It is time once again for that programme the one you recognise
immediately because it has no music, no commercials, no
jingles, no apparent talent and certainly no agenda coming to
you from the curry manor in the affluent suburb of Surrey known
as Guilford. I'm Adam curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak coming to you from the less than affluent
suburbs of San Francisco, California in Northern
California and John C. Dvorak, like I said a minute ago
at divorce.org/blog. Hey, my friend, how you doing? Okay.
Yeah. Hey, I think I have to set up even more stable today. I'm
happy. Yeah, you
told me you blew it up. That's why it's more stable. Of course,
whenever you blow something up, then you can figure out what
needs to be done. I can now even go to like a web page, like a
YouTube page. And, and I can play it and record it. So
anyway, who cares? I'm happy. I'm happy. It's working.
who I thought were gonna do the show earlier. Then I found that
you're out shopping for a suit.
Yeah. No, I wasn't shocked. I said to you, I'm picking up a
suit. Let me tell you what happened. My wife is so smart.
John, as most women are, of course,
in that she got out of the house. Now check it out. So
I came home yesterday afternoon, around one o'clock from the San
Francisco flight would you fly through the night? And I have to
say, I slept a couple hours. So I felt reasonably good. But you
know, basically you you lose a whole night somewhere and you
get pretty tired. And my wife, man, she opened the door and she
looked good. She you know, she dressed up and you know, like
this black outfit that was really, really sexy. And, you
know, so and then she fed me and she gave me tea. And then of
course, she made up for two weeks of me being away. And then
she said, Come on, quick throw on your coat and we're gonna go
buy some suits. Yeah, how can you refuse at that point, right.
It's like, okay, so,
yeah, go ahead. I'm just asking when do you wear a suit? You're
not a suit person? No.
You didn't see it. I wore a suit to Los Angeles. Ron and I went
there for four weeks. The reason why is because I'll buy a suit
and I go up and down in weight very quickly. And you know, not
that you really notice it, but right now I've, I've definitely,
in fact, I lost so much weight that my my wedding band slipped
off my finger and is now gone. That kind of sucked. But all of
a sudden, at TED what? Wait, wait, what
kind of a fluctuation are we talking about here? 112. The 115
I go from 40 to just suit. Suit size. Jacket. 42. I was 42. Now
I'm 40. And my pants. My waist is 36. Ha yeah.
All right. What so? So anyway,
so she had done all this pre production she had already
picked out what she wanted. She'd already Ted Baker's Where
is where she found something. And she had already worked with
these guys during the week, you know, measuring and thinking
about what we're doing right. And so I walk in and literally,
I was like, try this one on, try this one on. Okay, we're gonna
go from a 42 to a 40 large 40 long, I'm sorry. And boom, and
all that had to be done was just the seen need to be you know,
obviously on the pants because you know, they they come at us
and you know, full you don't
get 40 extra long because they do have an extra low. No, I
don't need it. I needed the long was just perfect. So it was
literally off the rack member I was complaining that that was so
hard in I was so happy and all they had to do is just take the
new the scenes on the pants and so that's why I picked it up.
But you know, Patricia was so smart, you know, get him while
he's vulnerable. And schlep me out to town. Go buy suits?
Never did. Was there a collar around your neck? Uh,
yeah, thanks.
Hey, by the way, you know, you flew into Heathrow? Are you
familiar with the fact that the that they just opened his
terminal in Beijing. That's the world's largest building. And
it's the size of all the Heathrow terminals thrown
together and was built in less than four years flat. You're
kidding me? They've taken that, at least that much time to build
terminal five in the UK
for years and is the world's largest terminal. It's two miles
long.
It's like Denver. Well, Denver
is not quite that big.
No, it's not two miles long, no way.
But there's a I posted a bunch of videos on the
divorce.org/blog for people who want to check it out. You might
have to look it up by the time you get to it. But the it was
just astonishing. I mean, it's just amazing that they could and
the reason is because I was in China like 12 years ago, and I
was at the old old Beijing airport from the communist era,
which was a horrible place. And then they built a new airport.
Now they're building it and then and then since then they built
another new airport. I mean, these guys are killing us.
What was the airport that opened up? I wasn't Beijing, but it was
in Asia somewhere that from Awan completely failed. Everything
was messed up. I was
Japanese went on the island, it was on some kind of landfill and
it keeps sinking.
Well, it wasn't it wasn't just that the logistics of the same
thing kind of Denver had when they first opened that the bag
was Japan. It could be Japan. Yeah, I don't really recall. No,
I did I was not aware for years seems really frickin fast, man.
Yeah, and it's getting to things gorgeous. Well, reason for a
trip, I
guess road trip.
Let's go. Yes, a man. By the way, I can tell you this much.
You can get a suit in China a lot cheaper than you paid for
that one from Ted Baker.
Was not that expensive. It was very, very inexpensive. Actual,
what's what's inexpensive to you?
I bought two suits, and two shirts for 700 pounds. So about
$1,500 1500 bucks. That is not expensive. I don't care where
you are. That's just not expensive. It's not cheap. No,
it's not cheap. But it's not. You know, it's not like Armani
where you're going to wind up paying four or 5000 pursued. And
you're right. I don't wear suits enough to even justify that to
myself. And I hate it. I hate going shopping. My wife usually
buys stuff brings it home, she keeps the tag on I tried, I have
to do like a fashion night.
That's more work than actually going shopping. I like to shop.
I'm like one of those males who likes to shop.
Well, here's what here's what I get into it, though. So what
I'll do is I will almost come become very flamboyant. You
know, because Patricia makes me Walker, she's down on her knees
with with with the guy, you know, putting the pins in the
pants and making it just the right length of the boots. And
she's really into it. And so I'll sachet back and forth, you
know, I'll do the whole model thing. That's the only way I can
really get through it is to kind of make fun fun of it. And then
it's partially enjoyable. But I'm not. No, I'm not a shopping
guy. I really am.
It's hard you travel. My experience is that when you
travel a lot, and I always am stunned by the amount of
business travellers who don't adopt this policy when you but I
always when I travel, I always rent a car, except in a couple
of the big cities. I don't rent a car in New York City, or
Paris, or London, but I will I'll rent a car in Boston. But
I'll always rent a car and then I hit the road. If I'm not in
meetings. I don't stay at the hotel. And then I one of the
things I do is I go scrounging for things to buy.
Oh, well, I'm done that like that. I mean, but you know,
until I met you, I was also not a guy who really went out to eat
first because I have no one to go out to eat with.
Yeah, that's another thing I tried to do. I you know, I tried
to find it when I'm travelling. I try to get somebody to go hit
one or two of the trendy trendy restaurants or whatever city I'm
in. And I have some pretty good contacts in the in the food
reviewing industry if there's such a thing. And so I can
usually get like, you know, these places and you know, find
out what the places that's going to be written up shortly and I'd
get in there before they get their ratings. So
about that. Maybe we should just talk briefly about our dinner,
which I thought was a great one we had was it Wednesday evening?
Yeah, we went to Rubicon which I haven't been to for a while. And
they used to have a we talked about this week, they used to
have a and by the way, Aruba Khan's quality fluctuates a lot
and I thought that meal was quite good, but I was
disappointed that they don't have their their old wine
sommelier, Larry Stone anymore. And instead they've got some
pretentious character who I didn't was
Yeah, that guy. That guy was kind of kind of dorky he was. He
would have been good for the tourists but definitely not for
a poor professional eaters like us.
Yes, for sure. And I wonder whether it was real knowledge
base is because he didn't seem to respond appropriately to the
things. Yes, one of the things that people should know is when
you go to a, if you want to get into wine you have you know, you
have to understand where the sommeliers are coming from and
you essentially what you do as a customer is you test them with
with knowledge that you have and not just have but are intimate
with it to see what they think or to see how they respond as
kind of a test to kind
of just set a baseline okay, this
is why this guy doesn't know anything right? Right. My
favourite summer yay, ever was a in terms of blowing me away
sommelier is is the wine guy for those wine guy. The wine dude,
wine, the wine guy, the wine waiter and the way you sometimes
have pins and they sometimes have the thing. So remember
officially, some of them have degrees and some of them are
just faking it. But anyway, there's this guy that was a
French wine sommelier at the at the restaurant in New York City
called City Hall. And it was and he was very knowledgeable and
every time in everything I was testing him on He had taught me
who he knew what I was talking about, but he would always beat
me with well if you like that and you'd like this kind of
thing and it would always be something I didn't know. So he
so I had chosen a wine and he says you know if you like that
you should get this and he's just found one that was actually
better and I think it's same price or cheaper have they
done it yet in wines you remember they used to have
perfume where would say if you love Giorgio Armani, you'll love
this. Do they have that inline elements
adapt, but it's all so subjective, that is doesn't
really work. Although I think there are certain styles that
people like some people like to big wines, and some people like
you know, thin, fruity wines or whatever. And I think you can
kind of add some wine lists actually have categorised
instead of like, I don't like the type of wine this I like a
wine list. It just gives me the area. You know, the Bordeaux,
what part you find the wine pretty quickly. The other ones
I've seen these one of this is robust, yet fruity or yes, that
they have a whole bunch of these, you know,
I've worked with guys like that, you know, give me some
information about the wine.
That's why I feel but I think some people like the idea, you
know, people that don't don't know anything anyway. So this
guy top the wine, this guy in France at this French guy, and
he gave me a wine that was just much better than what I was
gonna get. And I was just impressed. So I trusted him
after that. So he comes up at the end of the meal and he says,
Would you like some after dinner drinks? I said, he says what do
you like generally? So I'm a cognac drinker. He says you
don't like Gropper, and this is coming from a French guy. No,
no, sorry. Sorry. It's, it's anyway. So he said I said no,
grappa. It's because my experience with Gropp. But until
then, this was a while ago, it's nasty. It's yeah, it's horrible.
Yeah, it tastes like paint thinner. With oranges, the guy
says to me, Oh, really. He says, Let me give you one. And then
you tell me what you think. And he brought over this astonishing
Corolla. And it actually changed my whole attitude toward it,
because there is there's, unfortunately, there's so many
different ones. But there's, there's like this layer of
extremely delicious Gropp us that it's undeniable how good
they are. And this guy, the fact that he turned me on to it. And
I've since found other places that also have good selections,
including this little place over here in Berkeley, called a colo.
They have a good selection of Grandpas that it just changed my
attitude completely about the paint thinner thing.
So what I like about having dinner with you is you know,
first we kind of decide on what we're going to have and then we
really talk about Okay, well we really tie me i Listen, you talk
and you look at the look at the at the wine menu, and then you
okay, what's going to work with this meal, which is, you know,
obviously the way to do it. And this was outstanding. We
actually we had to we had two drinks, we had wine and then we
had an Armin JACC after that, but the wine What was it again?
Because of course I don't remember it was a
domain ducek One of the 99 combats, and
it was most excellent. I had the baby ribs and it was the
combination was stellar.
Yeah, that was a little expensive, but it was good. The
budget. But now we're talking about on the show that you know
the benefits are obvious. It's a tax write off.
It's done taken care of. I can't wait to explain it during the
audit. I love doing.
This is the show we go to restaurants for this purpose.
We have to start calling the show no agenda, but a little bit
of talk about wine and then we can write it off food and drugs.
And then afterwards what did you have? You had lamb right?
Yeah, the lamb was killer. I have to say it was a nice piece
of lamb. Yeah, it was Oregon grass fed lamb it was an it was
very wet and perfectly cooked. You know they have that that
restaurant at that restaurant is CO owned by Francis Coppola. I
think De Niro and a couple other Italians that just got it and it
was done a long time ago. In fact, there
there's not really an Italian restaurant per se, no, no.
No style, you know, fusion, not fusion, but Mediterranean,
eclectic California kind of thing. And they keep changing
chefs. So that menu changes a little bit but that it's you
know, it's the same name is Coppola is wine company. And he
took the wine steward, apparently, to the wine company
Rubicon up in the Napa Valley, which is where he really puts
most of his efforts nowadays. Which is kind of a
disappointment for the restaurant because this new wine
guy just doesn't seem to have no
no no, I think he'll the the waitress we had I liked very
much. She was from Spain, right?
Yeah, she was very pleasant. They happen to have a good
waitstaff. They're generally
Yeah. And in fact, it was kind of funny because here we are
with What did it cost 300 bucks this bottle of wine I
think. No, no is to 20 to 20
Okay, so we and you know, the the wine dude that are known as
the sommelier, you know, came over and we get that you know,
and it goes to the here's the cork and I love the way you
either like you pick that core cup like, slap it back down,
right? None of this fancy schmancy stuff just okay. It's
not rotten. That's clear. And he had it in. What do you call that
thing that holder?
Oh, we had a cradle cradle, one of these crappy looking things
which I just test and
we'd like take it out of the cradle, man, it's gonna fall
over in the cradle, just put it on the table.
Well, the thing is about you know, I've always found the
pretence of this of the whole scene a little annoying in
restaurants that aren't that don't really have the chops for
it. I mean, this place has got this is typical in California
restaurants are really especially these trendy or
places. They have paper tablecloths, they got a
tablecloth underneath, but there's a piece of paper on top
of them. Shape a nice is the one who really popped with crayons,
so you can draw on it. Well, you know, a lot of these places are
you do a lot of business deals in these places. And people will
write out business proposals on the tables paper, giant piece of
paper and rip it off,
take it for the lead. I know I've done that myself too.
But that that kind of thing to me is not telling me that I'm
at, you know, a three star Michelin restaurant in Paris.
I'm at a place that's that's, you know, almost a bistro, even
though it's not quite but in fact of the style of food. If
people like to go out and eat and they go to Paris, they
should go to a place called Love Procope some day and that's a
one of the oldest bistro still in existence. I think it was
built in 1840. And that's in Paris. Yeah, it's again, it's a
it's a very famous place. As I think it's Paris is the oldest
Bistro, but it as a bistro. It gives you a good feeling for
what a bistro restaurants, bistro style restaurant is
really all about and what it's like. That's what this place is
like, isn't anything more than that is pretension. And that's
why the wine cradle thing doesn't do anything for me.
Because what does it do? You've already sloshed the wine around
it doesn't have to be sitting around at an angle. Just stand
the bottle up on the table and then to
go away when you feel like go away. Thank you Let us pour it
exactly much nicer.
I mean, I don't mind guys who pour it if you're in a
restaurant a really great like say the Ritz Carlton in San
Francisco has a really attentive or Florida li they have an
attentive staff. And so yeah, they'll pour it because they
will keep an eye on your glasses. And so if you finish
off some wine, boom, they're over there pouring. But most of
these places, you know, they want to pour the wine but
they're never around when you're out of wine. And you're looking
around for the bottle. It's
ridiculous. And let's face it, you know, we're not there to
impress each other. We don't want to have sex with each
other. We're just there to enjoy the meal on the drink. So the
cradle is just out.
You know, so we we made the waitress who was a little
reluctant to do it, because I guess this guy that's a little
reluctant. She
was like, no, no, no, we can't. Oh, no, I should not do that.
Come on, take it out. Take it out. Oh, I cannot take
responsibility. So then after the meal, now I was pretty much
good on on the wine and, and you suggested, you know, a cognac. I
was like, you know, I'll have some coffee. Will you have the
cognac? And so let's have an arm and Yeah, cuz I said, you know,
cotton cognacs, like just little to Bernie for me a little too.
Jet fuel type of effect. And so you just said let's have an
Armin JACC, which I don't think I've actually I'm sure I've had
one at some point. But I certainly can't remember if you
ever
been to France, and he had an after dinner drink 90% of the
time. It's an army knife because that's what they drink their
beer, which is much smoother, much nicer.
Not necessarily but then cognac. Because it was a 1900
It was literally a bottle from 1900. Do you remember the name
of it?
No, I don't I'd have to look it up. I
we kind of we kind of we kind of chose it just because it was
from 1900. Right? It was like
it actually when the guys came up with it. And the thing was he
was wrong about the whole. I said is this actually a vintage
1900 Because in Armenia like they made they make vintage
spirits as opposed to cognac. They tend not to so much they do
it once in a while. But not too often. But anyway, so they make
this vintage arming I can they do it mostly for people who want
to buy one from their birthday or whatever. And they get pretty
expensive when you get older. And anyway, so this one was and
I said this is really a 1900 The guy goes on and on with some
cock and bull story about how well it's like average, there's
some stuff older and some stuff newer, and it's like a soldier.
And he's describing a Solera, which is a mix of things that
happened to have a date on it when the Solera began, which
would be the way to do and Sherry and I'm thinking I never
heard anything like this. This doesn't sound right. But you
know, we got to anyway because it wasn't that expensive. It's
cheap. So we got a couple glasses of it. And I asked to
see the bottle. So they bring the volume in the Bible clearly
says it was distilled in 1900. Yeah, so what he said was all
bull,
and then But then of course the cool thing was there was this
little there wasn't enough to get another glass out. And so
we're talking about and the guy comes over and like oh yeah,
that's really good instead, but what are you going to do with
this last bit? I mean, how are you going to you know, who are
you going to sell that to? I think I got like $15 worth of
free arm When you're
when he Yeah, then he dumps it and splitting it. Golf me to
know and yeah that
was that was wrong but he but he knew who was paying John
Well he didn't know anything he didn't even know what the
distillation day was or anything else he was just making it up as
he goes along he had no clue is paying.
Well let me get Bobby on the phone Bobby dinero let's have
that got fired. Bobby, Bobby, to Adam AC and JC got to talk to
you. Hey, I wanted even though that we have no agenda, I took
some notes because I've been just Oh, missing Yeah, messing
around the house. Actually, something happened last night
which really irked me this falls into our shoddy journalism
category. So, um, you know, after this enormously taxing day
I had, and I love it. I didn't just fall asleep. After that
watching TV, I passed out, like, you know, see, and you know
the difference, when why fall asleep when you can pass I
passed
out, you know, like, my neck just went. And my wife has seen
this now. So she's not and you're no longer alarmed when my
head like tilts back like I'm dead. So she knows something you
might check my breathing, but I was I was just passed out. So we
go to bed. And all of a sudden, you know, my knee, you know
everything. Oh, my alarms start going off. And with that, I
mean, you know, there's text messages. There's, you know,
stuff popping up on my because I took my n 800. I usually take my
n 810 put it next to the bedside in case I want to check
something like Google something to get the answer for a game
show.
And what is so nerdy I am
now what had happened is and actually I should have I could
probably send you the link Silicon Alley Insider. Are you
familiar with this pack?
I know the guy personally. Yeah.
Let's see who wrote this. Dan Frommer.
I don't know him. I know the guy runs Silicon Alley, though.
Okay, so Silicon Alley, came out with a news and and it's
actually from directly from the AP. So the AP rights occupy
occupy wins Limelight patent suit 45 and a half million
dollars. And I'll just read this briefly occupied technologies as
it one is patent suit against arch rival Limelight Networks.
The AP reports optimised set jury in the US District Court of
Massachusetts ruled Limelight Networks and fringe a content
delivery patent asserted by Akamai, the jury awarded Akamai
45 and a half million dollars in damages plus interest. Occupy
said it plans to ask the court to issue a permanent injunction
prohibiting Limelight from continuing to sell infringing
devices. So by the way that the idea of infringing device is
being sold means is not necessarily about their core
content delivery network business. I'm not quite sure
what it is. And then so here comes the editorialised part
that Dan Frommer wrote,
I didn't know they made devices at limelight, they make a
device.
Well, this is my point. So it's, it's about it could be I don't
know if they're making and selling something. And it's
clearly not necessarily their core CDN capability. But who
knows. But Dan Frommer writes, If the verdict holds up, it
would be devastating for limelight, whose shares are down
almost 40%, and afternoon trading. Last year, the company
lost 24 million on 66 million of revenue. And if the judge issued
an injunction against limelight, it might have to shut down its
network. And what happens is, and this play, and I'm going to
get to your blog to your MarketWatch column in a second
because it all has to do with this. So what happens is, this
gets blown out there into the blogosphere, but this really
happened on Twitter, which is probably even worse. So the
first thing that happens is, is everyone's saying pod Joe is
going to pod shall be fucked if these guys sorry to say that.
But that's literally what is being said. Pod show it
is price, what's pod show got to do? Because our
delivery network is limelight. Oh, so it's no limelight. By the
way. They're much younger than Akamai they only started
away. Yeah, and by the way, it would be so hard to switch.
Wait,
this is Wait, let me get the story out, of course. So, you
know, they're much younger, they're a bunch of radicals from
Arizona, we like these guys a lot. You know, we get a good
deal from them. They really work with us, you know, it's a tough
business. And, you know, so we stand by partners like that. And
so you know, we we sent out well, first of all, so what
what's happening now is now people are posting blogs and you
know, pod shall be fucked in here, all these other companies
that will go down. And so what happens is all our producers get
in a, you know, get freaked out, they're like, you know, do we
have to start changing URLs and have like 1000s of dancers
and they're all antsy all the time.
Yeah. And so they freaking out and I can understand, you know,
they don't know what the hell was going on, but they Everyone
knows
you spending too much time listening to Twitter's feeds
rather than doing the damn shows.
You are now in charge of programming. Congratulations.
So, you know, so al Shaheed, who is our SVP of engineering and
technology product, he of course had spoken to occupy occupy to
limelight and they said, Well, you know, yeah, we're
disappointed it sucks, but we're gonna, you know, we're going to
go back and we'll, you know, we're going to work on it, but
no worries, you know, nothing to be afraid of. And of course,
it's true. I mean, you don't have when this type of stuff
happens, you don't have to sign a check the next second, you
know, then you're not gonna turn your fucking network off within
three days or something. And by the way, your point is so well
made, it takes us about five minutes to switch to any content
delivery network, we wish any anyone we could, you know,
anyone. And in fact, we, you know, we've always had it set up
that way, for very simple reason. Sometimes you want
bandwidth that may be cheaper, because you can take it from
another provider for some streaming exercise. I mean, this
is how you run a business, right? You never want to be
locked into one provider, and you certainly don't want your
URLs have to change. So anyway, the point of the story, and then
I'll lead into your MarketWatch column about about Google is,
you know, because of the AI, where I said, you know, the
doesn't the good stuff pop up to the top and doesn't all that,
you know, don't you get to the real truth it is, you know,
these guys, they won't live down this going dark business for at
least a year. Because everyone will be saying all these guys
are so screwed and, and even when I posted on my
blog@curry.com exactly what the status was. Even in the
comments, people aren't even reading just saying, oh, man,
it's always the little guy who gets screwed because all the
little guys are on limelight. And it was unbelievable how
poorly informed people are and how quickly it was. It was
literally Twitter crap. And Society of spectacle baked into
one and it really really irked me.
Well, yeah, well, it should. But the problem of course, if you're
being you might as well get used to it because this kind of thing
is getting worse. Yes, it is in my dentist then better. And it's
going in, which is one of the whole internet thing is creating
this I've always believed this was happening from the
beginning, where you have the democratisation of everything,
you end up with a mob mentality, just kind of all over the pile
jumping panic suckered by hoaxes. And it's unbelievable.
So let
me lead into your into your because actually, I was so
wired, you know. And I tried to tap it out on the on the 810.
Blitz, and something went wrong with the JavaScript in a Google
group or whatever. And so I've written all this thing
painstakingly in the dark, and then it got lost. I'm like, so I
went upstairs, and now now I'm awake. I'm gonna type it out on
the computer, I'm going to do I'm going to do a blog post,
right? So I'm up for an hour and I'm like, oh, man, I can now I'm
wired. Now I can't sleep. And so I listened to a tech five, I
hear you're talking about your MarketWatch column by Google.
And it's exactly the same thing. And let me just set it up. And
then you can correct and take it from there. comScore which is a
company that has a panel based system of tracking unique
visitors they do. They track a number of things, but they're
really a type of Nielsen for the web in more than one man or one
because they use panel based and not you know, don't rely on
stuff. The web webmasters have installed as a tool bar like
Alexa. So you know, like it or not, you know, you can like the
Nielsen's or not. But that's the rule. That's what's being used
because that's what Madison Avenue uses. So we live or die
by the comScore numbers everybody does, including
Google. So they came out with a story, which was about the
decline in click through rates, a steady decline in click
through rates that Google was having. And a whole bunch of
actually a couple of different places. I don't know who really
started off, I'm sure there was one, like Ground Zero blog that
drew the conclusion that Google is going out of business. And
this spiralled into, you know, after our trading of, you know,
market cap being chopped off by 15 billion, you know, a lot of
stuff. And it got so bad that they did something which I found
absolutely amazing on the comScore weblog, the CEO and co
founder went into detail explaining what this really
means to Google, which I think is kind of out of the ordinary
and of course, draws up a whole bunch of questions about you
know, why would they do that other than someone saying, Hey,
dude, you know, the interpretation of your data just
chopped off $15 billion of our market cap. So would you mind
like explaining this shit to somebody? But it's it. First of
all, if you do the research and take a couple minutes, you'll
see that the He's, well, yes, the click through rate may have
gone down effectively, what they're making what you can make
on, on on Google's AdSense AdWords system is probably more
effective and generating more cash. But I'm just amazed by the
zeitgeist now of online advertising is in trouble. It's
all over for Google, you know, it's not gonna work. And you
kind of had written about some of this on your MarketWatch
blog. And I just thought I'd bring it up to you.
Well, I wrote about, I actually made the conclusion that Google
is in good shape. Yeah. But it ended. By the way, it's a column
not a blog, even though now that they allow comments, which has
just become a I think is a mistake, because I think the
publication does dip comments are useless. Generally speaking,
we don't get that for some reason, at least the commenters
that I've been reading on my forum, are just they're just a
bunch of snipers. They're just like, you know, like typical
ankle biters, that you know, that are Mac users that hate me,
for one reason or another. No value, added no value, there's
no value, there's no insight. And so I don't know what good
then I think they may kill it. Because one of the guys who
consistently start sniping, maybe more than anyone is the
editor in chief of the publication, every time he
writes anything, they just slam him and he's got to be annoyed
by it. But I was just, my real point to that article was that
the media has been given Google a free ride, in terms of their
coverage of the company. They're never ready to get into any in
depth. What's Google really up to Google's very secretive about
a lot of stuff, nobody digs into it, nobody tries to find
thank you this is this is what I wanted to say is that if you
really dig into what Google is doing, they control the buy and
the sell side, you know, they control this entire system,
they're continuously tweaking the system to do one thing, and
it's to generate more money. And, you know, it is a black
box, you don't know exactly what you're getting. It's clearly
still working. But Pete, you know, where is the? Where are
people delving into how this AdSense actually works? You
know, you can kind of figure out what's going on? And how, you
know, it's an auction bid based system for AdWords, you know, we
use it quite a lot to market our programming. And you know, you
can you can get certainly a Dave and have teams who will you
helped us you can call you know, if you're if you're a big, big
client, and they'll help you tweak it, you know, it is their
job to make you to make more money and thus more money for
them. But they control every single aspect. John, they've
gotten that night.
No, it's, it's unbelievable. And, you know, I wish I had this
guy's name handy. But I had sat down and had lunch with the guy
who invented that system. AdSense. Yeah, it was actually
another It was outside of Google had bought it from these guys.
And this was one of the original engineers, and he gave me a
couple of I'm gonna have to track him down now. But he gave
me interestingly enough, a couple of real cool insight
tidbits that allow you to not game the system but to exploit
it in ways that very few people do. He says he noticed a few
companies that do it. But he did and it was quite fascinating.
But this guy b this is the guy who should have gone out and
hired I don't understand, you know, Yahoo and Microsoft. Other
guys.
Didn't they buy that from Yahoo? Isn't that what didn't Google
buy them I think thinking overture
knew why they bought a bunch of stuff from Yahoo but this is
this specific was thing was a standalone system that Google
bought from these guys. And they were I don't know I don't
remember the story anymore. Because this was like Overcup
delis two years ago maybe longer. And but the point is
just sitting there talking to the guy cuz he was in some other
company now doing something. And just how much it is my memory by
the way going on me I guess having another
army EOC from 19
I can't remember anything. So anyway, this is why I'm, by the
way, this is one of the reasons I'm such a good guy for like
blowing out insider inside stories because
you don't you don't remember what you're supposed to be
protecting.
Except this guy says, Look, I'm gonna tell you this, but if I
get if I get caught, you know, if you ever tell me, you know,
and I say go ahead and tell me because you know, hours from
now, I'm not even remember I had this conference.
Do you remember any of the tricks that he would that he
gave for gaming the system?
Yeah, I do. But I'm not going to talk. I don't have the nuff
details, but I can just say there wasn't gaming the system.
It was like it was actually gaming the way it's presented to
the reader. Nothing was you know, that low side it says, you
know, if you're interested in corpses, find them on eBay when
you see that. There's a way of there's a way of changing the
wording that customises almost Sleep, what the reader is
looking for?
Well, there's they're doing a lot of work on that now where
vacation, they're doing more broader. So vacation will
automatically trigger trip and air travels all kinds of stuff
that they're doing.
Well, it's an interesting situation with that, but but the
thing that fascinates me the most about any of this, is that
the guy's like this guy who's I'm talking to him. Why is he
not working for a huge million bucks a year from Microsoft? Or
why isn't Yahoo hiring him? And why isn't Microsoft trying to
copy everything Google does, but they don't really find any way
to get a hold of these executives who know how to do
all this stuff. It just baffling to me, I would
say there's one of two ways one of three things either a he is
and we just don't know about it be he's building his next thing
to flog off to someone or see. He's incredibly wealthy and
cannot compete in that arena after they bought the company
from him.
No, I think that the bladder thing for sure, because they're
always having done a noncompete. But the noncompetes end after
two years. And usually generally speaking in the valley, what
these guys do is that yeah, okay, so they sign the non
compete. And assuming it's even enforced half the time. It's not
because it's like, you know, because these companies move on,
I got a right to work state and all kinds of stuff. It's very,
it's very hard to join force. But but let's say they do
enforce it. I got Person A gets a noncompete. For two years
sells the company does whatever he does, he goes immediately to
somebody else and starts working on a new project and take two
years at least to complete. Yeah. So so the non competes are
not that important. But I get to my sense is not what you're
saying as the reason. My sense is that these other companies
just do not dig hard enough at finding competent people to do
what they want to do. I just think that they do a crappy job
of it. I know Microsoft has got a not invented here, generally
speaking strategy. And they always try to do everything in
house. And when they do get somebody from outside, like when
they got David Cutler to do Windows NT. Yeah. That was a big
deal.
Yeah, that was a great OS, by the way. And T. Yeah, it was, in
fact, the guts of it are still running things mostly. But you
know, the windows 2000 is always still perceived as the best best
Microsoft ever did. But anyway, so but it's just baffling to me
that there's not more, you know, they just hire people based on
their resume. I mean, they don't really go after these guys who
are the superstars? At least as far as I can tell.
Yeah, so not only do the companies suck, the journalists
suck, and everyone kind of sucks.
And they're all making money. Yeah, hold on a second. We
got we got a very important comment, John.
Hi, Adam. Hi, John. Okay, I've let it go on too long. The first
couple of times. You mentioned it, I let it go. But you guys
keep talking about tea. And here in two Americans talking about
tea. It's like the blind leading the blind. Let's get a few
things straight. First of all a PG Tips is not good tea, even
the PG Tips gold. It's soft southern Jessie did it's too
weak. You want to get some property that's either totally,
or Yorkshire tea. And the next thing is I hear today you've
been talking about putting milk in before the tea bag, or sugar
in before the tea bag. Oh my god. Just step away from the tea
bags. Take a deep breath and learn how to make tea properly.
You put the tea bags or the tea into a tea pot, you pour hot
water boiling hot water onto the tea bags or the tea. You make
the tea in the tea pot and then you put the milk in the cup. You
put the tea from the tea pot.
Here's a guy that obviously wasn't listening to the show
because I was complaining about putting the milk in first. And I
was aghast at the fact that people were doing it so now he's
accusing us of suggesting that we do that.
It's a complete bias the Brits have against the Yanks, man they
hate
this guy. This guy's an idiot. Besides that, let's I got a
letter here from a Michel Gleave this is actually more
interesting than him mainly because he obviously wasn't
listening in and Tetley Tea is not that good, but whatever I
agree anyway,
I like my PG Tips.
You know, everybody that's the most popular T in England How do
I guess all the Brits are wrong? But anyway, let's go and read
this No, but this was actually kind of shocking and this came
from an American to true and she said something about true true
steeping completely depends on the brand PG Tips is strong
enough after 30 seconds. And Marks and Spencer. That's what
she says but Marks and Spencer needs a bit longer, et cetera.
There's nothing worse than when the tea bags have sat and stood
for too long. Yuck. Although I let mine go for days. It was
probably an American who did the milk steeping thing? No, it
wasn't talked to a German to look at you like you're insane
for adding milk to any kind of tea blah blah blah.
She's probably one of those women who has the big gigantic
tea cup with a tea bag hanging out walking around the office
all day.
That I'm reading her stuff. I can't tell if she's an English
word. She's got
The idea that sounds totally American to me, but she doesn't
sound
like that 32nd thing well, you know, maybe she doesn't really
liked it because 30 seconds is like holy crap. My son who was a
big tea connoisseur he his says that there's a bunch of
documents that say that at three at the three minute mark because
you get like he's got a time
but then But then here's something I see all Brits do,
though. They take the because of course the tea bags here in the
in the UK have no string. I just want to point that out. They are
basically sacks or pods or pads or whatever. pyramid or pyramid
right? I will see them take the spoon and squeeze the tea bag
against the side of the cup with a quite a bit of force and then
take it out.
I do that but I use my hands. I'm like it, you know, I
squeezed it with my fingers because
the grip really I'm a spoon guy. I'm sorry.
It's great as a region they're grabbing. Throw the thing in the
sink,
in the sink in the sink for what for me, me to clean it up later
is that when
we had a garbage disposal or things go in there, you hit it
boom at gypsys tea, you know, come on. It goes in the sink.
Garbage Disposals rock, you know, in Berkeley, they're
illegal. They're outlawed. If they are they're illegal.
They're not good for the Eco culture.
So what kind of BS is that? Let's not even get into it. I
don't want a shitload of email talking about how we're killing
the planet with our garbage disposals.
Yeah, well, by the way, got one more letter from a guy this is
we're talking about wine earlier. I thought he says he
liked our show last Wednesday, and I guess he doesn't
understand this comes out when it comes out. That's why he
listened to it. Quick question since it needed advice from an
expert that must meet me what line goes well, what's pasta
anything? I'm looking at it but anyways, I'm looking at up to
$100
Holy crap, you can get five seven bucks $100 with a screw
top.
You know if you pasta you know, I always like to match it to
Italian wine with it. And I would start looking at checking
out well now I would actually go up scale a little bit and then
you get these Rosso DeMonte chinos, which are kind of the
second wines of Brunello which are like better than Kiante is
and not as good as brunellos, but probably almost as good and
drinkable more
soon and you spell the name of that wine. So
just Rosso, R O SS o meaning red wine Di Di monka Chino, Mo N ta
LCI. No, and I'm pronouncing it with no Italian accent,
obviously, because I don't speak Italian. But anyway, that wine
generally speaking, when you ever see one, especially on a
wine list, tends to be usually well priced. And that they'll
they'll get some respect from the wine stores, if you know
what that wine is. And I've never really had a bad one.
And he'll get laid for sure. Right? Because he'll impress.
And they're, you know, you can get them for 20 bucks. And
they're very tasty. But I
tell you, you remember, earlier, I think it was neighbours last
week, YouTube went down for two hours because Pakistan blocked?
You know, I never followed up on that to find out what happened.
How did that how did Pakistan by blocking YouTube actually bring
down the system?
Well, I can't explain that part. But I will tell you this, the
Dutch press is and I'll just say that, in general is claiming
that the reason that happened is I think I've told you about the
anti anti Qur'an movie that this Dutch politician is planning on.
planning on releasing. We blogged it out. Right, that's
exactly right wielders. His name feared fielder's A is from the
PVV party or the party of something freedom. And the So
the story is, is that they shut off YouTube because they thought
that he was going to release this week and they they blocked
all traffic. And they intended to apparently only block traffic
from from wherever that guy's wherever he was going to upload
or something like that. But essentially, it was there
claiming that it was the reason they shut it down. Is because of
this movie. They thought it was coming out.
Well, how did they met? You know that it's just like a cheap
bunch of Christmas tree light bulbs. You're the internet. I'm
telling you.
Well, if you ever been to Dubai, as an example, I went to Dubai.
The three of us stayed at that ghastly hotel, the boiler up the
big one. Yeah. Which is great for a day and a half. But we
booked it for like a week and we were just bored stiff. But
anyway. Really, it has nothing to do. There's nothing to do
except. Yeah, good, good food. I will say good food. But anyway,
you know, so you get internet access in the room. And you
know, and I couldn't get to a whole bunch of sites and you
know, I asked a couple people I start to investigate a bit and
You know, for Dubai, there really is like a big gateway.
And it goes through one huge router, I guess. And there
probably is only one ISP there anyway. And they determine what
you can and cannot go to and can and cannot see.
Yeah, I know they do that. And in the Middle East a lot I'm
always checking with, I have some associates that are in
Dubai and elsewhere, I have a guy in China. And I'm always
asking to make sure that the divorce.org/blog is showing up,
because I'm always concerned about it, because we were cut
off in the Middle East, but two years ago for a month or two.
And I always felt it was because we have a lot of critical
articles about you know, terrorism. And I thought maybe
that was a bit turned out to be. I forgot what the reason was,
but it was some some minor thing that was fixable, and it got
fixed. And we're back up.
I'm always quite proud when we've, we've been at banks many
times in these types of legal and financial offices. And I'm
always quite happy when you know, you can't get to YouTube.
You can't get to MySpace can't get to Facebook, but pod show
pops up quite happily. You know, it's really cool.
Yeah, no, that's i You never know why they're cutting these
various sites off. I mean, what's what, what's
the I would, I would say the video clip of TSA gangsters
would be one reason for it to be cut off. That's the one I showed
you in the office.
Yeah, yeah, that would be bad. But but the Facebook, I mean,
what's No, no, no,
because it's a time waster. That's why people just sit there
all day Facebooking. Well, maybe I can see it. Yeah, I know you
don't have or maybe I have a Facebook account. Really, the
only reason I have it is so that that's the oh my god, my
daughter doesn't do email anymore, which is very
interesting. Now, Facebook has its own email messaging system.
And so you can either write something on each other's wall,
which is kind of like a public posting place. Or you can send
email and she if I send her email, she I know her email
address, she just doesn't respond if I send her a Facebook
message. And then to hers are protected environment, right,
she can kick anyone off. She all she only receives messages from
people she wants. And if someone wants, it's very interesting
this if someone wants to send her a message, and then they
have to friend her first. And you have to either get give a
good enough reason or she has to know them. And then you can
receive the messaging so I was
any different than AOL messenger, MSN Messenger, or aim
or whatever these other I am systems on, that's the
difference. Well, the
only No, there's no difference, except that obviously, the email
client that's built into Facebook, you know, has email
type properties, you know, I am kind of scrolls and it's gone.
And if you log out, you may not be able to see your previous
messages that were incoming. So it has more of a permanent
message structure and and you know, the
Skype with Skype, Skype is smart. Yeah, yeah. But you can
click on something and get all the messages you've ever sent to
that Yeah, but
it's it's not good enough for for structured following threads
and stuff. And you know, you'll you'll miss things and there's
always idiots you don't want to read their stuff and maybe miss
something. And Brad and I, it's not quite the same in the Email
Archive structure is just different than than I am. But I
do like Skype when you reconnected if someone's Of
course, sometimes it's confusing, you know, reconnect
after a 10 hour plane flight, and then blue blue blue ball
these messages come in, I'm like, Oh, let me look for that
document. And it turns out they sent the message you know, 15
hours earlier
Yeah, that well, that's like the the Verizon messaging system
every once in awhile, I get a message a text message from you.
That's like two days,
two days old that believe me, that's AT and T and Verizon,
dude, I'm sorry, 18 t, right. at&t is lame. That way.
It's very inconsistent. Sometimes it's like bang, bang,
bang, you can actually have an almost like an im conversation
with somebody would do a text messages. And then sometimes it
just never show up for days, like
gears that guarantee delivery, which of course, what SMS really
is, you know, is built on, you could even get a delivery
notification report automatically the system is set
up for that I think most carriers will let you do that.
It's very disconcerting to me that, you know, I'm totally
thinking I sent you a message. I think it was a back and forth.
We had one or two messages. And then I didn't hear from you, you
know, I'm like, oh, and it's worrisome. And now that I know
that these messages sometimes just don't arrive. You know, my
trust is kind of waning on it.
Ya know, it's disconcerting, to say the least. And it's like,
you know, and what's weird about sometimes you get like, the one
I think I got the last one from you. And try they sent you some
messages. I never heard back and figured they're just the same
thing. Last I'm sure. Yeah. So I got this message. That was all
call me now. You know, it's like some comment. What do you want
me to call in for you know, it's like 10 at night on Thursday.
And so I'm looking at it and I read and I track it. It's like a
message it was sent two days early. Yeah,
sucks that I'm sure you know, the big problem with 18 T is
roaming internationally, my voicemail never works. You know.
So when I'm over in the UK, if you call him and I, it doesn't
matter because I don't care about voicemail, and actually
I'm quite happy, it doesn't work. But what you get is the
caller you've called is unavailable, please or you've
not even that it's like, please enter mailbox number.
I don't know what the mailbox number. I mean,
it's horrible. I know,
I've heard that because I call you every once awhile on the
phone when you're over there, because you have a local number
in the Bay Area. So I'll call it and again, I'll get like gather
the guy's not here, enter mailbox numbers
of what, just punch it in, see what you get,
you get nothing. And then I've done it. And then you get into
the other the alternative message with somebody that deep
British accent says, enter the phone number to which you'd like
to send a message. So you have to read down the number which I
don't usually know because on speed dial the number and the
address book being you know, because that's the way most
people use cell phones. Now that you have the numbers in the UK,
you'd have to scramble around to get the number, which you can't
do without hanging up generally. Yeah. And so it's like,
on your Nokia II 61, you have you can actually you just hit
the Address Book button.
The button there at the on the one I have the where the address
book, but normally is I suppose I can scroll to it somehow. But
it's normally it turns over the loudspeaker on and off being
you can reconfigure those buttons. So that until I
would think didn't need to next, but you're
hitting the wrong one in the middle, you have your joystick
and then you have two little buttons to the left and to the
right of the joystick. So the one to the furthest left is
little addressbook icon. I think that one is you can't even
reprogram it. So you should be able to hit that one you
probably have the other
this for an idea. They should fix their crappy system. Why
should they put all the work on me? I'm not their accountant.
Dude, speaking of which, you know, I had my my typical
Saturday morning. Not bagel, as Leo incorrectly said, but I was
you know, kicking back drinking some tea reading the Financial
Times, man, you know, I'm you may, I'm sure you're aware of
it. But, you know, having been in the States for two weeks,
it's just, you know, it's it's not common knowledge. But this
problem with the banking system, which of course is all about
credit and debt, you know, that that's what banking is. Every
single bank in Europe is now throwing out these huge write
offs, you know, 2 billion here 2 billion in, in Switzerland. You
know, of course, it was a problem with with Francis. So at
General. It was yeah, there were there's totally toasted
but but the rogue trading, it's all the same stuff. What I think
is happening, John, is the it because it's not like, Oh, this
is because of just bad, you know, mortgages, subprime
mortgages, this is much, much deeper. All these guys are
fucked up, everyone's been lying, then they figured we
might as well throw it all out now. Because of course, they're
discovering this stuff. And whether it's a rogue trader,
they're all and they're popping it everywhere, man. It's unreal,
every single Royal Bank of Scotland, you know, huge
billions of pounds of write down. Every one is just taking
on let's get rid of it. CEOs are resigning, getting fired left
and right. It is pandemonium.
And I was looking at fact, I was looking at some bank stocks
thinking that I knew this was coming. I was thinking maybe
there's some good, you know, put some calls here puts mainly to
you know, and these guys are it's already done. I mean, UBS,
you know, the one of the biggest banks in Switzerland is already
down by 50%. And how much further down? Is it gonna go?
These stocks are all getting pounded. It's amazing.
So what's happening now and I predicted this on one of our
first shows, the sovereign wealth funds are bailing all
these guys out. And what's happening is, it's a much much
cheaper now to go raise some and not just cheaper, and we'll get
to another one of your favourite topics. It's much easier to go
raise money from the sovereign wealth funds, which are now in
the two to $3 trillion range of how much money is out there.
This is China. This is the Middle East. It's a you know
that that that kind of money?
And where waves back up and say it makes it was saw I don't I
don't know why. But I haven't heard this term. What does it
mean? Like private equity companies that are Whoa, no,
no, it's so the country puts a fund together a sovereign
country like China. Yes, Dubai and China. They literally set up
a fund and you can imagine a country you know, you can get a
trillion bucks together pretty quickly if you're China. And
they are now investing in every single one of these banks. So
all these banks are doing a missions Okay, and and what's
turning out is it's much more cost effective and much, much
easier. Of course, with Sarbanes Oxley than doing an IPO in the
US in the UK. Now, this non domiciled tax issue, along with
some other taxation, things that are changing is literally in the
Financial Times today being called the Sarbanes Oxley of the
City of London. So now all these banks that need the dough,
because you know, that's really what these IPOs are about
raising money is all about, they're all going to take money
from China. I mean, we're owned we're biatch is, man, it's, it's
crazy.
What's funny about it is that, you know, this is worse,
privatisation always ends up some other government instead,
instead of your railroads being owned by your government and
controlled by the locals. They get privatised, and then the
next thing you know they're owned by China. Yeah, well,
Heathrow
is already you know, the BAA British airport, whatever it is,
is owned by a Spanish company. You know it's a it's it's not
it's absolutely not and I think this is it's just starting you
know, but you're not seeing the headlines I'm sure of it in the
US you're not seeing the headlines you know,
they don't we you know, the problem with Yeah, we don't get
the right news feed generally speaking as a country we're you
know, because our local reporters or their local media
and local meaning you know, like the New York Times Washington
Post any of them they just don't know what they're thinking in
the in the editorial meetings you know, they in a newsroom you
have a big meeting every day of all the talk you know, the city
desk editors and all these guys get together around a big table
with the editor in chief and they start calling out what the
paper is going to look like for that next edition. You know
what's going to be on the front page and what's hot and what's
not what's what's coming up. And they make the decisions in that
room. And I don't know what if there what because
it because it look a lot of Brittany's
always Britney in the new day go Britney Clemens you think Roger
Clemens is it is using steroids? Can we run that in front? If it
leads
it bleeds baby? You know the rule? Well, leading Yeah, if it
bleeds, it leads fucked it up.
That same thing.
But I am a little bit hurt that you had never heard the term
sovereign wealth fund because I remember I had this whole rap
about it. You laugh.
Yeah. But that's because this what you were so deeply into
something rather than tell you to stop.
This is the one. Yeah, well, now
I'm more interested. Hey, John. It's timing. Hello, me.
All right. Thanks. A lie. Powell. Timing. Oh, you're so
happy when you're calling something earlier? Isn't that?
Isn't that what journalists? Do? I well, I said this in 1912. And
was right at a lot of people do that constantly. It's very
annoying to do that. You've never done it. I've rarely do
it.
Constantly. What are you talking about? You always say you Oh,
will you put it differently, though. But you'll say I wrote
about this six months in my MarketWatch column. John, you
always say these things.
I only say it to for clarification. You're killing
me, baby. You're telling me I always ever clarification or to
assure someone that I you know, because I made me part of a
premise. It's got nothing to do with the boys the most of these
guys do. It was? Well, I was right again. Last week, don't
write another column this week. And here it is. Listen to this.
Adam and Devorah acts as a message for you guys. Because
Motown for actually is stuff still made in America. It's hard
to find. But it's there. There's a fantastic television programme
on the Travel Channel on the shores travel channel. It's
called John racks and burgers made in America.
Have you seen that? I haven't seen that show.
You know, I think I may have seen it a couple of times. It's
mostly about candy manufacturing. If I'm not
mistaken,
I've been keeping my eye on it. And so first of all, I did come
up with something that is iconic although completely unimportant
for gross domestic product, you know, they we still make Harley
Davidson
Yeah, and you know that that would have been by the way for
you investors out there would have been a great investment
during their the period of time when they were about to go out
of business
when they were AML points. Remember that when they change a
void company or something? That was horrible. They made shitty
bikes like a sports or you know a motorcycle guy. I used to have
a bike and remember the Sportsters
Yeah, I didn't think they were that bad. They were fine if you
if you put you know, the teardrop tank in a nice seat and
everything. Yeah, you could
customise them all right. Yeah. I'm more of a fat boy type guy.
You like those big? Yeah, dogs as they like to call that all
the Okay. The hog was
awesome. Here's the here's another thing to add a little
bit to thought we were talking about last week. iAds that's the
company that makes Airbus, right, they would just show you
read this that they were award awarded a 58 and a 35 billion
pound contract to create super tankers for the US. forces over
both tankers. Yeah. Over Boeing. So for going out, yeah, 35
billion pounds. So it's $70 billion.
what that's all about? Why are we buying European products from
the United States when they're obviously overpriced because of
the value of the dollar? Doesn't make any sense? Makes
no sense. I totally. So it has to be politics. It's got to be
some real politics.
There's got to be corruption. There's no reason for this kind
of idea. We should be buying only Boeing products. The value
of the dollar, it cost a buck 50 To buy a Euro now
151 lowest ever in history,
the lowest of the dollar ever. Yes. Yeah. lowest value of the
dollar in history. Yeah. And so now we're buying European
products with that low dollar and we got a company called
Boeing.
This is a fucking Yeah, this doesn't make any sense. I
haven't read the article yet. But I'll look into it and find
out what's going on. Someone pulled a boner on that one. I
agreed the US should be outraged. It's for our own
military industrial complex.
It doesn't make sense. I'm gonna have to start blogging, you know
what it could be a write it up.
Maybe it's maybe it's what we call a veto godmother, or an
otherwise kind of a makeup for. For you remember, there was the
big dispute about government subsidy for the creation of the
big, you know, the new Airbus. And Boeing in the US said, Well,
you know, we're still going to support Boeing, and they had
that whole anti competitive thing, and everyone was pissed
off about it, because, you know, countries aren't supposed to
support their, their air, aircrew, aircraft manufacturers.
Does that ring any bells with you?
Yeah, vaguely. But you know, there's always there's been a
bone of contention on both sides for since the beginning of this
law.
What I'm saying is, maybe they let them have it, maybe they
said, here, you guys take that and we'll take something else
maybe there was that kind of a scale of deal on the in the bad,
they
may have done a deal where, you know, we bought a bunch of their
crap and then they bought a bunch of ours. So this reminds
me of like the freeway around here, I'm, you know, the freeway
traffic in the Bay Area has gotten so bad. I, you know, I go
to San Francisco in the morning, and it's crowded, I actually in
the afternoons even worse, like if I want to go to San Francisco
at three o'clock, it's just as hard to get there as it is an
eight in the morning. And I'm looking I'm seeing traffic stop
dead at three or four or five in the in the afternoon, going both
ways. So obviously, people are commuting in both directions at
the same time. Why don't they just move to the other location?
It just you know, it just something about the riddle, you
know, this, like, this guy's coming to San Francisco to come
over to here to work. And I'm going from here over to San
Francisco. Why don't we just change houses? So I swapped
derivative, a swap
swap? So that's when I'm possibly this is what's going on
with this plane deal. But it's still you know, it shouldn't be
it's wrong.
It's wrong. Yeah. You were harping most of the past two
weeks that I was in the office about and I've heard you on a
couple of other shows talking about you know, the nearly Smith
Cruz who of course is the EU competition gurus are and you
know how Microsoft of course received this you know, billion
dollar more than billion dollar fine it's pronounced namely
right? It's nearly that's her first name. And her last name is
Neely I guess that's one daily daily daily daily,
like me like like it was like a nail her only daily. And then
Smith Cruz is hyphenated, so it's Sierra Mike India. Tango
Smit. Crews are at Summit summit cruise crews. And that's kilo
kilo Romeo. Oscar Echo Sierra Smith crew daily submit crews
try the crews with a rolling our crews nearly Smith crews not to
don't put that in there. It's nearly Smith crews. Sorry. I
blew it. I'm trying to help you now. You'll get there. It's
quite
late nearly Schmidt. I keep wanting to say Sherman. No she's
not MIT Cruz.
Yeah, but But you got to connect the Smith crews into kind of
like why and the Smith crews There you go. Fantastic. The
crowd goes while
I work on it. But anyway, so namely, was a couple articles
and one of the things I was I didn't quite right or rave
about. Ro rave about was the fact that I was reading an
article and one of the business journals saying, well, when she
got the job they expected her to be a pushover and she was like a
weak person and she was always pro business. So this is a big
shock to everybody. But meanwhile we had talked about
her and you always said she was a hard ask them to begin She
is so I mean, you know, it's she's so hard as it turns me on.
I feel like I can't help but find her sexy.
So what is the white? Why was this analysis so wrong by all
these journalists that keeps saying that she was supposed to
be a soft touch
because she's a woman because she's a woman, I'm sure dickhead
journalist. And they and they didn't do any research into the
shit. She's She's done a lot of heavy shit. I mean, if you just
Google her, Hey, journalists, I got an idea, Google. Look for
some shit. Anyway, my question to you, my friend who actually
collects that money and where does it go?
Yeah. Because then she get a piece of it.
Because the Yeah, obviously, the reason you know, other companies
were at a disadvantage. So you know, these companies were
disadvantaged and ultimately, the consumer, of course, is
disadvantaged. That's why this exists. But where does that
money go? It's the same thing. Like, I heard that a couple
record labels are now suing the Ri A, because they want to know
or not, and record labels, artists and their managers,
because, you know, they see all this money being collected, you
know, definitely millions of bucks from infringements and all
these lawsuits, kids, where's the money going?
Well, that's a damn good question. Because they
don't they say they don't see it going down to the artists, you
know, then they're looking at the statements. Like in your
where does that money go? Does it go into one big pot? You
know, and, and then what? You know, who gets it? Does the
consumer ever really get it? I mean, that's what I want. Well,
I'd like I'd like to know,
I'm gonna find out. I got a column, the title, I got the
column already. Show me.
Show me the money. I love it. Now you don't have to write it
now that we have a title. That's so cool.
That's true. None, it's done. That's a call back for you
people out there. So here's the story of the week, how much time
we got left, by the way,
we have I think we have time for the story of the week.
So I'm watching a there was a shooting in Berkeley, some black
policeman shot at black woman who had a knife to somebody's
throat. And but everybody's up in arms about this, because you
know, sort of,
certainly you mean African American, John,
well, whatever. But but we there was, so they had a big fuss over
the city council and they were blaming everybody for being a
bunch of racist, you know, even though the guy was black, I
don't know. But there was an interesting new term that
cropped up, and I'm always on the lookout. And I listened to
like, free speech TV. And I listened to right wing talk
shows, left wing talk shows, I listen to the extremes to look
for new buzzwords that they're going to try to slip into the
public consciousness. So people all of a sudden all start
thinking along some line of thought. And I'm always reminded
of Bill Moyers, who gave a speech to a bunch of left wing
literally left wing journalists at some conference. And he was
talking about how the Republicans are always making up
words that they, you know, in terms that you know, they try to
exploit the dumb Americans. But meanwhile, of course, the
Democrats do even more of this, you know, with then I mentioned
to you a couple of my old favourites like gravi TAs and
truth, truth to power is my old time most recently returned
power. What does that mean? Truth to
Power is a term that came up about I first heard it maybe two
years ago, maybe three years ago. And it is a it doesn't mean
anything to me. But what is supposed to mean, I think is
that it's like you tell us, you, you, you, you confront the power
of what you'd like to present as somebody who's actually the
power or the CEO of a company with with
the truth. Truth, right? And that means power. And that
supposed to do something. I don't know why maybe it's magic.
It's like it might be maybe makes the guy disappear. Poof.
So the one I ran into is this woman who was complaining about
this and she's was defending I guess, the dead woman. And she
says, she makes it she says the phrase, she says well as a skin
a privileged white woman. So I heard so as soon as I heard
this, and I mentioned this in my wetsuit, and she just lit up
like I did, which is the word the term skin for privileged
which which is actually a demand it's there's not a positive
thing. It's like oh, well you can say that because it will be
used like this. Oh, well, Adam, you can say that because your
skin
privileged. Oh, my gosh.
And I when I mean it just every every
it appears, it appears I'm just Googling it. It appears to be a
derivative of white skin privilege. As a whole bunch of
entries on on Google a whole bunch of hits I'm getting here.
Huh? That's That's messed up. So but now it's being used in a
very interesting context.
Well, everything You know, with this is the, you know, the
modern, this is actually the modernization of the, of the of
the kind of epithets against, quote unquote, old white men.
So it's politically incorrect to say old white men, you know, you
have to say skinned privileged age.
I don't think it's politically incorrect. I think it's not, you
know, it's not trendy. It's like it's old fashion. Yeah. Which I
guess would be politically incorrect at some level, because
old fashion, you know, you got to keep up with these terms. And
so the new term would be skin privilege, that means that
you're good that you're using the right terminology that, you
know, most of these things are code. I've always found most of
these kinds of terminologies than they when they come and go,
if you and you can listen to them, and you can actually read
them logic calm, you know, if you see it, for example, the
word chilling is always a word used by someone identifying
themselves as a left wing writer.
So when I say Sebastian Ripley is a show shill, then
no, there's no coach there. That's actually a that's a, a
callback joke, because that's what it is. But there's those
code words that people were using their writing, and they
using their speaking to identify themselves as part of a
subculture, like LA gay they can be there's a lot of gay terms.
And you know, things you can do, there's a lot of left wing,
there's a lot of right wing stuff you can say. And you could
you run into these, and people sometimes don't even know
they're in the milieu. But they've adopted all these terms.
And you can identify them as being in the milieu even though
they're not trying to make it clear, a lot of people trying to
make it clear, some people aren't really such a nice word.
It reminds me of just my last anecdote, and before I bore
everybody, I'm like, it reminds me of a situation that took
place. Some years ago, when I was at I was visiting Boeing and
some guy written something for a PC World, which was, at the time
a very politically correct operation. And the guy was
right. And he's talking to me about some copy editing issues
that he had, because he was he got something that he wrote
kicked back and bend the editor. A woman said that he she wanted
him to use a term. company spokesperson, oh, instead of
spokesman, no, instead of representative. That's just
that's what got me and I was baffled by this. I said, What do
you hear what's wrong with the word representative? It's not so
it has no sexual connotation whatsoever. No, no, no, it is
different a representative and that's, in fact, that's what he
asked a man. And the woman copier says no, you don't. She
says, No. She says we use spokesperson because we don't
want sexist language. And he says, well, Rep. How's
representative sexist? She says you don't get it. We use
spokesperson to make it clear, that we don't use sexist
language.
To is unbelievable.
And that was like to me was like the, you know, like, wow, this
is? Well, I
will I will say though, man, that's, you know, particularly
when it comes to the sexual harassment horse crap, you know,
and, you know, obviously, there is a line where it is sexual
harassment and where it isn't. But the lawsuits, particularly
if you're a public company, you know, you got guys waiting
outside just asking, Hey, do they want to make you present
yourself as a representative? I think we can go make some money.
I mean, that's, that's the world we live in.
Well, unfortunately, a lot of that has to do with the, with
the way the laws being interpreted. But anyway, but
anyway, but the point I'm making is there's these code words all
over the place. So whenever I hear one because I'm always on
the lookout for him because I'm, you know, it's kind of what I
do. And so when the skin privilege one came up, I was
just like, wow, this is one of the this is a absolutely
astonishing term to be floating around. Because it's just
so Have you have you cracked the code of it. Do you think you
know what
I mean, the code is obvious as it means you're right, you're
right. You're a progressive. Yeah means you if you use the
word identifying yourself as a member of the progressive
movement within the Democratic Party, which is, you know, kind
of beyond liberal, but not anything like a NEO liberal,
you're not a NEO liberal, which is a certain type of liberal,
which is a globalist and is a different devil who are hated by
these people. By the way. You are a certain kind of
progressive style old fashioned, you know, 1930s borderline
socialist.
Well, let me just say that as a skinned privileged, man, I'm
insulted by the term
well, you should be Yeah. Huh.
Anyway, all right, my friend. That was good. That was fun. We
had a lot to say, Honey.
Please take your skin privilege to an extreme sex privileged
Alright, one of the longest shows ever by So I don't I it's
not your fault. You know, I think we do keep it rolling. I
had some thoughts about this, I was thinking, you know, maybe if
we did talk to each other every single day, we could actually
set a time limit, we could say, alright, we're going to talk for
30 minutes. And this is what we're going to talk about, but
because we don't talk every day, but all these this gushing
waterfall comes out.
I think it's better doing it this way every day thing. I
think if we had like a huge audience, and we can monetize
the show, yeah, we could do every day for a while till we
got sick of it.
But I'd never get sick of talking to you. That's Howard
Stern secret. He likes talking to those people. That's why
That's why the show works.
So but the point is, is that, you know, people seem to like
this longer format. And we can do it for you know, as long as
we can. And we've maybe, you know, we might want to try the
begging for money thing. That would be good. And Leo,
Leo Laporte monetization system
seems to love this show. Of course, it's public television.
It's
UNsponsored. Awful. Yeah, it's, well, yeah, we should do a drive
because this show is without a doubt on sponsible. It just
won't work. We could, I believe that this type of show if we got
into people's main line, and just looking at my ego filters
and stuff that's getting trapped. I think we are I think
a lot of people are tapping in and they, and they do find some
time, maybe on the weekend or Wednesday, you know, to listen
to the show, and they, you know, they take their time with it,
and it just works for them. I do believe that we could make this
a for pay programme. Could be, you know, like, like the
Economist.
Yeah, I mean, I don't see why not. I mean, it's not that, you
know, you know, it does work to a point. I don't know what Leo's
numbers are, because I know he begs for money. But you know,
they're good enough that he keeps doing it. And public
television and in public radio have made a career out of this.
In fact, there's networks of these things, and they're just
basically playing on people's get lucky like this show. Can
you give us some money? We'll keep doing it? Well, they
do it a little differently. They do it a little bit differently.
Because I know a lot of some friends of mine have done this.
Have you ever seen they do the pledge drive? And first of all
broadcast a concert? And
well, they don't always do that. Sometimes they do actually do.
But yeah, I know what you're saying. I hate that by the way.
They talk and talk and talk or they show something. And then
they cut right into the middle of it and then make your watch
for 15 minutes as they keep begging you for money. I'm not a
big fan of that.
Well, this this Dutch guy. For some reason, his name is just
not popping into my head. Who by the way, the entire Dutch show
business industry has laughed at for years. He's making so much
money with this kind of, he has like 150 people he's
consistently on the road and the classical music concert, but
really popularised and, and done as a fun entertaining evening
for everybody. You recognise all the songs, it's not stuffy,
they, you know, they dress up in, in, in the clothing from the
1800s. You know, and and so his show is one of the shows, and he
makes so much money from that because they're selling the the
DVD, you know, for 100 bucks, obviously, most of that's going
to NPR, whatever the public broadcast organisation is, but
he gets to pre sell an incredible amount of these DVDs.
It's just it's bank is Big Time Bank. Wow. So we could do that.
Or we could do we could have celebrities in the telethon.
We could do a telethon. That would be fun. And actually, that
might actually work. The end, it would be entertaining the way we
do it. And there's also the opportunity for grants. I don't
know that any podcasters have actually thought about getting
anywhere and getting a grant from the Ford Foundation.
Although I think in this case, you know, forget it. But it's
always a possibility at some foundation would find this to be
a something grant worthy.
Ah, that's a good idea. Well, in the Netherlands, actually, I do
know this this outfit called, oh man, my brain is mush today, fab
channel, fab channel.com. And if you go look at fab channel, they
got, I think, a couple million euros in seed money from the
Amsterdam a grant from the Amsterdam municipality to record
live concerts and put them on the internet concerts that are
made either in the Paradiso, which is a famous venue or the
Milky Way, another very famous venue in Amsterdam. And now
these guys have got some kind of deal with Universal and, you
know, but it started with the grant and they were in effect
podcasters hmm, yeah, interesting, huh? That's a good
idea. I'm actually a googling that see if anyone has thought
of that. There must be tonnes of money out there.
Well, I know there's tonnes of grant money. There's a there's a
fact I did some research, not for this particular thing. But
on grants. And there's a there's a lot of online resources now.
And then when you start looking into it, the amount of grant
money out there is just out of this world, but there's a trick
to it. It's called grantsmanship and grantsmanship is the ability
to get the money.
Yeah. Oh, there are whole companies that you been hired to
go get grants. I mean, this is big business.
Yeah, it's a little different than degenerate into normal
sales Minh ship. Yeah. So a lot
of forms you got to fill out and a lot of promises you got to
make, but you can get the dough and it's pretty lucky to
podcasting grant goes online. That's interesting. For schools,
yeah, they got grants for schools, but then it's all like,
you know, for equipment. That's not the same thing. It should be
for content. It should be for content. You know, you know, we
could talk to Nate Lee about that. I'm sure there's some EU
money floating out there that we can get our hands on.
It just came in from Microsoft.
Give me that Microsoft check. Just sign your name on the back
nearly don't worry about it. We'll put it to good but then
people are gonna hate us because then we're making money off of
this and we didn't still going to do long form.
That's bull. Nobody hates people for making
Yes, they do. They hate me incessantly for making they just
hate you for other reasons.
They don't care not a likeable guy. Yeah, well, that's the
that's what you say. And that's what you play on. And that's why
they hate you. It's not it's not the fact that you have a lot of
money. And I don't think people know how much money you have. If
they did, then they would hate you. But that's beside the
point.
Thanks. Thank you, my friend. All right. Well, let's think
about that. Because I mean, we don't need to do it. Now. We
need a tonne of listeners. We need a lot more than we
need to get into the hundreds of 1000s
I think yeah, we need a lot more.
So I would let's ask the real listeners that do listen that
eavesdrop? Hey, tell your friends to listen to the show.
You know it's not gonna kill them. Yeah, really.
Thank you. That's our pledge drive for today. Tell your
friends to listen. Put it on your blog. Twitter it please.
Jaiku it. pounce it. Dig it. stumbled upon it. No anymore.
Reddit Reddit. Ooh, good one. Good one.
We had a huge hit on the blog last week from one Reddit thing
is that like a dig thing Reddit I've never really looked into it
it's some like
it but you know, the thing is dig has been getting getting us
you know, we get these episodes where all of a sudden boom, some
crazy post has gotten to the attention of stumbled upon Digg
Reddit or whatever. And right now stumbled upon and Reddit
give us much more. Dig have a stronger spikes than dig does
really interesting. Because I hate you. Because you don't know
what you're talking about. And you don't like Max. You mean the
Dig? Dig? Dig crowd? Yeah, the dig kids. They hate you, man.
All right, John, let's wrap it up. The dog has been barking for
the last half hour. He's hungry. He's pissed off at me. You've
been listening to no agenda. Coming to you from the curry
manor in Guilford Surrey in the United Kingdom. I'm Adam curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak. This has been the extended edition. I'm
in Northern California,
and we'll talk again next week on no agenda.