The Vivek Kundra "Hollow" Deck

00:01 A lot of dynamic data will be posted there, and you'll see a more powerful website on Drupal soon! Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak. It's August 13th, 2009. This is your Gitmo Nation audio publication, episode 121. This is no agenda. Coming to you from the Crackpot Command Center, embedded in the minimum security containment cell in the heart of Gitmo Nation, West San Francisco, California. I'm your Chief Crackpot Officer, Adam Curry. And here in Northern Silicon Valley, sitting here with a glass of pure lemon juice, I'm John C. Dvorak. It's Crackpot and Buzzkill! In the morning! First complete opener in three shows. Oh. We're getting there. I'm no longer stumbling and bumbling. Well, I blew the last one.

00:54 If you remember, it was just... I'm John Dvorak. Oh yeah, we all remember, John. Oh yeah, I'm sure we all remember. Yes. Hey, good morning to ya. Yes, it actually looks like it might be a nice day today. in San Francisco. I didn't see any of the meteors last night I was supposed to see. I think it was cloudy all around the world. Of course I couldn't see it from the city because there's too much ambient light and we had fog. It's called light pollution. Yeah and I was reading that the UK had cloudy skies, the continent had cloudy skies. I'm just not reading, I don't think many people saw it.

01:32 You know, I could see stars last night, but you know, I just never saw any meteors. You really have to be out in the middle of Oregon someplace or out in the high desert. Yeah, that's my next plan. Yeah, not a bad idea. To be out there somewhere. Hey John, we got a lot to talk about today. Actually, a lot and not a lot. you wrote a piece yesterday, was it yesterday? The day before yesterday? Was it yesterday? It seems like weeks ago. And this is actually about Vivek Kundra, the federally appointed chief information officer of the United States of America, which I think the impetus for the piece was based upon last week's show where we wound up talking about this guy for a couple of minutes at the very end of the show.

02:25 Yeah, well, you still have my two clips from last week we didn't play. Oh, I've taken your two clips and raised them five, my friend. Yes, well, let's play the clip that I have a couple clips there. The clip that triggered my looking into the guy. See, I had it all set up differently. I didn't want to... This is a no agenda show. I've got my own agenda, not your agenda. There we have it. I do nuts. Now I can play... I can play what you were talking about. I think this was the clip you were referring to. Actually, was that the one with the real-time data? Was that the one? Yeah. This is it, I think. From my perspective, of course, where we're seeing a huge... I should mention, this is from the FCC broadband panel, which John and I both, by coincidence, I guess, or not,

03:19 We're watching separately. Divine intervention. Indeed. And I had to pull a couple of clips from this because the CIO of the United States is just, he talks like, huh? You just sit there and go like, what? And wait until you find out what the guy's really responsible for. Huge impact, I would say, on the IT dashboard where it's actually moving the way the federal government actually spends money. and we're making decisions from a public policy perspective based on real-time feedback that we're getting from the public itself. And the second part of that question was around data. So on the data side, one of the things we recognize is that we don't really know which data feeds are going to lead to better analysis. So what we're doing is we're trying to release as much data as possible with the exception, of course, of information that may be classified or sensitive in nature. In other words, nothing.

04:17 As a result of that, we're finding a lot of innovation happening out there. A lot of people are spotting patterns that we hadn't seen before. I mean, just flyontime.us. Yeah, this is my favorite. Flyontime.us. This is a fantastic service from our government. Just looking at the airlines, we have people who have come up to us and... Have you ever come up to someone? Yeah, we have people coming up to us. I'd love to come up to this guy. Can I come to you and say something? This is fascinating. We never thought this flight was actually always this late. people. I love this. We never thought this flight was actually this late. I'm going to change my entire life around it. We had to see it on our phone. People are changing their behavior based on that. But more importantly, I think what's happening. I'm changed. I have to change my behavior. Even at the local level in the District of Columbia, for example, based on where you're standing, if you have an iPhone,

05:13 You can pull up an application and you can see what the closest metro station is near you Wow, isn't that called Google? It's unbelievable and you can find a metro station, you know without having to look at the big giant sign This is a metro station this way and when the next train is coming and oh who needs a schedule both directions real-time You could also see on the same app crime near where you're standing and as you move the data gets updated. The data got updated. I'm moving towards crime! I love that. Listen to that again, that's fantastic. The same app, uh, crime near where you're standing and as you move the data gets updated. Uh, you can also see... I love the... I love the group. Yeah, that's the group by the way that you're hearing, not me and Adam, it's a group. Climb up there in real time.

06:12 douche. So you can make some really interesting decisions based on real-time information that you have access to. And the idea here is if we could create a national grid around information, that it will influence... Why didn't he add the sex offenders database to that? I mean, then you could really, really route your way to the nearest metro station that has no crime, lots of bars and no sex offenders.

06:56 I mean that would change my behavior. He must have forgotten. The way we act in terms of moving us towards making better decisions because we have access to real-time data and the government has made a decision not to keep that data secret but make it public. When was it secret? Secret bar data. Alright, so the reason why we've jumped all over this is because it's actually a follow-on to this $18 million website known as recovery.gov. And you know what, if there actually was some transparency, maybe we wouldn't even be having this discussion because we of course looked at all the documents and everything's been redacted. Pages and pages of actual information from Smartronics have been blacked out so you can't see

07:49 Who's really on the project what the process is because of course that is the type of data that is not supposed to be free and available Because you know that doesn't involve bars and crime actually it probably does involve crime But they're not they've redacted the crimeful parts in in the smartronics contract And so when you start looking into this guy, and there's a couple of guys we looked into including the chief technology officer and You just gotta ask some questions and that's basically what your article did, John, is you looked at his claims of background, what he's done, and really why he is not only why he's a candidate or why he was selected as the Chief Information Officer, but what makes him the best of the best. Yeah, which is nothing. He doesn't have anything. And the fact that he's being defended by so many people, we'll talk about that later,

08:43 is almost, it's just mind-boggling to me. I mean this is a guy who's essentially some, for all practical purposes, a kid who was a, you know, just out of school for all, you know, for his career. He's very young. He's a young guy. He did a lot of campaigning apparently and he mixed it up with the right people and somebody picked him for one job and he, you know, they went back and forth, him and Chopra. The other one, the Chief Technology Officer of the United States. And I started looking at, for one thing, he has a master's, he claims to have a degree in psychology and biology, and there's no reference to biology in any of his transcripts or in any of his records. His degree is in psychology. It took him six years to get it. They call him a whiz kid. I'm wondering why it takes six years for a whiz kid to get a degree in psychology, which is kind of one of those degrees, like sociology.

09:35 Like zoology. Yeah, or zoology. And so that's kind of caught me off guard. Then we couldn't find his master's degree, which we did find, but it wasn't really at the University of Maryland in College Park. It was at the... What the locals considered the kind of the Maryland's version of the University of Phoenix. Yeah, we got a lot of notes about that and so he does have a degree in information technology, whatever that is, but it's one of those, you know, it's not what you it's not from Harvard. I mean his partner and me Chopra has a has better chops when it comes to his academic background, but he's basically a bureaucrat and

10:14 and anyway so we started looking into this and then the thing that really got me was he was a CEO of this Creostar company. He apparently worked for some other company that had the name Star at the end so they sold to... ExoStar I think wasn't it? Yeah and they sold to some other... no the company he used to work for which was sold to ExoStar I guess they didn't keep him on and he went off and started his own company out of his house and uh... there's no evidence in fact somebody's in the note today showing that it was like he did the company basically folded to the field to pay some fees and here that section to a have a twitter to that

10:57 Let me finish. Here's the thing that bugs me. He was keep calling himself the CEO of this company. And if you're going to start calling yourself the CEO of a one man company or you and your wife, I think it's a little misleading. And this is the problem that we're having in this country today is the honesty factor. And if anybody wants to defend somebody who wants to call themselves the CEO over and over and all their bios, and that's one of their, you know, one of their stepping stones to this job, this great CEO position, I'm the CEO. Welcome CEO, I'm coming in. And when you're just one guy in a sole proprietorship that's really got no business, why are you calling yourself the CEO unless you're trying to? And I want to point this out to people like Tim O'Reilly who thinks that this Kundra guy is the greatest guy since sliced bread. Hey Tim, it's called being misleading.

11:47 He's misleading his entire bio his background the stuff that he says on these on these these panels Makes it sound like he's know something. He's a missile This is all part of a campaign to mislead the public is no different than the banks saying well free lifetime checking We're no ATM fees Yeah, no ATM fees. Boom! Where's the three bucks? Why are we taking three bucks out? I mean this kind of thing is unacceptable. We're sick of it and this guy is just another example. And why would anybody defend him? And what gets me is... Where's the biology degree?

12:26 So what gets me is the actual need for a CIO because this is actually a title that cropped up in the mid to late 90s as we had the dot-com boom and you had many companies had a chief technology officer. Usually if it was a new dot-com company it was usually the co-founder, the guy who invented some technology and I will say... CTOs are always inventors. And myself without any degree in anything except a life minored in herbology. I was the chief technology officer of a publicly listed company on NASDAQ which I co-founded.

13:07 I do not consider myself to be a technologist at all. I can hack together some Apple scripts. But at a certain point, people started calling me the CIO when they were talking about our company. Like, I'm not the CIO. And this was a new job that was created and I kind of figured it out. What the CIO at the time was, when this position was literally just made up, was they needed a guy who could translate mumbo-jumbo technology stuff into marketing speak. That's essentially what a CIO did. And so you had companies like Avon and they have a chief technology officer at Avon. They have huge big iron back end but then they needed someone who could talk marketing speak and internet speak. And so this chief information officer function was created but after a while it kind of became the role of an accountant.

14:02 And I read from the White House press release March 5th, 2009, one day I will add, one day after he resigned as Chief Technology Officer of the Commonwealth of Maryland, or was it Virginia? Probably Virginia. Virginia. On the very same day when there was a raid on the office and the people who reported directly to him were... I think that raid thing was the DC office wasn't it? Washington DC. That was the DC office, yes. Yeah. But that was... so he resigned on March 4th. March 5th they raid the office and we'll get to that in a second. And President Obama

14:47 uh... names the vehicle and other federal chief information officer uh... c l with the white house is a federal position cases a part of the executive branch it's the real deal and here's the yeah you don't want a bunch of slouches in their well when you listen what is responsible for the federal chief information officer directs the policy and strategic planning of federal information technology investments and is responsible for oversight of federal technology spending So he is, he holds the budget, he holds the money. Yeah, yeah. That's billions and billions of dollars and I'll point out that not only he but also his buddy there, Anish,

15:33 They have a lot of background in medical IT and this of course is where it's all going to come to bear. This is why people love these guys in the technology field because if all this money is going to be spent on health care, And of course just like the United Kingdom, the first thing that always pops up is, well we've got to automate it and get everything on digital records and it's got to be, you know, this is a great IT opportunity and in the United Kingdom I think they've misspent by their own admission. three or four billion pounds. The whole thing is a complete failure. You get all these contractors and pull everyone together and they build huge Oracle databases and all kinds of stuff and then of course it never works.

16:20 So this guy's got to be responsible. It never works because there's never anybody in charge of it that knows what they're doing and this is the problem that we have here. You know, I've said this before, if you took the employee directory at Xerox PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center, and put it up on a wall and threw a dart at it, you'd have a guy more qualified than this guy. Well, here's what he's done today. By the way, I think people that work for companies like Xerox PARC must look at this and they must be shaken. Why does this person have this job? In fact, I would say the same thing with Kundra. Why do they have this job and why are they getting so much support from certain elements of Silicon Valley?

16:58 Well, I think that's very easy to understand. It's all about the friendships, it's all about the connections, it's all about who you know and it's a big sales job. This guy is the buyer. That's essentially what he is. He is the buyer for the United States government. For everything we're going to do in technology, he's going to buy. So here's this guy who's... And by the way, that other outfit he worked for, that consultancy, What was it called? You wrote about it in your piece actually. I jotted it down. Hold on a second. Help me out here John. It's the World Cities Alliance. So the World Cities Alliance of course he was a part of the Greater Washington Initiative, the GWI. What these guys do is they essentially if you want to move your company into Washington in this case, he's going to go set everything up for you. So they're paid consultants.

17:55 and they make introductions, you know, they take everything from housing, you name it, but you look at who's on the board or who are the investors of this Greater Washington Initiative, oh man. It's number one, the chairman, Wachovia. Okay, that's where it starts. We've got the Bank of America, we've got Deloitte and Touche, we've got SunTrust Bank, interesting the Washington Post, not quite sure what they're doing on there. But it's all, it's a club, right? And everyone gets together and everyone's wheeling and dealing because you know if you get a government contract that's good for life. That's the beauty. That is the best thing you can have ever is a government contract because then you can mooch and loot the people.

18:44 Well, there's... uh, there's that. So then I don't blame these guys for kissing his ass. Well, that's what it's all about, John. That's all that it's about. So he's the best, he's the best. So what has he done? He's taken reports that were already available and basically put them into a whizzy wig, a cool little interface. In 1994 there was a report issued by then Senator Cohen that talked about billions of dollars that are being wasted on information technology projects. So listen to what he's saying. Billions of dollars being wasted. This is a report. Now listen to what he's done. He's actually taken this report of billions of dollars and made it into pie charts.

19:44 The president talked about a culture where we move away from secrecy, but we can change the default position of the federal government from secret to open and transparent. So what we did is we built a dashboard that would... This is a big Silicon Valley term by the way, a dashboard. Every, your company has to have a dashboard so the board of directors can look at the dashboard and know how the company's doing. It is the biggest farce in the world, a dashboard. So he's taken this data and built a dashboard. Lift the veil on IT expenditures. As soon as we launched this public-facing dashboard, which exposed every layer of spending, from who was responsible for the project with actually the picture of the CIO on that project, so you could actually see who is running this project, which contractors are working on it, where we are in terms of milestones on that project. And we saw a very... Right.

20:43 He's taken this data which was already available, which was out in a report starting in 1994, 2004 and has put it into nifty little pie charts that you can click on please go to the IT dashboard because I spend half a day on this thing. Oh, please try and find the recovery.gov spending try and find the picture of the guys who was responsible for the contract who's running the project the contractor find all the information he just mentioned and it's just not there in fact the majority of these projects have zero dollars because of little asterisks at the bottom of the page. This is only based upon the information that was available. So he's just taking the same stupid data that's not transparent, not being made available and putting it into pie charts. So useless data turned into pie charts. So from this same conference he unveiled two very important pieces of information.

21:37 He unveiled to us why the US Patent and Trademark Office is so fucked up and an important piece of information about 9-11 which I want to play for you right now. What we're seeing in the federal government is there are some agencies that have led. Some because they were looking at broadband and teleworking as a mechanism to drive productivity and essentially make sure that they were attracting the best people. And others that were reacting to adverse circumstances. So the Patent and Trademark Office is a perfect example where you have a federal agency that's got a program in place

22:17 We're close to 50% of employees are actually teleworking. Yeah, no wonder it's messed up We got half of the PTO sitting at home. They're probably housewives reading through patent applications. So all this podcasting thing Yeah, let's give that to volo media. It's so obvious. Is that a success is the patent and trade trademark office a success? Mr. Vivek because that 50% of them are at home and John, he said it was a success because of that? Yeah, he says it's a success. Replay that clip, sorry. He says success. Back it up a second. Yeah, listen. So the Patent and Trademark Office is a perfect example where you have a federal agency that's got a program in place where close to 50% of the employees are actually teleworking.

23:04 And the PTO, USPTO will tell you that they are already seeing over two million dollars in cost savings and 14,000 tons of carbon emissions that have been... We have saved 14 million trillion tons of carbon emission. I'm not taking into account these people sitting in their underwear farting at their kitchen tables. You always save money with teleworkers because you don't have so much... So what? It doesn't mean they're doing a better job. Now listen to this. What I'd like to highlight is the GAO. So that's the General Accounting Office, right? That's the... Yeah. They're responsible for the expenditure? Are they in oversight? They're like the accountants for the country. Well, listen to this. This is something I didn't know. What I'd like to highlight is the GAO.

23:53 After September 11th, the GAO had to vacate its building because of the anthrax attack at the Senate Hart Building. Did you know that? That puts a whole new perspective on the anthrax attacks. For me it does at least. Well, for you it would. I didn't know that specifically, no. I don't think so. I didn't know that the GAO, our government's bean counters all had... and what were they... oh right, there was a Senate bill, I guess their offices are there, and so they all left, and so people could go in there and cook the books. That's what you're thinking, I know that. Well, on September 10th, Donald Rumsfeld, and we have it on video,

24:37 said that you know what we're missing two trillion dollars from the pentagon we really not quite sure where when you know it's just an oversight we can find it all this stuff starts to happen and then not only is building set building seven go down But without a plane crashing into it I might add But then we have anthrax attacks at where the GAO is the guys who would actually kind of know where this money went I'm just saying they can't have backups tapes. I mean, of course if you have people that are running the the Information technology side of the country don't really have a background in in in true and being it like a like a CIO like for

25:17 Procter and Gamble might have a background in it's possible to be completely Ripped off. I mean, it's just a this is scenario isn't as very bad as a bad situation So then I find this other clip of him talking about his start in public service Which it's just I just love tying this all together and I'm not making a conspiracy theory out of it But just listen to his own words about how he got started in public service Hold on here comes I have a story with you in terms of how I got into public service. It was September 11, 2001 and I was sitting in Arlington, Virginia being interviewed for the job of Director of Infrastructure Technology.

26:01 And it was about 8.30 in the morning when the interview began. In the middle of it, someone knocks on the door and says, we've entered a federal emergency. I'm sitting there thinking, what the fuck? It's a state here. And suddenly, we turn on CNN, and we see the second plane going to the World Trade Center. and there, you know, the CIA asked me to join on the spot and I accepted the job. And that was September 11, 2001. Interoperability was such an important issue back then. So, I don't know if you could hear that clip because it's kind of muddled. So, he was doing his job interview on September 11, 2001 at 8.30 in the morning when the attacks occur on New York. What job was he asking for? Because it said something about technology?

26:48 It's very hard to hear. But the thing that's interesting... Because apparently he got his degree from that little college outlet. It's like a factory outlet. Hey, here's your degree! In 2002. So that doesn't make any sense in terms of the timeline, but you know, okay, go on. But then, listen, so instead of, you know, this was horrible and what an atrocity, he's thinking, I must lay fiber. Now you gotta go watch the clip because when you see his lips move you can understand it better. We'll have it in the show notes. So basically, during the September 11th thing he wasn't aghast. He was thinking about, oh I have to lay fiber between all these different... Oh what a crock of crap!

27:43 And when you see the insincerity as he's telling, I'm like, oh, okay. I was thinking something else at the time, dude. I don't know about you, but he was thinking I need to lay fiber. But it's an interesting story about how I got into public service. It's one for the grandkids. You know the problem with guys like this who are the CEO of a one person company is that they just, I think they're just too loose with the facts and the truth and the way and the timeline and everything in between. He's going to get himself into trouble. I mean my thing had a certain impact on a few readers, my article, which people should go back and read, it's on the blog.

28:23 But it had no, it had zero impact. I mean his minions got a hold of Om Malik who runs a blog and you know called whatever it's called. GigaOm. GigaOm, sorry. And Om's a friend of mine and so he didn't you know pick too much of it out but he did run their whatever they told him to because he's, it turns out that the group of people that are involved with sponsoring Vivek and others. If you start digging deep enough, you find the financing of Om's blog is from this same group. And people put that together before I did. I didn't dream it up.

29:00 But anyway, so the guy says that you know, this is you know this they just had a blast of saying that whatever I hold my whole column with lies and you know slanderous scandalous lies and I mean if you read the car read it for yourself and tell me you think it's a bunch of lies, it's just a bit just I'm just questioning notice how I Notice how you called the white did you call the White House? You said no, I said no you can't do just you can't call the White House You got us go through this email thing, which I did I went through a process Have you heard anything yet? Have you heard anything? No, it goes into a pot of nothing. So O'Mallec sends out the bat signal and he's got the oversight management board spokesperson on the line. I mean, you have no pull, Johnny boy.

29:43 I'm a little disappointed. After 25 years in the business, you have no poll. I'm sorry. I don't have any poll because I guess I contributed to the Democrat party. If you read the column I wrote, you'll note that people that all praise this situation. No, if then Tim O'Reilly, you know, the great Tim O'Reilly says nobody could be more qualified. He's qualified No, you can't beat him. Well, he's not most there's all kinds of questions You know the thing that has been severely under reported in the news was so again March 4th 2009 he resigns from his post-election

30:23 as a chief technology officer for DC, right, September, March, there's a scandal with all the people he hired over there. And by the way, as far as I know, he's in, it was in Virginia when they remember when there was that break-in and somebody stole all the health records of everybody in the state. Yeah. And then they put an extortion note out. Wasn't he in charge then? That was exactly the same thing. And so they arrested the guy who reported directly to him, Yusuf Akar, He was the chief security officer reporting directly. Nice find. I'm sure that O'Reilly would think he was a great choice. Now the second suspect who was arraigned on bribery charges, Sushil Bansal, was the CEO and founder of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp, which is a company that Vivek worked for.

31:15 yeah but where's the follow up? where's the follow up? what happened to these guys? did they ever figure it out? I mean and how come so Vivek was then put you know on temporary leave and then a couple weeks later boom he's back you're the CIO. He wasn't under investigation. But he was in charge he was in charge of these jabronis Well, and then the curious thing of course is Vivek was caught for shoplifting in 97 which I think accounted for the fact that it took him six years to get a degree in psychology because it was right in the middle of it. It was I think the year before, probably the year he should have graduated, which was in 1997.

31:59 Well, so by the way, Nick Shapiro, White House spokesman 20 years ago, Vivek committed, he says 20 years ago, Vivek committed a youthful indiscretion, stealing shirts from pennies. It's like, let me put some more shirts on here and see if I can walk out. So youthful indiscretion, he wanted some shirts, he's probably a snazzy dresser. So I do have a theory, if you want to hear it. Well, somebody just sent me a note that said there's no backup tapes in Virginia when the tapes were stolen by the hackers. This is funny. Of course not. That's our CIO, ladies and gentlemen, taking care of business. Yay! No backup tapes. And the other thing that triggered this article was the fact that this guy, which is the reason I think O'Reilly and these others think he's great, he keeps talking about Twitter. His Twitter feed hasn't been updated since 2008.

32:54 Twitch his Twitter feed is dead and Facebook we should be using Facebook more We should be using Google Docs for our government agencies. Don't save so much money go to his Twitter feed Is his twitter feed dead? He must have a new one now. No, what do you mean? Why would he have a new one? Look up something new. Just take a shot at it. The Great Kundra. See if it's under that. The real Kundra. I'm looking at his twitter feed right now. It's twitter.com slash vivek kundra. Last entry. Tweet. Last tweet. 11 58 am October 31st 2008.

33:31 DC government publishes procurement data online for apps for democracy innovation contest. He's had like five now four tweets total Maybe can't find the on switch to the computer Leveraging the power of technology to improve service delivery drive innovation and bridge the digital divide to build a world-class city Thanks Vivek love anyway we're smart so it's ok so this is a use of a car was busted apparently through an FBI agent who was wearing a wire and according to sources okay so this is Adam Curry crackpot stuff but take take it at face value a car also told the informant he could use his computers to create fake birth certificates

34:20 So now I'm not a birther by any means. I am not a birther at all. But I'm thinking, this guy, he's named CIO for no apparent reason. uh... then all of a sudden these guys get busted and he's put so that the vectors put on the on the sidelines and then he's not like ushered back in he's got to know something he's got to have someone somebody this guy's either gonna rise to be the president in the future or it will find about back with two to the head one of the other it's gonna happen near home Anyway, that's kind of the story. I would this like is gonna be the first in a series of stories not about him I'm done with him. I'm not I want to play one more clip John. Well. No I'm not done with him on the show. I'm done writing about it. Okay. I mean more clips the merrier okay. This is the clip

35:10 that's it i just love this and you have to know the guy got his start according to uh... the indian publications and research a little bit here and there uh... in telemarketing so it's a telemarketer in india so i probably talk to him i've probably had a conversation with him. You've probably been sold something by him. I've probably had a conversation with him. So this is near the very end of the broadband panel sponsored by the FCC uh... by the way the dude running the FCC is also a whole other interesting Area we need to look into but just listen to the utter bullshit coming out of the vex mouth I think one of the the biggest problems we see right now is the fact that So much of what we do online actually requires training. Is that a fact John?

35:56 That that I know I haven't taken any training Maybe I can go to that university and get so you're taking training to get the no agenda stream calm working You'd have training for that training of learn how to use Twitter fact here it comes I think where you're gonna see the greatest innovation in the coming decade is going to be around that human computer interface Okay, I love it when people get started on this particularly with you John because I believe you were the one who 25 years ago said the mouse would never amount to anything right I never said that You did are you sure I can give you the I can tell exactly what I said I said there when the mouse this is always annoying because people keep dredging this stuff up this I'm like a senator that can't run for president because there's too much baggage whatever

36:42 What happened in 1984 when the mouse was introduced on the Macintosh, I had a laundry list of reasons I didn't think the Macintosh would do well. By the way, most of those things I complained about were all corrected because I actually was challenged by an Apple guy who said, what do you think about this column you wrote back then? And so I said, well here it is. And then I went item by item and every one of these complaints of mine was changed. But the one thing I said about the mouse was the following. I said there's no evidence It's a new device, no one's seen it before. There's no evidence that anybody wants to use these things. Because there was no evidence, it just came out. I never said it was going to fail.

37:18 I have explained this until I'm blue in the face, but people keep cropping it up. It keeps coming up now because every time I complain about it, they bring it up again just to annoy me. I have to say, A, it's working. B, I love reading the comments on your blog and with the knowledge that people just kind of hate you as much as they hate me. So I feel very good about it. Now let's listen because the humor… Different kind of hate. It's a loveful hate. The human computer interface blows Vivek has an idea and think about this I know there are people on second life right now, but imagine a universe. I love it. Imagine a universe Stop stop. He's doing a V. Why does he throw the second life reference in at all? He doesn't make any other reference to he says I know there are people on so it's like Sam's like I'm talking to you saying I know there's somebody eating cheese

38:09 Because there were people they had a whole table of guys like Checklist of things he has to just say it. Oh, well it gets better. Okay people eating cheese out there now But imagine a universe where you have the Star Trek holodeck where you could literally ask the computer To act or ask questions and get answers. Oh my gosh. He just invented Google Unbelievable you can literally do that Google voice search literally does that well imagine a universe imagine a universe with a Holodeck though because you'd have to be able to walk into it and you then you'd have things on computer on computer on Okay, now listen it gets better in the same way if you look at some of these software companies They made it so complicated to interact with

39:03 What's he talking about? You evil software companies! You've made it so complicated to enable us to interact with the data. Listen, listen to what he says. Complicated to interact with their technologies? and at the same time the underlying architecture and the platforms it's almost a chicken and egg question. Okay, I love this. At the same time, what did he say? This is, this is, it's like he's standing in front of VCs pitching a really bad idea. Now the thing that he said there again by the way which got to me What does he mean by it's almost a chicken and egg question? Well, let's listen to it again technologies and at the same time the underlying architecture the underlying architecture and the platform and the platforms It's almost a check. It's almost a chicken and an egg the underlying platform or the Underlying technology of the platform chicken or egg John which one would you like?

40:02 question here comes because a lot of it was built and architected around bandwidth constraints huh a lot a lot of a lot of Microsoft Word was built under bandwidth constraints and it made a big difference well you need training for Windows 7 is a bandwidth constraint thing Oracle was built the way it was because of bandwidth bandwidth constraints these things were all started as as kind of you know network oriented it has nothing none of this has to do anything to do with bandwidth unless you're talking about Twitter well stand by therefore you had to deploy technologies it's just a whole so what he does in this case and this is I've seen this happen time and time again now it's just I'm gonna throw in fact I have to say my partner Ron Bloom used to do this really really well

40:48 You just throw out all kinds of buzzwords one after another and then the audience is just Confused listen to what he comes up with that were much more complicated in terms of interacting and communicating now as broadband deployment and more importantly if you look at the megabits per second how much information can we get through the pipeline is going to be so important. And as new and new software technologies are being introduced, you're going to see a huge change from how applications are architected with skip logic to... Okay, so I'm like, skip logic? Skip logic. Remember I told you the guy was a telemarketer?

41:33 If you look up skip logic, skip logic is basically a tree structure where you go through a questionnaire and the first skip is, are you male or female? I'm female. Oh, we skip to the female questions. So now he's just pulling stuff out of his ass. Skip logic. But it sounds really good and it gets better. binary or cobalt ways of interacting with it. Okay. Yeah, right. Binary or cobalt? What is cobalt? It's a cobalt way of interacting. It's binary or cobalt. What is that? This guy's a genius, I tell you. He's a whiz kid. He's a techno whiz according to the New York Times. A techno whiz. Binary or cobalt.

42:37 binary or COBOL does he mean like COBOL the old programming that's COBOL wasn't it that's COBOL, no it's COBOL, it's pronounced COBOL he got the pronunciation right COBOL I gotta hear it again Actually, go back and play the whole clip without interrupting it. Oh no, I can't do that. Not the whole clip, just the part about skip logic to COBOL. We get through the pipeline is going to be so important. And as new and new software technologies are being introduced, you're going to see a huge change from how applications are architected with skip logic to video and much more human ways of interacting with these applications rather than

43:24 binary or cobalt ways of interacting with those applications because it okay the guy is clearly a genius he's a techno whiz a whiz kid nobody could be more qualified oh my goodness so um... more ahead with you know then we have the other guy which is i think what got O'Reilly irked at me was uh... Anish Anish Chopra. I was looking for some connections because obviously there's an Indian connection here and it's pretty obvious and understandable that expats help each other out in all forms of work and social life. Of course, expats from the Netherlands from time to time get together and eat raw herring together. It seems that expats from India give each other really cool jobs.

44:24 and there's got to be deals going on. And I have to say there's a lot of these guys at Amazon and they're tied into many, many, many, many business ventures. And I'm not against it, that's all fine, but I do have my questions when we've got this guy responsible for potentially billions and billions of dollars in spending, exactly, and he's baking pie charts of binary, step logic, and COBOL. We have to communicate until now, we've had to communicate in binary. Yeah, I sit there typing ones and zeros and ones and zeros into Twitter. So, but interestingly enough, I looked up the owners of Smartronics fully expecting to see an Indian ownership.

45:11 Much to my surprise, which of course blows my entire theory, Mohammed Arshad Javed is one of the three owners, it's him and the Paris brothers, known from Jesse James and the Paris brothers. He's Pakistani. That kind of blew my whole theory right there. Yeah, the Pakistanis, and you don't normally see that kind of, although in the US it's not the Pakistanis and the Indians don't hate each other that much. the you know the same good in terms of cultures is a similarity that's kinda hard to anyway so it did that can I can can do do a solid by I'm on redacting the smartronics deal deal yes we just read it you know what's in but I heard by the way the whole thing is built on Drupal

46:00 What yes, oh this is gonna send them to the through the roof. Are you telling me 18 million dollars to build a Drupal? website That's what I know it's not possible. There's no way no I was it has to be built from it for that kind of money this thing should be built from scratch from from vestigial virgins no I rolled on the thighs of virgins Not because I was reading some of the Blue State Digital who built Whitehouse.gov and they did Obama's site and a number of other sites and this is where... Vivek's right-hand guy kind of pudgy dude who posted all the Who runs the blog? What's his name? Yeah, whatever I make Macon Phillips I think is his name or Mason or something like that. We need a wall of names Yeah, so there was some some chattering going on because blue state digital was pissed off They didn't get the recovery gov contract and my understanding is it's running on Drupal. I

47:04 Well, I don't think recovery.org is going to be a Drupal site. Gov.gov. I keep making that mistake, sorry. Recovery.gov. Stop it. Is going to be run on Drupal because I don't see how they're going to announce or I mean how they're going to rationalize that kind of money. These new programs, software systems out there like Drupal or WordPress or you know any of them our Squarespace that we use for NoAgenda.Squarespace.com, all these things have made it easier to do websites fast and extremely inexpensively. So why would you all of a sudden have to spend 18 million dollars for a website that really, you know, if it cost a million dollars it would be pushing it. And I keep getting emails and all kinds of messages on the drop from people about other governmental

48:02 website revamps around the world max max max half a million dollars is being spent some of them are you like in germany i think i should look it up here uh... they got twenty seven websites for like four hundred thousand euros well here's a right that's that's more like it now let me take a good side just got sent the link to fed spending dot org a project of or and be watch here let me let me interrupt you uh... in germany 300,000 euros for the new German Parliament's website the Parliament's website and that's that's you know, that's a big deal, too I'm sorry federal spending org smartronics Inc contracts to You can look this up go to federal spending org everybody out there and start looking stuff. Don't crash the site smartronics Inc federal

48:57 I, uh, fiscal year 2000 to 2008, the contracts that went to this company, $201 million. These guys know how to sell. Yeah, they do. They made $53 million from full and open competition with only one bid. for what project? God knows. I don't know if there's links to the project specific, but whatever the case is, this company is just amazing. I mean, they have some hooks into something because they really know. I mean, I'm not going to fault them for taking the taxpayers money every chance they get, but I have to say these guys know how to sell because they're amazing and they're getting

49:45 18 million for one crummy Drupal website if it's Drupal. I'm skeptical. I would like to see documentation to prove that. I would like to see it too. Somebody just sent me some documentation. Hey, by the way, it's official on the Drupal website, drupal.org, the website, it's official on Drupal, recovery.gov is on Drupal. Jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs. Let's vote for jobs. Okay guys gals, this is a letter from the recovery gov development team I can confirm one thing Wwe recovery gov is on Drupal we were able to put out this out pretty fast and in the coming months you're going to see how it's going to evolve a lot of dynamic data will be posted there and you'll see a more powerful website on Drupal soon That may have to be the opening of the show John. Let me just mark down the time code Well, there you go an 18 million dollar Drupal website

50:46 Need we say anymore need we you know I'm all you suckers out there who are working for $10,000 are idiots No, and think about all the Great Drupal developers that are out there who would be great to have people I mean we could create jobs I mean there's tons of people who can who are really good at Drupal Oh, yeah, and that did they make some slick stuff, and they could probably out slick the recovery gov for a hundred grand But that's okay So what? I just got a message from my friend. Hey, I got an email from my friend, John. Just came in fresh off the press. My friend David Axelrod. I received one from... Oh yes, I got the David Axelrod letter too. No, no, no, no, this is a new one. It just came in. It just came in. It's a new one. Just a second, because I got one this morning. One hour ago.

51:36 Did you get it one hour ago? No, no, it was like this morning. It was like two or three hours ago. Dear friend, that's my friend, David Axelrod, who is, he's the PR guy. He's Goebbels, right? Uh, well, he's kind of, I think he's more like Goering personally, but Goebbels is okay. This is probably one of the longest emails I've ever sent, but it could be the most important. Doesn't it sound like a Nigerian email scam when it starts off like that? And this is across the country we are seeing vigorous debate about health insurance reform. Unfortunately some of the old tactics we know so well are back. Even the viral emails that fly unchecked and under the radar spreading all sorts of lies and distortions. He's talking about you John!

52:21 I don't send out email. Well, people are sending emails about your piece. Oh yeah. As President Obama said at the town hall in New Hampshire, where we do disagree, let's disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that's actually being proposed. So let's start and chain email of our own. Wow, he's starting to spam. At the end of my email you will find lots of information about health insurance reform distilled into... Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right now you probably... You know... Someone you know probably has a question for you about... That could be answered by what's below. So what are you waiting for? Forward this email.

52:58 And of course it's a link to reality check which is something we're gonna talk about based upon a previous email that came earlier this week from my friend David Axelrod senior advisor to the president but he says. P.S. We launched whitehouse.gov slash reality check this week to knock down the rumors and lies that are floating around the internet. You can find the information below and much, much more. For example, we've just added a video by Nancy Ann DeParle from our health reform office tackling a viral email head on.

53:34 And I'd like to play this for you, John, because it is total double-speak Ministry of Truth stuff. You ready? Yeah, I'm all ears. So the title of the video is The Return of the Viral Email. The Return. The Return. The Return when it is stopped. The Return of the Viral Email. Here she comes, Nancy. Take it away, baby. Q hi, I'm Nancy and a pearl and I'm the director of the White House Office of Health Reform I bet most of you and by the way this whole video is chopped up into bits It's like I've heard of viral emails in fact. Have you heard of viral emails John? Hmm. It must be something new all right here. We go. Come on play play play One of the folks that I work with here at the White House Buffering this buffer you have to you have to hard-core

54:29 The federal government will have direct real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer. Okay, so here are the facts behind that. First of all, I'm pretty sure that this whole effort here... Screw it, let me just pull it back for a second. So, which is debunking and they actually use all these words here about debunking, all these lies. So, this is from the from the proposed health care bill, at least the one that I've read, where the federal government will have direct real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer. Now listen to how she debunks it and what she actually says. Here are the facts behind that. First of all, I'm pretty sure that this whole effort here came from the administrative simplification efforts that the health insurance industry itself has asked for Congress and the administration to undertake.

55:23 Individuals, not the government, will be in charge of their bank accounts just like they are today. The next charge in the email comes from... Did you hear what she says? She says individuals will be in charge of their bank accounts just as it is today. That's not the question. The question is will the government have real-time access to your bank account? Which is... that's the way I read it too. But she's not saying they won't have real-time access. She's saying, oh, you'll still be in charge of your bank account. Do you hear the subtle difference, John? Yes, it works like this. You ask a question, well, I'm afraid that the government is going to be looking at my bank account real time anytime they want to. No, no, no. You're going to have the exact same bank account you had before and you're going to have the same and you'll be using it exactly the same way. Nothing's going to change for you. Or as we say, don't look over here. Nothing to see here.

56:19 Let's play a little bit more of this the videos a little long. This is another example by the way This kind of deceitful thing going on constantly The people are getting sick of by the way. Yeah and it's so blatant. I don't understand how they can put, how he can send a blast email to everyone and then this video. All right let's continue. For Congress and the administration to undertake. Individuals, not the government, will be in charge of their bank accounts just like they are today. The next charge in the email comes from, they say, page 145 of the bill. An employer must auto enroll employees into the government run health public plan. No alternatives. That's the quote from the email.

57:00 I've read the bill. There's absolutely no such requirement in the bill on page 145 or any other page. The email says that on page 239, the bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid, seniors and the poor most affected. Alright, so the bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid, seniors and the poor most affected. So let's listen to the answer to this one. Crappy video. physician services for Medicaid, seniors and the poor most affected. Again, not true. On the contrary, in this section of the bill, the health insurance reform legislation prevents a scheduled 21% cut in the Medicare physician fee schedule. So she's talking about the fee schedule, not about the services.

57:51 It's one of these subtle differences and I'm just blown away. I mean even if they intend to say it, if they're really intending to debunk it, I'm all for that because I would like to have real answers as well. By the way, I just found out that the insurance company that insures our company's medical plan has raised our Our premium our cost by 15 17 percent for next year, so it's not that I'm against reform or basically Getting these asshole insurance companies out of it, but you have to now tell us what you said in the meeting No, I don't think so. That's not a good idea. I Think it's funny. No. I don't think it's very funny. It wasn't funny at the time either

58:45 But anyway, go on. You wouldn't mind it if these people were honest and straightforward and instead of trying to say, you know, they get criticized for this stuff, they'd be better off ignoring it. If somebody wants to send out a viral email moaning and groaning about this, that and the other thing, they can find the one or two things in there that are really genuinely wrong, and there's probably a couple, and just ignore the rest of it. I mean, why are they going to... why say, oh no, you're going to still run the banks, your bank account the way you've always run your bank account. The government's not going to run your bank account. That's what the question was. Is the government going to be monitoring the bank account? Do they have real-time access? And I read it literally, we read that on this show. It literally says there will be, for debits and credits, there will be a real-time connection between the government and your bank account. It says it, but she's not debunking it that way. That just angers me.

59:35 Yeah, well it's part of this dishonesty. You know, I mean you can talk honestly all you want, it always reminds me of Microsoft in the old days. They would keep using the word innovation. I wrote a bunch of columns on this, you know, tracking the use of the word innovation at Microsoft because they had no innovation. So they figured if they kept using the word enough, people would assume, oh they must have, yeah Microsoft, Microsoft, oh innovation comes to mind. So if you're going to say open and honest and transparent, keep saying it. Just say it a million times so when you think of Obama, you think of transparent because the word has been used a lot. But it's bogus and the public is are complete idiots for following along with this kind of a thing without being more skeptical This is one of the things that really bugs me by the way about you know, some of the feedback I got in that column I don't want to go back to it, but I'm gonna just mention this one thing whatever happened when I was a kid Wait a minute. Wait, wait a minute John. Can we do the jingle now? Oh, this will be a pet peeve Yes, John C. DeVore X Hey

1:00:33 the incomparable Jeff Smith everybody, thejeffsmith.com. Great. Awesome. I'll play it after you're done. Okay, go. So people moan and groan. There seems to be some issue with anybody standing up and criticizing or saying anything about anything nowadays. We're talking about sheep. People use the mock at, you know, the good talk show host call them sheeple and people use the term, but everyone, there's this, when I was a kid, You know, in the 60s and 70s, there was a bumper sticker that used to float around and it was a bumper sticker that was mostly employed by liberals, Democrats, progressives, you know, people who are radicals. They wanted a revolution. They wanted to legalize marijuana. They wanted, you know, the Republicans out. And the bumper sticker said, Question Authority.

1:01:22 everybody drove around with this bumper sticker, question authority, question authority. These same people, if you question authority, they get in your face about it because you're not supposed to question authority, you're supposed to listen to like, for example, what Tim O'Reilly says because he's authority and he thinks Vivek's a good guy, so don't question that. So O'Reilly of course has 900,000 followers on his Twitter account. I've got a mere 59. He's got 900,000 because he's in tight with the Twitter folks and in fact for some unknown reason he's got one of those qualified verified authenticated name Buttons at the top of his site. I have applied for this people are copying me You know saying they're me and they do it in the chat room

1:02:12 I'm under a kind of a constant attack. They won't give me the authentication, but they'll give it to Tim O'Reilly. And you know, and then also promote him to get his numbers up. But he's a, he's an icon of authority and you don't question authority. What happened to these same people that were running the bumper stickers that said question authority? They don't question authority anymore. They're a bunch of monkeys. John C. DuBorac's Pet Peeve of the Day. Brought to you by Alpo. I Hey John, I want to congratulate you. Sorry about that. No, no, I like that. You know why it is? It's because Tim O'Reilly promised not to sue the government and Vivek Kundra over the use of Government 2.0. That's why he's in good graces there. Because of course he came up with Web 2.0. And he sues people who use it. Yes, except for... That's sweet. John, I'm going to send you a link right now. Congratulations, you did it. I didn't think you could actually pull it off. I owe you a full bar of gold.

1:03:11 I can see that you've put together a wonderful crop circle. This was this showed up on Woodborough Hill, which of course is the showed up three days ago, which is right near Wiltshire. Great job, John. You're welcome. Once again, another this is a beautiful crop circle. The owl. You like that? The owl. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was a dedication to the bohemian club. Yeah. And I bohemian grove. And it's really good. I mean all the detail is there. I mean I didn't think you could pull it off in that short amount of time. It was, it didn't take long. Dude, when will you start just believing a little bit that this is not man-made? People, this is, these things come out every three days. It's not from outer space. I think it's harmonics from the earth. Balls from the balls.

1:04:09 My challenge still remains to you my friend. This is a beautiful one and of course the link will be in the show notes at noagenda.mevo.com It's just beautiful. Meanwhile, of course while the government is actually listening in on you while we're being screwed left and right, the big news or as I should say, and now back to real news, this will be all over the techosphere Apparently the Palm Pre, if you're an owner of one, is uploading your data to home base, including your GPS location.

1:04:55 Which I think is pretty nice. Why do these companies dream this stuff up and why do they do it? They always get busted. But it's anonymized. No one actually knows who you are. There's a dot there they can take out with their black helicopter. But you know this will be a huge story. Everyone's going to be like, oh, Pomprey, they're evil. And all the other evil shit that actually goes on people just don't look at anymore. No care No, but they're all wiped out about there. You know something the iPhones doing I'm going galt. That's what I'm doing I'm looking for a place. You know my plane is coming John Accompanied me to the hangar yesterday my new hangar at Oakland Airport first way to take the beef out of it Bring along your bolt cutters

1:05:52 But the plane will be ready. I'm sure when I find where the where Galt's Gulch is in Colorado, I'll be flying there. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think Colorado is a good choice. I think it's kind of a radioactive state. Although I don't think Wyoming is much less radioactive. But I think the opportunities for hanging out in Wyoming are much higher. I think there's more. Montana seems to have some interesting spots. Montana, the problem with Montana, I've always thought about these states. People go to Montana then they die way too. They just drop dead. I think the place is totally poisonous or something You know that when you copper too much copper in your Google, you know, where is Galt's Gulch? And of course, I'm referring to Atlas Shrugged. I know you hate it. Here we go Yeah, there's actually a lot of people who have built places where you can buy property called Galt's Gulch. It's it's pretty interesting and it's got communities

1:06:43 Well, you need a place, you need about 50 acres or more, some place in the middle of nowhere that has the right kind of environment for a landing strip. And then you just land there and you just park your car and you know... But of course the trick is we need to take all the great thinkers and producers and they all need to go on strike. That's what has to happen. So you will get an invite, John. No doubt about it. But you'll be one of the last ones. To the house in the middle of nowhere? To go on strike, yeah. To go on strike? Yeah. You read the book, didn't you? No, I never read Atlas Shrugged. You're kidding me! You've been ridiculing me over this and you've never even read the book? I read the Cliffs Notes. Does that count? No! At least listen to the audiobook. It's only 56 hours.

1:07:31 Go read this book John. I don't have time. I'm gonna be... I'll drop dead halfway through it and I'll be so disappointed. It's a great book. I see I don't even want to read The Fountainhead for two reasons. One, I like this one so much. Two, you keep telling me that I remind you of the main figure in the book. So now the main character. So I'm already worried about it. Yes, you're somewhat reminiscent of her type of character. The big tall blonde Superman. Oh, well now I do have to read it. But how would you disagree? You've never read the Fountainhead. No, but if you read Atlas Shrugged, and I've said this many times on the show, it is written in 1957, happening right now. It is exactly what is going on with the previous four administrations. It's probably been a buildup for a hundred years if you think about it. It's all about really what the military industrial complex is, the pharmaceutical industrial complex, and an actual solution

1:08:43 to rebooting the world I like it you know it's it's not doable or not news not there's a buzzword of the day ladies and gentlemen reboot I'm surprised kundra didn't use reboot in his in one of his stay tuned listen I'm telling you we need instead of all this binary and cobalt skip logic stuff we've got a reboot the world we got a lot of I'm saying I would hope people up by the way we had a really paltry bunch of contributions this week I mean it was it was for all the work you did for all the and we you actually did do some work on this I mean 50% were usual yeah yeah 50% less and this is in in the face of the fact that everybody loved our Sunday show

1:09:35 Yeah, I got a lot of good comments as well. People, you haven't heard the Sunday shows, you should go back and listen to it. And I have to tell you that I myself spent this past weekend, Sunday night, donating to a lot of sites where I get information from. $50 here, $100 there. I think I probably shelled out $500 or $600 just on donating to sites that actually do some research. Yeah, well that's less money than we got. Oh, we got more than that? No, we got, no I'm sorry, that's your money that we got. We got like nothing. We got like one or two contributions for 50 bucks and one for 120 and that's it. The uh... The thing you should note is that people other should notice when and I actually it's not a bad practice even though it takes a little getting used to Adam when he's on the streets, and there's somebody you know like a Homeless person some vagrant or a person that's just down on their luck asks him for money. Hey, buddy. You got a quarter I got to take the bus he always gives them money always use that he gives literally gives everybody that asked Street, yeah, I do five bucks and always and and a smoke

1:10:38 Well, well, they always say man, can I have a smoke? Say yeah, you can have a smoke if you're here. Have mine because it's all rolled up ready to go. It's just tobacco, right? And they always think oh, it's a joint. Yeah, I always give them money. Absolutely. Although I shouldn't according to my guru. In England, you give somebody money and they put people pull off, you know, pull their cars over and start berating you. It happened to me once, I guess. I said, what are you doing giving that guy money? Well, then these are the people of course who are no longer counted in our unemployment figures. Once you're off unemployment, what is it, after six months, then you become a bum statistic? Yes, you're not counted for anything.

1:11:17 you're done. You're no longer a person. I got a lot of emails... Let me finish the pitch and tell people to go to noagenda.squarespace.com Give me the two names who did donate. I'd have to go dig them up now because I don't have a plan. We'll do it Sunday. Yeah, Sunday we'll give them their kudos and then But the point is, noagenda.squarespace.com, there's a button there you can click on and then go to dvorak.org slash NA. We like to do three shows a week, we can't. and we, you know, really starving to death. We're not quitting the show ever, but the thing that you really want us to avoid, like the plague, is getting sponsors to sponsor the show because that is a corrupting influence on a political show like this. It's not a corrupting influence on a show that talks about gizmos and gadgets and what happened in tech this week and the fact that Intel has a new chip. It's not that corrupting there, believe me. Oh, you're talking about Intel so much because they advertise. No, no, that's not it.

1:12:16 On a show like this where we're digging into all kinds of weird stuff, we cannot afford to have anybody sponsor the show. You have to pay for this. Now I know there's a lot of people who listen to this show and they listen to it every week and we provide something like if you do the numbers, if you do the numbers that we do three hours a week of programming, three hours, people spend 20, 30, 40, 50 bucks, maybe more to go to a two-hour movie But the three hours that we provide, they are just saying, well it's free, those two dummies can talk all they want. I've got no responsibility for it. Yeah, you do have responsibility for it. So go to noagenda.squarespace.com or noagenda.mivio.com, I don't think we have a bug there, do we? Or dvorak.org slash NA. And think about the fact that we're producing a movie a week in entertainment value for you, plus information. And think about, where's the 20 bucks we get?

1:13:12 Where's the 20 bucks? I mean, we're not getting a dollar. We're getting on average, considering the number of people that listen to this show, about one cent per listener. Not even. Not even. I don't think it's one cent. Yeah, it's ridiculous. And you believe me, the show is not going to be any good yet. It'll still be the two of us joking around. But if we ever have to bring sponsors in to pay for it, you're not going to like it. I mean, you're still listening and you're going to be stuck, but you can only blame yourself. But seriously, we just we need to step it up a little bit. Now, let me give you some information that will actually be worth your donation. I received many, many emails for some reason this MIT study of the validity of tinfoil hats is circulating. Did you get any of these, John? I blogged this like three years ago. I know, it's literally from 2005 or 2006. Someone found it again, it's like, oh here's empirical evidence, whatever. Let me give you some tinfoil information that is actually good.

1:14:13 If you wear tinfoil across your chest, Preferably with a piece of cardboard under it, and you'll know why in a second. So a piece of cardboard under your chest, maybe do your back as well. Now this is only if you're going to a town hall meeting for example, you might want to use it for that. Put the tin foil, preferably three layers of tin foil over that and gaffer tape it, but not too much. If you get tased, it will actually short out the taser. You have a website that documents this? Yes I do. I do not have a video that documents it. So if anyone feels like documenting that the taser shorts out on the tinfoil, so the idea is... First do it on a dummy. Right. So the two... well...

1:15:03 or your brother, little brother, Mikey. So the idea is the taser darts go into the cardboard and they simultaneously are shorted out by the tinfoil. Apparently it arcs out immediately and nothing happens. Of course you still have to spasm around to look like you're actually getting tased and you have to say like, don't tase me bro! So that is some free information for you. Some guy walking around in a tinfoil suit Yeah, yeah, you're giving the taste. Yeah, you got nothing on me. Boom. Boom. Boom. That guy takes a lot of shots to bring down Free information. Yeah, we could do another another maybe five minutes John if I mean I've there's there's lots of stuff what's going on?

1:15:54 Actually, I did want to mention the Gitmo Nation Roundtable podcast, which is, I didn't know about this, it's actually in episode number five now. A couple of our listeners, producers get together on Skype after the show and then they talk about a couple of the topics. From that spun actually way back machine copy of George Sodeny's website. Yeah. Sodeny of course being the complete crazy programmer who went into the gym and killed women. So we've all seen the website the mainstream media attended us to or brought our attention to but when you see his actual, I'm looking for it right now,

1:16:41 when you see his actual resume from what was it 2006 I believe wow it's really laid out nicely the formatting is perfect I mean not an idiot at all oh really that's interesting I thought you were on that thread man I thought you saw that no I didn't I didn't see the old stuff that's interesting yeah one of our producers found that so anyway so links to that as well as the Gitmo Nation Roundtable, which I think is Gitmo Nation, or GE, I don't know what it is. I'll put the link in the show notes, but it's on Mevio. It's pretty good, couple of guys on Skype, and they're all doing research. Here it is, gitmonationroundtable.mevio.com. It's not bad. Well, I have one piece of interesting news, it kind of goes back into the, I guess it's off topic for today, but it should be mentioned. I think you should play the real news theme.

1:17:47 And now, back to real news. Zombie ants controlled by fungus. Parasite manipulates infected ants into dying where fungus prefers to be. In a bizarre parasitic death sentence, a fungus turns carpenter ants into the walking dead and gets them to die in a sport that's perfect for the fungus to grow and reproduce in a spot actually. Scientists have no clue how the fungus takes control of the brains of the ants so effectively. I've seen this, yeah. But a new study in September issue of American Naturalist reveals an incredible set of strategies that ensue.

1:18:33 goes on and on. There's video of this as well. There's a time-delayed video. Yeah, it's kind of eerie. It sounds creepy. I wonder if it's got anything to do with that. I wonder if those same fangs are trying to get control of the bats that they're killing. Finally, from my side, listener producer Sefer Aman went to smallsteps.gov, which we talked about two or three episodes ago, which are these handy tips from your government and from the Health and Human Services about how you can actually live a healthier lifestyle. We missed a very important one, John. We missed number 40. Remember, these are the tips like

1:19:12 Get the newspaper yourself. Or... Don't eat portion... ow. Don't eat a portion of food bigger than your hand. TURN DOWN YOUR SPEAKERS! Number 40 paste the sidelines at kids athletic games. No we I did that one I didn't hear that one. That's like it's like it act like a child predator Pace the sidelines at kids athletic games that will make you live healthier lives That's that's weird. I thought that was pretty creepy

1:19:49 to say that it is because this is exactly what you'd look like that you'd be arrested following this advice. You can always print out the web page and say, hey man, I'm just following orders. All right. So on my blog, since we're doing a blog showdown, Massachusetts deputizes dentists to perform swine flu vaccinations. I heard about not just dentists, but pharmacists and paramedics, pharmacists. Yeah. Actually pharmacists in California, many of them do vaccinations or they do shots. Let me at least do one more and this will be my final one because I would like to say now as an airman and a member of the aviation community, I would strongly advise you no longer fly with Scandinavian Airlines known as SAS and here's why.

1:20:37 Aviation Group Scandinavian Airlines Systems said on Monday, it has designed a new landing method for aircraft which can slash fuel consumption and emissions of carbon dioxide. The new technique involves planes gliding into land following an optimum route mapped out by satellite. It could save around 100 kilograms of fuel in twin-engine jets. Listen to me. Okay ladies and gentlemen, we're turning off the engines. We're gliding. Listen, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. This is like my grandfather used to have this. He would coast.

1:21:13 He had this Volkswagen Rabbit and we go down a hill and he push in the clutch. He's like, let's coast it saves fuel. I'm like, Grandpa, this fucking dangerous man. You've got to be like, it's actually against the law in California to do that. Coast don't do that. So now they're going to coast your jet into this is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. Dumb and potentially dangerous. Well, it saves carbon dioxide. It saves carbon dioxide. It can't be that dumb. I feel it's potentially dangerous. I really do. This is dumb. And by the way, it doesn't make sense because this is just not how approaches work. You want to be in control and the planes are not designed for that. That's called an emergency landing when you run out of fuel. Yeah, that's basically it. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to make an emergency landing into our airport. I hope you enjoyed the flight. You have to lay the foam down for him. Well, planes are designed to...

1:22:09 to do that by the way. You're going to Europe on Saturday. Yes. So I will be doing the show from Amsterdam on Sunday and then the Thursday show will be from another undisclosed location. I'm actually going to be away for two weeks but the show will continue even during my so-called vacation. You're gonna be away for two weeks? I thought you were gonna be away for one week. Well, really vacation for one week and then I'm working the other week, but I'm in London and Amsterdam. My daughter's birthday. She's doing... So you'll be back on the air somewhere on Sunday, the following Sunday? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Dude, I wouldn't mess up the show. Uh-oh. Here it comes. No, I don't want to hear the dog again. It's not the dog. The dog's not in the room.

1:22:57 Coming to you from the crackpot command center embedded in my minimum security containment cell in the heart of Gitmo Nation West San Francisco, California I'm Adam Curry and from northern Silicon Valley where it's turning out to be a splendid day I'm just finishing off my glass of sour sour lemon juice. I'm John C. Dvorak We'll talk to you again on Sunday right here on no agenda