Okay, everybody wants again. It's time for the programme that
emanates from two different continents every single week. We
have no music. We have no commercials, we have no jingles.
We have no seemingly value of talent or valuable talent.
Coming to you from a soon to be snow blanketed United Kingdom,
I'm Adam curry.
And in sunny Northern California, I'm John C. Dvorak.
John, how you doing today?
Now, what was that sentence again? Seemingly?
I don't know. I was talking out of my ass. I just tried to
that's the only thing I tried to mix up. But I never righted. You
know, I have no agenda. So I don't write it up. I try and
make it up. I know, it's suck. I should write it. Well, what
was the what's the snow thing? Were you talking about as April?
Yeah, there's this the wind change from the north. And
there's you can you can even track it on Google Earth, I have
the cloud layer, which is fantastic to look at, is coming
down directly from the north from Scandinavia. And just like
a low pressure system just blew me it dropped about an hour ago,
the temperature went from 15 degrees Celsius to about eight
and and hail started forming. And so it should be snowing
within the next five hours or so. Oh, nice. That's crazy.
Nice.
Well, you know, I understand is largely due to the fact that Al
Gore came out of his hole and saw his own shadow.
I'm telling you, man, we've had weather I mean, global warming,
how can you buy it? When does it start? You know, it's supposed
to be happening now. It's it's only gotten cold,
April. Climate change, not good. Really global warming, depending
on who you talk to. So I just, you know, there was a report
that was reported I think Nature magazine some guy wrote an
editorial saying that they did agree do they keep redoing the
calculations this year? There's no way no matter what we do we
can't stop influenced the climate so much as they say.
It's just a cycle.
Yeah, it goes up it goes down. It's the earth is built. Well,
let's not even get into this because I don't want to deal
with the email. There's some some things we say man on the
show that just generates so much email. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.
When religion also I got one for you. Thursday night. Now this
was the evening I was invited to a dinner at this play. It's a
it's a private club called Five Cavendish square. Have you ever
heard of this? No. Okay. So go Cavendish square, you know, it's
a very nice address. And there's this Sicilian guy, young guy
like my age a little bit older than I am just a few years and
he's turned this you know, this beautiful you know, London house
into a private club. I think private primary market is like,
Well Rich fuckers to start off with, but, you know, maybe maybe
football players or, you know, extremely wealthy businessmen
and you it's one of these places that's really blinged out
they've got like 15 hotel rooms and they have a restaurant a
private you know, club like disco like dance club. They've
got function rooms are really really top notch, really
expensive art, you know, great food Italian chef, also from
Sicily, by the way. And you know, the wine menu can this of
course, is what it's leading up to. So the wine menu, you open
the front page, John's like, cheapest wine on the front page.
2000 pounds. I'm like, Okay. I don't feel like well, I was
exactly I wasn't in the right company for that. But the owner
actually joined us after dinner and his name is Jay. And he
says, you know, what do you guys drink we chose one of my table
mates had chosen a wine. I know. It wasn't hugely expensive, but
it was okay. And he said, let me bring you my favourite wine.
This stuff is just awesome, he says and indeed. It was
fantastic. I want to see if you knew what it was because it
doesn't look terribly expensive. To be quite honest. He gave me a
couple bottles to take home which was another clue. I'd be
Italian it's a 2004 Amarone I've ever heard of this.
Am aronia Moroni Yeah. Have you ever had Yeah, yeah, no, I've
had that one. I find that wanting to be a slightly for my
taste. It's not a real it's not as popular as I think it used to
be popular in like the 50s or something but it's a slightly
it's a slightly sweet
it has like it has like a sweet slice that kind of goes through
it. You know what I mean?
Yeah, no, it's a sweet wine from my palate and it's the alcohol
is quite high usually. Well,
that's the other point I wanted to mention. I was severely
overserved that evening.
So I should say the alcohol content on the label somewhere
but as they run 15% Sometimes maybe how Are
you kidding me? Really? Let me see once. Shit, man, it's in
Italian. Oh, here we go. 16% Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. Doesn't surprise me. So it's not a favourite of mine.
Let's put it that way.
I liked it. But it's it can't be expensive, right? That looks
like a, like a 15.
Okay, it can be it. No, it can be expensive. But it might be an
expense. I mean, the range goes from, it's never a cheap wine.
And it can get pretty expensive. I mean, doesn't get really
expensive. Like there. There are great Italian wines that are
extremely expensive. But it could cost you know, he I've
seen him for, I think typical one you'd probably pay about in
the US you'd pay 35 bucks for it. Okay. Which to me, it's kind
of expensive for what you get.
I liked it though. I thought it was pretty
good. Yeah, well, yeah, sometimes, you know, a lot of
times the, I find it with wine and interesting aspect to it is
that often the situation, that company and the environment and
a lot of other variables contribute to the overall your
overall your overall impression of wine.
If you're sitting there with a Sicilian drinking it and he's
paying for it, it makes it taste that much better.
It tastes a lot better. And I noticed that there were actually
people like, I mean, I've tested this over the years are actually
people. And I'm not gonna go into too much details, but there
are people who are I don't care what I could pull out what
rabbit I can pull out of a hat. The wine never tasted good with
them.
It does happen, doesn't it?
It's weird.
Hey, how about I'm coming out to San Fran. How about dinner
Tuesday night? Sounds okay. Yeah, cuz I think I think I come
out Tuesday afternoon. And then either Wednesday, we're taking
the red eye to New York or or Ron MINECO, Wednesday and
MINECO. Thursday. We have a couple of meetings. Like we have
some stuff on Friday together in New York and then coming back
back to the UK. So either but Tuesday night would be good
because I don't have to think about what I'm going to do for
dinner.
Yeah, and actually, the restaurants are all open on
Tuesday standard, like people don't realise in San Francisco,
you know, on Sunday and Monday, you know, the 99% of the
restaurants are closed the good ones.
And really on Sunday, Sunday evening.
A lot of sweet Yeah, you'll find a lot of places closed on
Sunday. And and then the thing that's interesting is that the
restaurant that's tends to stay open on these, especially on
Monday, which is really problematic is lawful Lee, so
people out there who need to get a great meal. And they save
ventured reintroduced frogs legs to the menu. We should have some
we should have some frogs. These are great. I like it anyway. So
they, but all the chefs tend to go to this place on Monday, the
chefs that are in the restaurants that are closest,
quite interesting. You always run into one or two of them.
So any idea where we can go
look around and see what's going on? Maybe there's something new
and trendy. Check it out.
All right. Our first comment John is 23 seconds long and very
important to play at the top of the show.
Hey, Adam, are II the latest? No agenda. I gotta agree with
DeVore echo on the latest television offerings, especially
here in the US. It's all crap. Regardless of how successful
some people might be making the crap. It's still crap. Give me
something cultural. Give me something. Current events give
me something dramatic and interesting. Dvorak wins. Sorry.
That's right. You were supposed to come on this weekend. Defend
yourself. Yeah.
My rebuttal. My rebuttal. Well, first of all, there's a couple
important things that people have to realise about this
programme, because I went back and listened to it, and, and
kind of listened how I ground myself into the ground. You
know, like in third gear, you have to understand that this
show is typically we, we recorded on Saturday. And so for
me right now, it's 530 is the end of the day. You know, I've
been dinking around about doing stuff, you know, and for you,
you just got up so there's I think that's a big part of what
makes this show work is that you know, I'm I'm in a different
frame of mind than you are for some reason. I think that that
makes a difference, but could be I think that's that's part of
why I just collapsed, I just didn't have Oh crap. I don't
know what to do now.
Well, actually, you know, I thought about it afterwards and
came to the following conclusion. You had warmed up to
the entire idea of junk television programme because
your wife is working on a junk TV show in the Netherlands,
which is one of those reality shows where she's a judge which
has got to be great, a great job. And you just because it's
like money in your pocket. You being a company man, as it were,
you just basically sold out and we're proud of it. But without
thinking that's my years. In other words, if I I was like,
working for Standard Oil. And I just got a huge raise and I'm,
you know, then said something about oil companies come up and
it turns out that they're under indictment or something, I would
probably be defending them to no end. And I think it's just just
the nature of things. That's my theory.
Okay. I don't think you're correct. If anything, my wife,
my wife working on that show, reinforced my thinking. Now I
went back and understand that I didn't say I liked reality
television. What I said was I really liked television, where
there's an element of human truthfulness to it that is, I
didn't say say it in exactly these words, but we were talking
about a certain type of reality programming. And so let me see
let me
look at by the way, Deal or No Deal is the one that came to the
top of the of the phone there.
Well, no deal on do you brought up Deal or No Deal? And that is
not one of the shows that I like? You said you did? Yeah, I
was wrong. And because I had time, I had time, it's time to
think about it. And seriously, listen to me for a second. First
of all, television, John, and you made a lot of TV I think I
probably in hours end to end have have made more than you
have. Particular particularly the the MTV days. It is in its
in its bases. Television is an untruthful media. Okay, it
everything. Particularly when we start to get editing and digital
video editing. There's almost no truth to anything. It's all pre
programmed, it's all thought about, I mean, MTV, for Christ's
sakes invented the jump cut, which was for Bolton, literally
until until I started happening in in the early 80s. Because,
you know, every technical move every zoom every, every cut from
an interior and exterior, just like movie, right? It's
untruthful, even the news, you know, and it's put together. So
the only types of television programming that actually
deliver some truth are usually live programming, which you
don't have a lot of, but like a sports, sports is a great
example. There's not much you can do with the switching of the
cameras, and they have tonnes of cameras on these types of games,
there's not a lot you can do that will change what's really
happening, you know, you kind of see it, you may not see it from
the best possible angle, but you can see if the ball went in the
goal, or if it got, you know, or if the or if there was a strike
or whatever it is you it's a it's an end to end sequence that
all runs in parallel. And that's pretty, it's pretty truthful.
portrayal of what's happening. What you're watching is, it's
truthful, it's more truthful than anything else, let's put it
that way. So the only thing that's and I've made so much
television is all, all of its been full of shit, all of it,
it's all meant to trick you into liking and entertainment based
products now into reality television, which turned this up
50 fold maybe 5000 times. And if you look at programmes like
HoloLens got talent, and I you know, I was there at some of the
tapings. And when I look at the playback of the show, when I see
how it's been put together, it is completely every single bit
of it has been moved around pieces bowled in slow motion
dramatic music, even some of the answers although the outcome
didn't change what the judges said about an act, they cut a
different answer into into one act that was used for for a
different acts. All of this is it's complete bullshit. In fact,
I'm convinced I've done this, I can take a tape one of your home
movies, you just send to random the random home round, you know,
I'm getting that I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Let me
let me just go all the way to the end. So I could take your
home movies and with editing, sound effects, music and
voiceover I can create a fantastic show. It could be
dramatic, it could be funny, whatever. But well, here's what
I like about about particularly these contests, I'm talking
about X Factor, idol, Got Talent. And there's a couple
other examples is the one thing that television cannot fake can
provoke, but cannot fake is extreme human emotion of joy, or
sorrow. And these and that's what these shows are built
around. They're built around with pure honesty. So you have a
judge who will say something completely honestly, the judge
is not making up what they feel at that moment. And it will
either make you extremely happy or destroy you and that one
little moment that one piece of human emotion The Best Of course
is in the finals when you have a winner and a loser but just like
sports, when when a guy scores a goal, that human emotion is is
something that you cannot make up with television and that's
the part that really I love. I will sit down and watch an
entire show you Just to get the kick of seeing that, and you
have to say, unfortunately, usually when someone's extremely
sad or getting cut down is when I like it the most. And that's
what I like about this.
Well, you know, I mean, you might as well just go to the
grocery store and step on someone's foot and see what
happens.
Oh, man, I thought a whole week and that's what I get from you.
Thanks.
So, you know, this, this show, the thing that I wanted to
interrupt you for which you wouldn't have truly changed your
train of thought which I you know, okay, fine. I'm not gonna
argue about it. I think that one of the things is they choose
people because they've been doing on game shows for years
that are you know, they test people to make sure they are
emotional, jump up and down. And you know, these contestants, and
they won't take somebody who's who's nonplussed? Or who's you
know, just not gonna go? Or anything? Like, correct,
correct. And so, so there's a certain rigging involved there,
too, which I think is deplorable.
Well, but not but not in the talent contest genre? Not
entirely, they don't know that the way they do on game shows.
That's different. Okay,
fine, I'll accept that. But anyway, the one thing I wanted
to mention, which when you were talking about how a lot of this
was, you know, they changed the certain dodo edit stuff around
so it's not what really happened is my favourite absolute
favourite thing, which is always I don't understand how the Oh ik
to be honest about it. When I see it, I just get just
seriously annoyed. You have a live performance of some sort,
or even one of these idols shows for a comic, and they show
somebody doing something. And then the guy says something
funny, and they cut immediately to an audience member who was
dying of laughter. Oh,
that's all fake. It's all fake. It's all from a different
audience.
Yeah, they take a bunch of random audience shots, and then
they cut them in later, because there's no way you could have
the intimate that what kind of coincidence, are we talking to
John,
John, John, that's just the visual version of the laugh
track, which is still used every single day. It's this just a
visual version of it, nothing new. That's digital video
editing gave us that.
And the other thing I wanted to say is the is that all these
these these kinds of talent shows really, I never heard any
of them ever give a nod to the original. There's actually there
it goes back to radio with Ted Max amateur hour. And then there
was the amateur hour show on television.
And my parents used to talk about that when they used to
talk they would say that's really amateur hour is what I
would say.
Right, which is what all these shows are. And I mean, it's
they're all They're all dependent on that model from
some years ago. And then you know, of course, the one that
mocked it the best and I still think one of the greatest shows
of this genre was The Gong Show, which is actually he's had the
same crackpot talent and but they had this Gong element where
you could Gong the person,
by the way, that's the same in Hollins Got Talent each judge
has a big red button in front of them and when they hit it then
it doesn't do a gong but it gives them an explosion type
shot sound and then when all three hit it then the Act has to
stop so it's essentially the same concept.
So anyway, but I find you know these shows to be rather I have
to I'm having more trouble watching television now than
ever before. But
John John I don't watch television distinct. I mean I'm
not a big television watcher but when I do watch I love I have to
tell you I really really love it and you know other stuff I can
get online you know, the documentary stuff, I'll get the
good ones from you and have to sit through all the other crap.
So it reminds me yeah, I gotta get in. Okay, got a couple more
for you. I love it. I love it. Hey, let me ask you a question.
With all with all the smart computing power we have and all
all the smart brains that are making software these days. Why
is it that my calendar my schedules are still fucked up
from America changing to daylight savings time two weeks
earlier than the rest of the world it really messed up a lot
of things
Yeah, no in fact my I still have one computer that will not no
matter how updated it is will not give me the correct time.
I mean, we have really smart professional women working for
us to do a lot of our scheduling I you know, you know Maggie, you
know Rosie, I don't know if you know Carrie or not, but they all
work together and they use Google Calendar mainly but
there's some offshoots but it's all kind of linked together. You
know, Ron I think uses outlook and Maggie has control over that
but invites are generally sent out you know, as an invite and
they all those all work those calendar invites so if I you
know I can get one from Microsoft Outlook and I can just
accept it and it'll pop right into my calendar but usually
carry does that for me so there's I only want one person
if possible, do my calendar. But there's all these meetings that
got set up and every one was off everyone was fine our one way or
the other either I mine was messed up or someone else's it's
it's, I think in this day and age it's inexcusable.
I you know, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, it's just
amazing to me that the some of this stuff is goes on the way it
does. I mean, just to take it to a more of a micro level, how
come these clocks don't keep accurate time, we have a
computer for God's sake, and a clot and there's a clock chip
with a crystal in it. And these things, these things have creep,
they've over over. Like, if you run your little clock within
Windows, the time will change by a couple of minutes over the
month really makes no sense to me. And yet Yeah, and so you
have to keep resetting it or I use what I use the time of the
time server, I use a time server to I use atomic clock, right.
But every every time you boot, it resets the clock. But if you
take that thing offline and give it a month, it's the clock will
be off by it. You know, 234 minutes is unbelievable. I mean,
what is the problem I've
seen what I've seen this being a problem, it has to do literally
with the accuracy. This is what I've been told the accuracy of
the clock of the computer's own clock. That's very simplistic I
know. But as an example, something a lot of podcasters do
is they'll do what we call a double ender. So they'll talk on
Skype, but then they'll each record their individual file,
we've actually discussed doing it this way. But when you say
then the other party who are one of the parties sends his file to
the other person. And then the thinking is you just line them
up in a programme like Audacity or GarageBand, or something else
that is multitrack. And they can just set the levels. And then
you know, you mix it out, and you're good to go. But it turns
out that over time in about 70 to 80% of the cases that you do
this, they will be out of sync. And one file will literally be
longer or shorter than the other one because of the computer's
internal clock mechanism. This is what I've been told I've seen
the out of sync happen. I've been told that's what the
problem is. And it just has to do with inaccuracy of the
internal clock.
Well, it's possible, but all I know is that if that's the case,
then it's even more ridiculous. I mean, what does it take to
make the truck accurate is just a crystal.
I don't know I
maybe one of our listeners will send a note and we're getting a
lot of listeners from all over the world that are sending in
all kinds of interesting notes about you know what we're trying
to make a request.
And our numbers are I can't I haven't seen the last three days
worth because limelights logs messed up but our numbers have
yet again increased. It's really I think we're hockey sticking
could be what sometimes you get these word effects. So talking
about one of our standard we haven't talked about this for a
while. So as I mentioned before, I've been drinking the PG Tips
gold exclusively. And so they recently locally for some
reason, the one of the big distributors had way too much of
PG Tips in the big 160 boxes, 160 bags, and then we're getting
near expiration, like in the next few months. So they dumped
it on the market at $5.95 for a big box of this stuff. Wow. It's
a good price. I mean, I can Yeah, it's a good price. And so
how am I can average it so I bought a big box. And so I
started to you know, figure out better ploughs through this
stuff because gonna expire. And I can now say for certain that
the taste profile of the regular versus the gold is extremely
different. Yeah, for anyone out there.
I would agree. I would agree. It's different. Do you like it
better I presume
you know what, I can't say I like one over the other that
much I do. It took me actually a few bags of the old fashioned
stuff to get used to it again because it has a green
tasteless, literal vegetal green flavour that is a little taste a
little stronger. This is a smoother milder drink
even the the non gold is a little greener text. Is that
what you're saying?
Yeah, yeah, it has a little it has a little bit of a weedy
flavour.
I would call it earthy is
kind of Yeah, so he's good. Yeah.
Hey, I forgot one thing as a part of my rebuttal, man, I
forgot the most important bit. Speaking of honesty, you need to
apologise
Yeah, I told me forget Yeah, last week. You have this no
agendas the theory here that means we're not supposed to
really come on with a lot you know, I do make you know lists
of may be topics. But last week I had what was the topic again?
It was about the Fresh and Easy supermarkets.
All right, I had a I got on a Jag about these fresh and easy
supermarkets. And so I sent Adam a bunch of links to for him to
study and he did and I read too much material so it was actually
a plant you know, I had so it was there wasn't an agenda was
made a bitch and moan about this. So I and it didn't work,
did it? It didn't work. No didn't work because you were
over prepared. And which is typical. By the way, this is one
of the things I always like to You know, in broadcasting,
there's, I think I mentioned this before, there's two schools
of thought about when you get a guest use you either pre
interview them or you don't. And when you sometimes over prepare
a lot of the life
what happens is you'll have a pre conference and I'm of the,
don't even talk to me until the microphones Open School. What'll
happen is you'll actually say something. Sometimes the worst
is when you're on the air, you break for a song or commercial,
and then you're talking to the guest, and then something really
amazing comes out. And then you'll immediately of course,
try to reproduce that in the next segment. And it's never as
well told it's never as funny if it was intended to be it never
ever works. So I tell my guests. Sorry, just don't talk to me.
Yeah, I actually have to do that. And cranky geeks. Because
we take these to break two or three breaks and and then all of
a sudden, someone will get on a on some they'll start talking in
between, and I have to really scold them to tell them not to
not bring it up. That is for it. They were doing the show for the
audience, not for them to buddy up with somebody. They can talk
later.
Speaking of which, did you actually find out where Veronica
is going? I saw your video. No, no,
no, I want to point out that video, which is under the Dvorak
uncensored spot on YouTube. I want to point that video was
done with a little bitty dinky dinky little Kodak because Kodak
has these microphones in their cameras that is just amazing to
use to make these kind of slipshod videos. And I don't
know what to tell you. But I every time I listen to it just
sounded good. Didn't it's fantastic.
Yeah, no, no, I've been using the Have you seen the flip
phone? Have you seen one of those flip phone? The Flip
camera? Yeah, I've seen those. I've been using that one. It's
astounding how good it is.
Yeah, you can get really good qual. I mean, this for little
flash videos. I mean, obviously I don't you know, although, you
know, Kodak has one I've been playing with which gives a 720
p, HD 16 by nine movie Holy Christ. And, and it which is
pretty amazing, especially when you put it up on a big
projector. And so I mean, it's interesting that you know that.
So I think it was like about three or four months or four,
maybe four months ago, I was at an Iowa, a digital television
conference that's put on by the public stations there. But they
had all these people from all over the country talking about
digital TV. And they had the guys from frontline there. And
they were talking about how their how they moved to digital.
And then they made the comment that you know, the guys who are
cameraman actually, you really have to actually have more
talent to get these digital cameras to work, right? Because
of the colour balancing issues and all these other problems
that you have. So you can't for broadcast television, you have
to have a consistent look. Yeah. But I showed him one of these
cameras. I showed him in fact, this one Kodak that has a 16 by
nine 720 p HD recording capability in stereo mics. And
one of the producers told me Yeah, he says that that's kinda
like the cat a lot of the times are using cameras like that now
to produce some of these because, because apparently,
when you're like in Afghanistan or something, and you pull it
out, I've noticed this too. By the way, if you have one of
these little bitty cameras that looks like a little snapshot
camera, worthless little snapshot, then they don't treat
you as press. They don't treat you as press and they don't see
a big camera shoved in their face, they see you holding a
stupid little thing. It looks Mickey Mouse, it's not
threatening. In fact, it's non threatening, and it and it does
the job. And they're at now I didn't but I didn't realise that
the network guys the big boys are doing are using these things
to I've
made. I've made quite a study of this. Whenever I whenever I used
to interview someone, I would always say could you please mic
us both just with a lavalier mic because the whole idea of a
stick mic and then talking into it and then shoving it in
someone's face? It just gives you a different result.
Yeah, no, I think so. The methodology actually affects you
know, it's like a McLuhan thing you're the medium is the message
the the the actual methodology will affect the outcome in a
kind of unknown ways and you you don't know what you would have
got if you if you've done it differently.
Well, I've only seen by by my own experience it is most
definitely different when you're using a you know the what do
they call it the spooning technique or whatever
when you're when you have that yeah when you have any yeah
oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, it's just night and day difference it's
also unnerving me because some of these guys you'll have a
little crew and they got you some they'll do it from the gym.
Oh shoot from below and so you got a guy on his hands and knees
than standing outside of the shot. You got a sound guy up
here it's yeah, it's ridiculous. Especially if there's if you're
out in the middle of nowhere. If you're in the public arena, and
people are walking by seeing this they think of what's
going on what's happening. What's happening. Yeah. Oh man,
I got another A terminal five story you'll love this one. So,
last week, it was all messed up, it's still messed up at Terminal
five with the baggage. This is the new one that be well now
that now the now British Airways who have the use of the terminal
exclusively are saying that the automatic baggage system has now
failed them. So first it was their resource planning. Now
it's the bag that I mean, they, they just never really tested
this, you know, even I could have said, why don't you take
you know, 5000 bags of bricks, and try the fucking system out.
You know, it doesn't seem like they did that. But here's what
happens. I'm sure you read this because it's two great stories
in one. Naomi Campbell the supermodel. She right she so she
arrived well on time. Of course, she had a whole shitload of
clothes. And the story now, which I think is probably spin a
story now is that she had one super big case that was filled
with sponsored clothes, which she has to wear by contract
wherever she goes. But when she was on the plane, they came on
the plane and, and they said, Well, you know, Miss Campbell,
we're really sorry. But you know, one of your one of your
suitcases isn't going to make it on the flight. Because it's
messed up. And well, she wound up of course, throwing a hissy
fit and getting arrested. But I just thought it was kind of
interesting that it's still a week later. And after someone
knows he hears a case of you know, someone who you you
already know, you don't want to piss off Naomi Campbell. So you
should really try and get her suitcases onboard. I think
certainly as a paying first class passenger. And they're not
even capable of doing that. I think this this problem may be a
little deeper than than they're letting on. If it's taken them
this long, they cancelled another 12 flights today. short
haul because they couldn't wait.
This is not the first time something like this has happened
Denver International when it was
that was all technical, right. That was from day one. They
there was the skis wasn't it? They hadn't they hadn't figured
out how the skis would work on the automatic system.
Well, I'm not sure that that was the only thing because most of
the reports we're getting here in San Francisco where they like
to ridicule these things was was was bad baggage mangling. There
would be one show after another with a guy that microphones and
it showed the bag and the bag like coming out or some sort of
farming gear or something.
Yeah. It's just amazing. Just amazing. And everyone's so
embarrassed by it too, you know? And then for years, man, we've
got the Olympics happening here.
Well, you know, the funny thing is they built a new airport in
Beijing that's bigger than all those terminals at Heathrow and
they did the whole thing within this period of time. It took
them to get terminal five finished. And it from the sounds
and looks of it. The thing is amazing events and a lot of
specials on TV showing this new, this new terminal, it's huge.
It's something like two miles long. You know, I went to
Beijing the first time before they, you know, they, they were
working on an airport then I think it's like the third
airport. If I go to this airport, I'll be the third
different airport. I've been in that, you know, they're in
Beijing. The first time I went to Beijing, I went to the old
airport, the old communist airport, and it was a nightmare
especially trying to get out of the place I mean to get through
these bottlenecks of you know where they had the joy the head
passport checks, there was no lines and organisation so you
had to kind of muscle your way in this kind of pays off to be a
little bigger than usual. And to get just get in there and in
fact I had this experience and I was in Saigon and the Vietnamese
the airport in Saigon is is still easy it was even worse it
was some old it looks like it doesn't look like an airport one
of the few airports you've ever seen it doesn't look like it
looks like it's just it's just a big square horrible looking
building thick Stalin type of architecture and there's there's
no signage which is the really kills me oh really in the
airport there's no arrows
or what you're saying it's like a casino there isn't there's no
exit sign
well there's no any signs and it's not as quite as nice as a
casino so anyways you go in there but the thing was weird
they had all these guards at all the doors there's old people
crowded around just to get into the airport but if you were like
a tall you know Caucasian you know they kind of almost you
know they which is kind of a reverse racism there they kind
of like got you in but once you got into the place that you know
trying to get out of town right so you go in there and there's
you there's nothing to tell you though it's not like a big
United sign or I think I was flying on a I'm not sure what
airline I think Eva but anyway there you go you actually
literally had to go from one one of the you know one of those
things where you check in ticketing thing you have to go
from one to another and go right up to the to the counter and
look at the screen to see what airline and
right so everyone is crowded around people checking in trying
to see the screens and the nightmare well, but it's
each individual cuz there's not like there's there wasn't a
centrally located screen, you know, like most airports have
where you can just you can look down to either the time or the
where you're going and figure out where there was none of that
you had to go from one to the other the other day, till you
finally finally found one that was for this air carrier. And
then I, I just asked them, and I finally found my way out of
there. But I thought that was pretty bad. Now, since we're on
the topic, or I brought the topic up of airline terminals,
my all time favourite, horrible airline terminal. And I'm not
sure if this has been improved at all, because I haven't been
there since the fall of communism But Moscow. I've been
in Moscow, I've been to Moscow, Moscow, you go into this
airport, which was I think, new at the time. And the place is
dark. I mean, literally dark. And there's gypsy kids running
around all over the place. pickpocketing people in the
terminal.
What year was what year were you there?
About one year before? Before the fall of communism, which was
some Oh,
me too, like 8889? Yeah, something like that. Yeah,
that's when I was there. Oh, interesting.
Yeah. Well, I know I wouldn't have been able to see it because
it's so dark in the aeroplane.
Anyway, I'll be wearing the red rose.
There was the funny scenes with besides the kids running around,
there was also one in the entire airport. There was one automatic
door that opened, closed, in and out. And it was surrounded by
kids who kept jumping up and down on the thing to open and
close the door. Yeah, exactly. Go ahead. Go ahead.
You're right. It wasn't it wasn't like an Argus base or
like electronic eye it was a mat. It was a math your pressure
pressure mat pressure mat that would open it up.
Right. So you can't get out that door. And meanwhile they I
talked to somebody about this why the place is so dark by the
wind. And some guy told me that well the deal is is that it was
designed by a German company and they Specht out all these
lights, there's only little bulbs are inset and kind of
cans. The whole ceiling was covered with them. But there was
no light coming out of me said they the German spec to
cigarettes to a certain wattage bulb, not to a certain lumen.
And when they use Russian bulbs, they about half the lumens out
of them. So the place was pitch black.
I was there with the Moscow music Peace Festival. You
remember that? No, no, that was I wouldn't do when I get the
story. Are you interested?
Yeah, yeah, no sure. Okay, so
doc McGee. I don't know if that name means anything to you. He
was rings the bell? Yeah, very famous manager of bands. And in
the 80s he was the manager of Bon Jovi Motley Crue, or those
are the two big ones. And he had been caught. I don't know if he
was I think that either he had rented the Learjet or was
registered to his name. There was a Learjet that landed in
Miami with like 5000 kilos of coke. And so he got busted for
it. And the judge gave him kind of a Get Out of Jail Free card.
And he had to do some great community service. So the idea
was he would do an anti drug anti alcohol concert in Russia.
And of course, this you know, this went up to some pretty high
level because this was a political thing as well. So he's
clearly well connected in all the right places. So off we
went, and this I think it was 88 in a rented DC ate some some
crappy, crappy plane. So Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Ozzy
Osbourne, but with you know, the other Black Sabbath guys, Geezer
Butler, and it was at Tommy Iommi. And oh, man, it was Skid
Row, we stopped in Germany, picked up the scorpions. And
then we landed in Moscow, and it was for this huge concert that
would be held in Lenin Stadium. So they we were in the hotel
right near Red Square, where they actually turned on the hot
water in that part of the city as a gesture to their guests.
And I could probably fill up three no agendas worth of
stories about that trip there, but I'll just give you one that
was pretty cool. Because of course, you know, this was the
gonna be two stories. This was the anti drug anti alcohol
concert. So on the plane on the way over, and this is when
Sharon Osbourne was still just a little rotund, kind of pale. No,
no personality have an English girl who was managing Ozzy
Osbourne. So she was on board. And Ozzy was completely I mean,
completely plastered. Everyone was plastered, but Ozzy was
really, really out of it. And he's standing near the lavatory
because we were all kind of sitting together. And he's like,
Sharon, I gotta go. So when in lieu Sharon because someone
wasn't it was occupied. And Sharon's like, oh, Ozzie just
wait, so he wets himself right there right in the aisle. Don't
do this just like you know, like a, like a second grader a huge
white spot or a huge wet spot in his pants, which really kind of
set the tone for the rest of the entire trip.
But then is it what who would pick that guy to go on and anti
alcohol
is my point. Oh, like the motley crew guys were cool. You know,
or Skid Row. Come on. Exactly. Don't they'll be there for like
four nights or five nights. So on the second night, which of
course consisted of lots of vodka and just brazen
drunkenness. It was crazy. The Moscow chapter if the Hells
Angels showed up in front of our hotel, didn't know they had one
and the Member This was still before the wall came down. And
they were on Java motorcycles. You know, these Yugoslavian
built bikes, and they were out of their mind, John, they were
like popping wheelies flipping off the back. It was just it was
like being in a fucking movie. And I'll just never forget, it's
like, you have this idea of what a communist state particularly
what, you know, Moscow would be like, and you're there. And it's
just there was no control. There was mayhem. I looked at their
technology. The technology was like old grey Volkswagen buses
with curtains. Now, this was supposed to be the the highly
technical KGB that could you know, eavesdrop on everything
and have superiority over the world. No way.
Well, I'm reminded of, you know, Ronald Reagan, when he became
president, he was shaking his fist at Russia. And he called
him the evil empire. And he went on and on and on. He did this
for like, Mr. Gorbachev, bring that wall down.
But then he went to Russia. And he never he went to Russia. And
he was almost like, he went to Russia and had an epiphany. And
he never ever again said anything about the right evil
empire.
He saw it because it's not there. Right.
Yeah, he saw was a big bunch of bull. I mean, I noticed that I
was staying in the mirror hotel, and which is across from that
Russian, that white building that got, you know, yep. And got
some nice photos. And then they had mics in the room, that we're
obviously because the mirror used to be I guess it was it was
the diplomats hotel for a number of years. And it became a
political,
like big Sennheisers instead of micro stuff. It was like,
no, they had they were they were big, clunky mics. But they had
been, they had been painted over so many times because the room
keys kept getting repainted. And they were all just a gob of
paint. And what's that
bump there?
A big bump about goblet paint. And in every floor, there was a
woman that was the floor woman that you had to check in with.
They never really did any security. But they were told
before you went if you did your due diligence, you had to give
them gifts constantly. Oh, yes,
the floor lady if you wanted a toilet paper or if you wanted to
make a phone call?
Yeah, and you so you had to drop off toys. Fairly at the time,
the most valuable thing you can do besides cigarettes. Were
like, I was told this and they get a kick out of it because
most of them had kids and they would love these little Tonka
Toys or these little mini things as Little Hot Wheels. Little
things. Those were like gold in Russia at the time. And so you'd
give you gift them with
did you go to the hooker boat? Did you see that when you were
there? Know what? There was like a hooker boat near
national, the International Hotel, whatever it was right.
That's where
we stay. That's where we stayed in the International. You stayed
there. Yeah. And they had a rope and the rope was you know
hookers on one side hotel guests on the other side. It was
phenomenal.
Yeah, I think we're I lost you there. How
I got you. I gotcha did so anyway.
Hey, with that place was crawling. It was unbelievable.
It was and if anything is about that international hotel. It's
you still there? Yeah, I'm here. To cut this out. I gotcha. The
funny thing about that International Hotel is that I
was told before I went there, that it was modelled after the
Hyatt Regency in San Francisco and supposedly done by the same
architects. And there was it was funny because you go in there
and they were vague. You could recollect certain things. So
they had the big Open Atrium answering. But everything was
done on the cheap and the cement didn't seem up to par. And there
was just a kind of a falling apart. Nature everywhere it was.
It looked like
it was genuine 17th century, but that was actually just shity
shity construction.
Yeah, that was weird. So anyway, it was I haven't been back. I
mean, I still need to go. I would love to go to Lynn to St.
Petersburg and go to the Hermitage Museum. That's the
only thing. Here's one.
Here's one final thing about the floor lady. So if you had you
had to request a phone call, I think was either 12 hours or 24
hours in advance if you wanted to make a call international
call so you might want to call home. And if you weren't in your
room, when they came knocking then you would lose your call
right because of course you know The theory is the KGB at a set
up all the the recording equipment etc. And so I was
just, you know, that was very frustrating and I had only been
I'd been married for like six months and you know, it was
just, I was gonna get much younger and want to call home.
And I wound up hanging out with the because I knew a lot of the
video crew that was there but Westwood one was doing all the
all of the audio and they had a satellite truck. So I went up to
the satellite truck is hanging out with the sound engineer. And
I was talking about the phone call. He said, Oh, you know
what, he'd just pick up that phone over there and I pick it
up. It's got a 516 area code dial tone. So I could just dial
you know, 1201 I called your work. Oh, before I forget, be
sure to check out our complete show notes done every week by
Bubba the greatest hardest working guy in the universe. And
where's that at cage Mac, a cage match at
Devorah kid.org/cage. Match or cage match.org.org. without the
www that gets there. It's a subdomain. Bob always
goes to the whole show, and then does show notes, which is pretty
cool. And then I usually retrofit them into the show show
notes page.
I try. Yeah, he also sends some commentary once in a while. But
ya know, that's very handy. Somebody you know, it. I don't
know how valuable show notes are in general. But I think you
know, they're good for search engines, in case we're talking
about something that somebody actually want to stay. Yeah, I
think they're incredibly valuable. I mean, there's isn't
there always a moment, if you're listening to his show, then
you're in show listening mode, but maybe later, you're in
browsing mode? And you'll think, oh, yeah, let me just go check
up on that. And it's just a it's a it's like a permalink. You
know, you could say I'm gonna post it on dvorak.org/blog. Or,
but you can just say the show notes. And everyone should kind
of know where that is.
Well, it helps you find a show because everyone's so I've had
to had this happen to me, as somebody sent me a note. They've
said, have a look through all the notes. They couldn't figure
out what show it was where I mentioned something about, you
know, it was actually all for cranky geeks. And they sent a
note someplace else saying, you know, you were talking about
this town in Arkansas. That's so cool. And I find any
meditations. Yeah, it is metadata. But anyway, the town,
which I ended, send the guy an email, but there is this town in
Arkansas that if anybody's in a neighbourhood, I would recommend
checking it out called Van Buren. And Van Buren is kind of
a pristine Victorian town. In the bottom of it, you kind of
come in from Oklahoma, and you look down and there's just like,
it looks like a fake it looks like a Hollywood movie set of
all these old Victorians is like an old Victorian downtown. And
you go down there, and it's, you know, these buildings are all
from the, you know, pre judged turn of the century for the late
1800s. And they're all in perfect condition. And there's
no they turned the town into like a tourist trap for the for
the area. It's gorgeous.
I shall have to visit.
Yeah, you'll never get to me. It's almost I would have never
gotten in a million years. If it was you know, I haven't. I was
between speeches, I had like to had to give a talk in Dallas and
I had to give a talk like four days later in Memphis or
Nashville. So I said, Well, let me just drive. So I figured I'd
take this drive because I go lighter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I
drove from Dallas to Oklahoma and went through Oklahoma and
then which is really depressing. And then I
it's been Oklahoma is just really vast and flat.
Well, it's it's a lot of decrepit is the problem. Anyway,
so you get up there and then you go cut across and then I saw I
took a shot across the entire state of Arkansas, which started
in Van Buren and I took the side I didn't take 40 I took I think
it's 62 or something like that with the old US Highway as
opposed to the freeway which shows you nothing and the only
US Highways if you float around in the south takes you through
all these old towns where the highway used to go anyway so
yeah, I went all the way through and I found Arkansas to be an
absolutely fantastic state. I think underrated people don't
you know, they think it's you know, they think it's just a
bunch of hicks or whatever, but they they make fun of themselves
when you get up into the Ozarks. They have eaten by T shirts, you
know, the Toothless hillbilly quite funny. And there's
actually what's what fascinated me about Arkansas the most is
that there's a wine growing region in them Arkansas. Not
only that, but there was this one winery familia, something or
other, you know, normally should be prepared, but we don't
prepare on the show. So not to remember anything. But this but
there was a The guy told me and I got a long lecture from these
winemakers that this Arkansas is the only state where they grow
all four kinds of grapes. They grow the the vinifera and
there's this weird grape that they this big giant grape does
things the size of a small orange that they make. Musk is a
muscadine grape, and they make up one line out of it called
muscadine wine which you can get it they grow it all over the saw
this stuff is
like is that like Muscadet? Is that is that the same NO NO NO
Monica de is a vinifera grape This is called muscadine it's
called muscadine wine and it's apparently really good with deer
meat it is almost impossible to choke down although I have to
say this place is one place this familia that whatever made one
that was actually drinkable. And you know, i By the way, while I
was discussing this, I looked up the Wikipedia if you go to grape
varieties and look at the Wikipedia, there's actually six
varieties of of grapes that are made into wine, but the main one
I'll go over for people out there one is the vanilla, that's
the one that we know and love. And the and then there's the
Lambrusco which is the Conquer guitar, those kinds of grapes.
And the one that that muscadine comes from is called the road
tonne to folia and muscadine grapes and I'd never had these
grapes before they're very interesting I was at the I was
in Atlanta once I went to the farmers market I was shot on a
float around and and there was this this kind of a bin with
these huge fruits in there I nursing I think there's like a
really an extremely large plum. And, and I ended with the same
colour racially perfectly round. And I don't know what it wasn't,
I just saw that I saw it. I said, are those muscadine
grapes? And the guy says, Yeah, and you know, like, what do you
think they are? And so I bought them and I said, I ate them. You
eat them like an apple. They're so big. And I brought a bunch of
them home and the kids loved them. So really a good tea, but
it's a big giant thing. It's not like a you know, a bunch of
grapes. It's like these big doesn't have doesn't have seeds
in it. Yeah, yeah. No, it's just like a giant round grape that is
like, you know, some sort of from another planet. It's pretty
good. But anyway, the other there's Riparia which is another
variety anyway, they guys, they grow for the of the of the six
types, I guess. So in Arkansas,
so that whole grape wrap, you know, with all the all the
different times can you get laid if you if you lay that on women,
does that
work? Well, it did great with the grape talk.
Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
Yeah, it hasn't worked for me. But anyway, so the but But back
to this winery, so I find out a little research. There was four
wineries there when I went there. But apparently according
to our before Prohibition, there were 45 wineries, and I visited
all for the ones that were in business and one of them just
was bought by Gallo as a matter of fact, and they were thinking
of adding more stuff. And the only thing the only I don't want
to beat this to death. But the one thing that was interesting
is that I had I had a suspicion that this was a wine growing
area when I when I got into it because there is one there was a
there was a kind of a Fanta Florida thing that I've run into
in various winegrowing areas around the world. If there's a
lot of oak trees around, there will be a tonne of hanging
lichen. Not dissimilar to what you'd see in Savannah, Georgia
or places like that. But without the humidity just a drier kind
of a climate and you run into this town in southern California
when I first I was driving in the mountains. And I ran into
these, these this hanging like and and it turned out to be one
Paso Robles wine growing area. And I've run into this in the
mountains in the Napa Valley. And then when I'm driving
through Arkansas, I get this exact same characteristic. And I
go and they turn the corner is a winery. And it's just it was
very interesting.
Are there any wines from Arkansas that you drink
regularly or that you like? No, but
you know, what is one winery that I mentioned, I would order
wine from them they made actually made a Zinfandel that
was better than you'd imagine. But they also had a really good,
sweet wine. They made a Cabernet that was credible. And
I like that a Cabernet that is credible, nice.
It was credible. And there was a bunch of the all the wines that
were actually I talked to the wine guy it took some photos and
I met in blogging because it'd be previews too long ago,
I realised I could probably talk about marijuana the way you talk
about wine and different kinds of strains. And you know, and
this is great little place on Jamaica, if you turn left I from
Montego Bay going up the new highway, you know,
I'll be a couple members of the audience that would appreciate
that. Hell yeah.
There's a lot of great weed podcasts I might point out.
Really? Oh, yeah. You know, the coincidence about that is that I
have, you know, John Dvorak is a there's four writers in the
country with that name. And that's where we all use, or I
use different I make sure that use the stones. Yeah, there's a
John Dvorak playing. He's a metallurgist, and there's the
other one I can't remember it's a John M. Or John H. Johnson.
And he writes for High Times and he's one of the on it's
seriously one of the biggest proponents of legalising
marijuana, and nobody has ever confused the two of us I have
never gotten the an accidental email for him. There's been
there's been absolutely no connection. I've never met their
talk to the guy or even emailed him. And it's, it's just like,
it's almost like it's such a different track that there's no
crossover whatsoever,
they asked me to do there. This was just as we were raising our
first round of finance, they asked if I wanted to be a part
of the High Times, you know, the annual contest, which was being
held in Amsterdam, where you know, you have to smoke like 50
different types of weed, and then you decide which one is the
best. I so wanted to do it. I really, really did. And Ron and
I said, anyhow, man, that's not good. If we're if we're like
raising around finance, you might want to
not do that. So they do that in Amsterdam, they have a smoking
contest every
year, every year big, big smoking contest, and I think
it's sponsored by High Times, which I believe originates from
No, no, was it published a one time out of Amsterdam? I don't
think in that. Anyway,
it's just like, you know, it's like, maybe in the wine business
instead of like being concerned about the qualities that would
be like the magazine called, you know, drunken,
or Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no shot. No, man. There's a lot
more to the dirt. There's a last year hammered. Hammered. Hi, I'm
Adam Korea. Adam. Adam. See curry from hammered magazine.
I'd like to interview the candidate, please. Hey, by the
way, I only have a little camera. I'm not threatening
this. Let me interview with this.
Oh, man. So that's my Arkansas. So anyway, so I went all the way
through Arkansas and I caught like, excellent music stations,
Country and Western stations. went to Memphis spent the night
in Memphis, which is kind of the you know, there's two music
centres of Tennessee, Nashville, Nashville and Nashville. And
Memphis is the black and Nashville is the white. And so I
stayed in this motel or not a motel but a Holiday Inn or
something. It was right downtown. It was just all black.
And they had a basement band. That was like a little nightclub
in there. And it was like I was the old the one white guy in
there. Nobody cared and
you made up for three. You
did this at all good as our quota.
We're in we're good. You can close the doors now. So So
I sat there and he just had listened to some of the best
music imaginable and then took off the next day took a lot it
went around the town and it hasn't not very nice. Nice day.
There's a good barbecue place. And then I went to Nashville and
do what I did and took off took a plane home.
Nice. I've been in Nashville and Nashville is now the it's like
the New LA for music. Everyone's going down to Nashville. Yeah,
it's really really happened in there. I haven't been in a long
time.
Well, when I was in Memphis I did stop it. Elvis Presley's
you got to Yeah, how can you be in Memphis and not go there?
Yeah, it was kind of smaller than smaller than you think it
is. Right?
Oh, yeah. No, it's very small. I think the Graceland is it would
be a nice it'd be a comfortable house. Oh, yeah,
no complaints but it's you see it in pictures and you have this
much larger than life idea of what it really is. And then you
see it, it's like Oh, okay. Now is this where he shot the TV
that's all anyone ever cares about?
You know, what it reminds me actually reminded me a little
bit Bill Gates his first house before he moved into this
monster, you know, college running on Vista. He had a house
very similar to Elvis as it had to under you know, you had a lot
of study was to it was like not up and down. It wasn't like a
two story house. It was like a story and then down below there
was like a basement with a bunch of rooms in it that were you no
credible. And just like the Cabernet, just like the
Cabernet. Yeah, it was it was worth you know, going and
visiting and in his grave as there you know. And so,
we got we got a new fan of the show and I want to play this
guy's I'll just play a little bit of his comment. I won't take
the whole thing. But he has a great voice a great rap. Listen
to this guy.
Hey, no agenda, guys. grandpappy. John, and Adam. This
is Dan X New Yorker. marooned in Fort Lauderdale. I just know
that you guys want to talk about the banks pulling out of funding
the private equity capital takeover of Korea channel this
week.
That's all I wanted to play. Did you hear about that?
Yeah. I wasn't following it, though. I mean,
it's a pretty big deal, John. It's
clear channel bought everything. Yeah, I think so. I mean, they
own so much. And I know, through the grapevine, because I still
have lots of friends in the industry that these Clear
Channel stations. They're all consult now. They're even
consolidating stations in New York into the same physical
space. There's a stop on hiring people. Yeah, that's worrisome.
Well, you know, it seems to me that when you start to you know,
you're one of these big companies and you start buying
up properties to corner the market. And then you cheapen the
product, because the product let's face it radio crap, since
Clearchannel came around, and it is not the first to do it. I
mean, they were they actually picked up on a trend that had
begun long before.
They're the first to do it when the rules change, and they
actually could own all the stations in one market.
I'm talking about they were the first to cheapen the product.
Oh, of course. But radio is inherently the owners of
stations and unplug big radios big New York radio stations run
with like five people, it's already really, really cheap.
It's the lowest rung of the show business ladder.
Right. And so, you know, but the product is not what it was in,
you know, any number of years ago. And it's hard. I mean, of
course, they have to compete now with CDs. I mean, I'd rather
listen to a disk and then they and then the, the only real new
addition to array radio has been political talk radio, which
which is doing well actually was doing very well. But that only
came about that's part of the also part of that, you know, the
revolution radio, because they changed one of the laws, the
whatever is, I can't remember the name of it, where you had to
have a balanced opinion.
Yeah, you had to have equal equal airtime.
Yeah, it was called the equal sum or other. Stupid. I can't
remember.
I was taught that in college. Yes, I think yeah, I was taught
I was taught that in college, in my broadcasting, yeah, equal
access, equal access. Anyway, so if I said something about
negative about the board say I was promoting some Democratic
issue, they'd have to give same number of Minister Republican
but that was killed fair use. If it was fair, you know, if no,
no,
it was equal airtime.
There's a, there was a term for it. Anyway,
I'm a fraud. I'm afraid to use my browser and I want to kill
the connection. So
I'll use my but anyway, the ones David, that was eliminated in
1987. And that's when Rush Limbaugh hit the scene, because
he's the one the first guy to exploit it. And
that was my friends who did that whole network for him and who
sold all his advertising. The first, I think, five years, they
syndicated my shows as well, media America, little company in
New York, they made so much money.
I mean, just irked by the fact that I can't think of that term
is equal airtime. No, no, it's, there's no it's not. So that's
not the term. It's the
airtime act of 1932.
We type in equal equal airtime
act, you watch, it'll be the top hit on Google man, I'm telling
you,
cool air time act, hey, it's something
fucked up with the internet says that I read somewhere that level
three was having some, like, low level networking problems,
because I'm having a lot of trouble with certain sites.
Everything like really comes in fast. But certain sites just
give me all kinds of trouble. And
I noticed this last night it was it was okay. I'm not the only
one right. And particularly
Google seems to be messed up. And I'm getting all kinds of I
did some trace routes, a little bit of, you know, like, really
kind of semi techie stuff to see what was going on. And I got
warnings like, this IP address is used by two different
interfaces over Google. I mean, I'm sure it has something to do
with how they route their traffic. But I've never seen
that warning before. I see if I can reproduce it actually, while
you're looking up the equal as
they call it, the equal time rule, but it's the Fairness
Doctrine, that maybe was the term I was looking for.
That sounds like something much bigger.
Well says equal in Wikipedia, which I hate to use all the
time. Don't do that. That really pisses me off. The equal time
rule is sometimes confused with the Fairness Doctrine warning
mail.google.com has multiple addresses. Use okay using 64 dot
23.123 So now it's I don't know man, I thought I thought I read
somewhere that level three was it's probably like Border
Gateway Protocol, someone's announcing some stupid route or
something but it's it's really they're messing with China
again.
I was having nothing but trouble last night and the connection
that we have this morning which is usually pretty clean, it's
pretty crappy. But anyway, the Fairness Doctrine the equal time
or whatever the case is once they banned that 1987 end up
just political talk radio began to emerge. And it became a just
a huge moneymaker but it's so dependent on the people I mean,
Rush Limbaugh has like 15 million listeners and he he
probably makes you know I mean, I can't imagine how many
millions of dollars he makes a year 33
Yeah justice as base rate if he has a regularly year 30 million
a year
okay well then knows all these other guys including you know
the only other competition to this type of radio has been
Sports Talk. Brian there's money there too, but not quite as much
it's a lot harder because you you have East Coast West Coast
vibes and stuff like that it's a little hard to do it on a
national scale on Limbaugh it's just blasted out on all these am
stations of work everywhere it's it's beautiful.
Ya know, it's amazing and there's a you know, maybe for
for the guys that are making nearly that much money. And but
that's it for radio I mean, if I listen to radio Do I tend to
listen to that stuff? And then I put the CD on or, you know, even
I still play cassettes. I mean, it does the rest of the stuff is
horrible. I mean, college stations are okay. You know,
because they you will have some experimental stuff on there. And
there'll be music that you haven't heard before. But the
rest of it, which is all programmed by some central
location somewhere, it's just not interesting.
Well, that's really the trick is to have some with radio to have
some form of localization. And really, you know, they also made
radio, a very untruthful medium, you've got one guy sitting in
one central place, and he's doing breaks on four stations at
once, you know, so he'd be saying good morning to
Pennsylvania, on one on one channel, and then he'll be
saying good morning to Kansas on another channel. And it doesn't
work that way. You know, I think radio really are. You really
have to be in tune with what's going on in the community of
your listeners. Otherwise,
give us an announcement from Kansas.
Hey, good morning, everybody. It's Adam. See curry and Good
morning. Hi. Jackie, here, out of the Clear Channel station.
I'll be taking phone calls one 802 420 100. Good
luck. There you go. It's like turning on a switch.
I actually remembered the one 800 Number not of a Kansas
station. But that was the 100 in New York. I remember the number
said so many times you remember it one 802 420 100 Good luck
from C 100.
So anyway, that's the problem with radio. So a every once a
while somebody will buy with some little dying station and
they'll pump it up, it gets really popular because the only
thing in town,
I love the romanticism of it. I really love the idea of a radio,
you know, that's what I'm a disc jockey. And that's what always
attracted me to radio is there was always that guy in kind of
the, in the darkened room, you know, smoking his cigarette, no,
taking phone calls, and just, you know, talking to the people.
And I've always found that to be a very romantic type of
business. And that's always what's attracted me to and I
think that's also what's attracted me to podcasting, you
know, and why I don't do despite every one, I do these, my show,
now I hook it up to live 365. So you can listen to a live stream,
while I'm actually recording daily source code. And then
people will Twitter stuff while I'm talking. But they always
say, Well, why don't you put up a video stream, it's like, I
don't want you to fucking see me, I don't want you I want you
to, I want to be in your head. I don't want you to, you know,
it's like, there's something about that theatre of the mind
that is always attracted me to the medium of just audio.
Ya know, I've always been a big fan of it myself. And, you know,
I'm a subscriber to stand Freebirds theories, you know,
what was that, and it was Dan Freeburg, was his comic in the
United States, who was also a radio genius, and it became an
advertising guy over the years. And he is the one who did, he
did a bunch of novelty records, you probably remember most of
them back in the 60s or 70s. And then he, but he was a big
advocate of, you know, turning radio into this, you're using
imagery and, you know, say saying things that weren't
happening. I always like to work with somebody that has, you
know, a knowledge of, you know, of this, this type of
broadcasting where you can say to him say, so, we have in the
studio says, you know, Adam curry, and you have to be here
to see it. But you know, he's got it. He's got easy and you're
naked. And then the other guy played well, I came in naked,
because, you know, I thought we were supposed to be naked on
this show. And you know, and you just go with that kind of thing.
And people I know, there's a bunch of people that will listen
to something like that and, and say, Wow, that's amazing. He'd
come in navy seal.
That's the part that I never liked. You know? That to me, you
know, because that always got taken so far. And we'd like to
wait here we got let me do it for you. Hey, John. I'm in the
chopper. Right now. I'm flying over Guilford. I see that. We've
got some precipitation coming up. We'll be back later with the
no agenda weather chopper over to your job.
You beaten yourself to death.
Yeah, that hurt. I never liked that stuff. That's
I think it was amusing. So anyway, but radio is dead. Let's
face it.
There you go. Radio is dead. But you know what? I think that we
should actually consider putting up a live stream. Whenever we do
this. You know, if people want to tune in, they can come to an
end. Would you mind?
No, I wouldn't mind. I mean, we do that with cranky geeks. They
run a live stream. But it's like such a small number of people
that actually listen to the live stream that the work that it
entails. Doesn't seem to be worth it to me, but if you want
to do it, I don't care. I mean, we don't cut anything out of the
show anyway. Well, the
only thing that can make it different is if you then have
your at that point, you can create a live feed feedback loop
and that's what that's what I've enjoyed and I've specifically
chosen not to do a chat rumour anything like that. That's just
distraction. But with Twitter, it takes about, you know, two or
three minutes before something a tweet comes through. And of
course, it's kind of everyone can figure out how to get
Twitter working IRC channels are sometimes a little more
challenging, whatever, it's, it's the thing du jour. But
because of that two minute delay, you know, think kinds of
things kind of come in after I've finished the thought, or
while I'm playing a record or song. And it's an interesting
feedback loop. I don't know if it's something we'd want to use,
but that that's really the only reason to do a live stream.
You know, I don't think it's a you know, it might be worth
experimenting with because the fact is, they're the public that
is listening. I mean, I've said this before I deal with I feel
that with my writing, generally speaking, the collective
knowledge of the listeners is way beyond you, you know, the
the content providers and it has up his sleeve. And so you get
except for the the jackasses out there, generally speaking, you
you get often get interesting takes on in fact, Jim Rome, the
sports broadcaster uses that term takes and he has people,
it's mostly the show is whenever just when you break it down is
largely the public.
Exactly. That's exactly that's the same thing with my show. I
just except instead of taking live calls, I just have people
call into the voicemail. And I just play their their comment
and stop it midstream and comment on it. And it's kind of
become my my art form.
Ya know, and I think it's a good one, but we can try it. I think
the Twitter thing might work. You know, we can pick up on what
somebody is saying,
particularly for DUIs Saturday, you know, it's Saturday is kind
of a day when people would wouldn't mind, you know, looking
out because you also Twitter is a great alert mechanism. You all
say, Hey, I'm going to start the show in 30 minutes, and then it
kind of replicates you know, so I have followers, like 4000
followers or whatever. And so they may or may not see that,
and then other people will, will tweet it themselves kind of like
a mini blogosphere. And they'll tweet that and their followers
will hear about it, it kind of expands pretty quickly. So
within 15 to 30 minutes, you can get to several 100 people
listening in on a stream.
Okay, well, let's give it a shot, I need to get a Twitter
account, apparently, because I keep getting people inviting me
and everyone is demanding that and there's all these, you know,
they say you should use it for marketing, I'm going Oh,
whatever. It's just another thing I don't feel like doing is
to only
use it's like a pain, you know, what I what I'm not that
interested in although from time to time I'll do it is you know,
I'm at the gas station. I'm here. You know, that is not so
interesting to me. And I tip I tip, I don't follow many people
and maybe 100 150. But if I just want to alert people to a blog
post that I've just done, and I use it sparingly, because you
know, you have people who every blog post, they'll build tweet
that they've posted something that's like, I don't care. But
if there's something really like, urgent and a Twitter
showed up from you, I check it out. I'd click it, I'd say all
right, yeah. It's a good alert mechanism for whatever you're
doing.
You follow? 150? That seems like a lot. No, it's
very low. Oh, it's very low. Most people. In fact, I'm number
50. On followers, there's this, like Hall of Fame thing, I
forget the URL. And you can see who has the most followers. And
you'll see that the people at the top like Barack Obama has
the most followers, but the he has the automatic switch set on
that automatically makes everyone who follows you,
someone you follow. And there is I think there may be some
correlation between that.
So what you want is a lot of followers and only follow a few
select. I don't have time, because obviously it's obviously
a fake to say that, you know, if you give me you got 5000
followers, and you're following fight, yeah,
following that now, it's stupid. It's stupid. But the 150 that's
just about right, you know, and I know, there's a lot of stuff
that goes by that. And I miss a lot. And I don't go back into
archives. But there are other things like this is what is kind
of cool about Twitter, because that their API has been, you
know, open to developers for a while. And a lot of the people
who use it are geeky developers, apparently, you have stuff like
Twitter mail. Which, if you know Twitter has something very
interesting if you use the Add sign. Do you know about this,
John? No. Okay. So here's the concept. I'm following these 150
or 160 people so whatever they put on Twitter, it comes up it
kind of scrolls by continuously just like an IRC channel kind
of, but then if someone might say my twitter name is Adam
curry all one word, if someone in a in a tweet, I have to use
the vocabulary. If someone in a tweet does add sign Adam curry
then it will show up in my Twitter stream. So it's that
it's kind of interesting, because you can get drawn into
other conversations.
So in other words, you're not somebody that you're following,
but somebody who want
exactly someone who is someone who wants to get your attention,
and then started abused by spammers. Well, you can block
people. So that's another nice thing you can say, I never want
to see something from this person ever.
Yeah, but what if you had to get it to mean you can spam him
once, then?
Yeah, I mean, so it's the universe isn't that big yet that
that problem is as cropped up yet? It will. But then there's
this other place. Crap, I don't I keep forgetting. But it will
go into Twitter, and it will build the threads for you. So
if, if I, if I put something on Twitter than it'll throw it show
you a graphical threaded view, of all the responses that came
into that, it's interesting, John, I think you should check
it out. I mean, it is not, it is not the chat room, CB radio type
it off, I'm
gonna do it eventually, when I have a few extra minutes. The
it's not that hard. And what you need to do is you need to get a
client. So you don't just use the website, you want to I have
something called Twitterrific, which is like a Mac app, but
there's all kinds of different apps that will run it and you
can run it through I think GTAW Can you can have to I am and to
SMS and
it's, it's well, let me ask the public, what's the what the what
is the best Windows app that I should deal with that would link
into the system and make it practical? I'll, I'll take their
advice.
Do you do like getting email don't check.
I get I don't get any spam. So it's not that big of a,
it's all high quality stuff? Well, no, no
about that, I get a lot of email, it takes up an hour a
day, at least. But I don't look at all I mean, I do look at all
the mail that that comes from people that are actually trying
to get ahold of me personally. But there's an awful lot of
press releases. And you know, somebody's just to subscribe to
your video and that kind of thing. And I just kind of just,
if people would only
use the subject line a little more. With a little more
intelligence, if you want to get a hold of me, you got to have a
great subject line that works. You know, that's where it's got
to take place that that gets a click,
I agree. And I think the other thing that people should know
about subject lines is they should have some sort of
archival value. So in other words, saying like I, you sent
me a note about something or other, and then I say, Oh, they
had sent me this, I remember him sending me something about this,
let me do a search on the subject line, hoping that the
keyword is in the subject line, you know, like whatever it was T
and so I should hit the subject. And then boom, there's your
note, you know, Ben
CMBC, you don't use Gmail, right, but use it some other
search based email that you use. Or it's just a client just email
kind of
either using Thunderbird, which I'm not happy with. Or I'm doing
web based mail using squirrel mail, which has a search
function. And
I'll give you an example of how how incredibly cool Gmail is
because I was looking for this member this Jared had emailed us
about using a different client instead of Skype and, and I
wanted to take a look at it and set it up just for myself. We
didn't even get to doing that today. So I the only things I
could remember where they you had replied in this thread. And
you had said just being realistic. So I put in John, and
realistic and it was the top hit man, I mean, that's good.
I don't have a problem with Gmail per se, I do have a Gmail
account, I use it as backup, I just do not like to be at the I
don't like to be dependent on third parties over the internet
like that, in case somebody takes a dislike to me and say,
you know, let's pull his account or something weird happens or
gets hit by some bot or somebody you know, steals it
if that but that's why you want control over your MX record. So
you can change that and redirect it somewhere else. I mean,
that's that's the ultimate control. Right? That's all you
really need.
Well, I do send my Gmail to my regular box when I'm talking to
level up DeVore act.org in the DNS entry there's an MX record
which
you're thinking is I should use the Gmail client run it through
divorce.org So if something weird happens, then the Gmail I
don't get doesn't make any difference.
But you're still not taken up one level not the domain name
level, but you can actually maybe um we're just
miscommunicating but just like you can say okay, this is this
is where you send all traffic for port 80 for web traffic. So
DeVore act.org resolves to this IP address you have a separate
record for mail exchange you can actually put into several so if
this one fails, ie this one has gone nuts or whatever then then
after you know X amount of tries then you or they have a
preference setting, then try this mail server It's really a
whole separate art architecture. And that is really the ultimate
no one can Skrill as long as you control that, I
know I understand that but but the thing is, I still have to
run, you know if I can get it to go through Mark per kill spam
filters first, okay for it goes to because I don't get any spam
before it goes to anyone I might find it useful. But I'm not sure
that's doable. Of course, it's
doable. Well, okay, it
might be doable. Okay. And I got the list under number three,
Twitter. Yes. Twitter and then emailed me because Adam likes
Gmail.
Hold on. Listen to this. Hi, Adam.
And John. This is Falco calling from Germany. You guys were
talking about the famous hot dogs from Copenhagen, Denmark,
and you didn't know what the special stuff was on. It's
roasted onions. You can find them here all over the place and
not the grocery stores. I just wanted to let you know. I love
the show. I'll hear you
buy another mystery solved on no agenda?
Well, I thought it was roasted garlic because it had because no
real reason I say that is because I roasted onions is
probably what it is because they would know but I was in Brazil
one year and they had a some dish. It's once it was a special
dinner and they rolled out this exact same stuff. It seemed like
the exact same stuff that I had in Denmark. And it was indeed it
did in Brazil, a garlic that was roasted and it was chunky and
was actually quite tasty. And I thought it was the same thing
that had a similar quality. So that's why that's where I made
the connection. Anyway.
So we're to an hour and 20 minutes. Did you have anything
written? I got a couple of things. Do you ever did you have
anything written down? No, I
wrote nothing down because the last week I decided wasn't going
to come in even with vague notes. So
it's okay to write stuff down. I was thinking about what I want
to talk to you about.
Yeah, I decided to do it as penance. I decided not to do
that.
All right here. Let me give you a couple VBC threatens ISPs with
a blacklist over there I player I have the FAA sucking the
airline's off. I want to ban
three airlines have gone out of business in the last week or so.
Yeah, well, this is all this FAA stuff and all this maintenance
crap.
Well, they're blaming on fuel costs, which airlines went belly
up. Ata went out of business, and then something called Sky
bus and everyone heard of went out of business. And then I
think there's there's a third one. And then there's
apparently, we're also, shootings on the freeway are
reemerging to people killed in the last couple of days up here
by up to highway 80. And I guess in LA, there's been five people
shot down gunned down while driving on the freeway.
Well, that's an American tradition. And I'm quite happy
to see that return to the public space. That's nice. freeway
shootings. Very nice.
You have to be armed when you're driving.
So when you on your next trip, wherever you go, don't fly on a
777. Okay.
What what's the problem there?
Well, there's this whole thing about the FAA and if you heard
about all these planes that got grounded 737 is mainly because
of maintenance. Okay, so here's what I what I have deduced from
the information. There's a lot of it out there. The FAA,
somehow, they've gotten into bed with the airline carriers. In
fact, to quote, one article I read, the FAA is treating them
like customers, which, in a way, by the way, you know, we are
customers of the FAA, and we, we pay special taxes and dues for
use of certain things and a lot of it that's free. But, you
know, basically air traffic control, they're no, they don't,
they don't actually control everything they're there to to
help the pilots and the air carriers. So they are really, in
a technical sense, subservient to the people doing the actual
flying, and we can overrule them at any point, you don't want to,
but you can. So when it comes to maintenance, I think they've
just been really, really easy. And they've and they've, they've
done a lot, a lot a couple of airlines really get away with
shoddy maintenance records and a lot of it had to do with
checking holes that that might have cracks. And you know, as I
say, as an airman maintenance is absolutely everything that will
keep you alive time and time again. And the seven the triple
seven member, the one that had that high fuel pressure pump
problem that landed short at Heathrow and bounced around a
bit before making on the runway. Yeah, so they said the fleet has
not been grounded, the triple seven the problem has been
identified. But there's been no like get everything down and
start fixing these things. It's mandatory and I think it's a
part of this problem the FAA is, for whatever reasons is, is in
bed with the carriers and they're trying to, you know,
skim skim on expensive overhead and help each other out so that,
you know, they can kind of weather through the storm of I
don't know whether it's the fuel costs or whatever the problem
is, but I don't think that the public is being served by the
FAA. I don't think that they're that they're doing their job
properly and looking out for our backs. I think this triple seven
is is dangerous, and I will not fly it.
Avoid it. If it did, you know, say they don't flight if it's
like a plane that was always kind of sketchy because nobody
wanted to fly across the Pacific into engineers. Oh, yeah.
You only got two engines. And
although, you know, suppose they can fly across the Pacific on
one engine, yes, it can. But the Danis a comfortable plane. It's
a really nice plane. I've been on a number of them. And of
course, the first ones that came was actually on one of the
earliest ones and they came out I flew to Washington DC or
something and they had designed it. So the ball, the seat
movement stuff was right under right on top of the armrest,
just about the point where you put your elbow. Yeah. So you'd
sit down, you start to relax. And the next thing you know,
you're getting a back massage, and the thing was moving back
and forth, and back and forth, and jerking all over the place.
Friendly Skies,
I love it. He lifted your arm up and you realise that you
couldn't put your arm on the armrest because all these
buttons were on it. And so I thought that was kind of dumb.
There were some other issues I've had with that plane, but
generally speaking, it was always pretty comfortable. I
still like to 747 still my favourite plane
airline to like I like it over the air buses. Actually, I
really liked the 747 I haven't I haven't flown the big 380 yet. I
hope to do that soon.
Yeah, that should be entertaining. I mean, the last
the biggest Airbus which I can't remember the number of it, but
the one with the four engines. I've always found it's kind of a
distressed I was sitting on one of those once in a flight and
there was like, the wings is like good. You know, I had a
roommate in college who was an aeronautical engineer. And he
described to me that the wing theories he says, you know,
these companies like Boeing or just wing designers is what
their real businesses and and he pointed out that McDonnell
Douglas and Boeing he worked for McDonnell Douglas had two
distinct theories of wing design that were different. And Boeing
had a flapping wing. And McDonnell Douglas had a rigid
wing, and I have a phone call. So I think maybe we should
continue this conversation next week.
Ah, maybe I should play a little music. Let's listen in on John.
You wait. Too late is gone.
It may turn out to be somebody who didn't have to talk to you.
So that's our cliffhanger or cliffhangers rigid versus?
Yeah, let's talk about rigid wings versus the fixed wing.
Because because you
have the same in helicopters, you also have a fully
articulated rigid, you have all different kinds of wings. It is
it's the two there are two theories. I don't know if it's
going to be tremendously exciting to our audience.
Well then let me finish it so so that the difference was that you
had to maintain them differently and Boeing has these wings that
been like a mile and they flap literally in the air and they're
designed to flap but they need to be you know, they had to be
checked a lot. And the rigid wing guys their stuff is built
like a truck. It doesn't have to you know, so there's there's a
maintenance difference, but the rigid ones cost a lot more to
make. Hay that's the basis but anyway, so I'm on I'm in this
big giant Airbus the biggest one before that new one. It's a
363 40 I'm not sure and there's an it's got the it's got the
flapping wings just like the Boeing's only they're like
really flapping so I'm looking out the window at the at the
wing and is flapping and flapping and then the engine at
the far end is flopping around. And so I'm thinking this is this
isn't right. And the engines are flopping around and the wings
are flapping and and we're going across the Atlantic and I just
said I'm not going to fly on planes. nerve wracking much
wing flap. Actually, when when you hear a helicopter and he's
going overhead slowly and it gets you can really hear the the
blades. It's called blade flap literally. Yeah, that's what it
is. That's not the engine. That that is actually the blades.
So anyway, that's my story. I'm sticking to it.
Oh, man, I forgot to load up to the theme music. I'll post that
it'll it'll be it'll sound just like I started in just a time
just on time as usual. I feel like I talk a lot more but I
think that it's also it's like an hour and a half. Although
people don't care, John. They said time and time they just
don't care.
How well we don't I don't think we have anything else to talk
about is that is the issue here. Well, we do have one thing you
can you know you're coming in again, you said this week. I
think you should do some more expense. cementation with the
customs guys.
Right? So I did think about that briefly. And I was, I was
thinking of two things. One is I need to ask for a team leader
immediately because that's what that's what I've learned, right?
The TL has the power. You haven't done that yet. Now
having done that, and I also should, I should say, when I was
speaking to the team leader, I'll ask him if he could put a
flag next to this guy named John Dvorak, who writes for High
Times, he sometimes goes by the name of John C. Dvorak, you
know, you might want to keep tabs on him. Yeah, that would be
appreciated a known drug theme. I mean, do you have any other
idea? I don't want to get in trouble. But I'm sure I'm gonna
get stopped. So
no, I think that what yeah, you got you can't do double blind,
you can't do too many things different every time because you
then the stories, you don't know what caused it. I think this
time you should meet. I think that's all you should do. When
you come in. Don't do anything else different. Just ask for the
team leader?
Should I do that at the, at the first customs or, or where they
always give me the secondary, which is when you leave, and you
have to hand off your customs form? Should I ask for the team
leader right away?
Well, I think you're gonna have to do it 111 of each, right. And
one way the next time I see what the difference is, I would not
do it right away, I would take it a little further. And then
the next time do it right away.
Because I think if I do it, right, those are the guys that
they tend to give you a really pissed off. Look, no matter what
you say, Well, why
don't you do it to them, then? No,
I'm afraid I don't want to get in trouble. I'm going to get
more I don't want to go. Alright, let me give you one
more man, there's this BBC thing was just funny. And I think
you'll enjoy it, you know, there iPlayer. Have you followed this
at all?
Only? No, okay, there
was a little controversy over or controversy, I should say, the
iPlayer. Essentially, they're making all of their programming
available for up to seven days after it airs, which is great,
because, you know, here, we, we pay for our public television,
it's a separate fee that you have to pay. And people really
enjoy it. And it's really good quality. And then the iPhone
version, there was some controversy earlier because it
only worked on Windows. And because it was like an ActiveX
plug in or whatever. So they they met you know, there was the
Linux people mainly got up in arms and said, you know, this is
unfair, we're paying too, you should make it available for
Linux. So I think they, they solved all of those issues. But
the but the basic Windows version actually is a peer to
peer client. So when you fire it up, you're becoming a node on
this peer to peer network, which of course saves the BBC a lot of
bandwidth on these high quality video shows that they're making
available. And it is also an I think, a DRM issue, which, which
is quite important to them, which the windows stuff gives
them. But what what a number of ISPs are not doing with pretty
well with peer to peer traffic in general. But also now with
this BBC iPlayer is they're shaping the bandwidth. And it's
giving people you know, a shitty experience. So with file
sharing, it may not be that bad if you're running bit torrent or
whatever, because it may just slow down. But eventually, it'll
all come in. But when you're trying to watch something in a
live stream, and it's peer to peer, it messes up the whole
experience of the BBC has now come out and said, they are
going to publish a blacklist of ISPs that are doing this, saying
that the users deserve to have the best possible quality. So
they're basically siding with the users on bandwidth shaping
of ISPs, which I thought was pretty interesting.
Yeah, that's, that's good. That's very good. It's,
it's a huge step in the right direction,
and see where it ends up. And just guys, these ISPs are
backing off on most of this stuff. They're trying to figure
out some other way making money and they Comcast, for example,
looks like they're gonna experiment with a 50 megabits
per second system. We're gonna roll it out in Minnesota. Yeah,
like 150 bucks a month or something. Yeah, 100, something
like that. And then and then at that point, if they can make 150
bucks a month from everyone, they don't need to be doing TV
and all the rest of it. They can just be a carrier of the
internet and make plenty of money. I mean, there's always
this Oh, God, we're gonna ruin our own business if we go to
IPTV and no one's gonna buy cable TV anymore, and, and
they're just worried sick about this, but it's not a foregone
conclusion, conclusion that that's where things are headed.
So these guys own that they own the pipes, and all they have to
do is put metres on it's like being in the public utilities
company, you know, you just make nothing but money. I don't get
their thinking that they don't want to do this.
I think they want to do it. I think they were just
underprepared. And, you know, Comcast still believes it's a
media company, that, you know, everyone wants to be in show
business who wants to be in the pipe business if you have a
choice? Yeah, I
know. But you got to be realistic. I mean, not
everybody's supposed to be in show business and you run
through podcasters.
But it's the same as I used to have to go to all that like the
Cable Ace awards that we'd have when MTV was trying to stay on
basic cable which they they've succeeded in doing that. We had
to go to affiliates all the time. And these guys thought
they acted like they were NBC, you know, they were trench
diggers, who had the, you know, 30,000 customers.
I think it's all about the girls.
Dude, it's always about getting laid. Absolutely. Speaking of
which, and then we'll wrap it up. I did a pilot for a game
show, which is being sold in con this weekend and this coming
week. Yeah. And I almost got laid off just doing the pilot.
Wait until you see the show. You're gonna love it.
All right, I'll wait. One of the contestants
actually offered herself to me. I was so proud.
Did you That's good. Did you? Did you make a DVD of it and
bring it over? Yeah, I
have a DVD. I have a full DVD of the so they have like a promo
and then they have a pilot episode is called Are you? Yeah,
go ahead. I'm sorry. It's called Baba boom.
VAVA. That's a good name. Baba
blah, Baba. Baba. Triple V.
V. But also you're supposed to make me some DVDs of that debt.
That show and a little
Britain but I don't have the I don't have all the shit to do
that. I don't have. You don't have a
little DVD recorder for your TV.
Oh, I do have a recorder. I never record stuff. Yes, I do.
You just push the button. It says Record. It's like a VCR.
pops out.
Thank you. Yeah, I gotta do that. Yes, I think I can
although the sky box, I think because I can record it on the
sky box. But then when you play it back, I don't know if the DVD
will record it. Or if there's some, like anti copyright theft
shit in there.
If it goes through an analogue port is not a big deal, though.
And you haven't I'm not set up analogue. I'm
set up digital. I'll try. I'll try it. But I mean, can we can I
just buy the DVD set for you?
Now you would not want to do you're missing the point.
Wait a minute. This is wrong. All right. No cliffhanger crap.
Now well, all right. I got a cliffhanger. I'm banning the
Olympics.
Now we got a cliffhanger that you forgot to discuss. And we're
not going to bring it up which is soy?
Oh, yes. You know what, I do want to know more about that
because I'm genuinely concerned for my health. And a lot of
people say that you're right and I did not know this but I'm very
willing to listen and open to switching to something else. I
got to have some kind of milk but I don't want just milk and
my wife has coronary disease. She can't drink milk.
pasteurised,
pasteurised, really,
that's the bad stuff is pasteurised. We'll leave it I'm
gonna sound like a complete nut ball if I go on and on. Okay.
We'll talk about it next week. All right, John. So I'll see you
Tuesday. You'll hopefully get something set up for dinner.
Yep. Okay. That's it for the programme. It hasn't started
snowing, but from definitely a very wet Britain in the curry
manner. I'm Adam curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak from Northern California where
there's no snow in sight.
And we'll talk to you again next week right here on no agenda.
Well, that's