that are 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,
or we can change the default position of the federal
government from secret to open and transparent. So we did is we
built a dashboard that would
this is a Big Silicon Valley turn, by the way a dashboard,
every your company has to have a dashboard. So the board of
directors can look at the dashboard and know how the
company is 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 right we saw, right,
so he's taking this data which was already available, which was
out in the report starting in 1994, and, or 2004, and has put
it into nifty little pie charts that you can click on, please go
to the IDX dashboard, because I spent a half a day on this
thing, oh, please try and find the recovery.gov spending, try
and find the picture of the guys who was 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 $0, because
there's little asterix at the bottom of the page. This is only
based upon the information that was available. So we're just
taking the same stupid data that's not not transparent, not
being made available, and putting it into pie charts. From
the same
data turned into pie charts.
So this from the same conference, he unveiled two very
important pieces of information. He unveiled to us why the US
Patent and Trademark Office is so fucked up. And an important
piece of information about 911 which I want to play for you
right now.
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 programme in
place where close to 50% of employees are actually
teleworking that.
No wonder it's messed up. We got half of the PTO sitting at home
that had probably housewives reading through patent
applications. Say oh, this podcasting thing? Yeah, let's
give that Devolo media. It's so obvious is that a success is the
patent and trade and Trademark Office a success? Mr. Vivec?
Because that 50% of them are at home.
Just said it was a success because of that. Yeah. He says
it's we play that clip. So he says let's back it up a second.
So the Patent and Trademark Office is a perfect example
where you have a federal agency that's got a programme in place.
We're close to 50% of employees are actually teleworking. And
the PTO USPTO will tell you that they already seen over $2
million in cost savings and 14,000 tonnes of carbon
emissions that have been
we have saved 14 million trillion tonnes of carbon
emission not taking into account these people sitting in their
underwear farting at their at their kitchen tables.
We save money with teleworkers because you don't have so much
debt to show what it doesn't mean they're doing a better job.
Now listen to this. So I'd like to highlight is the GAO. So
that's
the General Accounting Office. Right? That's, uh, that's the
Yeah, they're responsible for the expenditure. Are they an
oversight?
They're like the accountants for the country? Oh,
listen to this. This is something I did. I'd like to
highlight is the GAO. After September 11, the GAO had to
vacate its building because of the anthrax attack of the Senate
heart building.
Did you know that? That puts a whole new perspective on the 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 don't know that the GA Oh, there are
government's bean counters. All right. And what were they?
Right, there was a Senate bill that probably that gets their
offices are there and so they all left and so people could go
in there and cook the books? Well, you're thinking I know
that.
Well. On September 10, Donald Rumsfeld and we have it on video
said, you know, we're missing $2 trillion from the Pentagon, we
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 just building set building seven go
down. But without a plane crashing into it, I might add.
But then we have anthrax attacks, where the GAO is the
guys who would actually I have no idea where this money went.
I'm just saying
they gotta 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, in true in being
like a, like a CIO like, for Procter and Gamble might have a
background, and it's possible to be completely ripped off. I
mean, it's just this scenario is very bad. It's a bad situation.
So then I find this other clip of him talking about his start
in public service, which is just, I just love tying this
altogether. 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. Oh, man, here comes
already with you in terms of how I got into public service in
2001. And I was sitting in Arlington, Virginia, being
interviewed for a job as director of infrastructure,
technology. And otherwise 830 In the morning, our the interview
began, in the middle of it, someone knocks on the door and
says, We've entered federal emergency. And suddenly, you
know, we turn on CNN, and we see the same thing going to the
World Trade Centre. And they're, you know, join on the spot, and
it's up to the job. And that was a timber level in 2001.
Interoperability was such an important issue back then.
So, I don't know if you could hear that clip, because it's
kind of kind of muddled. So he was doing his job interview on
September 11 2001, at 830 in the morning, when the attacks occur
on the New York,
what job was he asking for? Because it says some about
technology.
And it was it's very hard to hear. But the thing that's me
because
apparently he got his degree from that little college outlet.
It's like a factory outlet degree
2002. So that doesn't make any sense in terms of the timeline
but you know, King going but then
listen to instead of you know, this was horrible. And what an
atrocity he's thinking I must lay fibre
aside, we get fibre from falling into DC the entire region. So we
did bring the SDR.
Now you got to look good. Watch the clip, because we see his
lips move, you can understand it better. Well, we'll have it.
So basically, so he during the September 11 thing, he wasn't a
Ghast he was thinking about I
was thinking about all this, I have to lay fibre between all
these different crap. And when you see the insincerity, as he's
telling him like, Okay, I was thinking something else at the
time, dude, I don't know about you, but he was thinking I need
to lay fibre. But it's an interesting story about how I
got into public service. It's one for the grandkids.
You know, the problem was guys like this, who are the CEO of a
one person company, is that they, they, they just, they just
I think they're just too loose with the facts and the truth and
the way and this and the timeline and everything in
between. He's gonna get himself into trouble. I mean, my thing,
you know, we had a certain impact on a few readers, my
article which people should go back and read us on the blog.
And but it had no it had zero impact. I mean, he his minions
got a hold of all Malik who runs a blog and you know, called
whatever it's called Giga ohm, giga ohm, sorry. And it was a
friend of mine. And so he didn't, you know, pick too much
of it out. But he did do run there, whatever they told him
to, because he's it turns out that the group of people that
are involved with sponsoring of evac and others, if you start
digging deep enough, you'll find the financing of homes 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,
you know, this is, you know, this, they just had a blast of
saying that the whatever are all my whole column was lies, and,
you know, slanderous, scandalous lies. And I mean, if you read
the call, read it for yourself and told me to think is a bunch
of lies. It's just, just, I'm just questioning and notice
how notice the job and notice how you call the wife that you
call the White House, and you send that,
no, you can't do this. You can't call the White House, you got to
go through this email thing, which I did. I went through a
process and heard anything yet. Have you heard anything? No.
goes into a pot of nothing.
So So Maalik sends out the bad signal, and he's got the
oversight management board spokesperson on the line. I
mean, you have no pool, Johnny Boy. I'm a little disappointed
after 25 years in the business. I mean, you have no pool. I'm
sorry.
Well, I don't have any pull because I guess I'm not a you
know, I contributed to the Democrat party. So look at all
the people if you read my column I wrote you'll note that people
that all praised This situation is no. Then Tim O'Reilly. You
know, the great Tim O'Reilly says nobody could be more
qualified. He's just 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 4 2009. He resigned from his post. As Chief
Technology Officer for DC, right September, march to
scan old all the people he hired over there. And by the way, as
far as I know, he's in it was in Virginia, when they remember
when there was at that breaking and somebody stole all the
health records of everybody in the state. Yeah, then they they
put an extortion note out, Wasn't he in charge? That was
exactly the same thing. And so they arrested the guy who
reported directly to him the use of aakar. They he was the chief
security officer reporting directly
mind reporting. Riley would think he was a great choice.
Now the second suspect, who was arraigned on bribery charges,
Sushil Bansal was the CEO and founder of advanced Integrated
Technologies Corp, which is a company that Vivek worked for.
Yeah, but where's the file? Where's the follow up? Where's
what happened to these guys? Did they ever figure it out? I mean,
and how come so Vivec was then put, you know, on, on temporary
leave, and then a couple of weeks later, boom, he's back
here. This guy wasn't under investigation.
But he was in charge. She was in charge of these bronies.
When and the curious thing of course, is vec was caught for
shoplifting and 97, which I think accounted for the fact
that 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
it did probably the year he should have graduated which was
in 1997.
Well, so I'll, by the way,
Nick Shapiro, the White House spokesman 20 years ago, the vet
committed he says 20 years of go recommended 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 so
youthful indiscretion, what some shirts, he's probably a snazzy
dresser.
So I do have a theory if you if you want to hear it.
No, Somebody just sent me a note that said there is no backup
tapes in Virginia and the tapes are stolen by the hackers and
this is fine.
That's that's our CIO, ladies and gentlemen, taking care of
business. Yay. No
backup tapes. Let's see. And the other thing to do. The other
thing everybody want to trigger this article was the fact that
this guy has kept which is the reason I think O'Reilly and
these others think He's great. He keeps talking about Twitter.
And he keeps
data since 2008. Tweet, his Twitter sheet is dead.
And Facebook. We should be using Facebook more. We should be
using Google Docs for government agencies. Go save so much money,
go to his Twitter feed his Twitter feed dad. Well, he must
have a new one now.
No, what do you mean? Why should Why would you have to look up
something new, which I just take a shot at it. The great Khunde
registry if it's under that,
the real Qudra I'm looking at his Twitter feed right now. It's
twitter.com/vet Qudra. last entry, tweet 11 last tweet
11:58am October 31 2008 DCS government publishes procurement
data online for apps for democracy innovation contest.
He's had like five now four tweets total.
Baby 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 for Vic.
Love anyway.
All right. So so Okay, so this use this use of aakar 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 take it at face value. ALCAR also told the
informant he could use his computers to create fake birth
certificates. So now I'm not and I'm not a birther by any by any
means. I am not a birther at all. But I'm thinking this guy.
So he's named CIO for no apparent reason. Then all of a
sudden, these guys get busted. And he's vexed put on the on the
sidelines, and then he's kind of like ushered back in. He's got
to know something. He's got to have something on somebody. And
this guy is either going to rise to be the president in the
future or it will find about back with two to the head one or
the other. It's gonna happen.
Yeah, well. Anyway, that's kind of the story. This is gonna be
the first in a series of stories not about him. I'm done with
him. I'm gonna I'm not I want to play one more clip, John. Well,
no, I'm not done with him on the show. I'm done writing about it.
Okay? Make more clips, the merrier.
Okay, this is the clip that I just love this. And you have to
know the guy got his start, according to the Indian
publications and research a little bit here and there in
telemarketing. So it was a telemarketer in India. So I've
probably talked to him before I probably had a conversation
probably
been sold something I've probably had a conversation
with. 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 nother interesting area we need to look into, but
just listen to the utter bullshit coming out of x mouth.
And
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, that that I know of I don't, I haven't taken any
training.
Maybe I can go to that university and get
training training to get the no agenda stream.com working, you'd
have training for that free training of learn how to use
Twitter fact, your comms
and 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 give you the I
can tell exactly what I said. I said there when the mouse or
this is always annoying, because people keep dredging this stuff
up, because 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. And most of those, those things I complained about,
were all corrected, because I actually had was challenged by
an Apple guy who said, What do you think about this code? And
we wrote big good. 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 would
just came out. I never said it was going to fail. You know, I
have explained this till I'm blue in the face. But people
keep cropping it. It keeps coming up now because every time
I complain about they bring it up again, just that annoying 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 I feel very good about it. Now let's
let's listen. Because the kind of issue it's a lovely. The
human computer interface blows Vivec 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
where we made it stop stuff he's doing the second life
referencing it all. He doesn't make any other reference to he
says I know there are people so it's like Sam's like I'm talking
to you and saying I know there's somebody eating cheese. It
doesn't make any sense. Because
there were people that had a whole table of guys like
a checklist of things. He has to just say it oh, well, it gets
better.
Okay, people eat and 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 the universe, the universe with 100. holodeck
though because you'd have to be able to walk into it. And you
didn't you'd have think 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?
Companies you've made it so complicated to make us 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? This is this is
he's it's like he's standing in front of VCs pitching a really
bad idea.
Now the 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 let's
see talking about listen to it again,
technologies. And at the same time, the underlying
architecture, the underlying architecture, 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 have chicken or egg John, which one
would you like,
can enact Russian here comes because a lot of it was built
and architected around bandwidth constraints, plans
a lot, a lot of a lot of Microsoft Word was built under
bandwidth constraints and it made a big difference. Well, you
need training for Windows seven is a bandwidth constrained thing
oracle was built away it was because of bandwidth
constraints, these things were all started as, as kind of, you
know, network oriented, that has nothing to do none of this has
to do anything to do with bandwidth unless you're talking
about Twitter,
well, standby, therefore, you
had to deploy technologies, it's just a hole.
So what he does in this case, and this is I've seen this
happen time and time again. Now it's just I'm gonna 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, I'm
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
how much information come and get through the pipeline is
gonna be so important. And as new and new software
technologies are being introduced, but you're gonna see
a huge change from how applications are architected
with skip logic to
Okay, so I'm like, skip logic, skip logic. Remember, I told you
the guy was a telemarketer. If you look at if you look up skip
logic, skip logic is basically a trece structure where you go
through a questionnaire and the friend the first skip is, Are
you male or female? I'm female. Oh, we skip to the female
questions. So he's now 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, skip logic to video and much more
human ways of interacting with his application or comes Josh's
rather than binary or COBOL ways of interacting. Okay. Yeah.
Binary or COBOL? What is COBOL?
COBOL way of interacting is my area. It's binary or COBOL. What
is that? guy's a genius. He He's a whiz kid. He's a genius at
techno whiz. According to The New York Times ed tech. No, is
mine area called?
Over here binary or COBOL? Does he mean like COBOL? The old
programming? Oh, that's COBOL wasn't it? That's
not COBOL is pronounced COBOL. He got the pronunciation right.
Oh,
I gotta hear it again.
Let's actually go back and play the whole clip without
interrupting it, oh, no, I can't do that whole clip, just a part
about skip logic to
get through the pipeline is going to be so important. And as
new and new software technologies are being
introduced, but you're gonna 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
because Okay, the guy is the guy is clearly a genius. He says
he's a techno is a whiz kid. But he could be more qualified Oh my
goodness. So Laurie had with you No, no, no, we have the other
guy which is I think we've got a Riley or Demi was a niche, a
niche Chopra.
I was looking for some connections because obviously
there's a there's an Indian connection here. And it's pretty
it's pretty obvious and understandable that expats help
each other out in all forms of 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 and there's
gotta 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
you know I do have my questions you know when we when we've got
this guy responsible for potentially billions of dollars
billions of dollars in spending exactly and he's bacon pie
charts have binary step logic and, and COBOL.
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.
So But interestingly enough, I looked up the owners of smart
tronics fully expecting to see an Indian ownership too much to
my surprise, which of course blows my entire theory. Muhammad
Arshad. Javaid is one of the three owners. That'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, that Pakistanis and you don't normally see that kind of,
although in the US it's not the Pakistanis and Indians don't
hate each other that much. The you know, they're same in terms
of cultures, there's a similarity that's kind of hard
to anyway,
so vet can can do do a solid by unredacting the smart tronics
deal deal. So we just read it. You know, what's I heard, by the
way that the whole thing is built on Drupal? What Yes.
Oh, this is going to send them to the through the roof. Are you
telling me $18 million to build a Drupal website? That's what I
not possible? There's no way no I was. There has to be built
from it for that kind of money. This thing should be built from
scratch from from vestigial virgins. No, I
rolled on the thighs of virgins. No, because I was reading some
of the Blue State Digital who built whitehouse.gov And I did
Obama's site and did a number a number of other site sites. And
this is where Vivex right hand guy kind of pudgy dude, who
posts who posted all the who runs the blog, what's his name?
Yeah. Yeah, whatever. I mean, making Phillips I think is his
name's or Mason or something like that.
We need a wall of names that we refer to.
So there were some 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.
You're gonna have a group chat. I keep making that mistake.
Sorry. recovery.gov solicited against office is going to be
run on Drew Paul, because I don't see how they're going to
announce or I mean, how are they going to rationalise that kind
of money? These these new programmes software systems out
there like Drupal or Wordpress or you know, any of them are
Squarespace that we use for me for no agenda.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 what for a website that really, you
know, if it cost a million dollars, it would be pretty it
would be pushing 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 are like in Germany. I think I should look
it up here. They got 27 websites for like 400,000 euros. Well,
here's
right that's that's more like it now. Let me take it I just got
sent the link to fed spending.org A project of OMB
Watch. Hey, let
me interrupt you. In Germany 300,000 euros for the new German
Parliament's website, the parliaments website. And that's
that's a big deal to
I'm sorry, federal spending.org Smart tronics Inc, contracts to
you can look this up, go to federal spending.org Everybody
out there and start looking Stop Don't cross the site. Smart
tronics Inc, federal fiscal year 2000 to 2008. The contracts that
went to this company $201 million. 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 gonna fault them for you know, for taking
the taxpayers money and you 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
web website. If it's driven Drupal, I'm sceptical. I would
like to see documentation approve that.
I would like to see it too.
Somebody just sent me some documentation. Hey, by the way
stuff. Drupal website drupal.org. The website it's
official on Drupal. recovery.gov is on Drupal. Okay? Jobs, jobs
and jobs. Let's vote for jobs. 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
out 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 $80 million
Drupal website. Need we say anymore need wheeze? You know,
and I'm all for the
shuckers out there who are working for $10,000 already.
It's
think about all the great Drupal developers that are out there
who would would be great to have people I mean, we did we could
create jobs. I mean, there's tonnes of people who can who are
really good at Drupal.
Oh, yeah. And that they make some slick stuff and they could
probably be out slick recovery.gov for 100 grand. But
that's okay.
So, I just got a I got a message from friends. Hey, I got an
email from my friend John just came in fresh off the press. My
friend David Axelrod.
I'd received Yes. I got to David Axelrod.
No, this is a new one that just came in. It just came in. It's a
new one second,
because I got one this morning. One hour ago. Did you get one
hour ago? No, no, it was like this more. It was like two or
three hours ago.
Dear friend. That's my friend David. David Axelrod, who is
he's the PR guy. He's Google's right?
He's kind of I think he's more like gearing personally. But
gurbles is okay. This is
probably one of the longest emails I've ever sent. But it
could be the most important is that doesn't 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
when people are sending emails about your piece. Oh, yeah.
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 been proposed. So let's start and 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, you 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, it's, 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 adviser to the president. But he says PS, we
launched whitehouse.gov/reality Check this week to knock down
the rumours 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 and a parley from
our health reform office tackling a viral email head on.
And I'd like to play this for you, John. Because it is. It is
total doublespeak Ministry of Truth stuff. You ready? Yeah,
I'm
all I'm all ears.
So the title of the video is the return of the viral email, the
return,
the return return when it is stopped. The return
of the viral email, here she comes Nancy, take it away, baby.
Cue. Hi, I'm
Nancy and Pearl, 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
viral emails. In fact, when
you heard of viral emails must be something new. Alright, here
we go. Oh, come on. Play. Play Play
is one of the folks that I work with here at the White House.
buffering
is buffer you have
the federal government will have direct real time access to all
individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer. Okay.
So here are the facts behind that. First of all, I'm pretty
sure that this whole effort here, 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 help 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 chart comes Did
you
hear what she says? She says, individuals recharged the 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? Which is the 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 in
real time, anytime they want to know No, no, you're gonna have
the exact same bank account you had before, you're gonna 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. Look at
that. Let's play a little bit more of this the videos, little
one. So this
is another example. By the way, this kind of deceitful thing
going on constantly, that people are getting sicker by the way.
Yeah. And it's so blatantly I don't understand how they can
put you how we can send a blast email to everyone. And then this
video, alright, let's continue
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 enrol 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.
Alright, so 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,
position 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
I'm just blown away. I mean, even if if they intend to say
it, if they're really intending to debunk, and 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 our premium our cost
by 15 17%. For next year. So it's not that I'm against reform
or basically getting these asshole insurance companies out
of it. But
you have to now, tell us what you said in the meeting?
No, I don't think so. That's not a good idea.
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. Why? Well, you wouldn't mind it if these
people were honest and straightforward. And you know,
instead of trying to say, you know, they get criticised for
this stuff, you're they'd be better off ignoring it. You have
somebody was just sent out a viral email, moaning and
groaning about this, that and the other thing that you 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 gonna do the why? Why say, oh, no, you're
gonna still run the banks that bet your bank account the way
you've always run your bank account, the government's not
gonna run your account. That's what the question was, Is the
government gonna 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 four debits
and credits. There'll be a real time connection between the
government and your bank account. It says it but she's
not debunking it that way. It's just that just angers me. Yeah.
Well, it's
part of this dishonesty. You know, I mean, you can talk about
honesty, all you want me to do 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 no, they must know. Yeah, Microsoft,
Microsoft, my own innovation comes to mind. You know, so you
Gotta stay open and honest and you know transparent keep saying
it just say it a million times so when you think of Obama think
a transparent because the word has been used a lot, but it's
bogus and the public is are complete idiots for following
along with this kind of a thing without being more sceptical.
This is one of the things that really bugs me, by the way,
about some of the feedback I got in 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 Cena for x.
Day the incomparable Jeff Smith, everybody, the Jeff smith.com.
Great, awesome. Let's play it after you're done. Okay.
So people moaning there seems to be some issue with you know,
anybody standing up and criticising or saying anything
about anything nowadays. Everybody's been we're talking
about sheep people use the market. You know, the goat talk
show host column sheeple. And people use the term but everyone
does this. 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 radical they wanted over
they wanted to revolution. They wanted to legalise marijuana,
they wanted to, you know, the Republicans out and the thing
and the bumper sticker said, question authority. And
everybody drove around his 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 the VIX a good guy. So don't
question that. So Riley, 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, you know, the
saying they're me and they do it in the chat room. I'm under a
kind of a constant attack. They won't give me the
authentication, but they'll give it to Tim O'Reilly. And you
know, and then to also promote him to get his numbers up. But
he's a he's an icon of authority. And you don't
question authority. What happened to the same people that
were running the bumper stickers that said, question authority?
They don't question authority anymore. They're a bunch of
monkeys. John cedars borax
brought to you by elbow. Hey, John, I want to congratulate you
on I liked that. I liked that. You know why it is? It's because
Tim O'Reilly promised not to sue the government and vet Kandra
over the use of government. to.oh That's why he's in good
graces there. Because of course, he came up with web 2.0.
And he Sue's people who use it. Yes. Except the wheat. Yes,
John. I'm gonna 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 was this showed up on Woodborough
Hill, which of course is the showed up three days ago. Which
is right near Wiltshire. Great job. John. You're welcome once
again. Another This is a beautiful crop circle.
The owl you like that? The owl? Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was a
dedication to the Bohemian club. Yeah. And I
Bohemian Grove. And it's really good. I mean, all the detail was
there. I mean, I didn't think you could pull it off in that
short amount of time. So it was it didn't take long. Dude, when
will you start just believing a little bit that this is not
manmade people. This is these things come right every day,
outer space. From space. It's not from outer space. I think
it's harmonics from the earth.
From the bowls
my challenge still remains to you my friend. This is a
beautiful one. And then of course the link will be in the
show notes at No agenda.me veoh.com It's just
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 this will be
all over the Techo sphere apart apparently the Palm Pre if
you're an owner of one is uploading your data to home base
including your GPS location. Which I think is pretty nice.
Why did they why these companies dream this stuff up? And why did
they do it? You know, it's they always get busted.
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 gonna be
like, ooh, pool breather evil. And all the other evil shit that
actually goes on. People just don't look at anymore. No care.
No, but they're all wiped out about their, you know, something
the iPhones doing?
I'm going, Gault. That's what I'm doing. I'm looking for a
place and you might my plane is coming. John. accompany me to
the hangar yesterday, my new hangar at Oakland airport.
First we had to take the beef out of it.
Bring along your bolt cutters. But the plane will be ready. I'm
sure when I find where the word golf gulches in the Colorado,
I'll be flying there.
And I don't know. I don't think Colorado is a good choice, I
think is kind of a radioactive state. Although I don't think
Wyoming is much less radioactive. I think the
opportunities for hanging out in Wyoming are much higher. I think
there's more.
Montana seems to have some interest in Montana,
Montana. I've always thought about these states. People go to
Montana and then they die way to is dropped dead. I think the
place is totally poisonous or something.
You know that when you convert Google? Where is Gulf Gulch? And
of course I'm referring to Atlas Shrugged. I know you hate it.
Yeah, here we go. There's actually a lot of people who
have built places where you can buy property called Gulf Gulch.
It's it's pretty interesting. And it's got communities.
Well, you need a place you need. You need about 50 acres some are
more someplace in the middle of nowhere that has dead Skynet.
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,
of course the trick is we need to take all the great thinkers
and producers and we need to they all need to go on strike
that's what has to happen. So you will get an invite John, no
doubt about it.
But you'll be wanting to write to the to the house in the
middle of nowhere
to go on strike. Yeah.
You go on strike. Yeah, you read the book. Didn't you? Know, I
never read Atlas Shrugged.
You've been you've been ridiculing me over over this and
you've never even read the book.
I read the Cliff's Notes. Does that count? No.
At least listen to the audio book. It's only 56 hours. Go
read this book. John. This I
don't have time. I does not I'm gonna be I'll be I'll drop dead
halfway through it. 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 to you keep telling me that
I remind you of the main figure in the book. So now the main
character so I'm already worried about it.
Yes, you just somewhat reminiscent of her type of
character. The big tall blond Superman. Oh, well, no, I
do have to read it. I can't believe you've never read Atlas
Shrugged. This is a great read.
Whatever 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, you 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 this with the previous four
administrations. It's probably been a build up for 100 years.
If you think about it, it's all about really what the military
industrial complex is the pharmaceutical industrial
industrial complex and an actual solution to rebooting the world
I like it, you know, it's not doable or not. It is not
as easy as word of the day ladies and gentlemen reboot. I'm
surprised coonara didn't use reboot in his in one of his
stay tuned. Listen, I'm telling you, we need instead of all this
binary and COBOL skip logic stuff, we've got to reboot the
world.
I'm saying I would hope people are by the way, we had a really
paltry bunch of contributions this week. I mean, it was it was
for all
the work you did for all and we you actually did do some work on
this. I mean
50 per shot. We weren't really Yeah, yeah. 50% less. And this
is in in the face of the fact that everybody loved our Sunday
show. Yeah, I got a lot of good comments as well. You know,
people who haven't heard the Sunday shows you go back and
listen to it. And I have to tell you that
I myself spent this past weekend or Sunday night donating to a
lot of sites where I got where I get information from $50 here
$100 There I think I probably shelled out five or $600 just on
donating decides
Yeah, which is less money than we got. Now the we got more than
that. No, we got no I'm So we got, we got we got like,
nothing, we got like one or two contributions for 50 bucks and
one for 120 and that's it. The the thing you should note is
that people either should note is when I 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, I gotta get
quarter I got to take the bus. He always gives them money
always use that he gives literally gives everybody that
asked the street do five bucks and always have the endless
smoke. Well, well, they always say hey, man, can I have a smoke
say I never smoke here have mine because it's all rolled up ready
to go. It's just tobacco. Right? And they always think hard to
join. Yeah, I always give them money. Absolutely. Although I
shouldn't according to my goal
in England, you know, give somebody money and they people
pull off, you know, pull the cars over and start berating
you. Yeah, it happened to me once I get so die. What are you
doing given that guy money?
Yeah, well, then these are the people of course, who are no
longer counted in our unemployment figures that once
once you're off unemployment afterwards, after six months,
then you become a bump statistic.
Yes. You're not counted for anything. Yeah, you're done.
You're done. No longer a person.
I got a lot of
emails already finished that. Let me finish the pitch and tell
people to go to No agenda.squarespace.com
Give me the two the two names who did donate let's let's shy
away.
You have to go dig them up now? Because we'll do it. We'll do it
Sunday. Yeah, Sunday, we'll give them their kudos. And then. But
the point is no agenda.squarespace.com There's a
button there, you can click on and then go to divorce.org/and.
A, we'd like to do three Shows a week. We can't. And we you know,
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 is 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 by 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 any buddy sponsor this show, you have to pay for
this. And I noticed a lot of people 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 that we do three
hours a week of programming three hours, people spend
2030 4050 bucks, maybe more to go to a two hour movie. And but
the three hours that we provide there, they are just saying,
well, it's free, those two dummies can talk all they want
and we don't we I've got no responsibility for it. Yeah, you
do have responsibility for it. So go to No
agenda.squarespace.com Or no agenda.media.com. And I think we
have a bug there, do we? Or devora.org/n. A and think about
the fact that we're producing a movie a week in entertainment
value for you plus information and think about the 20 bucks.
Where's the 20? bucks? I mean, we're not getting $1 We're
getting on average, considering the number of people that listen
to this show. About one cent per listener for
not it? No, not even not even. I don't even think it's one cent.
Yeah, it's ridiculous. And you believe me, the show is not
going to be any good. Yeah, it's there'll be the two of us joking
around. But if we ever have to bring sponsors in to pay for it,
you're not gonna like it. I mean, you're still listening and
you're going to be stuck. But you can only blame yourself for
seriously, we just 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 because I blogged
this like three years ago, no, literally in 2005 or 2006.
Someone found it again. It's like oh, here's empirical,
empirical evidence and whatever. Let me give you some tin foil
information that is actually good. If you wear tinfoil across
your chest, preferably with a piece of cardboard under it,
you'll and you'll you'll know why in a second. So a piece of
cardboard on their chest maybe maybe to your back as well. And
now this is only if you're if you're going to a town hall
meeting for example, you might want to use it for that put the
tin foil preferably three layers of tin foil 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 the documents so if anyone feels
like documenting that the Taser shorts out on the tin foil so
the idea is first Do it on a dummy. Right? So that well are
your brother, little brother Mikey. So the idea is that 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's, that is some free
information for you.
Go walking around in a tinfoil suit. Yeah, you're getting a
taste. Yeah, you got dead on me. Boom, boom, boom. That guy takes
a lot of shots and bring down
free information. You could we could do another another maybe
five minutes. John, if, if he's I mean, there's, there's lots of
stuff. What's going on? Actually do want to mention the Gitmo
nation roundtable podcast, which is I didn't know about this is
actually an 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. So Dinis 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 the
website that mainstream media attended us to or brought our
attention to but when you see his his actual looking for it
right now, when you see his his actual resume from what was it?
2006 I believe? Wow. It's really laid out nicely. The formatting
is perfect, perfect. I mean, not not an idiot at all.
And 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 gizmo 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 the view. It's a pretty good couple
of guys on Skype. And they they're all doing research. Here
it is. Get more nation roundtable.me veoh.com
It's not bad. Well, I have one piece of interesting news is
kind of goes back into the I guess it's off topic for today.
But that should be mentioned. I think you should play the real
news theme. Now zombie ants controlled by fungus. Parasite
manipulates infected ants into dying where fungus prefers to be
in a bizarre parasitic, parasitic, parasitic death
sentence of 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, science have
scientists have no clue how the fungus takes control of the
brains of the ants. So effectively, I seen this Yeah,
but a new study in September issue of American naturalist
revealed an incredible set of strategies that ensue goes on
and on
this video of this as well. There's time delayed video.
Yeah, it's kind of eerie. And this
sounds creepy. My monitors got anything to do with that man was
deaf, same function trying to get control of the bats that are
killing.
Finally, from my side, loser listener, producer sefer Aman
went to small steps.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, this is the
these are the tips like get the newspaper yourself or don't eat
portion out.
Don't eat a portion of food bigger than your hand down your
steak cars.
Number 40. Paste the sidelines at kids athletic games. No, we
did that one. I didn't hear that one that's like, act like a
child predator. Page the sidelines at kids athletic games
that will make you live healthier lives. That's right.
That's weird.
I thought that was pretty creepy to say it is because it's
exactly what you'd look like that you'd be arrested following
this advice.
But you can always print out the webpage and say hey, man, I'm
just following orders. All right.
So On my blog, since we're doing a blog showdown, Massachusetts
deputises dentists to vaccination I've heard
about not just dentists but for pharmacists and paramedics
pharmacists. Actually pharmacists in California, many
of them do vaccinations or they do.
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 S A S, and here's why.
Aviation Group scandium Scandinavian Airlines system
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 kilogrammes of fuel twin
engine jets.
Listen today, ladies and gentlemen, we're turning off the
engines we're gliding.
Listen, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. This is
what my grandfather used to have this he would coast. He had this
Volkswagen Rabbit, and we go down a hill and he's pushing the
clutch. He's like let's coast it saves fuel. My grandpa is
fucking dangerous man. You've got to look like to actually
against the law in California to do that coast. Don't do that. So
now they're gonna Coast your jet into this is the dumbest thing I
have ever heard of dumb and potentially dangerous
dioxide. It saves it saves carbon dioxide. It can't be that
dumb.
I feel it's potentially dangerous. I really do. This is
This is dumb. And by the way, it doesn't make sense because this
is just this is just not how
a word control and of planes are not designed for that. That's
that's called an emergency landing when you run out of
fuel. Yeah, that's basically
it. Ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna make an emergency landing
into our airport. I hope you enjoyed the flight.
delay the fog of the foam down for him.
Well, planes aren't designed to do that, by the way. But you're,
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. actually going to be away for two weeks, but the show
will continue even during my so called vacation.
You're gonna be away for two weeks or they're gonna be away
for one week.
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
gonna be back sit on the air somewhere on Sunday. The
following Sunday. Yeah, dude, I wouldn't mess up the show. Oh,
get your comms. No, I
don't I don't want to hear the dog again.
It's not the dog. The dog is not in the room. Coming to
you from the crackpot command centre 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. And John C. Dvorak
will talk to you again on Sunday right here on no agenda.