Hey everybody, it's time once again for the programme that
comes to you once a week and you never know what it's going to be
exactly. Except for the fact that this is going to be us two
guys talking about something coming to you from a sun
drenched Surrey in the United Kingdom in the curry manner. I'm
Adam curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak appear in smoky Northern California where
we've had 1200 fires and the whole area has just smoked in
Wow, you really can get the smoke is noticeable was because
the wind has been blowing from the north and the south and the
north and the south. And it's accumulated. And if I look at
right now, you'd think it was fogged in but it's mostly smoke.
Yeah, it's very noticeable the first day of it, this this
weather, when I woke up, I was thinking you could smell it. Now
we've been in you know, in the smoke now for so long that you
can't even smell it and you're you're been kind of acclimatised
to the aroma. So
is that all the way into the city? Or is it just out where
you live on the other side of the water? No, no, it's
all over the place. I mean, it's very hazy. And because of the
smoke
is this from the Santa Ana winds that the fire everything up and
all of California has burns,
those cause the worst fires these the winds that blow from
the west, from the east to the west, they blow in the wrong
direction and heats and it's a it's a dry air that heats
everything up, and it's terrible. But this is mostly
north and south winds. The wind goes from the north, and it goes
from the south and goes north. It's just going back and forth
and washing back and forth all the smoke because there's no
fires around us
at all. It's all southern California.
No, no, there's a bunch of them in Norway. They're all over the
place. After all type Shastar. They're everywhere.
This happens like every single year. Is there anything left to
burn down in California?
You know, it rains, things grow. Fires. It's not like
weed fires.
But anyway, so it's smoky.
But no houses have burned down or anything horrible. Yeah, no,
plenty
of houses burned down through the hundreds. That sucks. So
that's pretty you're right every year just
what's going on in the US of A John, I haven't been there.
What's been two months now I can't I think July 23. I'm
coming over for two weeks.
You won't recognise the place. So I bet. So a couple of things.
Yes. I'm listening to the show. Last week. So I every time I
listen to the show occasionally. And I noticed there's something
that bothers me, which is that we do have there is a Skype lag
since we're going from England to the United States. And so so
you get this impression, it's not as bad as the satellite
thing you see on the on the cable channels, you know, they
get the satellite
finding, and I know exactly what you're gonna say. I know
exactly. So
Bill, what do you think of the situation there in Syria? And
then there's just like 1234 Ed said, I didn't hear you there,
Jim. What?
And then they talk at the same time and you go, you know,
you'll go
right? Well, we did a bunch of that yet last week. But the way
we sounds because at the beginning of the show, you'd
like to do most of the talking at the beginning and I can't
live enough when I finally wake up.
And all the punch Lions have an like a Oh, point eight second
delay before someone laughs
Exactly. But the way it sounds is the following. If you were
listening to this and didn't know there's a Skype lag. It's
like you say something like, Well, what? So what do you think
of that, John? And then there'll be this long delay as if I'm
actually
you actually give a shit what I'm saying. I know. It's
fantastic.
Right? There's almost as moment where you listen, it sounds as
though you're saying something. And I? And I because of these
long pauses. I'm thinking to myself, Is this guy a total
idiot?
No, no, first of all, I'm sure you think that from time to
time. But in general, I think those those pregnant pauses, I
would call them I think they kind of make it interesting
because it actually sounds like you're thinking and processing.
Boy, Adam is once again asked a fine, interesting question. How
should I respond? But when? When is when there's a joke? Of
course, that works both ways. No, actually, because the
recording is on my end. If you crack a joke, my response is
instantaneous. But of course, all the good jokes have that
delayed laughter from you. Like,
yeah, why are we listening to a different show that would have
jokes, and now you know
what I mean. But if it annoys you get an ISDN set up, man. I'm
here
to help because we're still so far away. It has
nothing to do. The delay has nothing to do. Well, actually,
it has a little bit to do with the fact that you know, it's not
a direct full time circuit. It's, you know, packets that are
flying around the internet. Skype has to buffer all that
shit, so it's never gonna Get any less that delay on this type
of technology. But on the I don't think distance has that
much to do with it when you come to ISDN it's just IP packets
it's but it's a direct cert. Well, you know what, once you
get one, we'll try it out dude.
But you know, there's we got a couple emails for people to say
this is not as clean as necessarily as you'd like to
make it out to be. Yeah, but this distance from London to
here is a long haul.
Let's let's give it a shot. It can't be worse than Skype. No,
they'll certainly be better quality.
Yeah, well, the quality would probably bet yeah, I agree.
Yeah. Okay. We'll do we'll do that. Then he put it hold on.
Let me write this down.
And put on top of the pile of other notes of things to do yet
Skype? No, get ISDN not Skype.
I'm sorry. See, I even made a mistake already.
Just get a tailless thing or whatever. Make sure you have the
AAC codecs loaded. Or they all have the same thing. Yeah, well,
so it's just I got ISDN in in the condo now, I haven't tried
it out yet. But I do have it.
In the condo in
the condo, the curry the curry condo.
Over in San Francisco. Yeah. I had it put in. So what's going
on over there now you EU.
A lots going on.
As far as I can tell. From our news coverage, nothing's going
on. Okay.
You guys hear this little thing called the Big 90th? Nelson
Mandela birthday bash in Hyde Park. Nope. Unbelievable. Yeah,
Nelson Mandela celebrated his 90th birthday. In fact, the half
of the US show businesses here. Let's see Will Smith was here
Jay Z was here. It huge, huge party. And, of course, it's it
royally messed up all traffic for most of the week in in the
city and coming in and out of the city. So that was pretty
big. And of course, what
Will Smith is Will Smith like, I'm sure it's Will Smith as some
sort of old running body with Nelson Mandela, May. What's the
connection there? Is that the only thing?
No, didn't he play Nelson Mandela in a movie? Or did
wasn't even a Nelson Mandela? Yeah, I thought he was it wasn't
even. I know. He played Muhammad Ali. Oh, okay. Well, that would
explain it. Yeah. But you know, and also, Will Smith, a social
thinking kind of guy, you know, and he's a great performer. Now,
he performed? Yeah, yeah, he performed on stage. And so Jay Z
has
announced it. Well, he's a he's a rapper. Oh, Nelson Mandela.
Know that? Will Smith's religion into rap. Really?
It Nelson Mandela, everything. You know, it's it's all kinds of
musical acts. I don't think the guy doesn't give a shit. He's
90. And when you're 90 years nd Oh, look at these young people
doing anything on stage, you're happy and then come on, whatever
the fuck the guy is doing. But we'll submit this kind of an
ambassador. You know, he's a very positive very energetic
type of guy. I met him. In 1988. We did a gig together. God was
in Pennsylvania. I think it was like a Nintendo launch or
something of Super Mario Brothers or whatever. And he was
still doing. parents just don't understand with the DJ Jazzy
Jeff. Which of course was whether it was rude. Yeah. And
even then I was like a really nice guy. Nice guy. And Jay Z.
So they were all on that. Jonathan Ross. Last night. Jay Z
is headlining, this is kind of controversial. Jay Z is
headlining Glastonbury this year, which traditionally is
more like a kind of like a rock concert. And it didn't sell out
this year. And the critics are saying that that's because Jay Z
was chosen as the headliner, very controversial issue you
understand?
So let me tell you, the United States, the way we handled this,
what Nelson Mandela Yeah, I'm looking at the news rundown here
it is top of the top of the news, which was actually really
only run in India. The US approves a bill that removes
Nelson Mandela from the
no fly list. Yeah, I read that or that. Yeah. Right. Well,
you know what, that that was a birthday gift.
Well, there's a lot of things going on here that I actually
wanted to ask you about.
Let me to bring up one more story though. Okay. Just because
this will interest you. This is the time they hate the way they
handled the headline and Fox News. Singer Amy Winehouse takes
the stage at Nelson Mandela birthday show
thank God we got an Amy Winehouse referencing Damn it.
Now. Now it's newsworthy. That's got to be top of the headlines,
everybody. cocksuckers anyway, so I've been trained now
partially due to my own investigation and work and
experience but certainly in the past 30 six episodes have no
agenda. I've been trained to be very suspicious of big
headlines, and the Zimbabwe thing really has all my bullshit
metres going off. Have you been following this?
Yeah, I think that has been covered over here, to some
extent, mostly by the news, our type shows are the ones that get
into an in depth. They've read the regular news, of course,
it's just the, you know, that this guy doesn't want to leave
office and they, you know, they beat the crap out of his
opponents, supporters and the opponent took off and said, I'm
not, I'm out of here. And, you know, we got I think we've got
the gist of it.
Well, because what is the gist of it? I that's the part that is
the bullshit. I mean, this guy has been around for decades,
this Mugabe, and whenever I hear oh, it's an anaemic democratic
process. And we have to go in and peacekeeping troops have to
keep watch over the democratic process, and the voting has to
be democratic. Whenever I hear that I'm like, Okay, what is
this country have that we need? And I know it's not oil. But
what I have discovered is that I think 70 or 80% of all British
vegetables come from Zimbabwe. And tobacco. Good. It's done.
Yeah. And tobacco is another another big thing but of course,
the economy over there has collapsed you know, the loaf of
bread cost 45 billion Zimbabwe dollars. No kidding. Billions
now.
Yeah, you know, I've got a call out. They got unfortunately,
haven't been able to score it. It's really irking me to know,
to know, and I got one more source, I think for this before
that, before they go away. But right now they're paying for
everything in Zimbabwe in bricks of money. Yeah. Farther further
along than they did in, you know, the hyperinflation where
they you know, this, these various countries have had a
hyperinflation. Germany, of course, in the 30s. Famous, but
more recently, of course, Brazil 20 years ago was hyperinflation,
I have a couple of 500,000. Zero bills. Yeah, awesome. So like,
500,000, you know, the equivalent dollars 500,000.
Bill. And it was, which was worth like, I think I went to
Brazil when I when that bill was around, and when he sold was
worth $1. When I got it, and two days later is worth 10 cents
somewhere with this thing was Zimbabwe, they've got these. Go
ahead. Well, I'm just gonna say in some Bob way, because they
don't they're not print these high notes. Are there people buy
with these bricks of money. So you have a brick of money's like
piles. And the brick is that equivalent of you know, a couple
of bucks. And I've been trying to get somebody to get me some
of these works of money, especially the ones that have
Mugabe's picture on them. Right? Because personally, I think
they're collectible.
Now, I think you're probably right, I was actually there were
like four stories in the Financial Times yesterday, which
I read on the on the train into the city that I actually
circled. Let me just find the one about about Zimbabwe,
because they said it was a pretty funny line. He said it
was more expensive, because you know, they've limited what you
can take out of the ATM machine. And just because there's not
enough paper can come out. So it was actually more expensive to
drive to the ATM for the amount of money you could withdraw that
people are no longer going to the ATM this given up. They're
giving up on money in general, which is sad, but it was it was
dominating the headlines so much, John, and you know,
there's all kinds of other stuff going on. It was it was for
three days straight nonstop all over Europe, at least what I can
see, because I did skim around a bit. I was like, No, this has to
be for some other reason. Why is this the most important story is
like no one gives a shit about Zimbabwe for years. And then all
of a sudden, oh, surprise, surprise, you know, one of this
guy who I've never heard of who supposedly his opponent in the
elections, the undemocratic elections. And then you kind of
look into the history, it was known as Rhodesia before, it was
Zimbabwe. And of course, basically, the white man came
into the country fucked everything up regardless, no
matter what you say. That's the root of the problem. But I was
just interested, like, why are we so interested in this
country? What is the deal now? Add to that Nelson Mandela, of
course, you know, and there's, you know, there's like millions
of Zimbabweans are now fleeing Zimbabwe into South Africa. I
don't know. It's, I don't know. I really don't understand
Africa. It's just a lot going on.
Have you ever been there?
I dude, I lived in Uganda for three years. What
are you talking about? Three years in Uganda? Yeah,
I was very young. But yeah, we lived in Uganda. Three years
before Idi Amin came in it was at the time of Bo Tay was
president. Now, who by the way Oh, Justice karate been back.
Can
you go there? Do you visit? Do you have old reminiscences or
what do you do?
Yes, I have reminiscences and my dad was an A Super Eight
millimetre not till we have just 10s and 10s of now we're talking
stuff that should be posted. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
And you know what? I'm gonna go talk to Bob, that's my mom's
second husband. I know he has all that stuff and I should get
that transferred, of course has no sound it's only
you can do you can do a voiceover
I really should do that because it's tonnes of wildlife footage
and and you know,
you got to do that before they can do that stuff deteriorate,
it
does deteriorate. You know, I'll make that a point. That'll be a
project for sometime between now and the end of the year. I'll
get that done. So, we do have lots of you know, we have a an
ivory elephant tusk, which has been completely carved, you
know, back when you could still when it was still legal.
Obviously, we have zebra skin rugs, we have lions, skin rugs,
a lot of stuff, spears, some paintings, we have a lot of
African artefacts that my parents collected in those
three years. Oh, well, it sounds like a debt. Sounds good.
I still don't understand the country, though. Might when I
list my notes
that it's a crazy place.
My sister was born there on January 1. And it was a
nightmare in the hospital,
um, that there's a lot of people that I was talking to somebody
the other day I was going to Africa. And I will warn them
that one of the problems that I've noticed with people who go
to Africa a lot, is that they get addicted to going there.
There's some addictive mechanism about Africa, I always found
Africa to be, you know, people say well, you know, you just you
imagine different things is largely savannas at least most
of what I saw, as opposed to the jungles that we imagined to be
their light, which are mostly the kind of jungles that we
visualised are typically Amazonian in South America. And
the place is teeming with light. Like if you look on the ground
anywhere, you're it's just this bugs. Yeah. Yeah, it's just
there's so much wildlife, there's bugs, and there's birds
that you've never imagined before. It's just it's just
like, you know, it's kind of I find kind of distressing to be
I'm not a big fan of Africa. I don't have any desire to go
back.
I think what people feel is the kind of the it's real mother
earth, you know, the real pole maybe because that of course,
where I think it's where people really came from. Maybe that's
it, maybe it's just a human DNA connection. But indeed, I mean,
you're such a you're such a cracker ass white man, I can
understand where you have no affiliation with that
picture. You know, Eastern European stock. We you know, you
were invaded by the Mongols kind of thing. So it's like, I have
no real affinity.
You have no,
I mean, there's parts of it's a nice place. I mean, I bet there
are people that just go back to cause effect a friend of mine
who lives up the street who was used to be a journalist for The
Wall Street Journal Greg Zak for you as part of the Spangler
club. He he's an African now as far as I know, I got a note from
him Kenya and I don't know what the hell he's even doing there.
Yeah, well, you know, in Africa is developing as well. You know,
I was talking to a guy from Nokia yesterday. He says that he
says that in Africa and also India honestly he he did mention
two countries but he said that there's 60 that six zero 60
million new cell phone subscribers coming online every
month
but no that's not possible said
in India if you take India and Africa combined, that's what he
said. He said all of a sudden there's a look these networks
are just opening up it's not a gradual thing. It's like it open
up oh, you open up a whole new area. And you can you can sell a
million of these candy bar phones as absolutely as
possible.
You said 16 million a month Yes.
At the current right now that doesn't mean it's going to be 60
million in three months time because everyone will be
saturated right that the new new the new markets but there's new
markets are exploding.
How do they even make that many folds? Right? They
make they make 1 million phone they sell 1 million phones a day
we should be in the phone business?
No, you shouldn't because this is very interesting. They have a
you know a per unit price and you know how much they make per
unit and you know, I think Nokia is one of the smartest companies
around they understand very clearly what Apple of course is
telling everyone is it's about the services if you can get the
right services that people want and you can put those on your
phone it many people are for the first time in their life are
experiencing the internet but it's not on a computer. It's on
a handheld device. So no no no no no. And but the margins there
it's almost nothing I'm sure I mean, this is just plastic John,
this you know you get throw aways. Maybe we're not talking
like smartphones or anything in in India. We're talking, you
know the gross was just a phone and and it had maybe have a
little you know little mobile browser on there and some text
messaging but it doesn't have you know not big smartphone
capabilities
so was the last time you were in Africa
1967 I gotta go back. But you know Russia you don't have the
you
don't have the that addiction and maybe you shouldn't go back
maybe you'll pick it up but I'm telling you there's these people
that are just basically go to Africa constantly. And like they
can't get away from it. They just loved the place.
Yeah, I kind of like now, I don't know, there's no poll
let's put it that way. And nor do I have any kind of poll like
I want to go to Asia desperately. I do want to go
You shouldn't you should at least want to check out Asia.
You
know, I've been to Asia. I've been to different places in
Asia. But it you know, I don't have that wonder last week. I
did so many documentaries for for Tesla. Right. Right. We
talked about this already. You were burned out on Asia that
just burnt out?
Well, I did Australia, I think Australia I'd love to go back to
I'd really love to go back to Australia. Did documentary
there. I did the Caribbean. And I've been back to Jamaica 1520
times since that documentary.
So you like Jamaica? Then?
I fucking love Jamaica. I could live
on now. But that we all would never mind that just don't even
go there. Because
it's not just about that. No, it's not just about that. I that
whole vibe. I I've always had something with reggae music.
It's everything. It's the food. It's yeah, I know a lot of
people there. You know, the and by the way, this is in the
north. I'm not talking Kingston. But you know, on the northern
side, so obviously very calm and touristy and laid back kind of
life. But yeah, I dig it, man. Totally, totally dig it. Why
don't you get a place there? And we've considered it many times.
But get a
place there. You go out to people.
Well, there's a there's a setup there. Okay, that's interesting.
You bring that up. And it's called Round Hill. And Round
Hill was set up in the 50s. In fact, a lot of the architecture,
it's basically there's a round Cove. So with a hill and there's
I think maybe 35 or 40 villas are built into this into this
hill at Round Hill. And so it's it's a closed community. But the
deal is you buy your house, you model it, you put you know, all
your own stuff in it, every single house, every one is
different. But every house does have a cook, a housekeeper and a
gardener. And you know, they're locals who come in and and work
but they're assigned to to a specific house. And so the
central management, but then even if you buy the house, no
matter what you do with it, but everyone has to bring it up to
certain standards. You know, the deal is that it has to be rented
out X number of weeks per year. And so of course you can choose
when you're going to be there, you know, it's one of those
typical type of deals. But what's interesting is that
people who have houses there, so the by far the largest who's
been there for I don't know, 1015 years is Ralph Lauren. But
Bob Pittman also has a place so and I've rented his house
several times he has a beautiful beautiful house there. So it's
all people who basically anyone who has a jet who can you know,
you know, take three and a half hours to fly down from New York
or you know, hop across from from from Florida. They all have
these houses there and there's it's spectacular. It's
absolutely beautiful. And many many times I've considered about
buying one of those but I knew I never really take advantage of
it it just be stupid.
Well, let's go with the Pitman house. What is it cost to rent?
Well, of course that is depends on the season. You know,
obviously, if you want to go now you can get it pretty cheap, but
you'll die of heat exhaustion. But in in peak season for
Jamaica, I think at the time, I'm sure it's more now last time
I went was three years ago, I think was $10,000 a week.
$10,000 a week to rent to rent the guy's house. So that's
$50,000 a month or so. 40,000
Yeah, if you wanted to rent it for the whole period. Yeah.
And yeah, that's That's seems high to me. Because you can get
a place in Spain which is probably pretty spectacular for
a lot less than that. Or Portugal Yeah. You Brits go
well, but don't forget it's you. You get to your your breakfast
and and lunch and dinner you can decide we want to do but it you
know, it's all cooked for you and everything every I mean it's
really it's a it's a great personalised service and into
the house. You know, we'll sleep like six people you know, so if
you if you if you do the math, it's probably not that
expensive. I mean, within moderate I mean within context
of me okay? I don't want to sound stupid.
Yeah, no, no, it's it's probably if you did the math you're right
if if you loaded it up with a bunch of frat boys or something
like Bobby's split the bill and
it's not a it's not a frat boy type of place, John, that's not
exactly what it's like. No, not exactly, but I just want to get
a
feeling for it, you know,
but it's very Casa Blanca type vibe. You know? 50s You know
what I mean? Like white. picket fence type wood stuff, and blue
and white stripes.
So you rent it say you got the Okay, let's say you got the Bob
Pitman house and you have it for a week. What are you gonna do?
What do you do? I miss like, you know, it's like, you're not in
Paris?
No, but each house has its own swimming pool or most of them
do. But yeah, you got your own setup. You know, it's it's open
living basically. So you're you're overlooking the ocean.
You know, you've got a swimming pool there, you've got anything
you need. And what I usually wind up doing yours first,
hammered out of my head for three, three days straight, just
trying to calm down and relax. And then I'll hook up with my
friends and there's restaurants in the actually like in the
woods so not it's not a restaurant that says restaurant.
But it's where the where the locals go when they go out to
eat and so hang out with them and you
make it sound do you have to crap in the woods to I mean,
how's that work?
Um, no, they do have toilets. But not plumbing. Just
saying. You make it sound. You make it sound as though it's
like well, it's, it's the problem is I'm gonna tell you
what the no here's the problem with you and everybody else out
there including all of these listeners. Okay, me and nobody
brings a camera nobody brings a camera nobody takes pictures.
You know that the Japanese give them credit for this. It's a
show that to blog. I mean, you've got a blog, you know, you
have a blog. It's called curry.com for anyone who wants
to find it
John John John Yeah, hold on. Hold on, calm down. No photos in
there and down.
Your wife looks like nobody knows.
Are you dude Do you even ever look at my fucking blog Yeah, I
do that dude. There's a little thing there called search you
want pictures of my wife there's pictures my wife when picture
Jamaica this picture Jamaica on pictures me in Iraq this picture
of me in Iraq are you kidding me? I always take pictures of
stuff like that. I'm going there now but I didn't even know you
then and by the way it may be on some other blog somewhere that
died you know I don't know if it was all imported. But
now you're making excuses No, I get first picture I guess a
picture of you holding a rocket
that's that's the artwork for daily source code. I'm such a
rebel.
There's a few tech fives is a picture of Britney Spears
another tech five there's a YouTube video of George Bush and
there's
been kind of busy lately you know
and a Coke bottle I'm really reiterate that one okay, let me
do a search hang on my curry
doing this just because I don't have 30 ass licking lackeys who
post from me all day long doesn't mean that you know I
don't have my shit together.
But Trisha I'm typing in see what she looks like in this
pictures nothing I got nothing here. No pictures
no you gotta go to previous posts because I know I've
mentioned Patricia a lot this is all was shows. Once you go to my
Flickr page man go to my Flickr page and look at I got tonnes of
pictures. I'm just saying In fact they were so good my
pictures that have the gossip magazine stole them and
reprinted them and I had to sue them over it I mean come on. If
you're even remotely interested in that story, which of course
was a huge queue coup for the Creative Commons copyright which
you know you pretend like you actually know anything about
that case then you would have gone to look at the fucking
pictures the whole case was about
I might have you don't know that. You're You're accusing me
Yeah, hell yeah. See what's what's what's your name on
Flickr?
Adam See 1999
That's Well no wonder you know your name is Adam curry. I would
care I am I'm looking to add him see 1999 There isn't anything
available to you tagged with okay. I'm looking at tags in
Flickr sucks.
It's great pictures on my Flickr I'm always uploading stuff.
I actually had something I can't do. It kills me. You can't find
crap on
app and see 1999 And there's all kinds of beautiful pictures
They're not getting they're getting a duck just hitting the
tags thing.
Oh well maybe to advance for you John Hold on let me Skype it to
you BAM
Ah, here we go. I found some no I didn't
know I just sent you the link in Skype please click on that and
then take a look I did
this okay let me take this by the way Look
there's a whole go look at that it says right on the right hand
side I have a beautiful what they call these galleries or
whatever a collection of my
wife picture of your daughter's car or look to the right on the
left to the right you have a cat
look to the right right next to the cat picture you see that
beautiful woman there pee pee glossy it says
the picture next to the cat that I'm seeing is a picture of your
backyard with snow do
not on the on the right hand side. There's collections of a
little icon these little icons.
Yeah, I see these you got Christina's Twingo wet iPhone
resurrection, which is I think was five years ago. On AC get
shaken down and they're Steena no no
Lauren Oh is a private picture. That's why you can't see that.
It's not hard it says because Christina prom you schmuck.
Oh, I'm sorry. Christina is prom. Look, man. On that scene,
this Thanksgiving picture why don't you 2006 Yeah, you're
keeping up John Kansan and me Yeah, but that 1986
Now stop it look just click go down the bottom and click no I
don't give a shit you know I got plenty of pictures I got I got
more than enough pictures
all right, if you say so I'll take your word for it see have
not run into them you know when I but it stinks to me. There's a
lot of stuff that you could because I never seen you even
with the camera.
I use my my phone with my my cell phone
it doesn't have like it says explains it.
But if you go through this all kinds of great pictures this is
from RV or vacation the family reunion. There's all kinds of
stuff Dr. cockney here I see And there's my others. Oh, God, just
go to the second page. Man.
I got to think those are all private because I'm not said no.
They're not they're not public. See?
You've no it's not mediocre. You've gotten to the second page
and the third page I have 51 pages of pictures. 923 items.
Now the Isle of Wight now here you have a picture that would
interest me. Now this is you know, this is a kind of picture.
I'd take just one crab and lobster inside.
Yeah, that's where do you seen that? Where are you seeing that?
It's under the Isle of Wight set.
You see oh, that's when I Okay. That was when Patricia and I
went to the Isle of Wight. And you go there mainly to eat at
the crab and lobster pub, which is overlooking the overlooking
the ocean. So it's a picture of Patricia with a sunglasses on.
Yeah, she's gorgeous. Let me read the sign because it's kind
of funny crab and lobster in Galician is the kind of stuff
that I like the blog, you should be blogging this crab where you
should have crab and lobster and get glasses, crockery and
cutlery. excetera must not be taken to the beach or away from
this area. It's just a funny, you know, ridiculous. Good sign.
I wasn't stealing the cutlery. Yeah.
But a lot of so but Flickr has a nice thing where you upload your
pictures. And if you want to blog it, there's just one click.
So a lot of these have been blogged. Because that connection
works. In fact, that's the same thing that that we've been
talking about using Flickr, you know, connects to any weblog.
Well see, here's a problem I had that irks me. So you know,
Google bots. I bet one of the things I did with Flickr I'm not
a big fan of Yahoo bought Flickr, not Google Yahoo. Yahoo,
I'm sorry, the but I'm not you know, a fan of all these public
photo albums even I'm giving you crap for not having one. I
actually don't like doing them because I think it's like who
needs to know this stuff anyway, so that you know this I'll take
a picture that sign but I don't want a bunch of family pictures
everywhere. And but I did do a public photo album of all the
input of all the I take a lot of pictures with a camera and I
denied when I was at ZD TV, I took pictures of the staff and
everybody has ever worked there and people came through and
people are on shows and so I took like hundreds of pictures
at ZD TV and I was in the process of posting them all
because you know for people who want to reminisce or whatever.
And then Yahoo buys them and I can't use the uploader and I
can't I can't do the password doesn't work. And so these
basically these, this whole album is stuck, kind of frozen
in limbo because of Yahoo take Taking over the operation and I
saw I just gave up on it.
I like it, I you know, it's worked out. I have Flickr Pro,
which gives you a whole bunch of a whole bunch of benefits.
Actually, it was funny, I was I was flying. I was at the airport
on Monday, I was gonna go over at some family business take
care of in Holland in Amsterdam. So at the airport in the sky,
Hugh, who has an imaging company, airborne imaging
company, he does imaging of power lines. And I've been you
know, he's been a listener for a long time at the Daily source
code, and he listens to no agenda. And he came out and he
said, You know, I was thinking about what you guys were saying.
And he says, you know, so there's the, you know, the new
chipsets, the new GPS chipsets are really important for for you
know, what we were talking about having having a camera with a
GPS in it and geo tags, etc. And he showed me the setup, you
know, that has these new chips. So the minute you turn it on, it
immediately fixes this or almost new within like three seconds,
it has a signal, which is which is what these new chips chips
that's going to be able to do. But he also had another sensor
in it. So you not only did you know the exact position where
the picture was taken, but also you had the compass direction,
the camera was pointed how close that?
That's totally cool.
I mean, I was like, Why? Because we're a couple of obvious nerds
here. But somebody has an Azmuth. So he so he knows the
altitude, right? He knows the compass direction. He knows the
exact location. I mean, that's hot shit. I mean that now, think
of what cool stuff you could build with that, man. That's
awesome.
Well, one of the things you can do you know, this was presented
by I think a Microsoft guy originally, or maybe somebody
from MIT, another guy
next to him said this is a guy who makes it himself. John. This
is a homebuilder,
saying that technology is obvious. Yeah. Obviously, Sunday
should be an all cameras, right? Yep. And what it lead dodging
and underlined project that's being worked on, in kind of in
the background, or were you just low, if you have the depth of
this information, you can just load every photo you can get
your hands on that has GPS data on it, and recreate the world
and the virtual space? Yeah. So I could bring up a map of Paris
and then say, what is it like on this blog, kind of like the way
that Google guys have been doing by driving around? And pretty
much really limitless photographs?
Well, clearly, that's the way forward. I mean, the Google
Street mapping stuff is, you know, it doesn't scale, you
know, you've got to get the community doing this. That's the
only way to really make it happen. Right
doesn't scale unless they buy more Volkswagens.
It was funny. You called me and I was just driving back from I
picked up the newspaper, and I rounded the corner onto our
road. And I see this Google sign. And it said, like, a three
fencing Google us and had the Google logo. I'm like, man,
maybe it's, I actually stopped the car to get out and take a
picture, believe it or not, John. Well, hold on a second. So
I parked the car, I take myself and I go to take a picture. And
like, I'm sure this is like some kind of marker for Google street
maps, right? They're finally hitting my town. And this is
interesting. So I go over to take the picture. And then I
realised it's actually an ad for the fencing company. And it's
not Google us. It's a three fencing Google us. Google, but
it took me My mind went immediately to oh, this is
secret. Michael had the it didn't say Google isn't it said
Google. But it was the Google logo. And in the words, Google
spelled outside like that, that must be some kind of marker, but
it was just an ad. If you want to get a three fencing. Go
ahead, Google us.
She was like a some sort of a violation of copyright. The
Easter logo?
No, I'm not. I'm sure it is. But who gives a shit? Well,
so anyway, these I visited a friend of mine, because I went
down to the, to Livermore the other day, and to look at some
software he's developing. And he gave me his address, punched it
into the Google Maps. And they had in this on the middle of
nowhere, they had not only he didn't even know this, but they
had not only that street, in that, you know, they have the
view, Google view or whatever it's called have the actual
photos of the houses. But yeah, I could find you actually could
find his house in high def. And, you know, I could desert there
was his place and I went and saw it. And it was that was it. And
I just thought it was kind of creepy, isn't it? It's, it's
it's it's useful and creepy at the same time, because I have a
total mixed feeling about it. It's like it's something it's
handy. I mean, it's cool, because then you want to drive
around so much looking for something. I can see where it
can be very useful. But it's like do we really need all of
our houses had to you know, I mean, it's almost as though it's
like for the invasion of the Nazis or something. mean? Like,
what do we need the? No, I haven't, like I said, I don't
know, how do you feel about it? Because I can't come to any kind
of a conclusion.
I understand what you mean, because Patricia has the same
feeling, because because I've introduced her to Google Earth.
And, and, you know, she's looking at houses right now in
the city. And so I said, Well, you just get the zip code or
postcode, as they call it here, you just entered in boop, you
zoom right in, and you can zoom in, zoom out. And she's and
she's really, really enjoying that process. But whenever I
show her our house, he's like, Well, that's kind of creepy,
too. Well, yeah, I mean, you get the good with the bad now,
personally, as an aviator, I, it's awesome. Because, you know,
the whole idea of flying to an airfield you've never been to
before. And yeah, you can see a picture. And most airfields in
airports have pictures now, you know, aerial pictures, that
website so you can get some information. But when you can
actually fly in approach with Google Earth, you know, it's
like, Okay, here's where I'm going to be coming in from,
okay, it looks like that, you know, Boyd gives you such a self
assured feeling you really understand the layout, you have
the situational, situational awareness from a much richer
data set than what you typically have in aviation, which is, you
know, maps and charts and, and symbols and warnings. So in that
way, I think it's good. I don't mind you know, look, the
government can see what I'm buying with my credit card. You
know, what the fuck difference? Do I care if someone can see my
house? You know, it's all over there is no privacy. It's a it's
a joke.
Well, it is a joke, but I think we need to fight for our rights
to privacy anyway.
Well, that thing about the credit card that's bugged me
that's, you know, I've been watching no one is talking about
that. And even not even unblogged Where is where is
that? Where's the outrage over that?
Oh, about the fact that they could tell everything and you
know, the,
the credit card companies have to report all transactions to
the government.
They say they're not abusing it, you know, but they go to a G
right. And think about all that info. That's weird. I mean, we
blogged it and there's nobody you Oh, well, it's just
terrible. It's gotten to the point where they're just
hounding us to such an extreme, you're taking away our rights
and putting cameras everywhere giving us we're giving.
We're giving up.
I think it's pathetic,
someone sent me a quote. I gotta play this for you now, because I
thought that was actually really fucking brilliant. And even
though I played on the daily source code, listen to this on a
second. Play this.
Hi, Adam, this is Justin from back into this podcast. And
you've been talking about lately, why people won't stand
up for their liberties being stripped away? Well, I figured
out and it's like this. Okay. All that was required of them
was a primitive patriotism, which could be appealed to
whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working
hours, or shorter rations. And even when they became
discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led
nowhere. Because being without general ideas, they can only
focus on petty specific grievances at from George Orwell
1984 All right, man, they work for us. So
that brings Britney Spears back into the picture. I
mean, yeah, exactly. It is exactly right. Britney Spears.
Now. distractions,
distractions and Britney Spears is one of them. And Amy Wiley.
And Amy Winehouse. Yeah, well, who's you know, on a death
spiral? Oh,
hold on. I wish we did that. We named last week's episode where
we name it Yahoo. Microsoft equals Britney Spears. Yeah, we
did that to see if it would jack up the numbers. Let me just
check. Because I haven't actually looked haven't looked
at in a while.
I had a couple of people write in about that. Say What is that
supposed to mean? Even though anyway? I'm thinking
Did you listen to the show? Yeah. Did you listen to the
frickin show? Get the hell out of here.
Listen to the show. We explained in great detail it means
Jeez Louise fuck I don't have my password.
So you sent me a you So you sent me a picture of your aeroplane.
Which I should blog by the way unless you don't want me to.
Yeah, it's okay.
It's it's a it's a photoshop job. Obviously my wife isn't
actually on the nose.
I was I was not aware of that. Because I was thinking that the
joke was no wonder she won't fly with
you that well that's that's why someone made that photoshopped
picture for me, because oh
It's a great feature great Photoshop yeah no it's your well
I mean even being told as Photoshop I'm not I'd have to
really have to have a bigger blow up to see that it was a
fake pencil it's actually you maybe should have somebody you
know separate the type font being used there I don't like
that particular font it's I know what it is too and it's just old
fashioned you should really go really old fashioned and do some
font from like World War Two Yeah, but better people out
there when are we talking about our blog this blog it's a
picture of Adams little aeroplane I'll have
my people blog this for me. Yes, John.
Rambo do it. It's a picture of fabric and put it on the cage
match. It's a picture of Adams airport but but it has like one
of those like a world war two painting of Varga girl up far
girl on the front. And like, you know, the bombers used to have
it was the name the lady Patricia. stencilled on it next
to it and it looks real? Good one.
I've seen my new plane John, I can't wait it comes out in 2010.
But is it you're gonna buy a Dreamliner? No.
No, it's serious. There. There's been a lot of talk about this.
And they there were some like sneak shots. Finally, it's about
to make its first test flight in the actual model and you know
the the configuration that that they're going to sell it in.
It's called the the jet is what they call it. And it's a set
it's really it's a five person but it can be with as to jump
seats. So it can be a seven person personal jet with one jet
engine. It has approach speeds similar to that of propeller
aeroplane. So you could land it, you know on on smaller air
strips. It does about 300 knots. But the price tag is what's
amazing, is going to be like $1.3 million. Of course in 2010.
That may mean nothing it could that they might it might have to
be $10 million. But at today's price is $1.3 million, which for
what you're getting. Aeroplan wise is just a lot of plane
what's what is the jet normally cost?
Well he doesn't work that way. But what do you what do you want
you got you know which model the 25 to 35 the 45 the 55 You know,
do you want are you talking about just give me some price
give me a price range? Well how many people do you want to move
and how far that's it doesn't work by that's the only way it
works. How far do you want to go and how many but there's
a try there's got to be a price for the cheap one. What's the
cheapest jet you can buy? Well okay, let's look at only goes
five miles I mean, I don't care
about that. But that's what it's about John. You can't
give me a price you're like what are those? What can I what do I
have to pay let me get well you know, if you have to ask you
can't afford I'll give you
a range. Okay, I'll give you a range to this the Cessna, the
Cirrus jet will be $1.3 million is range will be about 1000
nautical miles. And you can let's just say you can take five
adults that sitting down not walking around the cabin. Okay.
Now on the other end of the spectrum, you have Ray Lane, who
has a G five which he can carry, I think it's configured for 14
people with a bedroom and a shower and stand up cabin, you
know, that's like $57 million. So if you're, if you're looking
at anything comparable to this Cirrus jet would be more than
the $3 million range. So it's really it's an incredible price
reduction. Okay, even if you were to get a turboprop King
Air, you know, it's gonna be $2 million for a very comparable
aeroplane. But this one will actually fly cheaper because it
only has not only does not have a prop, it only has one engine.
It's a new power plant. You know, this isn't this isn't new.
This thing is really tiny. It's, it's yeah, it's phenomenal. And
what I like about it is they model the aeroplane after a car
after the conveniences of a minivan which I've been saying
for years you know there's the flying car will not happen. It's
called an aeroplane.
You know, it's it's a image of a flying minivan it's just be I'm
gonna have to do a photoshop job myself to spell this series
serious thing
to go to a Cirrus design CI rrU s design.com.
You know, you're in a sour mood today, by the way. No,
not at all. Not at all. I'm just fighting back. I'm just not
going to take any shit from you.
I think so. I think you're something you're accused of.
Serious plus garment equals revolution. Yeah. Are they
hooked up with Garmin? Yeah, this was this the SR 22 You're
gonna get
no no, not the SR 22 Go to the jet. So the SR 22 was a very
successful model they made I think it is called the jet Yeah,
the jet. Yeah, look at it, man. Look at
V tail. Well, then the jet engine sits on top of this
really pretty thing.
If you go deeper into the site and it talks about the head
straight because they've been developing this thing for like
15 years, you'll see how they came up with the with a V tail
solution. And why? It's there's a lot of thinking it's really
it's a fascinating story. And that whole company has just been
amazing the series aeroplanes, although I won't fly that one
because I don't like their fibreglass plastic as a wing
that just feels dinky to me. I'm definitely more sheet metal and
rivet type guy,
but brings up the interesting story which, curiously, I was
thinking about earlier, because I'm holding a piece of plastic
that fell off of something I have around here in the messy
office which needs cleaning, by the way. That's a some sort of
composite thing. And I was thinking about how you know,
with tennis rackets. They went from wood rackets to aluminium
rackets to graphite composite rackets, which essentially now
they're all high tech rackets. And, you know, which is the same
progression that we've had with aeroplanes, which is wooden
planes, to aluminium, to now the Dreamliner from Boeing, which is
what I thought you were buying is, there's no money. It's all
composite. I don't know. I mean, do you trust that? I mean, is
that yes, scary? You
know? No, no, because when I was flying helicopters, helicopter
blades used to be made of metal. In fact, at one point, they were
made of wood, they're all composite. Now, now that's such
a strong man, the fibreglass stuff that Cirrus is doing? I
don't know about that. Because you know, if you're if you shake
one wingtip, the other one really rattles up and down. It's
just like, it just doesn't feel right. And by the way, any any
aircraft manufacturer who includes a parachute with their
aircraft, it just doesn't sound right.
It's just the planes that have the parachute that the whole
plane gets parachuted down. Yeah, it's called. You familiar
with that? Right?
Yeah, that's what this is. It's called the ballistic recovery
system.
Right. So in other words, the plane craps out. Yeah, at the
middle of nowhere, you just put pop to shoot and the entire
plane
floats around safely to Earth now, almost every new plane?
Don't you think that? Well, let me explain.
So is the jet going to have that? Yes.
So so this is obviously it's a new development, and now all
these aircrafts are being outfitted with it. But it's, you
know, from an aviation standpoint, first of all, it's
heavy, adds a lot of weight. There's a lot of extra
splitting. There's some downsides to having the system
onboard. But what what is happening and this is why you
know, aviators think is kind of lame is that it's not because
the plane is crapping out it's, you know, the planes are flying
is because people now are pushing themselves into
situations they really shouldn't put themselves in because
they're just not experienced enough. Because they think they
have this ultimate backstop of a parachute. Yes, this, by the
way, is the same aircraft that Corey little killed himself in
when he crashed on the east side of the New York River. That was
an sr 20 I think it's either 20 or 22. You know, but But that's
really what's happening. And if you look at the statistics of
people who pull the parachute on these planes, it's because they
got into into a situation they never should have been in and
they they are pushing themselves too far. And you know, at a
certain point, I look at Cory little you can't the parachute
is not going to help you. You know, he that accident was a
terrible terrible underestimation a bad bad
judgement call.
Yeah, we talked about that before. I can't remember the
details.
I'd be happy to tell you about you if you want to go with so
I'm
looking at the interior of this jet. I'll go for a ride on this
thing.
How hot is that? Huh?
Oh, it's gorgeous. Yeah.
One point and you see how little that engine is? It's a very tiny
engine.
Yeah, no, it's looks like it's so cute. I mean, it's like a jet
fighter. This thing looks very futuristic. It's a very pretty
plane. And for the price I'm sure it's a deal.
Oh, it's an incredible deal because I've been looking. I've
been thinking you know, in a year and a half or so maybe, you
know, maybe a little more time. Who knows I definitely want to
do some more. You know, flying at altitudes so you want to have
something that's pressurised. Protect particularly my wife
altitudes don't work well with her and or circulation for a
heart. And so I've been looking at the Piper Meridian and that's
a single engine turboprop which is smaller than this much
smaller in fact, that's $1.8 million dollars. You looking at
a King Air 1.9 And this is a revolution the pricing is just
an outrageously low price.
Well you know the thing that's everyone's Well, I can't
consider this the small general aviation planes these little one
engine prop jobs. You know, the Jets have long since then me for
commercial aviation. Nobody uses prop planes anymore. So you
know, there may be some old clunkers left in the car. I
kind of just interrupt you and tell you that there is since the
Cirrus came out there's a whole revolution in air taxis these
things are being used all across America as air taxis for
commercial aviation
Well, you know the prop planes are being used by horizon and
all these little puddle jumpers for small airports all over the
place. But I've always been of the opinion that there's that's
because they have never shrunk the jet engine enough. So if you
do the math on how the two engines work the Jets are just
superior to to
drop so Oh, absolutely. Well, that's what this whole VLJ
category is about as they're called very light jets, and
they're all using these new smaller turbans, Honda is
they're coming out with a it'll have two engines, but it's also
a very light jet. It's also going to have a very low price.
It's it's different. You know, it's much more of a corporate
type get me from A to B quick type of thing. Whereas this this
series thing looks kind of like a family family roundabout. In
fact, you'll see it when you look at the site later you'll
see a picture of a minivan and how they modelled. You know
everything. Even the doors open up like a minivan, you know,
gullwing doors opening up on both both sides easy to get into
it. That's the future man. It is. I mean, yeah, it's still
expensive. But look at how cheap that's it's a 50% or 100%
reduction in price in just a few years.
Worth 50%. If the 100% would be 50%. William is the thing that
intrigues me here is the jet again and not so much because I
can't afford one of these obviously, I don't fly. But I'm
looking at this as like, there's an interesting investment
opportunity for people making the small adjustments. So the
company making this little fan Get the f j 33. For a dash 19.
Is the company a really? And what do we know about them?
I don't know much about them at all, except that there's a whole
story there
as well. And companies to me always. Pratt and Whitney
General Electric and Rolls Royce are the big boys. Yeah,
these Well, it's all it's all this new technology to be able
to create this shit in your garage.
And it's interesting, you know,
hey, here's one for you, John. I just wanted to read this. This
was the front page of the Financial Times yesterday. This
was kind of amazing. So Gazprom, which, of course, is the the
Russian gas and oil company, who I think they pretty much stole
all of the everything from every other company and person who
owned anything that had to do with gas and oil in Russia.
Isn't that kind of what's been happening for the past five
years?
And this just some level? There's some kind of corruption
we don't understand.
Yeah. So anyway, the CEO, said, he came out and said, OPEC
doesn't determine the price of oil anymore. He says, you know,
even if they raise production, the price of oil still goes up.
He says they have no real influence on prices. Not a
single decision has been passed of late that would really
influence the global oil market. And here it comes. In the coming
years, Gazprom will not just will, will be not just a major
company in the world, but the most influential in the energy
business, adding that his target was to reach a market
capitalization of $1 trillion. And goes and goes on to say,
check this out. Competition for gas and other energy resources
was growing. And he stood by his prediction the price of oil
would hit $250 A barrel next year.
Wow, that's a good one.
That's good. That and the front page, man, I was like, Holy
crap.
I haven't heard the 250 thing. I know they're pushing the 200. So
we I was doing Andrew Horowitz's show today. And because he had
Michael Greenberger, on
which I did you do this really early this morning?
Yeah, that feels great. Yeah. Is that it? Was that video? Maybe
I'm the Grouch? No, no, it was just an audio thing. But Michael
Greenberg is the guy who has been testifying in front of the
Senate. He's a former regulator, about the fact that these oil
prices are fixed. They're rigged. There's a there's a
fully baloney market that has no supervision. And nobody knows
what's really going on in the background. And when and this
the president of Shell came out the other day saying, hey, the
oil prices are bullshit. They're real. The price should be around
80 bucks.
Meanwhile, Bourassa, the President of the European Union
said it has nothing to do with traders but he's he has started
an investigation. They will report back in December.
Yeah, when you know when we were broke, and
we're broke, thank you. So
they the fact of the matter is this all stems from a 2000 and
writer put into a bill in Congress called the Enron
loopholes. And I tell people, you can go look it up and read
it all you want on your own. And this loopholes never been closed
is what caused the Enron crisis is what's caused the Nash, you
know, the fact that Morgan Stanley now holds monopoly
powers over most of the heating oil that's going to be going
into the Northeast. I'm not heating oil, but the natural gas
that people use to warm their houses when it gets cold. And
there's all these other elements of just out and out corruption
based on the fact that there's an unregulated trading market
that is essentially fixed. There's no supply and demand
problem, like all these writers are putting out there because
you because if there's a supply, and you would be able to do
transparently see if there is, but if somebody's telling you,
yeah, yeah, yeah, we got what you want to buy some futures
contract for oil. It's a 140. And that that's it, you know,
you got no choice, because they're making it up. So it is
142 Tomorrow, then it's 150.
So what you just said that I Googled Enron loophole, the top
link is something called Stop oil. speculators.com. Yeah. Have
you seen that when I have no, no, I haven't.
But people should be catching.
This should be a waste of this. Yeah, this is crazy. And this is
happening in London. We talked about this last week in London,
most of the actions in Dubai, which is a conflict of interest
in it, and the argument is that Dubai is regulating, you
shouldn't have to worry because they're regulating this and
they're not here to this day,
the so called swaps loophole. financial investors can game the
markets for pure profit by buying up positions in the
energy markets without any limitation on the size of the
positions they can take. One recent estimate suggested that
they now control 1/3 of the commodities markets or $150
billion, a 1,000% increase in less than five years.
That's the moneymaker. Yeah, you know if we could show but here's
the deal that Greenberger made clear, because I was bitching
about, he was bitching about a couple of New York Times
columnist, they're also on the wrong side of the argument. But
he says that right now, these guys watch the various
investment houses. Morgan Stanley, that was the other one
from anyone, anyone who's in commodities. Anyone who was a
commodity swaps,
he says that right now, they've got so many lobbyists, because
the Congress is knowledgeable about this, but they're, they're
you know, they're they're still not closing the loophole
completely. And that needs to be done. And there's a million
lobbyists that are in Congress right now trying to talk people
into vote not vote taking that position anymore. Just you know,
let it happen. Free market, you know, fair, you know, this, you
know, this whole free market absolutism, which is like
screwing us because there's not a free market when it's rigged.
And it's the public has to start writing their congressman and
their senators and bitching and say, Look, we're watching you.
If you vote with these guys, you're voting against us voting
for high gas
prices. Yeah, screwing us over.
And so the whole thing is a scam.
So on the lines of something similar to that, if you have a
chance, John, listen to yesterday's daily source code. I
know you don't know you have no time in your
busy life. This I almost listened to it yesterday. Okay,
because I interviewed Vivian Redding. And she is the
Commissioner of the Information Society and media for the
European Union. She is in what I call Starfleet Command. This is
she's she's at the same level as nearly cruise the woman who was
fined Microsoft billions of dollars. Yeah. And so I spoke
with her and she does something really interesting. In Europe
today, we still have roaming pricing when you go from one
country to the next. And of course, we're trying to pull
Europe together to be one entity in the United States of Europe.
So when you go from the UK, of course, to anywhere in the
continent, but even if you've crossed the border from Holland
into Belgium, and there's not even a sign as far as I can
recall, it's not like Welcome to Belgium, all of a sudden you're
there. If you keep driving to Germany, you don't have to show
your passport any of this. But then you're done. You're on
roaming prices the way it used to be in the States until the
big networks you know, really got created. But even if you
have Vodafone in the UK, and there's a Vodafone and every one
of these countries, you're still paying for incoming calls up to
like 20 euro cents per minute. outgoing calls are like 60 or 70
euro cents per minute a text messaging 50 cents per ship that
I lose you John That sure sounds like it I knew that was gonna
happen hold on we'll get John back hear me Yeah, I got you boy
that was fucking Skype like completely crashed and started
whining and all fine stuff.
As you go, you went offline and everything.
Yeah, no, it crashed really hard. Anyway, so we're back. I
don't even know what I was saying anymore.
Alright, well, I do I know exactly what you were saying.
And you can go right and cut right into it. You were saying
it was 20 cents to get an incoming call. Right. Going
roaming.
So anyway, so this is and then for mobile data, if you want to
use the internet from a different country than your home
country, 15 euros, right. So that's almost 30 bucks per
megabyte. So this obviously this shit had to stop. And yeah, oh,
you know, it's fucking outrage. So this Vivian reading in
February, she said, All right, you know, you guys can't be
trusted, I'm going to slap down regulation on on voice calls. So
she did. And anyone the calls have actually become reasonably
affordable, like 36 euro cents per outgoing per minute for an
outgoing call, it's still, you know, it's just a start. But
anyway, so I started following this woman and all the stuff
that she's doing. And you know, she's like, really, she's really
bringing the hammer down. And she's saying to every single one
of these operators who say, You better bring down your your text
messaging, your data pricing by July 1, if you don't, then I'm
going to then I'm going to kick your ass, and I'm going to put
regulations in place. And so I called her up. And right now
they even have this. Her current pricing demand is 28. You know,
just as a benchmark is 28 cents if you send an SMS text message,
while roaming, which is still of course an outrageous amount for
the resources it takes. And so I'm talking to when I said Well,
you know, here in the Netherlands, you know, not a
single one of these operators but basically blowing the
whistle on was really cool. And she now she's gonna hammer him
it was really it was a fascinating was only like, eight
minute an interview. But fascinating how much power she
has. And it was really interesting to hear her talk
about about Europe, and how this you know, how we have to
harmonise these markets. And yeah, you get these operators
and all like, no, let the market work. It'll be okay. And she's
like, bullshit. She almost said bullshit. No, it was it was I
was just I was really endear to how she was how she was
speaking. And, you know, just the power that emanates from our
words. And like, that's really interesting that there's your
government doing something for you, of course, if it gets
turned against you as equally as scary, but, ya know,
that's one good side, I have to say. I mean, the Neely, woman
and this woman, obviously. I mean, they're, they're think
they're consumer oriented. And there's nothing wrong with that.
And I'm not, you know, I'm sick of the deregulation and the free
market absolutism, which is, you know, which is I mean, we're not
there's a reason for governments, we're not a bunch
of anarchism. You know, if you take everything to a logical
extreme, the free market should, we should have no laws, the free
market decide. And if you don't like your competition, you can
shoot them, and they can shoot back at you. I mean, that's what
it really boils down to. It's simple. No, you have to have
laws against murder. Well, if you have to have laws against
murder, you have to have laws against other things, too, don't
you? Yeah. So you're just have no laws, and we can just shoot
each other. So the whole thing makes no sense from a logical
perspective. And the fact that we're getting screwed over by
these operators that already have essentially quasi price
fixing and manipulative powers, it's ridiculous, and there's
something has to be done about it. And obviously, the public
doesn't give a crap because they don't do anything, but you know,
complain to each other.
Maybe. Yeah. So I so I come so I called her up. And I complain
that these guys aren't complying. And she says, Well, I
did give them until July 1, she said maybe a miracle can happen.
I said, Yeah. And maybe the Dutch will win the European Cup.
You know, and she taught me a new word. Because you know, I
was basically you know, I wanted to see if she really understood
you know, what the actual costs were of like mobile data and 140
characters in a text message so you know, I launched into this
thing about you know, this is you know, this is a scam you
know, does it cost nothing you know, once you're connected the
data is so minimal the only reason that jack up these prices
because they want you to keep using the phone the voice you
know as to how can you as the Information Society
Commissioner, you know, stand by and you know, watch this shit
happen. That she said, Yes, it is an anachronism. I was like,
Holy crap. What's that? What's a good word though? Which
basically means something not of this a Yeah, sure
is. Yeah, it's a classic. The well you know, the funny thing
is I have to bring up just kind of an American side to this,
which has always kind of fascinated me. You know, I've
always thought when this when the mobile phone Vista began the
best and and we didn't have a lot of competition. And it was,
you know, it was almost like the key business where, you know,
one guy had a whole area to himself and you kind of stuck
with it and that kind of thing. And there's a lot of competition
in Europe, there's a bunch of different companies. But when
you start looking at the actual prices that you pay per minute,
it seems to me that my already talked to people in Europe, they
were paying always more. Yeah. Especially when they were
roaming, I missed, like ridiculous amounts of money, and
they shouldn't be on the phone more. I mean, how do they afford
it?
Yeah, well, you know, so nationally, that, you know, you
can get some pretty good deals, obviously. So when it's all
traversing a national network, you know, if you, if the whole
family has T Mobile or orange or whatever, you know, obviously,
they have great deals in that. And they have, you know,
bundles, you know, that it's all about the marketing, trying to,
you know, to give you something that you really need, and then
charge a little bit extra for something you don't really want,
but then maybe you use it, I mean, at this point, and we look
at America, and this is also on my conversation with some Nokia
folks. And I think everyone pretty much knows that, you
know, Nokia has a proportionally small corner of the market in
the US, we should maybe I think, you know, 10%, or whatever. And
the reason why is because they were a production company, we
make stuff and then we have to go market it but we can't market
that in the States. Because the whole phone experience,
everything that is marketed to you is about the network. You
know, there's your network is with you, you've got more bars,
you know, more places for reception. None of it's about
anything, but then it's never about the phone. It's always
about the network. And this is it's these guys are just
breaking it in left and right. It's a duopoly or whatever,
whatever it would fall under, but it's totally unfair pricing.
Yeah, that's a good point. I never thought about it. But it
shefford Apple when they market their phone by themselves
without the help of anybody.
Right. Right. But look how far that got them now. Now they had
to cut deals. Subsidy deals with all the carriers. So they're the
kind of slipping into the same patterns. Everyone else.
Right. And but not you mentioned it. I never thought about this.
You're right. The only ads you see are for the quality of the
network. I'm
sorry, I didn't hear you, Ron. John, what do you say?
That is an interesting Freudian slip. That is the only GADS that
you see in the United States for cell phone, the cell phone
business tends to be well actually, there's two kinds one
is the network. You're right. And in fact, that's all you see.
Who's that? Who's that there? Oh, that's my network, though.
Although the group of people
though group of people have fallen, which isn't, you know,
good value. Can you hear me now? Is that part of that? And then
the other one that you do get is the is the phoney Baloney, you
know, sign everybody up your friends favourites Ryan and you
get the call to want to do your top five as much as you want.
And, you know, we have that planet, this bullshit. Really. I
mean, you just steal all these weird charges. And you can't
figure out what the bill means. I mean, this is why I personally
tell people look, get a disposable phone to the little
phones that they give you for the disposable business, you
know, they're actually quite powerful. They're in colour.
Now. They got a lot of features that are pretty SMS. I mean, I'm
saying you're talking about a phone, it costs 20 bucks. Yeah.
And then you buy these little, you know, you buy some time
every once in a while. And if you don't, you know, you get you
last a whole year. I mean, I don't get a monthly bill. That's
indecipherable. My wife uses the old, regular system, she gets
bills for hundreds of dollars. And I'm like putting out like 12
bucks every once in a while. I mean, the difference is
ridiculous. If you want to go through the trouble, it's a
hassle. Yeah.
Well, you know, I, you and I probably aren't the typical
phone customer. Yeah. The not the not the mass market. You
certainly aren't.
No, I know. Because I don't like these things. Actually. The
curious thing about this is my daughter, who's 13 Now she's
going to be 14 shoots soon. She doesn't like yakking on the cell
phone all the time. Maybe that'll change
now. No, Christina uses it for for text messaging. That's what
that's really what it's for. It's text messaging. My
son. Yeah, my son who's 20 He's something he's you're young.
He's still just finishing college. He's in it with a group
of people and all they do is text message. They're just
constantly typing to each other. I never see him talk on the
phone. Once in a while. He talks to his girlfriend you know, has
a short conversation but generally speaking, but they're
not only text messaging, but their text messaging constantly.
Yeah,
it's an ongoing conversation. I know I have my daughter is
almost 18 has the same behaviour. And what's really
cute is my wife and daughter together you know, you know how
moms are and they want to know where you know there's a
connection. We always want to know where they are and moms and
daughters. It's something special I'm, and she's always
texting back and forth with Christina.
Here's why I gotta tell you something that's funny. So we
should probably do this reconnect here on Skype. Maybe I
should try calling you. You had to do just a minute ago. I
couldn't hear you at all that I've never heard this on Skype
ever and I'd like to get an explanation for it. I didn't
hear you at all. And then you came on. I didn't miss anything.
You came on at high speeds, like a fast forward talking really
fast. Oh,
John, this is I've been listening to you that way for
the past hour, almost. And we've had the shittiest connection. I
didn't want to say anything. But yeah, what it does is it tries
to do a catch up. And so it's actually pretty smart. So you
don't really lose any of the conversation because the
degradation of the connection. It just speeds up to catch up in
real time. Oh, it's buffering. Yeah, it's really smart shit.
But I'm listening to wow. Because
that's the way the whole show should be should be in triple
speed. There you go.
Oh, you know, you could you could run it through a process
that do that.
Did you see that? I, I encoded it like 64 kilobits to make a
much smaller file size on last week's show. It sounded the
same. Yeah. Because it's, it's just my voice in the crappy
Skype. So you don't need much more.
Yeah. Which was the size was the file. So yeah, because the show
was so long. Yeah.
Well, I know, I know, people want to put it on, on thumb
drives, they want to burn it on to as an mp3 onto a CD or, you
know, they want to know, the length, of course, determines
that you still need to CDs. But I have gotten complaints in the
past people said yeah, it's just unnecessary to like, yeah,
that's a good point.
Yeah, no, it isn't. That's a good it's a good point. I used
the I'm one of the types who burn things on CDs. Yeah. I like
that to honestly bring the car because I can throw it in the
car. You know, I don't have a hookup. I mean, it'd be cool if
I had. So you know, you must be car. I mean, I mean, the new
BMW, they have USB connectors to the
steroids, not even BMW is my daughter's Renault. Twingo has
an amp and so it has a regular three and a half millimetre
audio jack, it has an iPod connector, and it has a thumb
drive connector. So you can just connect a thumb to get thumb
drive or a thumb drive, and it'll play it right through the
system. And this is a little cheap car.
I you know, I think probably most of the cars should be
having that if you don't already. I haven't kept up I
don't have a new car.
That's kind of my point is I think it's it's become, you
know, it's the call polar of, of the year 2000. A, you know,
yeah, it can't be too expensive to implement. But, but until I
get that, your waggon should yeah, thumb drives the way to
go. If I could put this thing as you get, you get the file on a
thumb drive, I got it. The thumb drive I carry around is 32
gigabytes. So there's lots of room. And so I would or I just
take any old thumb drive, what difference does it make, but
anyway, sticker, I put it on as just as a download file an mp3
on a thumb drive, and I stick it on the car and listen to it. I
will I think, you know, this is an untapped, you know, people
still, you know, have mixed feelings about audio podcasting.
But I still think that this is really what, because this is
what I prefer listening to in my car. I'd rather listen to
lectures about stuff that I'm what I want to hear about, I'd
rather hear one of these shows that doesn't have a lot of
commercials. And it's, you know, personalities that are more
contemporary than the typical radio personalities. No offence
to you guys. And, you know, it's not like, I'm a kid. But I'd
rather have that stuff. And I wonder if you know how many
people are out there, obviously 1000s that are already moved
over completely. And they just stopped listening to the radio.
You know, I was just talking to Leo on one of the shows
recently, and he who's a radio guy, and he just thinks radio
has been dead for years.
Yeah, it is it so first of all, I totally agree. Second of all,
this reminds me I think there's a company called pod dango. And
that's what they're called. And I always like what they had set
up and there have they have some marginal success. I'm not quite
sure exactly what they're doing. I haven't tracked him but I
think they got some funding and the idea was just good. They
distribute thumb drives, that includes player software, so you
stick it in any computer, you know, it kind of auto recognises
up pops a player and there's kind of like you're, you're on
the go radio experience and you can plug it into almost any
computing type device or any device that will understand you
know how to play the files. And I died, you know, I pretty much
exclusively listened to, to audio shows, you know from I've
set up a couple of channels. So my my iPod always has the
latest, you know the latest episodes of stuff that I want to
listen to. I will say though, that I find that I probably have
about 40% what we'd call mainstream in there so stuff
like the New York Times front page or I Do listen to on the
media is another NPR show I like but you know, the rest is all is
all pretty much independent. In the UK though the radio still
there's me like radio for it's still pretty damn good. I mean,
there's some really interesting shit they're doing on radio, I
mean, they still have a radio culture here, which is pretty
deeply embedded and it's not, you know, it's just like a male,
it's just not all top 40 or whatever genre music you know,
with monkeys, reading liner cards and stuff like that. It's
yeah, good radio,
you don't have the commercial interruptions, which really
changed the flow show. I mean, people who listen to me on any
of these things know that I'm like a fan. I do. Listen, I do
listen to the radio, but I tend to be a fan of, of the worst
kind of radio, although it may be the best kind of radio, which
is sports talk radio, which is, you know, brain dead. A lot of
people don't get, but it's like, you know, it's I listened to it.
And I also listen to political right wing chatter, which I find
to be highly entertaining and kind of interesting. I probably
don't listen, anything else, I do listen to some college
stations once in a while, when I close to them, they're very low
power, typically, because they don't have any commercials. And
I will listen to NPR once in a while. But NPR is I think it's
very slow moving. And it's ponderous. And they and it's got
the voice, it's always you know, the guys talking like they're
gonna have this certain kind of a sound to it. And there's a
kind of a, a fake gravi toss that slightly annoying when you
listen to it. And, but I do, I will list too. I get on a public
radio station now and stay on it for a while. But generally
speaking, they still aren't as good as some of these podcasts.
And most of those guys are doing podcasts, too.
So let me ask you a question. Do you have a system set up? Do you
use iTunes? Or do you just grab something at random? Do you find
yourself repeating, downloading things? I mean, I basically have
a channel set up on bvo. And that's always synced to my iPod.
And so I always have the latest things, I can tell you what I'm
listening to. But do you have a set number of things you listen
to I don't I,
I'm more of the hunter gatherer type. Instead of automating it
like I would, I would limit my kind of exposure to weird stuff.
I tend I'm like one of the worst guy and like the kind of guy
that should visit my blog, which are, you know, they show up once
in a while, but they're not coming every day. And
essentially, what I'll do is I'll fight I'll find a cache of
interesting podcasts right now. I'm ploughing through the stuff
that's been done over the last number of years. ad tech
conferences. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. They have a slew of
podcasts. And they're all hour long, because they're
essentially presentations with you know, you miss out because
you can't see that PowerPoint. But usually, you don't need
PowerPoint that's just there to, you know, have something for
people to look at. But I've been downloading those things and
listening to those, like constantly. And I mean, hours
and hours and hours and hours and hours of this kind of thing
is because I'm kind of like a marketing hobbyist. And so I'm
listening to all these, what you know, what the trends are, and
all this other stuff. And I'll go through probably most of
them. And it'll be taking a month or two. And then I'll go
for scrounging around and I'll find some other website with
some interesting podcasts outs, I'll sample a couple. And if
they interest me, I'll burn them on the sea. And so I'm not, you
know, a normal listener. And if I'm just gonna listen something
casual, listen to some, probably some crap on the radio.
You want to hear my list? Because because it's always the
same. Go Well, I made changes, obviously. And by the way, you
can subscribe to this. So you can get the same shows in the
same order. So first of all, that was something that I don't
have publicly available is about a guy I met online, a buddy who
puts up with the Howard Stern Show all four or five hours
every day. So he records it off a serious and then he puts up a
little feed a little private feed and so I get that and you
know, sometimes I'll I'll listen to two hours of Howard Stern,
but most of the just days that are on listened to, but I do
like to see you as guests are but anyway, so I have New York
Times front page, I have a test thing called the robot weather
which is a robot voice. Whether transcoder for the Guilford
region then I have tech five Meet the Press video. News pod
which is the that's a that's a great you should listen to that
one. John, the BBC News pod wishes. It's highlights from all
these years. Okay. Yeah, it's a highlights from all the best BBC
radio programmes and of course talk shows from the previous
day, and it's about it's 30 minutes each time. It's like a
great catch up. That's perfect. Yeah, I think you'd like that.
Yeah, buzz out loud, which I haven't been listening to a lot
recently. There was for a while I listened to every day. Then
Pacific Coast hell away on the media in business, which is
another BBC show. It's Peter Day. Another great one
that I have that I have heard that one that it's good.
Yeah, that's good. The Gilmore gang, which I kind of stopped
listening to. I was listening regularly for a while that went
away. They've got lost tapes that have got Newsweek on air
than I have. twit. BBC Breakfast takeaway, another one you might
be interested in. It's the morning news segment from BBC
Breakfast Show it's video. Then I have dope fiend, the cannabis
Podcast Network. I have CNN marketplace update. Music, New
York Times music podcast and I have the jazz sweet. I love the
company. Irwin's podcast, NPR fresh air. Dr. cockney, the
President's weekly address. I love listening to that. That's
always funny. Hey, Mr. Jesse, it was a great music show. Advice
with Don as Don Maselli, from the hills of Florence is my
sister in Italy. And then and then there's stuff at the end,
you know, I may not even listen to on a regular basis. As a
couple more it goes on a bit. But that's kind of my regular
list. And it's, as you can tell a lot of it's shorter form. Most
of it.
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, listen to that every day that it
rotates out, right?
Yeah, whenever there's a new episode it comes in and if I
miss it, then I just miss it. You know, I don't even catch up
on those things. I'm mostly what do I
what point do you and I always worry about this? Because I do
it on a lot of these pod casts myself. I do. You know, this one
here in particular is is is the most experimental because it's
so damn long. Yeah, we're an hour and
a half almost jungle. Actually. It's shorter than that. Because
there's a piece of gotta cut out when we lost the connection. But
yeah, it's long.
It's a long show. And it goes on and on and on, and on and on.
And nobody complains about the length generally. And that's
makes it worse, because then we don't feel obliged.
I know. I'm like, I'm not done yet. They it's almost an hour
and a half. Let's break the two hour limit. We can do it,
Johnny.
That's the don't know. But anyway, so we will anyway, you
know that. So? So what is it that gets people to the point
like you said, you don't listen to Gilmore gang anymore, and you
don't and buzz out loud was a I remember when you first
discovered that you were like jacked up about it. And you
listen to it constantly. Yeah. And what and I wonder because I,
you know, this is not my listening habits are different
because I listened to mostly lectures. And but what is it
that happens? And I wonder about this for just anybody? Because
you because you have to assume that some people were listening
to no agenda, maybe for the first 20 episodes, and then at
some point, they just stopped? Yeah. What happens? What what is
it about as you get sick of the two jerk offs? Or are you just,
I mean, what is it repeating themselves? Or what is the
sociology here? Well, there's
a couple things at play. And I'm speaking partly from my
experience in radio. It has to do with the regularity of it. So
here's the trends I detect. So there there is a when people get
hooked, it's like mainline and, you know, the if they can't
listen to something during one day, because what gets in the
way, of course, is life, you know, not everyone's life is
exactly the same, your commute is not exactly the same, your
mood is not exactly the same, which is why we have choice and
why you can listen to different things. But with if you're
jacked into a show wishes, you know, a longer format, like this
one or more daily source code, or twit is another perfect
example. When you're when you're jacked into that your main
lining, you know, is like you can't miss out on the
conversation because something happened in a previous episode,
and you have to catch up. So the shorter form stuff is much
easier to dip in and out of that long form stuff. Yeah, at a
certain point, I think you just get tired of it. And by the way,
you know, it's okay. You know, come back in a couple months, I
when I lived in New Jersey, and drove to New York, every single
morning, five days a week. Every morning, I'd listened to Howard
Stern religiously, even the replays when he was on vacation.
And what would happen every single time after, you know, X
amount of weeks, or sometimes days. He's like, I don't feel
like it anymore. I just changed but you come back, you know, you
go in and out. It's just life, John that just gets in the way.
Now, what I've taken away from it is my daily source code is no
longer daily. And I found that unfortunately, the name doesn't
fit anymore, but people kind of anticipate, you know, so now I
do maybe two or three Shows a week. This last week was
horrible, only did one but I know that it'll be good because,
you know, I've got all the energy together and that's kind
of the other side of the equation. You know, when we do
this one show a week. I look forward to it. It builds up I'm
excited about Have you know about doing it on a Saturday?
But my life also changes in his dynamic. So you know, I can just
roll out a show. I can do. I can set up, I can schedule time
every morning at nine to record but it's gonna suck because I
won't be in my element, you know. So I think this, the
fluidity of it is is really important not that I've cracked
anything on that yet. But yes, it's from both ends.
But let's just distil that. There's a couple issues here
that you we've kind of touched on. One of them A, by the way,
that for people out there, we have to do the next couple shows
on Sundays, because I'm going up to Washington for the Fourth of
July. I'll be back on Sunday. And we're Saturday night,
actually. And the week after that is my daughter's birthday.
So Sunday is going to be because people complain to me on email
that oh, you know, where's the show? Where's the show? Where's
the show? And you know, we occasionally do the show on
Sunday, and sometimes on Thursday? I'm, but they're
always stunned when we're not doing it. You know, when you
don't post?
Where's the show? Yeah, it's late.
Yeah, it's like, come on, I mean, give us a break. But you
know, I, I think that's cool, actually, that people are that
intuit that they complain about the, you know, not being there
when they needed their, you know, fix. But the thing that
let's go back and look at the Euro commentary about, well, you
know, you get sick of that. And then you came back here and
people can come and go, you know, they can listen to the
show for months on end. And then they can stop listening because
they hate it. And then they'll come back. The fact in the
classic sense of marketing. And this is holds true for blogs and
to is that once you lose a customer, the rule has always
been it's harder to get a lost customer back than it is to get
a new customer. And do you really think that when people
stop listening to no agenda that they ever come back?
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, 100%? certain of it. Yeah. Oh, they
definitely
get some old rule. Well, fuck the old rule. And Shannon, it's
a violation. There's no reason in that there's something else
at work here that they would do that. In other words, they'd
never really quit the show. Now, I think you've probably quit the
Gilmore gang.
No, no, no, no, I disagree. I have temporarily I've just No,
also this is a it's a very long show. And it's like almost every
day, so I just don't have the time. But you know, twit, even
though sometimes it'll like, this wasn't really a show for
me. It's not gonna make me quit. Because I know next week, it
could be extremely exciting could be right on the money, you
know, could be, you know, there's a lot of excitement
depending on who the guests are, you know, I'm totally mainline
on that, on that show, no doubt about it. But if it's, if you
have a couple in a row that don't work for me, you know, I
may quit.
Let's go. Let's stop. Let's stop there and bring this issue in.
Years and years and years ago, when I was at the University of
California,
trying to say one thing, John, I'm sorry, just out of one, I
want to add one dimension to it. Don't forget that quitting
listening to the show is not the same as unsubscribing,
particularly with these audio shows, they still may be coming
through on someone's iPod or an iTunes, they may iTunes might
even temporarily disable it saying, Hey, you haven't
listened to this in a long time. So I'm not going to update it.
But that doesn't mean that you're not just one click away
from jacking back into the show, which is a little different from
the type of marketing speak as scenarios that you outlined.
No, you're right, because it apparently is always there. So
you can be tempted. But I want to bring up an interesting
point, which is a lecture I heard Wheeler auditorium some
years ago by Phil Spector. When he was he was a he wasn't too
crazy. Phil Spector, he later became but he was still a little
weird. But he came in to do what they used to have these famous
people that would come into the University of California, and,
you know, after hours and give these lectures in the big
auditorium, Wheeler would hold 1000 people and they pack them
in. And I went through a lot of these things, and you get to
hear a lot of people and afterwards, you can hang out
with them, you know, if you wanted to. And Spector came in
to do his hour, which lasted three and a half hours. And it
was three and a half hours of riveting anecdotes and
observations. And he talked about the singles business back
in the day when they were 40 fives and they had to have they
had to hit single. And he says, he says the key to success for
the hit single business was that you could never you could as
long as you had never had two singles that were dogs in a row.
So you were done. You were out of business, you had to have a
hit single and you had to have a hit single the ones that they
would plan to jukeboxes, then you had to have a hit single and
then you could have a dog, they you could be excused one dog in
a row, then you'd have a half to have a hit. The next one had to
be a big hit. And I've always felt that this model was is
actually what I use when I write columns, because not every
column has a gym. But if I ever write a crappy column and one of
my publications I know it's crap. I will go out of my way to
write a gym the next time because I have aware of this to
dogs and now you've your once you do the two dogs, you've lost
customers. If you're not Last year job would be in the record
industry. And so I wonder when you have these shows, like, you
know, and you talk about twit and our show and other shows
that people listen to, and it's more risky with a longer format,
obviously, if you can really get away with having two crappy
shows in a row like the, you know, what does it does it
really set you back? And unfortunately, there's not a lot
of good metrics on this stuff.
I think that's, that is a very interesting point. And I would
say that, that it sounds that feels right, that two shows in a
row that are crappy. And I know that that would warrant a
temporary suspension. But that is, of course, what's completely
interesting about this medium is, you know, you don't have to
do a show, you know, there's not not not like the airtime is
scheduled and waiting for you and has to be filled up. And
that, of course, is the downside of a regular programme. And I'm
sure you you can probably say more about this than I can
because you actually do a show five days a week, and you have a
fixed format. And sometimes I'm pretty sure it must sound it
must feel like a chore, like, Oh, crap, I got to do that. And
you fit it in either before you go to bed or you know, whatever
your schedule is. Whereas with daily source code, I know I'm
gonna do a couple of weeks, and I kind of live towards it. And
sometimes I have a shitty show, or at least that I feel is a
shitty show. And you're absolutely right, you know, I
never go back and review a shitty show. I'm just like, hey,
there'll be another one next time, and I'll do twice as good.
But to have two dogs in a row, I think you're right. And that is
the danger with with regularly scheduled programming, where
even you're being late on posting something can piss off
your audience.
Right? They get irritated. They're they're fickle. This
group. Yep. And that's the guy the reason I went to Team
blogging, because I knew that the problem with blogs a lot I
didn't you know, I wasn't, I wasn't the original team
blogger. My name is boing boing, which is one of the most
successful blogs in the world is a team blog. And more of a
publication now and but you know, I went to that because the
keys to blogging and I tell people this all the time, is
that you have to post a lot or people just won't come back. And
it has to do with the with the maybe the two dogs theory, which
is you go to the blog, you say you have a blog you like and you
follow it. And the next thing you know, and you know this,
when you go surfing, you go back to the blog, and you look at it
and it hasn't been updated for months. You never go back. I
mean, that's basically you've got you, you may go back one
more day. That's it, you got your two dogs, you went there,
it hasn't been updated. You go back, it hasn't updated. You
never go back. And I think that's the reason that most
blogs have lousy attendance. I mean, they just can't keep up
and then guys who I'm always amazed by guys like the jaywalk
blog welcome Bush's blog, which I'd love to get just have him I
just talked to him in St. Louis once you just want to just do to
come over and we'll do to something else, you know, do a
teen blog, right? This guy for a while I was competing, I thought
I was competing with him because I was doing a blog by myself and
I look at his and he was much better blogger than I am. I
mean, he really gives really good stuff. He's got a lot of
interest, he's got a good insight on things. But then I
look at his blog, and he's like blogging himself 5678 times a
day, holy crap, you can't keep up that kind of pace. And when I
first started blogging, by the way, I wasn't even putting up
that much I was putting up like five posts maybe which was,
which is not enough to make people come back, by the way.
And I would get letters from people saying DeVore if you just
started blogging, you're gonna burn yourself out, you're gonna
be like everybody else, you're trying too hard. You're blogging
too much. And I'm thinking, Wait, there's a conflict of my
thinking here. One, you have to blog a lot to keep people coming
back. But I'm blogging too much. And I'm not blogging enough. So
that's when I said, Forget it. I'm bringing in some guys who
you know, that want to get the because I have the numbers. And
so the people that get that blog with me, the editors, they are
getting a lot of attention, which they wouldn't be able to
do on their own single blog.
Well, it's the quick hit mentality. You know, it's and by
the way, I don't actually go to blogs anymore. I use Google
Reader and so you know, it just pops up right? Oh, there's
something new so I'm not wasting any time going around the blogs
I'm basically looking at headlines and finding stuff that
interests me which is severely underrated by the way the title
of your post because that's how a lot of people get with email
the same thing subject line most important marketing if you want
me to open up an email that subject line better say some
interesting
No, actually one of the things we emphasise that the divorce
uncensored blog, which divorced.org/blog For anyone who
hasn't been there is headline writing. In fact, we go demos
you know, I used to do a monthly memo on headline writing because
it's important. And I'll go into myself and be focusing on
constraint people if they if they're doing blog posts, they
want to learn how to handle right in this data subscription,
the New York Daily Post, The Post newspaper in New York City,
it's got good headlines and and also the you know, there's a lot
of a lot of those tabloids that are at the news, checkout
counter, the star, the Enquirer in places like that those
headlines are outstanding. Here's
a little game Ron and I were playing yesterday because this
is a conversation that we're having internally inside the
company as well. Do you have a magazine just laying around just
any random magazine? John, yeah, yeah, just pick it up. And just
and just read it. It's, it's funny when you do it. And I just
picked up a random magazine here. Okay, so I'll go first.
I'm just gonna read what's on the cover, which is basically
marketing me to, you know, to buy this magazine. At three
pounds 70. Michael Staats dream den destination, WT nine
dynamic. Mighty microlight air cam, lightweight twin splash
Show Report, hovering out of wind binder, EB 28, the ultimate
sail plane. Now, that's good shit, man.
Well, there's a couple of things that you should always note.
American magazines tend to be subscription oriented. And they
don't have the great headlines into the European magazines,
especially the ones in Great Britain, which tend to be
newsstand oriented, in terms of getting their circulation to a
certain point. And what I always tell people who are in the
magazine business, if they happen to be travelling in
Europe, especially in England, where they can understand what
the headlines are saying, You should go to the newsstands in
England and look at the racks and take a look at these covers.
Because you see dynamic grabbing covers everywhere. And the only
time that shows up in the stage happens to be with Felix Genesis
magazines. Maxim is one of the great magazine covers that
you'll ever see. But it's because it's British. Yeah. But
yeah, but the bloggers have to learn this because you're right.
If you're getting that little laundry list from Google alert,
or whatever it is, you're talking about an alert but
Google Reader reader, he has a list of headlines, and most of
them are so Dahlia, you want to click on any of them.
Nope. That's another thing man album art. Anyway, we could go
on forever about all that. Are we done? We have anything else?
God? No. I mean, God, yes, we're done.
Let me just see if I had anything else.
I know. I did have one. I was gonna talk about the Mexicans
invading the United States of Mexican army killing some people
in Phoenix and Oh, really? Yeah, it's just really some weird shit
going on. Nobody's talking about much. Well, to give me some more
info man, what's happening? What's on the blog? Actually, I
have to bring up the story. Well, there was there was a
murder in phoenix from the the perpetrators seem to be in the
Mexican army, working on the behest of the drug overlords,
which seem to have taken over most of the border. Most of the
border towns in the United States. Definitely taken over
all the border towns in Mexico to bring drugs into the country.
And besides the murder in Phoenix, which nobody really
covered much. There's another story that developer one of our
US congressmen had a relative that was kidnapped from her
store in Juarez and held for ransom, which is by the way, a
serious problem in Mexico, which is then this has been going on
for a long time. This happens
all over the world man kidnapping, but you actually pay
the money and you get the person back. I mean, it's
you pay the money. It's just it's, it's, you know, it's
extortion, kidnapping extortion. To the point I mean, in Mexico,
for example, I was told a long time ago because you don't like
you go to Mexico City some of the best parts time and you
don't see many really cool cars. And somebody mentioned to me
well, you know, the thing is, if you really have a lot of money
in Mexico, you buy a clunker and you don't want to know Yeah,
people will think you're just some bum you know, and you got
like, you know, missing hubcaps and things like crabbed and it
needs paint you got it made. So you don't see a lot of Mercedes
and you don't see anything cool. And in Brazil, where they
actually do like to have nicer cars. I was last time I was
there, which was like a year ago or a year and a half ago. I'm
good we go past we're driving around and looking at stuff and
I'm we go past a car dealership that's just apparently a very
popular. It's a huge car dealership. And anybody had this
weird Portuguese name for these cars. I can't remember what it
was like I never saw this word before. So oh, that's a car
dealership that slapped this bullet through cars for the rich
people. So you'd buy a Mercedes in Sao Paulo, that would be like
ruggedized. I mean, essentially, you know, the door, you push a
button and everything locks up and they can't shoot through the
glass armour plated. Yeah, the car weighs a tonne. Right. Yeah.
And thinking, well, that's how they handled it. But you know,
that hasn't gotten into the US yet. But I'm always worried that
it will because, you know, now we had a congressman, by the
freedom of somebody, and we're supposed to be the country that
doesn't deal with terrorists that way. But meanwhile, we're,
you know, the US government was like, involved in this
negotiation. I'm just like, it's not a good sign.
All right. I got last one last one. My uncle Don was in Korea
this week. And it did in the result of his work is in the
paper. And what is it? Oh, you didn't hear about this that?
Yeah, the they released the information about their nuclear
programme and everything they've done since like the 60s and
President Bush said, Oh, well, now I'm going to take you off
the axis of evil.
And your uncle Don had something to do with this. Oh, hell
yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's a major. He's a major negotiator
for the US and in both South and North Korea. Yeah, he's the He's
the president of the Korea Society, which is, I'm sure some
kind of front for something. But now that, you know, the guy was
ambassador, yeah, he was ambassador in South Korea. So he
knows a hell of a lot. In fact, he even wrote a New York Times
op ed on I think, the 17th, where he said, Hey, you know,
and it's so funny, because I didn't quite understand what it
was about. He said, You know, don't mess with the Koreans were
their beef, you know, don't mess with their beef, because they
get really emotional about it, because this is what their
parents and grandparents have always made their living on. And
it's kind of like a holy topic. And you know, Condoleezza Rice.
Sure, shoot, and like they read in the paper this morning, Jesus
saying to the people of Korea, well, you know, please consider
trying our beef.
Well, you know, when I went there, which was just a few
weeks ago, I'm reading the newspapers over there and
watching the TV. And there's all these riots taking place about
American beef and how everybody thinks they're being poisoned
and also how it wasn't there was wasn't one piece of this
information in the US media.
Well, except for my uncle Don's op ed, he said, When do you
remember in a must have been in the 80s? I think when people
attack the US Embassy in South Korea, yeah. Okay. So my uncle
Don was the ambassador at the time. And and he wrote, he wrote
about that, I'll send you the link to his op ed piece he wrote
about he said, You know, when when people got so pissed off,
so angry, they broke into the embassy cause $35,000 worth of
damage. It was about the frickin beef. He said, You gotta leave
him alone. They do not want a foreign beef. They want that,
you know, it's a whole cultural thing. And this is what the guy
understands. Yeah. And that's,
that's interesting, because I didn't think that's interesting
because I know they're beef. They're the like major I mean,
the beef is there is a is a staple part of their diet. And
it's a part of one of their great all their great dishes of
Korea or beef dishes. I mean, I'm sure he does some vegetarian
all right. No, that's not true. They do vegetables too, or what
have you. But for the most part, it's a beef thing and you when
you go to a great Korean restaurant, you know, eating
beef is usually a thin slice gorge. I mean, it's beautiful. I
mean, that that food in Korea is really nice. It's in Korea,
there's Korean copies that we have right here always kind of
lame.
Well, so I think that that will I mean, I wouldn't have known
any of this. I'm just I'm looking for this letter. Now.
Hold on. Here's here it is. Let me just it's a short one. You
can just read this Do you mind? Yeah, go okay. To the editor
regarding South Koreans assail us packed shaking leader front
page Jun 11. About the large demonstrations in Seoul. In
October 1989. Six Korean college students broke into the American
ambassador's residence in Seoul and did $35,000 worth of damage
before being arrested by the Korean police. I was the
ambassador and the issue was beef. Modern Korean society
still has deep roots in his agricultural traditions and
Koreans can get very defensive about any issue that seems to
threaten the livelihood of grandpa and grandma back on the
farm, even if this causes them to pay twice as much for
inefficiently produced Korean beef as they would for foreign
imports. This is a delicate issue that needs to be handled
with sensitivity by leaders in Seoul and Washington. So the
question of beef does not derail the important free trade
agreement with South Korea being considered by Congress. The
issue also needs to be placed in a broader context. South Korea
is a tremendous ally of the United States. It sent more than
300,000 troops to help us in Vietnam was a quick and generous
supporter of Desert Storm in 1991. And for several years had
the third largest deployment of troops in Iraq following our
invasion of that country five years ago notice the word
following our invasion of that country five years ago. Without
our strong alliance with South Korea, our influence in Asia
would be vastly diminished. Let us keep the fact clearly in mind
as we deal with the fractious beef issue interesting I love it
how he sneaks a lot that invasion thing. Yeah. And he's
like Mr. Republican. You know what he hates? He hates he hates
Georgia. W. He hates this whole thing. He's so angry.
Yeah, a lot of Republicans do but, but that explains a lot.
That's interesting. Because when they were when they were having
the beef riots when I was over there, they were making the they
were rationalising it as our beef was tainted with Mad Cow.
Well, it probably is. doodly is our tomatoes of salmonella. Have
you been following this bullshit?
What's going on with tomatoes are coming from Mexico?
What's going on with it? How could How can tomatoes have
salmonella? Is that something exclusive for lunch, you can,
here's the way the way it was worth. This is the way it was
explained to me that doesn't get a lot of coverage tonight, and
I'm sure there's more details, like somebody knows more than
this, but I'm gonna give you the basics. There's a lot we began
to use recovered wastewater from sewage treatment plants as part
of our agriculture and figuring that it was a fine you know, to
use for you know, for everything in fact, we would I think one of
the processes is washing tomatoes at the end of a
processing plant was nothing from a farmers basically shit
water. Yeah, but it's but it's been processed. So it's actually
you could probably drink it and it wouldn't be a big deal. But
you know, but we don't drink it because we don't like the
concept. It's fine. It's fine for agricultural purposes. Now,
it's believed that the exact same kind of factories that
manufacture is mass produced tomatoes that are never really
fully ripe to the crap you buy in the crummy storage it's not
the stuff you get at a farmers market or in a good vegetable
store. Generally, the Mexicans decided they're going to do the
same kind of processing but they and they use the recovered
wastewater but unfortunately, they never treated it so it's
just loaded with God knows what end of promise these tomatoes
are already de stemmed. And the stem hole where the stem was
that part of that tomato usually cut off is still will absorb
water through it into the tomato when it during this process of
washing and so you'd have these tomatoes rolling off the line
being sprayed to wash them off a little bit and that water would
get on top of that little area and it goes soak right into the
Jamaica gets sucked in because it's gonna look at
this fucking Mexican poop water my tomato.
I mean, that's what they think is what happened. But nobody
wants to say that. But here's the one of the reasons. The one
of the reasons is because there's been a and this is the
problem that you can blame on Monsanto among other companies.
They don't want to make it so we label the country of origin when
it comes to like a tomato. They don't you know, because it would
be it wouldn't cost much, by the way, because these machines that
label nowadays, these little stickers that you put on fruits
and vegetables, it's just uh, you know, it's nothing. But
there was there was a movement of consumer movement to like,
where's this tomato from? Movement and I want to stick or
if it's a foreign tomato coming in from Ecuador. I want to see
an Ecuador sticker on it if it's from Florida, you know, I'd like
to know. Yeah. And no, no, we can't do that because it's too
much you know, it would hurt relations and all this other
crap. So meanwhile, we don't know where these tomatoes are
from and they can't really say it's the Mexican tomatoes
causing this problem and and trying to point the finger at
Florida, which I find hard to believe. You know, well, it
could be Florida if you read the news. Is this Maggie? No, I can
tell you what it is. It's a bunch of crappy
Mexican poop water tomatoes. Salmonella is a result of poop
water.
You know, that's that doesn't make a lot of sense because
salmonella is not necessarily in poop water. But apparently
whatever.
Wait a minute, John, please tell me that in 1972 You were
actually an expert on poop water. Please give me one of
those new environmental poop water specialist.
I was an air pollution specialist. But I don't have the
bite. You know, when I was working at the funny it's
coliform testing, which is kind of water oriented. I knew when I
was at Union oil, we had to test for coliform. One of the things
that effluent that goes out into the San Francisco Bay from their
oil refinery if you're one of the chemists at the place you
have to test the water for coliform which is an indicator
for poop. And because you don't want to put too much poop into
the bay and so you do all these tests you know some kind of an
expert but I'm not that much of an expert telling you what
they're
gonna have business cards made up me vo John C. Dvorak poop
expert
Yeah, be a poop expert. All right, but but anyway that
so that's outrageous and And you know, they put made in China on
every single iPod, they might as well put nail made in Mexico on
every tomato. I mean, I agree. It's just that's for sure. We
deserve to know we deserve just coming from.
That's an abstract. I never even thought in those terms. You're
absolutely correct. If you have to put made in China, which you
do on all this junk that the Chinese ship us and you know, in
good quality too, by the way, like the iPod, I've got some
quality products made in China. But if you have to put the label
on there for for that you're not even eating Yeah,
you're putting shit in your face. Mexican poop water
infested tomatoes we should at least know.
Yeah, I don't get why you have this shouldn't be a label on the
Yeah, we're eating this stuff. We're not eating iPods. I don't
care. Yeah.
Well, you mentioned Monsanto. And if you know anything about
that anyone ever emailed you about the Codex Alimentarius?
No, you've never heard of the Codex Alimentarius.
I have but I don't I don't know if I've ever looked at it. Okay,
so
this is not for this show. But let's both do some research on
it. Speaking of no agenda, now the Codex is something that the
World Trade Organisation put into place in I think I'm gonna
say the 50s. So it's basically a trade agreement about what is in
food that is imported and exported amongst countries that
are member of the WTO. Now, this isn't this has now become pretty
much law. In fact, in Europe, the so all the recommendations,
which are you know, what can and cannot be in certain types of
foods and what can or cannot be sold literally, has resulted now
and in Europe, this is already starting where I'm sure you've
heard about this, that you you can't get certain vitamins over
the counter anymore. homoeopathic medicines are being
phased out. And Monsanto was one of these big companies that's
that's behind this. Codex Alimentarius. And I, and I
believe that the January one 2009, it will be ratified as the
code. I mean, Codex Alimentarius literally means the food code,
it will become the food code of the United States as well. Or at
least it's it's, you know, that's on the schedule. I think
it's the first of January 2009. and the European Union is
already harmonising it with all laws. And of course, if you you
know, if you look at some of the conspiracy theory videos, which
I'm an expert at, you know, this is really, really bad shit. In
fact, it will probably, you know, some people say you could
easily kill, you know, 3 billion people within 50 years or
something, you know, malnourishment? I mean, that's
taking it to the extreme, maybe, but it is, it is very clear that
there is going to be a food code that the government is going to
set, and we'll tell you what you can and cannot eat. I mean, that
is what the Codex is all about.
It was funny, it's like, I'm always complaining about how
Brussels is pushing the Europeans around with all these
laws that they're doing. But I think it's even more pathetic if
Brussels is pushing us around. But anyway, let's go back to
just before we just finished the show, otherwise, we'll go on a
rant about Monsanto in some way. The company too, you know that a
lot of people disliked it, they actually essentially broke the
backs of a couple of journalists in Florida who were like trying
to blow the whistle on on the company for being behind much of
the laws that for example, if these laws are both them, or at
least I don't think they apply in California, but there was
they were attempting to make it so you could not put it that
way. Again, we're going back to labelling laws you could not put
on a on a carton of milk that the cow's milk in that carton
was a result of a animal that had been treated with the bovine
growth hormone that makes them produce 25% more milk it was
like in the in California you see it no no BST or whatever
it's called is in this was know that these none of these cows
are made this milk and and in fact if you taste the milk from
a cow that does that have been pumped up with this stuff and
it's a watery, watery Yeah, it's crappy. But anyway, so Monsanto
was behind them they drove drove these guys out you know they
were really tight with the government they get a lot of
these laws that's why probably Monsanto's you know, kind of
mentality is behind where we don't know where the tomatoes
are coming from. Meanwhile, here's what I'm predicting is
going to happen it's going to be really interesting. There's a
number of countries in South America who have banned the use
of the Monsanto genetically engineered your roundup
resistant weeds and the some of these crazy seeds that they've
invented as
modified stuff. Yeah.
Right genetically modified stuff and which is, you know, illegal
here and there, but this stuff is getting into the wild. Now,
you know, in fact, where they've grown a lot of these crops the
pollen from these crops goes into the neighbour are in the
next thing you know that next year, they got said, you know,
half the crop is this stuff they don't even want. And they're now
there's I forgot what country it was on one of these world
reports in Bolivia, maybe Ecuador someplace that they had
to change the law because it's stuff that's, you know, these
genetically modified this you know, pollens have gotten out,
essentially changing everything. I'm suspect because the whole
genetically modified business is a patented one that one of these
days, Monsanto is going to walk into a field in Nebraska or
someplace else and take a sample kind of like the BSA does with
software, make, you know, make him do an audit, and they're
gonna find genetically modified products that growing there that
we're not licenced, and they're gonna sue the farmer, really,
and then make them pay a fine for having that in there. And
even though the farmers gonna say, Well, you know, listen, you
know, blew over and the documentation said, Well, it
does it can't blow that far. And get you washed up some really
crazy lawsuits over this genetically modified stuff,
because those guys who got it locked down? Well,
I'm not a, this is one of those issues that is so big and so
broad. And, you know, of course, there's a deadline coming up
that lots of people are starting to at least talk about it. And
I'm just not schooled enough in exactly what's going on. But you
know, once again, you know, you there's lots of lectures and
YouTube videos of some pretty serious looking people saying,
you know, this is a real problem. And you can take it to
the extreme. And, of course, you know, the second part of the
video is always, and this is what they've always wanted, you
know,
that's the problem with a lot of these guys, instead of
presenting these things in a logical orderly way. You know,
many of the people that present and I wonder sometimes I've
always believed this, by the way, if you want to make a
point, and you have, you're on the bad side of an argument, and
you want to kind of keep people from beating you up, you put a
debate on where you have the bad side of the argument, you know,
whatever it is, with a reasonable person who's very
professorial and then bring on a guy who's against you, who's on
the right side of the argument, but it's clinically insane. And
so you have this good, I've seen debates, I've seen TV debates
like this, where you have a Republican or a Democratic, you
know, that, that one of the two sides put the whole thing
together, because you have one guy who's very reasonable. And
the other guy who
says, Yeah, of course. Well, anyway, it's something we should
look at. We should look at, uh, John, I'm sure people are gonna
send us all kinds of links and information.
Yeah. Is there a topic for this or no agenda topic for no agenda
show for next week? If we remember. Precisely, hanging out
not talking about
it? I'm just pulling the break here. I mean, how can anyone
listen to this shit for two hours?
I don't know. I can't. I certainly can't really do it for
hours. I'm playing the music. You don't hear the music. Do you
or don't you? You shouldn't hear it. Barely. Well, it's soft. You
know, it's called like a nice, gentle fade. And at the end, I
bring it up. It's the end of the show. It's all done in real
time. You know, no joke here.
Are we gonna say goodbye? Yes.
Thank you, John. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I can think of
no better way to spend a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon.
I wish it was less than a couple of hours but I'm just right up
here in northern California is smoky. We'll be smoking some
meat tonight. And I'm
Adam curry at the manor in the United Kingdom and Guilford
soaked in sun. We'll talk again next week right here on no
agenda.