From coast to coast and around the world, we're bad. We're
nationwide but we have absolutely no agenda once again
for you this week, coming to you from a sun soaked United Kingdom
where it's been 80 degrees today in the curry manner. I'm Adam
curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in northern California where it
looks like it's going to be at today. Sharon I tell you go
so well. What do you think I was talking Celsius will be rather
hot. Welcome back. Welcome home. John. Thanks. I followed.
followed your trip to Korea. You were twittering here and there
and I heard some some interesting reports on on tech
five. And I'm sure you got lots to talk about. Now. Wouldn't
that be like yeah, I got the slideshow though. Uncle John,
and he's gonna Did you have an uncle like that? I had an uncle
Stanley. And he would do slideshows, where the family
gatherings? Oh, my God. I was like, and here we all did great
at the Great Wall of China. I just fantastic. You had a good
time, though. Yeah, I
did. I I had, actually, one of the things I could get
accomplished quite a bit. I met a lot of people I would have
normally met and got to hang out. And it's pretty good.
Yeah, this, this was a conference. Were you attending?
Or were you speaking at the conference? Was a moderator at
a panel. Okay.
Is that me? Are you feeding back? I don't know. It sounds
like you actually.
Okay, well, let me turn this thing down. There we go. Well,
maybe
I'm a little loud too. Man. It is so hot here. It is
unbelievably busy. It has been just absolutely beautiful all
week.
Well, I don't know what it was like here since I was in Korea,
actually in Korea was you know the weird thing about Korea.
This is an interesting. First thing you do you get up in the
morning. And it is so smoggy.
Really? Yeah. It's from China, like Los Angeles, like smog.
No, it's it's really grimy looking. It's like maybe Los
Angeles smog in the 60s.
But that's floating in from China. Is that what you're
saying? Yeah, wow.
Yeah, no, China. If you look this up, there's there's some
stuff you can look at. There's some satellite imagery of the
smog coming off the smoke and crap coming off of China. You
dig him up on Google, you'll be stunned because this stuff
floats up halfway to the Pacific and sometimes on certain
occasions it gets as far as California really, is a mess.
It's even you've never seen anything like it. It's just like
this big glob of goo coming out of China. And it comes all the
way across the ocean and it just nails Korea Korea.
Now I realised that was such an incredible dork. I think I
twittered you about it that I'm so stupid and you know, my uncle
was ambassador to North Korea I mean, he's president of the of
the Korea Society. He definitely could have hooked you up with
something a little more interesting than whatever you
were doing. North Korea Yeah, no South Korea I'm sorry. South
Korea North Korea that's done yeah, you oh, gee, I'm sorry. I
completely completely forgot it's so stupid Ambassador Greg
they still call him that. I mean, that could have been your
passport dude. I missed that one
but I'll get back there.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
Well, it's okay. I was actually pretty busy. But the I did get
some I didn't manage to get downtown to the kind of it's a
touristy area of work near the one of the bases which is called
E to one and they have all these tailors and they know these so I
got some you know a couple I got a suit and linen jacket tailor
made and a few shirts nice and the price has gone up since the
last time I was in town but still pretty much the same and I
and I've always been convinced that the whole I don't know for
sure that almost all the tailors in the not necessarily for the
suits and jackets but for the definitely for the shirts all go
through the same factory someplace in Korea because it
come back if you bought from three different vendors, you're
gonna get the packages packaging comes back it's identical but
anyway, you can do it with anyone one of the things I've
been working on for the past 20 years is kind of like my own
shirt. And
what do you mean your own shirt to?
Well, I mean, this is more than just a custom shirt. These these
guys. You can have
a rack autograph model is that what you're going to shoot at?
You
know I should probably market the shirt. It's got for example
the pockets I use I have two pockets that have buttons on a
man that pockets are the size just the right sighs to hold a
CD jewel case. Totally slip a jewel case into your shirt
pocket.
You're awesome dude. Come on optical disk. Awesome.
And they also have the the Perry Ellis pleats.
Oh my goodness you don't wear that do Yeah.
Yeah. Perry Ellis has these pleats in the shoulders. And
which they patented by the way, for a while the one of the big
stores in New York had their own branded shirts, and they put
that pleat in there and they got sued, and they had to take it
out. But, you know, these are custom shirts. So you know, put
the bleeding. And anyway, there's other aspects to it. I
have a double stitching here and there and things like that.
But a trip like that I'm sure that there's a whole bunch of
things that happened and you're probably going to process that
we're going to hear about it over the next couple of weeks
probably is that just added to your arsenal of stuff that your
baggage that you carry with you. crackpot stories? Exactly. I
love the one about Bill Gates reinventing history that he
invented the personal computer. I thought that was
unbelievable. We had a table full of people that was you
know, they put us so there was like a table of English speaking
people.
The white the white guys,
right? That's a little ghetto. Yeah. And so they when he went
into this thing about how it was unbelievable, because I mean, it
was just astonishing. He starts talking about how he saw a
microprocessor. And as soon as he saw it, he realised that it
was going to just get more and more powerful how he realised
this, I don't know, it was gonna get more and more powerful, and
it was going to need software. And that's and that insight of
his his and his what led to the, to the PC revolution.
Yeah. Meanwhile, the real story as he was the least away he's
been telling you for the last 40 years, is that, you know, he was
at Harvard with his buddies. And he saw the picture of the Altair
on the Popular Electronics and did a little research and
realised they needed a programming language. And so
then they recoated somebody else's basic somebody claims
that was Dartmouth basic. Some people say it was a Dec 10,
basic, but they just kind of recoated it for this for the
Altair and then went down to New Mexico and sold it to the guy
who was running that company, but Bill Roberts or Ed Roberts,
and David Bunnell, I think was done there as a time to and he
actually probably knows the story better. And how does that
go? How do you go from that story to I saw the
microprocessor, I saw the future. And my insight is what
led to the PC revolution. It's just astonishing to me.
Well, you know, maybe, maybe someone told the story that way.
And then, you know, he retold it once or twice, you know, the
brain can do amazing things. Yes. I guess I can show him how
to edit his wiki page. That's anyhow.
Hey, talking about Wiki pages. So I'm gonna have digital one of
the people down there as Gina Smith.
I went out, wasn't she early at CNET didn't? Didn't we do that
pilot with her as well? Wasn't Gina Smith, there was she? Yeah,
she
was there. She was at CNET. She went on, you know, eventually to
ABC. Now she's a writer. She's
what does she do her book writing?
Well, she's book writing, she did a book on the genome. And
she's dead. She's got ever heard of wahat. I didn't think you
know much of doing that as a topic either. But she did the
Iwase book, and it turns out to be a best seller. And so she's
doing great. And I'm probably going to do a book with her now
where she lives. She's in the Bay Area. Anyway, she says hi.
Because she tells me this. I didn't know. She's the one who
put up your original Wikipedia is posting.
Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, you didn't know that. Did
you know hmm.
And she's been trying to keep it, trying to dog it for you in
the back. Covering your cheese covered for you,
that is so incredibly nice. You know, I never ever look at it.
In fact, I make a policy of pretty much not looking at
Wikipedia at all. Because, you know, I look at my own page. I
know it's full of shit. So unless it's really something
general, I'm just gonna think it's probably there's a
likelihood that it's a version of the truth. But it's really
nice to know that someone's on my side. My age, that's very
cool. I have to take a look at it. Because, you know, it's so
so wrong.
It really is a centre give her a centre note.
And it's funny because my wife now is running into you know,
she's, she's from the Bakelite phone era. And in fact, it was
quite an accomplishment for me to really sit her down and walk
her through a menuing structure like on her mobile phone she
had, she's just not from that era and has never had to deal
with it and would, you know, essentially dial numbers
manually and wouldn't even use the address book and then once
she really got into it, she she's, you know, she really
loved it. Now, of course, there's a lot of media exposure
for her and although she uses her iMac and she loves it, and
she uses it all The time you know, for web browsing and email
and some of the basic things. Now she's having to deal with,
you know, people masquerading as her on a Dutch social networking
site called hives, which is, you know, like a Facebook type
thing, Bebo, whatever. And, and it's just amazing. She said,
Well, how can someone do that? Why did they do that? Why are
they trying to be like me? And then, you know, we got into
Wikipedia, and she said, Wait a minute. So if you can't actually
write or could change things on your own page, I'm like, No, you
can't do that. And she's like, Huh? It's, it's quite alien, we
take it kind of for granted.
It's very a quite it's not the word stupid is the word. But,
and this brings me to something I saw in the Financial Times.
yesterday. It was it was a editorial piece. But basically,
it was saying, you know, when, when Bill Clinton said, trying
to censor the Internet and the cyberspace to China, he said his
quote was something like, that's like trying to nail jello to the
wall. I think it was a famous quote of his. And it turns out
that yes, there is a great firewall of China except exactly
the opposite has happened. There's a lot of anti Western
and anti west or Western hate basically, particularly if you
look at the cutter for the French grocery store, because
they're pro Tibet. Now all they have these angry Chinese men and
women who are, you know, banning the stores and roughing up and
this is a this is a fact that we've been meaning to i You, me
more than you, you're excited to hear. You mentioned the fact
that the two of us were standing outside the offices of what is
now media,
right? That's right during the during the torch protest during
the
torch protests, and there was a whole bunch of pro Chinese
people protesting what they had Chinese face from China, and
they were going from place to place and we we ran into one guy
who pulled out his look like an
itinerary and a map Yeah, exact
and a map. And he had a chain of fight from China. He looked like
a national. Yep. And he was like, seeing where he had to go
next to do his phoney Baloney, exactly. Pro China thing, but I
think Chinese are gonna get busted for this trying to pull
this crap, fashion thing
happening, John, I really have the feeling just look at reading
these reports. And it's kind of bubbling under that. And of
course, immediately, immediately makes me think about how we're
being indoctrinated here. You know, this, basically, you look
at Google News, right? Every news item has been repeated and
copied and republished 1000s of times, whether it's correct or
not. I think the same thing is happening in China. And you
know, maybe the maybe the government is kind of smart
about getting nasty word out there and it propagating through
the net, and maybe they are creating their own kind of
online hate culture against us. You know what I mean?
be possible. I mean, I all I know is I mean, generally
speaking, if you're a Westerner in China, you still get treated
better than a lot of the Chinese. So that we don't know
yet. But, you know, you had to visit it a lot. And you'll
figure it out. After a while when I started, go, I really
want to get food at the restaurant.
But there's a name for these angry Chinese young men there's,
and it's, you know, every decade or so, there's a new version of
them. And now they're all anti Western and like,
these are the same idiots that were part of the cultural
revolution that Yeah, absolutely. You know, if it
wasn't for Chiang Kai Shek, moving all the antiquities out
of the country, they would have probably trashed the whole
place.
Yeah, those guys.
Those guys a lot of them. Yeah, there's lots of them. There's
too many of them they're idiots.
But, you know, this is kinda it's kind of playing into your
theory that the internet is actually really bad. Bad thing
you're really anti internet John. I know.
I was I don't I don't hate I mean, I just think it could be
Yeah, well, here's the here's the interesting thing happening
in China right now that this is a you know, China still has
issues and that you know, one of the things that nobody This
kills me and people out there who watch the TV reports from
Beijing coming in, you know, pre Olympics. You take a look at
these reports. It's just hilarious. There's a guy just a
reporter on the scene as I was watching one of these the other
day and no, none of these anchors, these these pathetic
anchors that have obviously no powers of observation if they
have a monitor. I'm sure they're looking at it once in a while.
They're reading the prompter for the next one. Right? But I mean
when they get
when the correspondent is standing in some place in
Beijing and behind him, you can't see anything because of
the smog and you see a vague bus go by it looks like some from
outer space just barely. You can barely make it out. Looks
like a beautiful morning there in Beijing peep
Nobody says, Is it a little smoggy there that you know, it's
just, I mean, every one of these reports I've seen, with no
exceptions, I'm sure there will be, you know, I know when
actually even if it's a windy day,
I actually it was, I think it was maybe it was even Gordon
Brown who was in China. And the BBC did a very, very funny bit,
although it was short, but they did a very funny funny bit about
me. So everyone's standing around and literally, you see
the smog like wafting through and that they did show it but it
wasn't like, you know, it was so tongue in cheek it was off the
cuff that it was almost insulting, but it was so it was
really nasty. Just this shit just wafting through. It's
crazy. So.
So anyway, besides that, but you know, somebody's got to point
this out, because I have yet to see a report from China where,
where it is not just completely, you know, just smoked in. And
now as it were, you know, we get to summer, you know, it's not
gonna be any better. But anyway, the real problem going on a
champ my wife pointed this out to me last night was is hoof and
Mouth Disease. There's a form of hoof and mouth disease. It's a
form of Coxsackie. Yes. Which I think kids get my
daughter had that is the scariest thing I've ever
witnessed. Were all sudden, all of a sudden, she's crying and
you go to her bed, and there's just this huge flood of blood
coming out of her mouth and covering the bed.
We are step mice that had this and he had the same thing as
like, your mouth is filled with blisters, and you get your it's
a mess. But it only lasts for a couple of days.
Yeah. But it's very frightening for parents.
Yeah, well, it turns out there's one it's called, I think, Ev 71.
Or it's got a specific, specific version of the virus, which is
breaking out now in China that is deadly. And they've already
killed 35 kids. And a typical of the Chinese people they don't
they've under reported it. So it is now slowly perhaps getting
out of control. There's cases in Macau. And they're coming in
from all over the place. And it's and it seems to be deadly
to kids, especially around the age of four. If it's
if it's anything like regular foot and mouth disease or hoof
and mouth, what sometimes they call it that as well, because
I've lived through several versions of that in the
farmlands in Belgium, and and over here as well. It's highly
contagious.
Yeah, that's the that's the real promise extremely contagious.
Not good. No. So now what?
Well, though, it's, you know, if it starts getting out of the
country, I mean, what here's what the question is what
happens when the public hits the road when this throng of people
go to the Olympics, and you know, this thing is breaking out
all over the place, and it just happens to be the timing might
be just perfect for it to be hitting Beijing in a big way.
It's going to be a disaster.
So wait a minute, so is it is it located north now? Is that where
you said it was?
See, here's the rally. So you have to look at that. But here's
the interesting thing about about this particular disease,
especially the deadly one, the adults can get it. And they do
get it apparently, by zero symptoms, all you become is just
a carrier. Wow. And the way the Chinese have handled these
things in the past, you know, we're not very not telling
anybody anything. And then the then the thing that says my wife
makes her concern is that it seems as though America is
already involved in we're sending people over there in
some sort of a panic move.
Really? Yeah. Like the CDC Dustin Hoffman,
kind of thing with the hoods that I know, I'm just telling
you, this is it you if you start looking it up, you can see the
story starting to form and the stories are China all kind of
downplaying it a little bit, but the potential for something like
this is pretty high. I did then we had about
30 people dying. I recall that somewhere, but it wasn't a big
story.
No, no, but just in fact, it should be
much more important to know if Hillary Clinton is a lesbian or
not. That's the kind of news we're interested in here, John.
I think maybe she's trying to get the lesbian vote, but put
her might put her on the top. I mean, over the top.
So I interrupted you. I'm sorry.
Well, I was saying that I mean, this kind of thing. Now we have
like to train and in Canada that was stopped and that and
quarantined, and then we have norovirus breakout at Moscone
Centre in San Francisco. I know, the Jabra one conference that 35
People got norovirus from something or other.
How come I didn't hear about that? I haven't read one speck
of news on that.
It's in on the blog. Check it out. oh.org/blog
What a fantastic resource.
So yeah, we actually try to keep up with epidemics.
No I'm a little I'm a little cautious I'm, I'm a believer in
that kind of shit. You know, it does actually spread that
actually can happen
well with these crowds I mean, you know, everything has become
like, you know, the stadiums are bigger. The the malls are bigger
you know what else is happening more and more crowded,
you get like a Java one conference and you got all these
nerds and they're all saying hey man, let me let me see your
iPhone and they're all like touching the same surface the
whole time and they're touching each other's things. And there's
a whole lot of this. I think there's much more touching going
on. Or, you know, touching the same surfaces with all these
geeks been Yeah, bringing us down.
Like somebody said on on on I actually twittered that thing
about the know about the Norovirus and, and somebody
said, What do you expect from a bunch of grimy unwashed
programmers?
Well, that's another thing keyboards man. Oh, that's so I
mean, there's more nastiness on your keyboard than on your
toilet seat as Yes,
we'd like to do is look, if you get your keyboard in the right
light, you just get grossed out. This thing needs
cleaning. It's very nasty.
What is just be a grease getting your grease on it constantly,
you know, dust in the air. It's just horrible.
Hey, there's something I'm sure you didn't read about in the US.
Big news over here in the UK. You know, we have 4 million
cameras in the UK, their civilian society known as the
the United Kingdom. Yeah. Turns out that they're not working
very well, that they're responsible for only 3% of all
crime solved.
Yeah, no, we actually got that story. I didn't get the story.
Okay. Yeah. So that story, but that's not as good as the other
story that's developing where there's now becoming a trend to
move the cameras.
Oh, yeah. That was on the front page of the newspapers here.
Yeah, but that's the speed camera. Right? Yeah. Well,
that's not a trend. It's just one guy did it and put it on the
front of all the papers. It's just we're all
Australia that there was this? There's similar incidents
happening around the world. Yeah. But you know,
so that's not news that's like
it is to me.
I know a guy who did a morning show on the radio in, in
Holland. And he actually, he actually got in trouble, he had
to go to court because he incited his listeners to
whenever you know, to basically bring down the man and knock
knock down all of the speed cameras, and people started
doing it. And it turned into quite a national scene. Wow,
that's cool. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, what a lot of
people do now you have these, you can buy these very cheap GPS
units, I think they have them in the States as well. But they're
kind of community based, they've been around for about seven or
eight years. And basically, all it is, is just a little
database. So you connect it to the, to your computer, you know,
once in a while, and it updates the database. But if you see a
speed camera, or if you're, if you're coming up to a speed
camera, it's just a GPS receiver. And so it'll start
flashing, saying speed camera coming, but you have a button on
it. And so if you you can basically tag a new speed
camera, and then that gets uploaded to the community. So
people are pretty current on where all these things are. And
you there's really no reason you'd have to hit one unless you
of course want to move it and then you speed up.
Well, most of the cameras here are used for traffic light
violations. Yeah,
for people hitting going through the red light. But these but
these are actually speed cameras on a stretch of road. In fact,
they have a system in Holland, which is unbelievable. There's a
strip or like a sensor. And then there's it's a large section
maybe like 20 miles. And what they do is they detect you when
you hit that first that 20 mile strip. And then if you hit the
other end too quickly, then they know exactly how fast you were
going that you were going too fast and then they send you a
ticket so you have to pace yourself in that 20 mile stretch
which I just think is outrageous
Well, you know there is a speed law. Yeah.
But it's you know, that's like
wow, you know like it you know, if you don't like the fact that
you haven't changed the law make the roads faster making like
Germany. I agree with Germany where there's no speed limit.
Well,
the problem there is they've they've got too many cars.
There's this every single morning, every single afternoon.
There's hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of traffic jams. It's
just It's horrible.
We're in Amsterdam, Holland,
and Holland. Yeah. And there's no no escape routes. You can't
get off and drive through villages or anything like that.
It's just everyone and you know, the news literally every hour is
at least five sometimes longer five minutes or longer of okay,
here's where all the traffic jams are. It just goes on and on
and on and on and on.
Really Well, we have that problem in Los Angeles. I mean,
you can't go from here to there anytime.
Yeah, it's about the same problem only in Los Angeles. Why
did how many people are there? 30 million?
Well, not quite. But as a lot Yeah.
Holland is only over 1017
Well, the thing is, you know what Los Angeles at least what
you said like what you say is like when they you trying to go
from one end of the area to the other, you can get off the
freeway and take city streets and actually entertain yourself
right.
Now this is actually getting I mean, the only the only highways
in the Netherlands are between the cities. You know, and so you
can always get off at some little village, that's not a
problem. But if you want to go into any city, forget about it.
But in or out of any city is just horrible. And they have
these rings around the around each city, it just doesn't work.
Well, somebody's got to redesign the system, because it seems to
me to Vimeo people moaning and groaning about energy savings
and all my car gets a million miles per gallon. And I was
gonna use a hybrid. Yeah, we're just sitting there dead in
traffic. That would mess with a hybrid that makes a little
sense. Cuz you don't, you know, I like to things with the engine
stops, you might as well just stop your engine run on battery.
Yeah. But then, you know, if it's a hot day like today than
your air, your air conditioner is in work and
Right. Right, so you gotta keep grinding away. So you're just
wasting gas. In fact, in Berkeley, where they have this,
you know, this dis, I don't know what what the point of it is,
but they have to put bike lanes in everywhere. And there's
nobody on these bike lanes, because there's only a few, you
know, people that haven't been killed driving a bike and it's
hills, right. It's a lot of work. Well, there's, there are
hills, there are a lot of hills. But the Djinn the flat area,
which is the main part of the city, there's still a lot of
these bike lanes, and nobody's using them. I mean, it's not
like Holland where you know, if there was a bike lane, there's
a, there's 1000s and 1000s of people on bicycles. Yeah. I
mean, literally, there's just hundreds and 1000s of people
there on bicycles going up and down. Here. There's like one
person every two or three hours, maybe on these bike lanes which
have moved the traffic that would they but they take a lane
away from the cars. And so the cars are all backed up stopped,
you know, forming this long line of cars idling and just burning
gas. It's a complete, it's like an ecological disaster. It's
burning more fuel than it would have if you didn't have these
idiotic bike lanes because we had to have a bicycle, we have
to encourage it. What are you going to encourage? I mean, it's
too far from point A to point B for people to using bicycles.
And, you know, we have to encourage more bicycle riding.
What about this, you know, the 60 year old lady, you know,
she's not gonna be on a bicycle. Anyway, so the whole thing is
ridiculous.
And meanwhile, the price of oil is $126 a barrel? Yeah, I'm
still thinking 100 before the end of the year, baby 200
I'm thinking 200 before the end of this year, though, right?
Well, it's gonna be pretty quick, because I think when it
hits 200 is going to reverse.
I mean, it's, it's unbelievable. Although I was looking, someone
sent me a chart. And when it comes to the actual cost of fuel
per gallon, you know, the US is still you know, 111 on the list
of most expensive countries, the UK I think is number three and
about eight $8.40 a gallon. So I think it's actually it's, it's
probably going to double in price, we'll probably see six or
$7 per gallon in the US before people start to freak out. Did
you see seven bucks or do it seven bucks? Yeah,
I think then people just start just going frickin nuts, you
know, that and, and food costs, which of course, are rising. And
I think, you know, that seems like a scam to me, too.
Someone's just jumping on some bandwagon. And I mean, there
seems to be no actual economic reason for this to be happening
other than futures traders. Yeah, exactly. Just just futures
traders just jumping from oil say, hey, let's let's we can do
this with rice. You know, we can make up some bullshit about
biofuel using up too much of the commodity resources, and we'll
start jacking up the price. Isn't that exactly what's
happening?
Well, that there was somebody sent me a note, because I've
been, we've been discussing these economics, things over the
last number of months. And I unfortunately, don't have his
name in front of me. But a pretty good analysis saying you
know, that the way to go is is that you, you know, you go long
on oil and short the dollar, you know, in futures. And you just
keep doing that and doing that and doing that to get to the
point where the oil prices ridiculous. Dollar is
ridiculously low. And then you reverse it. And you can run the
thing back the other way as fast as you can make just millions
and millions of dollars. Just
just reverse your history, your straddle, basically, it's not
what a straddle is called.
Well, it's kind of a straddle, but it's actually it's really
more it's, it's, I don't know what you'd call this leverage.
Because Because if you're doing both and they're both going in
the same direction, not really straddling anything, that's
true.
But But my question was Do you Do you think that this is just
the futures traders just jacking up the price of some of the
commodities like rice? Grain all that other stuff?
Yeah, that the dollar is the best example of this. I mean,
there's something wrong with this. I mean, the dollar is
obviously still weak because of this war that we've got. But But
still, there's something wrong with this picture when someone
in France can buy you know, can come over here and buy a bottle
of their own wine cheaper at almost half the price. Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. I mean, that is not right.
Yeah, so there you go. We're getting shafted.
It's all part of the grand scheme of things totally is
actually is it there's the chef job isn't going to be fair. I
mean, Americans aren't I mean, except for the price of
gasoline, even though nobody seems to be complaining much
about and people don't complain too much about anything, which
is a problem, I would recommend taking a problem. Take a look at
this week's market watch column where I think it's called
watching the watchdogs where I start to moan about because when
AIG went you know, apparently showed up with an $8 billion
loss this is the insurer that tanked the street last week
right Thursday
last week and then they and then Standard and Poor's as well
we're gonna have to lower their rating to double A minus they
were triple A rated I'm thinking what these rating agencies are
complete bogus scam if they can This is like in a new way my
weatherman got a clue
that but that doesn't mean that's the shit they gotta be
look that's illegal man. These ratings agencies that what are
they on the take? I mean, this is this is messed up.
Well, there's a guy talking about that kind of thing. I got
a lot of interesting stories at this Korean conference about
about some of this stuff to weird stuff that was going on in
the late 90s before the.com crash where the you know, these
these companies would come in and say well, you know, if you
do this and that let us be your underwriter will give you the
big write ups and the good ratings and the rest of
analysts.
Yeah, well, that's that's the that's the way it works. You go
with the right investment firm that has well known analyst who
has a track record, which of course is just based on luck
pretty much although a lot of them do have some really good
models for well established businesses. But yeah, that's and
those two sides of the house. That's the so called Chinese
wall. Whether Yeah, they're not supposed to talk to each other.
If anyone's ever looked at that Chinese wall, but there's a lot
of holes.
Massive something cool. I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, no, nothing no just just changed the topic completely. So
I'm at the airport in Seoul, Korea, and there's a Skype
store.
Oh, with Skype apparel? No, they
had for Skype. I guess you could get an account and a flow phone
to take with you or whatever. They use CDMA there, and most of
the phones don't work. I mean, I took a phone from the office
that was supposed to work and then wouldn't charge and then I
had took my sad my Sony Ericsson phone, which I bought in Europe.
I thought it was universal could be abused anywhere. No. Can't
find this transmitter. I mean, this year, I think the GSM
thing. Great thing about GSM is you can use it anywhere in the
world. That's not even close to being true.
I have not had any problems. I'm surprised.
Yeah, we'll take one of these phones that you think you've had
no problems with and take it to Korea, where they use CDMA GSM
I wonder if the iPhone works in China?
I know they've no it doesn't work in China because I've had
to get some buddy twittered me asking whether they ever think
that the iPhone ever will work on on China it will work I'm
sure I was thinking Korea it should work in China. Okay, but
not in
Korea. No, yeah, that what the CDMA thing is not what sprint
still uses in the US.
I don't know. Well, I don't know if that's maybe
sprint was. Yeah, there's one carrier that did. I was actually
going to change the topic and say that something really cool
launched here in the UK, which I just think is amazing. Freesat,
UK. Have you heard of this? No. So it's a free satellite system.
So actually, you buy the, the set top box for I think it's 60
pounds, so about 100 bucks. And, or it's even cheaper than I
think with installation, all told, maybe 120 100 and $130.
And then you basically flip it on, there's no no subscription
charge. It's like Freeview. If you know that over here, they
you can receive digital channels right over the air. And so now
you have HD quality of all of the publicly available channels
and of course if you want you can just dial a number and then
you can take a temporary subscription like a one day for
the porn service. Or you know, you can get some other package
but it's it's I love what they're doing. I mean, they
really leading with this, you know, here at is get your cheap
set top box you know will sell you all the upgrades you want
but basically here's your television you know you don't
need anything more. You get your BBC you get your ITV your
channel for your CNN, your BBC 24 news, all that good stuff.
And if you want more, you can just order it ala carte. I think
it's fantastic. And if your satellite
but what don't you have to have somebody instal a dish?
Yeah, you can instal it yourself or they'll instal it for you
that's built into that price.
So, so what's the price again?
Like 102 130 bucks installed everything ready to go and no
monthly charge? You guys.
So it's a one fee? Let's put a dish up one fee. And then you
can just you know, whatever. Yeah. I said for premium.
Yeah, if you want premium, and you can just order that over the
phone.
Well, you know, one of the things I've been wanting to do,
there's have now a version of the long forgotten technology,
which is still one of the better ones is see band, those big
dishes? Yeah, you know, the the early set, the first set, you
know, people that lived out in the country that have this huge
dishes, because in a day, pick up the band aid, pick up the
direct feeds from the networks and all the other stuff.
Usually, those dishes were located right next to a trailer.
I've seen exactly, you know what I mean? Right? It'd be a big
dish. And that's where they got to, you know, the feeds of Dan
Rather picking his nose. Oh, that's right, the good old days.
So but anyway, that that has not gone away, necessarily. But it's
gone to two HD. And so there's a bunch of HD channels now that
are up there, that in fact, everything up there is not
coming down in HD. And if you do if you get to new receivers, you
mean, in other words, this technology is not dead. It's
just kind of being overlooked a lot. And it still has more
versatility. And I've been thinking about actually going to
a C band dish because I have a pad in my backyard. And I'm in a
really good spot, I think to hit the heli birds. What No, you
know, a pad for a dish. I had a Oh, okay. A constant helicopter.
Yeah, I wish I had. It's not that big of a backyard. But
anyway. But I have the thing, the pole the whole thing. And so
I could put that thing up there and then get the HD but what I
think is cool. And I think, I don't know if the free set
people do this, but it would be cool. If they did, I'm sure they
don't. But there are systems that you can subscribe to, for
the premium stuff where you can, and it's all prorated. You can
get HBO for a day.
Right? There was a while when I was really deep into that shit
into the satellite stuff. And I knew all the guys who had like
the gold cards, which is kind of code for Cracked decoding cards
and there's a whole community there's all kinds of shit
happening on satellite let you know like that crazy movie you
saw the other day from Shell. But there's a lot of really
weird channels and experimentation going on. Yeah,
there's yeah, there's a lot of when I'm when I'm sure that C
band
you're right, you know, because it's that's huge. frequency
range, isn't it? Don't they have a lot of bandwidth on the on
that C C band?
Yeah, as far as I know. I mean, you and and the great thing is,
is that, again, you know, you could do I mean, besides all the
free stuff that's up there, because once you buy this, you
know, it's not it's not as cheap as I mean, obviously, it's gonna
cost you a couple $1,000 to get up to speed. But then again,
once you get it, you never have to pay again. And if you do want
to go for that premium stuff, there's the systems where you
can you know, you there's an eight movie coming up on HBO HD,
you want to watch it, you just buy the hBo hBo for that week or
for that day, and you don't have to keep paying and paying and
paying. And
those are the old cool systems where you have to have a rotor
attached to your
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, because there's different birds.
repositioning the and the
rotor actually will slowly turn with the with the rotation of
the Earth to stay in sync is not.
Well, this deserves Geosynchronous Satellite such
and had to turn it all but the satellites do wiggle around a
little bit.
Yeah, now that's cool stuff. I remember the days. I've talked
about this before, a long time ago. The BBC did it. And in
fact, it was, I think lots of different countries. I heard
were doing it. I was living in the Netherlands. I was I had a
Commodore VIC 20. And later is 64. And there was a programme on
national radio on FM, and they would broadcast programmes and
you would call you would record those on the cassette tape and
then load them into your computer. It was the most
awesome distribution ever. Yeah. I was thinking, I always loved
those kinds of systems, you know, so yeah,
those things come and go. But David, so I'm thinking of
getting a C band thing I keep talking about it just seems like
an interesting kind of solution to Well,
I see a trend of people moving you know, there their media
habits are now really accelerating in different
directions primarily away from network based broadcast
television. I was reading the ratings the other day, you know,
after the writer strike. All ratings except for American
Idol, that's the only exception. So Fox kind of wins in this and
of course had the Super Bowl, all the ratings are down 14%,
you know, have only a small amount of their new shows of
this new the new the new season even mate did over 4 million
viewers per episode. I mean, that's that's small man, these
audiences are getting outstripped by other media or
certainly aggregated. If you looked across all other media
pretty quickly.
Well, I think they're gonna have to rethink the way they look at
this stuff, too. i My concern is that what we're going to lose, I
mean, I, you can kind of see the shift to even like with a lot of
different kinds of broadcasting, the show that we're doing, for
example, is essentially what could have been done on on
radio, but without the same convenience, the radio doesn't
have a TiVo, you know, there's no way subscribing to a show
like this over the conventional system. But with this over the
internet approach, it's got more versatility is obviously going
to make things different. Because this is really the way
to go. And
for this kind of this kind of format and programming. Yeah, I
agree. That's the way to go. Right?
In that media, but with TV. I mean, it seems to me as it is,
it is slowly shifting away from what I what I would miss the
most are, you know, good dramas, and good sitcoms. And the thing
is, is that I've noticed over the years, a lot of the
definitely there's still good material on television, as the
CDC seems to be scattered about much more than it used to be.
It's not as compact, easy to find, and reliable. And some
years ago, they started moving the shows too much. I mean, it
would be Wednesday night, and they changed it to Thursday
night, then they changed and it used to be always considered, I
think
you're kind of already offering up your own solution for this.
And I agree with you. I mean, I watched lots of drama. And I
also know how hard it is to make it how expensive it is, an
episode of loss will be anywhere between two and a half and $3
million. So and by the way that production does actually get
paid everyone on the set and everyone involved in the
production up to the new what we call tape on desk, they're all
paid and and they're done. So then it's up to the to the
broadcaster to go make money. And of course, there's also a
distributor because there's international distribution, etc.
But I think we're getting close closer to the point where there
will be enough vehicles, enough outlets to either sell or
through other monetization mechanisms to actually grab that
kind of scale. As long as as long as it's actually available
and not just free to air on television. I think they could
that type of budget and recouping on that is probably
viable.
I think it is, especially if they if they monetize it in more
than one way, which I think is one of the keys here. And that's
why I think when they first started putting TV series of TV
shows on DVDs. Yeah, for example, the Firefly series,
which was a really outstanding programme that Fox screwed up
and so but on DVD, people, you know, would just buy the DVDs,
and watch the thing and I think may have paid out over time. And
also, you know, people who missed the first couple of
seasons of alias, or the one that I think is hot right now
for DVDs is the wire. And people would watch it because I always
told people that use Dwyer was one of the great dramas ever put
on television. And I always say Well Don't even start watching
it on HBO, get the DVDs and catch up to the story. And then
you know, start watching it then. And people would you know,
everybody in my family has watched the wire mostly off the
DVDs. And there's money to be made off of that, because that's
how the movie people do it in the budget. You know if it would
cost $2 million in episode to make a TV drama and you do two
of them. That's like a one DVDs worth of material for a $4
million outlay as opposed to what a movie costs are produced,
which is an average of 66 million, according to everybody.
And it's there's a lot of there's a lot of money to be
made. Obviously the margins are different. So that so I hope
that the you know, they don't stop doing these things if they
can get these other channels to work. Here's
just one thing that you know, Ron and I have been in Los
Angeles a lot in the past couple of months. And we've pretty much
struck a couple of interesting deals. In fact, one agency a
large one. They represent I think it's like 110 pilots that
are Um, that basically didn't make it that didn't get on the
air. And that's not because they were bad. Obviously, there's
only so many so many shows that can enter rotation on a seasonal
basis. And I think we've pretty much secured the rights to be
able to, you know, put those up on our network and see if
anything strikes. And you know, that could actually be a way to
start one of these up, you know, we'll see, but at least we'll
we'll have a good laugh at 100 pilots that didn't make it.
Yeah, no, that'd be fun. And he actually used to be a TV show
that did that during the summer. They would run all his whole
pies, but it was it was, you know, the lot of this stuff
doesn't television doesn't work for a lot of things. Because
especially non episodic things that just random. It's better if
it's, I think TiVo has helped a lot. But TiVo is not the
complete solution, the real solution to the whole thing is
IPTV where everything's actually done, distributed over the net,
when you want it off of huge catalogues,
which is where we're going, Dude, that's what the y max
cloud is all about.
Yeah, y max isn't helping things much. But it is where we're
going, somehow
an on demand world.
And now, you know, that also does shake out, you know, the
cream of the crop will come show up different ways. It also lets
niche markets develop. I mean, our show, for example, or any of
the tech shows that are out there are totally niche. They're
not necessarily for everybody. It's not the mass market. But
there's there is a mass market, if you take a worldwide
audience, and you can let everyone tap into it. I mean, if
you have, you know, on a domestic basis, you have a tuner
million people in the biggest market in the world, which is in
terms of dollars, the US market, you have 200 million people and
you can get 10 million to watch something. You know, that's
that's a success. But if you have a worldwide market of
billions of people, you can get the same 10 million only from a
broader grouping much easier over the internet and
distributed cheaper to you. Your so your home business model is
completely changed. Yep.
Yep. It's, it's definitely happening. I can feel it. And
you know, I can't I really, I really, really can't, and it's
still going to be another 10 years. I'm sure.
It always takes longer when you're when you're, you know,
surfing that wave, you know,
that's what I mean. You can totally feel the wave. But my
experience has taught me slow down, boy, slow down.
dead by the time our vision takes place,
but John will be dead together. Won't that be fun?
Yeah. So anyway, but it is obviously the major underlying
trend, that but it's kind of the fun part is when you have a
trend like that, that's so apparent. It's kind of fun to
watch people scramble around trying to either try to fix you
know, do whatever, which brings me to Sumner Redstone who I got
to meet in Korea. I've met him he's a very interesting guy.
coot would be the word that comes to mind.
That's a good description. People are very afraid of him at
Viacom, very afraid.
Well, you know, they probably shouldn't be he's pretty. He's,
you know, he's got a he's a man with opinions. I think I'm gonna
take his side though, on the, on his suit against us.
Totally. Right. Absolutely. Yeah, but I also
have a twist to it, which I'm gonna I think I'm gonna run this
is a column and PC mag on Monday. And it's going to be
it's going to have a twist to it that I think is going to be very
interesting because I just came to me when I was flying back
from Korea, that he I'll take his side but then I'm going to
twist it in some interesting way. I mean, he's not going to
be able to you know, he'll never read read or hear of this
column, I'm sure. But the funny thing was his main complaint
over in Korea and i By the way, I got some great contacts over
there now that will be helping me to expose some of the common
places that are inaccurate up on the blog. And it is very
interesting. But anyway, the his main complaint is that the
Koreans even though they are the people who do the SpongeBob
SquarePants cartoon there because all the cartooning is
done in Korea. Now. Most of it now the anime, the fact that
nations right they've got a bunch of studios all over the
place. They they they make the cartoon but they don't subscribe
to the SpongeBob show.
They don't like it. That I'm diggin. So he is
a bait I'm telling you, he gives a speech and he and
Mr. ledson it is a talking splint.
You know the problem that I think that he's missing and he
loves the show, apparently but if anyway, I never knew about it
might when my daughter was you know as young she was always
watching Spongebob and I kind of got into SpongeBob dog cat and
all those crazy shows they want Nickelodeon, The Amanda Show and
but the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon is high comedy. In some
crackpot is a very, very weird and advanced form of humour.
That is that dead transcends.
Oh, that's that's the sign of a great cartoon right is when the
parents can be laughing in the kids as well, only two totally
different reasons.
Right. But it's not in the intellectual sense of the old
Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons where there was a lot of asides,
or even the Simpsons cartoons, which are almost adult sitcoms
with a children's kind of, you know, cartoony quality, where
they're very this is really nasty humour. The, you know,
they just go after it. This is the weirdest kind of thing I've
ever seen in terms of its humour, and I just don't see a
lot of cultures, ever even coming close to getting them
getting it. You know that it just if you don't get the meta
joke in there. It's not funny in the least. In fact, it's the
stupidest show ever. Yeah. And so he just like you could just
see as frustrated by the fact that the Koreans, they draw the
Cartoon For God's sake, why are they watching it?
One time, I took advantage of the Viacom corporate culture and
I I went to the Nickelodeon Studios, which is I think it's
in Florida.
I don't know where they are. Yeah, I
think it's in Florida. And we had the whole VIP treatment. And
my daughter was on the show, and we all got slimed. And your
daughter's probably too old for that now to appreciate the
slime.
She probably had to limit Yeah, 13.
Christina was Shinano, seven or eight. And it was just awesome.
Absolutely awesome. They know how to do that. They take care
of their own. They're at Viacom.
What do you how do you get that crap off? Yeah.
It's, uh, you gotta shower. They have a shower, a whole setup
right there.
I think they should invent some sort of SLAM like that. You can
just get slammed and you just shake like a dog and it all
comes off.
Boy, we'd be rich. If only we could come up with that
perfectly Would Professor Flubber
do the product would be that you did would be some green slime.
But you fall on you and we'd get all over you'd be a total mess.
And you'd shake like a dog and would fly off. Yeah. And then it
would disappear.
Well, don't you remember that? There was a product called slime
at one point. Remember that? Ya know, the green canister that
was reasonably good.
Yeah, but it wasn't that good. It was. It was good. It should
disappear. It should have some quality. So it just completely
disappears. It just evaporate like alcohol.
And will have it made in China.
Right. And ended up being toxic unfortunately.
Here's a trend. Boys in Britain with increasing rate do not want
to French kiss.
You kidding? Yeah.
And this is I had a whole conversation with my daughter
and a couple of her friends that were here in the garden today.
And it's
because the Brits hate the French that much.
That was my question too. But like, we ate these fucking
French
no more dead tongue.
It's called a freedom from Freedom kiss now instead of
French kissing? No. They're just not into it. It's Believe me,
there ain't a whole bunch of other stuff. Because, you know,
I did get all the details but know that they don't like French
kissing. It's going out of vogue. Pun intended.
That's interesting. Yeah.
And so I've told my daughters
to sociology think behind that. I really don't know. You know,
the
first thing I said is baby, maybe you need a tic tac, you
know, she's like, Oh, no, no, no, Dad, and then, you know, her
friend Liz. And a couple of these girls say Yeah, more and
more boys. Just they don't like it. They just
get the boys the girls don't one way or the other. Not the boys.
It's
the boys who don't want to French kiss. That's kind of
trippy, isn't it?
That's wild. I wonder if that would if that trend is
developing here.
I have no idea. Personally, I'm I'm a big fan
of wood with French kissing boys. Yes, specially young. You
set it up. I was supposed to say hi.
No, I was open goal. That's what we say over
here. Open net. We'd say here to be more of a hockey term.
Okay. Open goal is for football, which as you know is the real
soccer. Yes, I'm becoming quite a pimp that way. So yeah, no, I
thought that was pretty interesting trend though. I have
no idea what the sociology behind it would be. I really I
really can't figure that one out. I mean, you still see it
and all the porn. I'm reliably informed.
Yeah, but Kedah know how many? How many kids will I mean,
Shannon? How many people you know how many teenage boys have
watch porn. I mean, I think they look at porn on the net. But
yeah, that's different than
Yeah, they're all looking for the you know for the latest sex
video. That's that's really a big thing. And they make their
own. You know, there's a lot of that going on. Oh, did you see
so and so sex tape, you know that totally mimicking, you
know, the Paris Hilton Lindsay Lohan. Britney Spears type
thing? Yeah. Which is kind of sad.
It's totally sad because just like what you Go Yeah, once you
go everybody go do these sex tapes and put them on new tube
which is one of the there's a whole bunch of them too. There
are a bunch of just typing in porn to put anything tube and
you'll find some porn and tube because you know they got some
smart money guys you know they're in the same classes are
going to be collecting these things and then when you know
you had you and the other guy working at the same company you
know looking up for the same promotion even though what I'll
never work for a company that's thrown in your face
now it's gonna surface but yeah, I mean that's the I
think I had people think ahead. But that's it's changing
to John I mean it's the same thing with so now the you as we
were talking earlier, now the Brits are going to store all
these images from the CCTV cameras in a database. I'm
thinking we should sell the whole kit and caboodle to Mark
Burnett and call it Britain the reality show. Just let him
switch it live make a whole channel 24 So why not? Did you
see that band that was this is a fantastic I think was on boing
boing, a band shot their video clip by doing performances in
front of all of these different cameras in I think it was mainly
in London, maybe in Manchester as well, maybe even Birmingham.
And then they and then they submitted Freedom of Information
Act requests for the footage, and they strung it all together
and made a music video out of it.
No, I didn't know that. That's a great thing. Yeah, I
think it's a great boring. Oh, it's fantastic. You know, and
then you see, you know, you see all these different angles. It's
funny. It's pretty funny.
These cameras are ridiculous. Yeah, but yeah,
our whole life and this is this is why I did our reality show
back in the day. It's like yeah, this is this is what's happening
it's going to be real normal for people to be putting all this
shit out there. And and not necessarily that even thinking
about putting their shit out there but they just put it out
and then it gets out there.
Well, that brings me back to the original Albert Brooks movie
that went back for years this I think was his first film and I
can't remember the name of it I'll have to take a look look it
up in his filmography but it's where he you know, is these
people being followed around this is actually predates all
this reality stuff is obviously very, very interesting. You
know, these people have these cameras on their heads, like
whole crew people, and they move in with this family and
basically film everything they do. And who knew it was actually
going to be a trend, but the movie itself is quite revealing.
I'll look it up.
I'm looking right now. When was it from? He did. Albert Brooks.
His first movie is first. Yeah, it was called. Was really old. I
mean, he's in the 70s. I believe.
I'm looking at IMDB. Right now. I'm seeing a lot of appearances.
And we're gonna
manage Albert brooks.com He's got all his movies on here. See
what he's got here. Real Life 1979
Real life I'm trying to think if I've seen that.
You've seen it? I'm sure but anyways, the thing about the
thing is the these people that were filming the doing the
reality show, they had these big cameras on their heads. So they
look like they had Pat's on. And they were walking around with
this, like all constantly, it was actually quite funny.
That was the the old vision one day we'll have cameras on our
heads.
Well, it was meant to mock the whole idea. Because I think
though, concepts were just being first thought out right around
the late 70s. And many which way does this movie? And it turns
out that how I mean, it's just just amazing film if you look at
it in terms of The Truman Show and some of these other films
that came out much later. And I don't think Brooks has ever
really you know, he did real life and Modern Romance African
but that was about it. That was the kind of here's the stories
for oriented thing lost in America was really a good film.
And then it started you know, defending your life was as big
budget movie that was pretty good. But after that he just
didn't seem to I guess he they wouldn't get any more money
because he did. I'm looking at his filmography or starts in
1979 1981 1985. He's between five and six years between films
1991 1996 and 1999. The Muse which was kind of just a
commercial, nothing
fun, it was in broadcast news and 87
it those are his words, the story I'm talking about the ones
he's where he's written, produced and directed, or
written and directed.
The Muse mother defending your life lost in America, Modern
Romance. So, in 2000 2000, maybe even end of 99 that was around
the time The Truman Show came out. And, and I was we were back
in Holland. We just moved back and I got a call at, like 1130
At night it was John the mole of Entomol. You know in the mall is
no and the mall the big production company. Most famous
for big brother. Okay, yeah. Okay, worldwide success sold to
Telefonica for several billion. He called me around 1130 says
add an item item, come to my office, I want to show you
something. I'm like, alright, that's kind of weird. But he was
already a pretty big television producer. I'm like, okay, so I
go in, he says, I got a mood tape for you. So, okay, I know
what a mood tape is. Because it's, it's kind of biosphere
meets Truman Show. And he showed me this tape. And it was
literally, they had it, it wasn't mood tapes, it was all
stuff cut together and voiceover to make it kind of looked like
it was real. And essentially, it was called golden cage. And the
idea was that, you know, we'd lock in 10 people, five men,
five women lock them up for a full year, the neon and then
whoever would come out as the final person would be the sorry
about that would be the winner of like, a million euros or
whatever. And, and that about three months later became big
brother. And okay, yeah. And I was right there at the very,
very start. And it was completely influenced. And, and
I betcha that pieces of real life. Were in that mood tape.
I'm going to see if I can find it because I have it somewhere.
The original Big Brother mood table and later actually, animal
went on to create golden cage, which is like a really harsh
version of Big Brother with loving sex and getting drunk and
shit on camera, man. He tried to sell that in the States, that
wouldn't even take it.
Our standards? Yeah, boy, we sure do. Please. Anyway, so
yeah, there's a bit it's, it's an interesting situation. And
the funny thing is about those things, though, they don't
translate well to the the secondary markets. So you have
to make all your money right away, because I don't see
anybody renting DVDs of Big Brother.
No. Yeah, the whole DVD retail market is gone. John, it's, it's
pretty much melted, which is a big Hollywood problem. We talked
about that last week or the week before?
Yeah, no, but there's still I mean, there's still destroy, I'm
talking about distribution of secondary, you know, secondary
viewing. And yeah, maybe change from DVD to downloads or
whatever. But the point is, is that secondary viewing, you
know, old, you know, two year old Big Brother is not going to
be the same as a two year old, you know, some of these classics
that were that people can watch for the next
20 years now you can make more money off of, you know, Baywatch
from 15 years ago, then you can off of last year's big brother,
that's just a fact. Right? Now, because that that whole show was
built around audience participation. I mean, it truly
is an engaged audience, you know, you have to be a part of
it. Otherwise, you miss it, and it's no good. Right now. And the
repeats are no good. It has to be it all has to be witnessed
kind of in real time, which is, I think, is the genius of it
is a genius on the one hand, but it doesn't do much for residuals
or, you know, long term you know, it doesn't have to talking
about that's genius. Excuse me, let me get my producer hat on.
Are you nuts?
There's your man. Adam curry coming in.
Absolutely. I love it. No residual money, MIT. All these
little kids are under contract that can't do shit without us.
In the UK. These girls were like third or fourth, but had the
right vibe going on. They're doing like 100,000 pound
photoshoots for you know, with their clothes on for the
newspapers. I mean, they're, they're big, big celebrities.
Huge business.
Yeah, for them individually.
And people seem to love it. You know, everyone's so well, you
know, that's another
issue. I mean, people seem to love it. The public is just it's
the public on some level is just pathetic, John
that they play Shotzi crowd Shantelle on the front page,
your newspaper you sell 500,000 more copies. It's a known fact.
So that just do a comment saying
it's not a known fact because it is a known fact. And when even
on the Dvorak uncensored blog until it got completely
ridiculous. We would put a lot of Britney Spears stuff up there
even though these nerds would moan about it. They'd all be
reading it. It's a male audience. You know, Britney
Spears is cute, she's photogenic she's, you know, she's kind of
does stupid things. It's funny, but and you know, then it got
pathetic and even my wife says, You guys have stopped as Britney
Spears stuff. This girl is like, you know, in trouble. Yeah. So
we stopped doing it, but you're actually
participating in that circus. Um, I'm shocked.
But you know, um, shouldn't be you shouldn't be shocked. But
the point is, it doesn't mean it's a good thing. I wouldn't. I
wouldn't do it saying it's a good thing. I mean, I say it's a
bad thing, but I'll do it. Like saying public drunkenness you
know, is a good thing. It's not
They're betting on Boris Johnson, our new mayor is, is
banned as of June 1, this is going to be funny. He's banning
open containers of alcohol on public transport. Good fucking
luck. I can just see the poor train conductor trying to take
it you can do a lot of things. But taking a beer away from an
inebriated Brit is just not one of the things you want to have
high on your list to do. Right? Especially if he's Irish. Thank
you. Because I sit in first class on the train home like at
530 or six o'clock and man some people are toasted toasted in
first class. Yeah, well, they they don't have first class
tickets, but they just come in, you know, barge in. And you
know, and everyone just ignores them, right? No one No one says
anything. And they're like burping and shouting and farting
all over the place. And the conductor comes by and he's
like, he takes one look at him go like I'm gonna fucking deal
with these bozos. You know, hey, you shouldn't be You shouldn't
be here, gentleman. Yeah, right. Now, man, wait and wait until we
get some Liverpool fans on the train. Yeah, that'll be fun. Put
your beard on son.
So when I was in Germany, when there's some big soccer match
with a bunch of Brits today was like it well knows that whatever
World Cup match or whatever. But it was some big match. And so
there's a bunch of I was on the one of the trains. And it was
like, all of a sudden got filled up with a bunch of these British
footballer fans. A bunch of punks I've ever run into and
they're all like middle aged.
Middle Aged hooligans.
What is the deal with that? I mean, I guess it wasn't like
they're a bunch of teenagers.
Well, okay, so now you're understanding why Soccer is the
biggest sport in the world. It is the common man's sport, you
are seeing there is a working class still in the UK, I
believe. And you're seeing it. You know, that's Look, that's
why you get great players from South America is because any kid
that dream of any kid is if you can kick this frickin ball, and
you can get it in that net. And you can do it consistently, you
can become world famous, and you know, et cetera, et cetera. And
that dream is there. And for these guys, that's that's all
they really know that the their social community is the club in
the UK, some of the supporters actually make the decisions
about what the club has to do. And they have delegates who will
go into the board of directors meetings and say, All right, you
can't trade this guy, or you know, we'll basically rip down
the stadium. No, it's it's a huge, huge cultural thing. And
that's what you're seeing. And I think it's sad. I think it's a
sad statement. Everyone can love enjoying sports, but it just
seems like that's all they've got.
Yeah, well, it's weird, because although I have to say like, if
you took a look at American football fans, a lot of them are
middle aged, too. You know, in fact, it's probably more middle
aged people who watch you know, the Oakland Raiders, then kids.
Yeah. And but it's just something worried about running
into. I mean, you see these guys tearing down your fighting and
having all these really, I mean that you don't see a lot of
fights, even though they're nasty looking at the Oakland
Raiders. I mean, it's not like it isn't in Europe, where
they're just with a fighting shot, kill each other. And same
thing in Brazil. I went to the big stadium in Rio once, which
has a whole 350,000 people on and they have the section for
the visiting team. And actually, there's like a barbed fence wire
in the stadium blocking the two sides. So they don't go at each
other. Yeah. Oh,
yeah. And so they have names like, in Holland, you have F
side. They call them sides, and you have what do you have? Fuck
S. I mean, there's, there's all these different they're hooligan
gangs. But they're really supporters. I don't know. It's
they're all over 38 years old. It's weird.
That overexcite and why is it by the way, in the United States,
when your team wins, you go nuts. You burn up the streets
and you riot but when, when gas goes to 40 bucks a gallon, we do
sit at home and smoke. The crack pipe.
Again, is addressed in my column in MarketWatch. Where I ask, why
is the public housing Why did the public get to be so passive?
Yeah, and I think a lot of it has to do with this terrorism
thing because it got the public scared, if anybody hasn't
noticed is at the airports. All the US airports have been on
Orange Alert. For five years straight. It's never moved. The
yellow. It's never moved to red has never moved to green. It's
been orange. And it's a lot of the posters that say orange
orange alert. You know, watch out watch your orange alert and
those signs are printed. They're permanent. There's no way they
even show up the sign. I was like it's been printed on the
wall Orange Alert. I have this bullshit is this
Well, I have this, this thing called a drop. You can find it
at drop.io/ Daily source code. And basically it's a it's kind
of cool system. Jon's take a look at it, you can, you can
drop any type of media file in there and you literally drop it
and looks like it kind of turns into a web log. But anyway,
someone put a PDF file in here, which I've been reading, it's
about 300 odd pages. I'm just looking for it. Now, of course,
it's not easy to find. It's a book on authoritarianism and how
authoritarianism, I think that's the word is less about the
authorities who are suppressing the people, but more about the
the attitude of the people who are allowing themselves to be
authority sized.
Well, that mean, the classic work on authoritarianism is done
by a guy named TW Adorno. And I believe is his book. I think
there's two volumes of it. It's something called I think, I
don't know, remember, the Taleb I think is maybe just
authoritarianism. But this book was written as a definitive work
sociology, probably around 1940 to 19, maybe right after World
War Two and one of the two in the 40s. For sure. And it's it
outlines most of this in fact, I use this book as a when I was in
college, I read that first Reddit. It's actually quite
interesting, but authoritarianism was quite,
quite the thing. But I'm not sure exactly why we have. I
guess, it's completely out of control in this country, because
nobody protests anything. And then when they do protest, it's
just a bunch of whack jobs, protesting marine recruiting
centres, and things like that, you know, and moaning about not
having enough bike lanes, that kind of thing. It's
unbelievable. Oh, we need more bike lanes? Yeah, that'll do it,
that's going to change things that'll get us out of a rack.
I wish I could find this thing. But it seems like there is a
theory, a theory out there as to why we're doing this and why
we're so passive and why we're just not getting up. And I can
feel it. You know, when I, when I reach out and say, This is
what my show has become my daily show, daily source code.com. And
people are starting to wake up, you know, the saying,
Oh, they're not waking up to people that listen to your show,
maybe
well, that's two more than than have woken up from your show. In
fact, your show puts them to sleep.
I keep my shows short. Puts them this way. Anyway, there is an
issue here. But I again, I moaned about this. And one of
the things that I mentioned this column, which is you should read
because it's pretty funny. I wrote it actually, I was
figuring it wasn't gonna get this combed until I got back to
the States. Because, you know, it was like, you leave Korea at
Friday afternoon. And you get home Friday morning.
So, yeah, mine mindfuck.
You know, it's like, what, but anyway, I was gonna get home in
time to write the column for MarketWatch. But I woke up that
morning, and I read this thing about AIG going, you know, I
just got angry about the fact that nobody's complaining enough
about these rating agencies. And then I started on a rant about
nobody complains about these bank charges and, and 18%
interest rates, which used to be illegal. And these pay, get
cashing these check cashing places that will give you an
advance on your paycheck. And then they have, you know,
essentially loan shark rates, and all this other stuff that's
going on appeal or whatever, you know, it's just too bad. And the
government's not doing anything about they're in bed with these
people. It's unbelievable to me that no, well, you know, that's
just the way it is. I know. It's like terrorists. There's we got
to somebody, you know, the terror, we have to be careful
what the terrorists alert
or does the authoritarians by Bob altameyer, Associate
Professor, Department of Psychology University of
Manitoba, Winnipeg.
That gave me the title. It's called the authoritarian
society, by tw Adorno.
Yeah, he actually references that here is that being. But
what he's trying to do as he's trying to just, of course, with
any book, I'm making this for the common guys, so you can
understand this incredibly complex crap, I'm trying to
smack down on you. But he does a pretty good job. And it's been a
it's been an interesting, interesting read. And he also
has some solutions at the end, you know, here's what we can do
to stop ourselves from being authoritarian.
Oh, wait, wait, I'm sorry, is the authoritarian personality by
tw dornod. Anyway, go ahead.
It's interesting, because I think there's something there.
There's something wrong with everything. Well, so you know,
people you know, I think there's going to be also a point where
you start there's a build up because people know that they're
being scammed or ripped off. I mean, people are going you know,
getting somebody's credit card companies, the credit card
companies get go out of their way and they get Congress to
change the bank. cripsy laws so when you go bankrupt in the
United States now where you're supposed to have all your debts
forgiven or have reorganised though the credit card companies
are completely out of that loop you still have to pay them even
if you you know you're in a bankrupt situation. It's um it's
ridiculous because the credit card companies are have part of
the reason people end up going bankrupt.
And in Brazil is really bad. Did you get that note?
Well, you know, by the way, you're talking 220%
interest on credit cards in Brazil.
Well, nobody uses them. The end and the guy who was somebody
wrote me I haven't followed up on this but they they said
that's bull that crap. Did you have to bite the house with
cash? Oh, really? Yeah.
Well, I got a couple people confirming it.
Yeah, they're probably Americans. Maybe they bought
their house with cash, but I've got people that I'll get the
scoop on it. I just haven't followed up enough. I guess
we'll get the whole real story but his boy it doesn't make
sense.
I don't know man. I don't make up the news.
Nobody other people do. Anyway, okay, so what else do we have to
complain about?
Um, let's see. I think I had something written down here.
Freeze? No, actually. Yeah. How was that we got a nasty gramme.
Didn't we? Someone I didn't get? I got a couple of nasty grammes
about people saying we're harping too much on people who
don't eat meat, but I think they're kind of missing the
point.
When do we harp on people not eating meat? Well, that's what
I mean. That's why they're missing the point well, because
we both agree that meat is good for you. And there's a lot of
people out there saying that meat is bad for you.
Let's because these guys are you know, they mean I'm sure that a
lot of meat isn't good for you and if you eat too much of it
can't be great. I mean, eating too much of anything but these
me anti meat people you know just today shouldn't be
listening to this show.
Does that mean vegetarians as well or just anti meat people in
general
I you know, vegetarians that you know, I can I can put up with a
certain amount of it. As long as you're not pushy.
I just heard many many iPods drop
so what you got coming up this week?
A couple of lunches and I don't know Not much. I think it's
pretty gonna be pretty slow week. I'm trying to catch up
with some stuff. Put together book proposal try to finish my
depressions book. And now we're doing a pilot for with Becky
Warley. That's still happening or not. Yeah, it's on Thursday.
We're going to do something. We're going to work on something
then and then we'll have that finished. And I really liked the
idea. I
think it's going to be good.
I think so. And it's it's going to be an editing thing. And
that's about it. I think. You know, it's gonna be the same old
boring week.
You got to cranky geeks on Wednesday.
Yeah, gotta cranky geeks. We're gonna get a guest lined up yet,
but we'll have was trying to do too, because I'm the first week
of June. I gotta be in New York on a Wednesday. So
we got a big party here on Tuesday. It's the big
introduction of the company to the press. Oh, really? Yeah.
British Telecom is putting together it's like a really big
deal shortage house. It's going to be wall to wall celebrities
from the underground and
you should have flown me over for that. I
should have Yeah, but guess what? Didn't.
I noticed? I need another long flight. Like a hole in the head.
Yeah, I can No, no. Like you. They really actually enjoys, you
know, 10 hour flights back and forth, and back and forth.
Well, it's been good, man. I think I'm gonna be here for
hopefully the rest of the month at least. You said that the last
time? Yes. Yeah. And then the next day I was in front of your
doorstep? Pretty much. Yeah. No, no, it's, it's good. We got a
lot going on over here. So you know, that needs attention to.
That's right. So Okay. Well, I think we're wrapping up. We got
our 80 minutes in more than enough. Is that
is that actually, holy crap. Okay. Well, we usually were
looking for a theme. I don't think we had a theme this this
week actually
complaining.
Oh, yeah, we gotta come up with a name for the show.
Oh, the complaint department.
Yes. May I take your number, please? Next. All right. So
maybe we'll get some more Korea stories out here next week after
you've processed it. Could be okay. Coming to you from the
curry Manor, where it is still nice and toasty hot on a
Saturday afternoon and five minutes to seven. I'm Adam
curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak where it's just warming up here in
northern California.
And we'll talk to you again next week right here. I know agenda