Did Edwards cop a feel under the table?
Is Dick Cheney as sexy as he looks?
Did Cheney win the debate?
Did we actually play another Prince song in today’s Trade Secrets?
The answer to at least one of these questions is yes!
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Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated.
♪ Throw ’em up ♪
♪ Street secrets ♪
♪ Throw ’em up ♪
♪ Throw ’em up ♪
♪ Street secrets now ♪
Hi everybody, welcome to Trade
Secrets.
Today is Wednesday, October 6th , 2004.
I’m Adam Curry in Belgium.
Dave Weiner here in Seattle.
And you’re sounding mighty fine , my friend.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah.
So– We like it.
Yeah, we like it, man.
We like it very much.
How you doing, Dave? Pretty good.
Yeah? Pretty good.
We had a debate last night and it was kind of, it was weird, but you know, interesting times.
I didn’t see the debate because it was, you know, it was another 3 AM deal for me here if I wanted to see it.
And I was actually, I was kind of hoping you were gonna do another one of your, you know, let’s listen along to Dave comment on the debate.
Oh, listen, then you would have heard was me snoring ‘cause it really put me to sleep.
Really, it was that bad? It was boring.
It wasn’t that it was that bad, it was just that it wore on you .
I mean, they were extremely belligerent and, you know, and I think that they had pre pped Edwards basically that, you know, Chaney’s gonna be this grouchy old dude, so you have to turn the grouch iness up yourself.
And so they were both sort of like, you know, whining at each other .
(laughing) Okay, so– And it was like, it got old after a while, it was like, “Oh, okay, great, so you guys don’t like each other, I get it. " So no fireworks, no– Yeah, well, there was actually more fireworks than this one than in the presidential one, but the presidential one was sort of like, you’re sitting on the edge of your chair the whole time.
Yeah, because it’s so presidential.
You know, they’re gonna be, well, they’re gonna be some just great mixes coming out of that one.
(laughing) Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
There were.
It’s so cool.
Did you ever chance to listen to the source code today yet? Haven’t, no.
Okay, ‘cause I found another one, I found a great song which was “Trigger Happy,” and it’s a real song, you know, well produced and everything.
Another– Yeah, another– I’m still, I would lag you by about, generally these days by about 24 hours, so I’m really up on the Peter Sellers singing, “She loves you,” I got that one .
Yeah, that was a classic, actually.
That was, I’ve heard that one before, but it just kind of fell into my iPod the other day.
Now that wasn’t really Peter Sellers, was it, or? I know that Peter Sellers did an album like that.
He also did– I think that was– Yeah, I think it was, yeah, he did “Hard Days Night,” he did, what was it, does she loves you, and she also did, he also did " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” in the same– No, no.
Yeah, yeah, I’ll look it up online later.
Are you sure that wasn’t William Shatner, he did– He did exactly the same, he did exactly the same, yeah.
He did “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” I don’t think he did “Hard Days Night. " (laughing) Why are we discussing the disc ography of William Shatner? (laughing) Oh man.
Listen, it was really funny, I heard an interview with William Shatner, I think I was like in Tennessee , it was on a drive across country, and the funny thing about it was, is that he was serious, and he’s– He’s deadly serious.
William’s kinda cool, everybody ’s making fun of it, but he thought he was adding something to the culture.
Do you know what his big thing is, you know what he’s really into? ‘Cause I know him, I’ve met him a couple, I’ve interviewed him.
His big thing is horses.
No kidding, really.
Yeah, and he has a web blog, his daughter keeps a web blog, BillShatner. com, and it’s current every single day, and it’s about, you know, Bill ’s appearances, Bill’s horses, yeah, it’s really good.
How about it? Sorry? Have it like a category for his hair, does it have a category for his hair? Why is it people who are losing their hair that are always ragging on people’s hair? You know, what’s up with that? (laughing) Listen, we’re all losing our hair.
Yeah, I know.
I’m doing okay.
I know you, I’m doing okay.
(laughing) All excepting yours, Julie, that’s true.
You were blessed with incredible hair, I know.
I’m lucky that way, boy.
So.
Well, it reminds me of the time in 2000, you and I were walking somewhere in Greenwich Village, coming out of some blier’s or whatever, and you said, you know, all ge eks like you and me, and I stopped, I had to look at , come on, Adam, you’re not a geek.
No, I remember very well.
I think it was sort of like, it was like, you know, I don’t know, whatever.
No, I remember this.
I remember this, I remember.
And it was, it was such a let down, because at that point I was like, oh man, I’m hanging with the real geeks now.
And then all of a sudden it’s like, no, you can’t be a part of our little team.
It’s funny, the grass is always greener, isn’t it? Yeah.
I mean, like you’re a TV star, you’re a TV star.
Somebody needs to tell you that , you’re a TV star.
Everybody now, yeah.
You need to hear that.
You know, video killed the radio star though, Dave, you know that, right? I heard that one, I heard that one.
So the radio industry is tuning into podcasts.
They’re waking up, sure.
It’s really a thing.
Yeah, that NAB prediction that you made, well, we saw a newsletter, and at the top of that newsletter, I forget which, you leaked to it, right? Yeah, it’s the radio and internet newsletter, that’s what it was.
Exactly, and at the top of the thing, he says, if you’re gonna be at the NAB, in fact, I’m watching CNN right now, and they’re at the NAB.
At the NAB.
First Limbaugh is giving a speech.
Yeah.
Hey, y’all wanna buy some pills for me? Oh, yeah, yeah, I would actually.
(laughing) Oh, Patricia has some great pills.
I tell you this, Patricia has some great pills.
Yeah, actually, that’s what they’re talking about, Adam, they’re talking about.
Exactly that.
Yeah, Patricia has some great pills that she’s gonna try.
Medical records, what? Record seizure did not affect Limbaugh’s privacy.
Wow, wonderful.
What did they say? He’s going to hang out with Martha Stewart.
(laughing) Play some golf with Martha.
(laughing) I was gonna say, Patricia has some great pills for all the heart trouble, and I gotta find out what the name is, but she says, you take one of those, and if you have any anxiety, just remove the anxiety, it’s wonderful.
That’s gotta be Xanax.
Xanax, that’s it, Xanax, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, oh well.
Yeah, you could tell when they gave Bill Clinton the Xanax, so he was in there pretty.
He got real mellow.
Back-up surgery.
Yeah, he wasn’t worried about anything.
He stopped calling Larry King at that point.
(laughing) He sort of let it all go.
Exactly, exactly.
Gary Bush, what’s the difference? Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Okay, so.
So is this lag, and I hear an echo? There’s an echo, and I hear a lag, so it’s like, this is choppy today.
Really? Okay, I don’t have an echo.
You’re coming through fine, but what we really wanted to try and set up, which I would have loved, is to have you record your voice locally on MP3, and then just send me the file, and I wanted to sync them up, but couldn’t get that to work.
I hate that, I hate that.
No, that’s the story of my life .
That’s the story of my life, Adam.
We couldn’t get it to work.
Couldn’t get it to work? We couldn’t hook up.
That’s what it’s gonna, that’s my epitaph.
It’s gonna save that on my tomb stone.
He couldn’t get it to work.
(laughing) It didn’t work.
(laughing) It didn’t work.
(laughing) No, that’s great.
Yeah, well, yeah.
So I heard you a bit about– At least you could have a good laugh about it.
Yeah, I heard you a bit about security on the morning coffee nose.
By the way, good morning coffee nose.
Your best ones are done at late at night, I think.
It was– Yeah, isn’t that funny how that works? Yeah, no, it was good, but the whole bit about privacy , and it was just, I played a bit on the source code, ‘cause it was, you know, the stuff you don’t think about , you get so easy with your data, and you forget about it.
You forget what’s going on, and shit starts to happen.
Not me.
I’m doing all my banking on the internet now, and I don’t even know if I wanna say that on a podcast.
Don’t worry, we’re not gonna tell anyone else.
But yeah, sure.
But the security is appalling on these machines, you know? And– How does your bank do security? I just got an email.
Huh! Huh! (laughing) I laugh, I mean.
Yeah.
You know, it’s got so many holes in it, it’s ridiculous.
And then today is really funny.
After recording that piece, I got a spam that somehow rout ed itself to my friend’s mailbox, so I actually saw it.
And they were offering me 10 free Visa Mastercard numbers if I joined this site.
In other words, this was a, yeah, they said, “No, you can have 10 for free, “and then you’d have to pay after that. " You know, it’s sort of like, oh , cool.
Oh, don’t worry, I think I can withdraw enough to pay for that.
Yeah, right.
So the next thing is gonna be body parts.
Yeah.
Well, I do online banking, and my bank has a card reader.
You put your bank card in, it gives you a challenge string, which is kind of the way I’m used to doing it from the old Unix days.
And then you type that challenge string in, and then you’re in.
So there’s a separate authentication process step in the middle.
You don’t have that with your bank? No, none of that.
Oh, really? Yeah.
No.
That doesn’t sound good.
I mean, I’ve tried to put rules on the other end where I’ve said to them, if there’s anything other than this exact amount transfer , I mean, I’ve got two accounts, right? One is where, you know, is a brokerage account where I keep most of my money, right? And then the other one is my checking account where I write checks from, you know? And so that’s, again, and you know, I transfer money from the brokerage account into the regular account on a fairly, you know, regular basis.
And I’ve tried to tell them at the brokerage account, never accept a transaction for anything other than this exact amount.
Right.
And if it’s anything, just reject it.
Well, I tested it.
Yeah, it doesn’t work, does it? No.
They’re perfectly happy to transfer whatever amount I have .
But you know, you just leave your money in your investment account, and it’ll dwindle all by itself.
You don’t have to do anything.
Well, no, I haven’t invested.
Are you kidding? What do you mean it’ll dwindle? I’m doing really well.
Really? Oh, OK.
Yeah, yeah, I’m making shit loads of money.
I mean, I mean, I have also lost shit loads of money.
I mean, it all kind of evens out in the end.
But actually, net net, I’m making money.
This year, actually, it’s been really good.
Yeah, I haven’t been in the market for three years.
Really? So what do you do? You just keep it under your pillow or something? I’m sitting on it right now.
Really? You just keep it in your ass.
OK, that’s cool.
Right there with the steel rod, right? It’s a real tight wad, man.
So that was good, that bit you did.
I mean, I can see the whole iP od, our thing is developing really, really nicely now.
The directory looks great.
I have to link to the directory today so everybody can see what the other side is.
I was thinking.
I wanted it to look better.
Maybe I should ask– give Brian Bell an assignment to come up with a nice theme.
This looks so– You know? Well, that would be cool.
Brian’s time is hard to come by .
But of course, his work is absolutely the best.
Yeah, I love what he does.
But he does it commercially, right? He does themes.
He does those for a living or doesn’t do that anymore? I thought he did that.
I didn’t.
Well, I don’t want to– I can’t speak for Brian.
I mean, basically, I don’t know .
He did the white on our injects and L button that has become so ubiquitous.
Yeah, that’s cool.
I said to him, Brian, give me something.
Give me something that’ll represent my RFS feed.
Right.
And then he asked us some basic parameters.
And I gave them to him.
And being nuts, it came back.
And now it’s the standard that everybody’s fucking with.
Yeah, from Apple to– You name it.
Oh, Apple.
Well, yeah, Apple’s fucking with it.
Yeah, they changed the colors.
You know, they changed the colors.
Yeah, fuck that shit.
Right.
So I was talking with the Microsoft guys the other night.
And they were asking me, what’s going on with Google and Yahoo and the rest of those guys? And I said, it’s really funny.
But the techies are the ones that basically– Zigg when I asked them the zag.
But the publishing industry goes straight down the middle of the road.
They don’t innovate.
They don’t– they just basically are being really compatible.
And I said, Microsoft’s been one of the biggest supporters of this.
And Apple has too.
I mean, Apple’s RSS has been exemplary.
It’s been really cool.
Azure has Microsoft.
And so he asked about that.
I said, don’t you change.
Don’t even think about change.
But it’s funny how that works out.
I mean, engineers just– whatever reason– you know, the big picture is, hey, we’d all be a lot better off if we did this sit the same way and that we competed on the basis of the quality of our service and our innovation in other areas.
But somehow that big picture– it’s a shortcut they can use.
And so you end up with Google offering Adam feeds for Gmail, but not R SS feeds.
Interesting that Evan left, huh ? Yeah.
And you know what? After the left, he signed up for BligerCon.
So maybe there’s some for the world.
I mean, I still try to figure out what the hell happened there.
Why all of a sudden do they become so hostile to RSS at Google? And what’s the upside? Why? What do they get for being such jerks about this stuff? And I don’t know.
I mean, I have a new rule, by the way, that every time I mention the name Google, I have to put $100 in a jar somewhere.
Oh, boy.
It’s a joke, Adam.
That’s a joke.
Well, no, I was going to send you my paper.
Just drop it in my tip jar there, Dave.
No problem.
We’ll accept it.
Oh, cool.
We’ll accept it from you.
Actually, it reminds me of money.
We’re going to have to start raising money for BligerCon pretty soon.
Yeah, you’re going to do a PayPal thing for that? I am.
And I just was working on in the last hour an RSVP page where people who aren’t going to be able to make it will be able to say, hey, I’m not going to be able to make it so that we can make room for people who are going to be able to make it and really want to come .
And we’re going to juggle things.
I think we actually will put something opposite the podcasting session now.
Because the question is, will more than 160 people show up at that time? And the answer is, yeah, there probably will be more than 160 people.
And rather than having them standing out in the hall making a lot of trouble, let’s give them something to do.
Is how many people can sit in a room for a session? Well, I have on the grid, which is at www. bligercon. org/iii/sch edule.
If you look at that, in the left-hand margin, the rooms are listed and the capacities are also listed.
So I’ll bring these up and I’ll answer your question.
I’m not going to fire up any browsers.
Yeah, that’s a good idea.
Well, I guess I’m firing up the browsers.
You were talking about– just going back a second, you were talking about how we should have all this stuff work the same.
And it hit me last night.
I saw that someone had made a podcast icon that you could attach your RSS feed to, so just like an XML icon, which is, of course, a really good idea.
But then we bumped into the holy grail of web logs where we can’t have one uniform podcast icon if we’re expecting it to auto-s ubscribe since we have 15 different iPod or engines out there.
And that’s going to be my next call to the community, the iPod or development community, is can we come up with a standardized subscription mechanism so we can actually have a podcast icon? You know, that’s the same problem that RSS has.
And I’m getting the echoes really bad right now, so– Oh, really? Yeah, so– and there is a solution to that problem.
So that’s kind of what I wanted to say is, you know, it’s like if you come up with a solution, great.
If you don’t, we will have them to offer soon, I think.
Right.
There is a way to solve that problem.
I think it’s with a centralized service and a little bit of user preferences.
A centralized service for the subscriptions, you mean? Yeah, to do the translation so that you tell it– in this case, the iPod is an aggregator, right? And you tell it what aggregator you’re using.
The reason is if you try to set a standard on the desktop for what these guys do, then you won’t be able to run more than one.
Exactly.
So they kind of all have to do it differently.
I mean, you should– you know, it sounds stupid to have two iPoders, but let’s say you want to try another one out.
But in the meantime, you have to keep listening to the things you subscribe to.
Right.
Well, you’re not going to want to throw the old one off until you’re actually sure that the new one works.
So they’re right there.
You kind of need to have them not collide with each other and not all do it the same way.
On the other hand, I kind of wonder why you even need to do that.
Because an iPod or a podcast feed is just an RSS 2. 0 feed.
Oh, yeah.
Why not use exactly the same mechanism? Right.
But that’s what I’m– yeah.
OK.
The same mechanism.
Right.
I’d like to use the same mechanism, but there’s a back end that’s not baked into the iPoders yet.
Right.
They don’t have a– right.
They don’t have a web server running and all that stuff.
Yeah.
Since they’re not web servers, that’s probably not going to be that easy to do.
No, exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
And although, on the other hand , you’re right.
Everyone’s pretty much– anyone who’s used an aggregator by now, I think, knows, OK, there is going to be some copy/ paste involved.
And it’s not a big deal.
But iPoders is all about simplicity, right? Right.
And you’re doing really good work there, making it really simple.
But your previous statement is just right on there.
There’s nothing we can do.
Other than if we own the browser at them, then there would be a lot we could do.
But we don’t own the browser.
So we’re basically fucked.
Yaw.
Yaw.
Yeah.
So the directory, I think– let ’s talk about that for a minute.
On the iPod or not, we’re sure.
I think what’s going to– yeah.
I mean, the redirect is happening right now.
So the site, it will look a lot better for everybody, although very much like it looked.
You know, there’s a very smooth transition here.
It’s just going to get better.
And sort of things, bugs were fixed, and things look better.
But maybe it even performs a bit better, because it’s not running on an overburden server anymore.
But then what are the next steps? It occurred to me that– then you’ve got a phenomenal directory there.
And I think that we ought to develop that.
And however– We just go with categories, you mean? Well, what other people contribute to it? One of the nice things about O PML– which, by the way, that is an OPML directory you’re working on– is that you can include other O PML directories in your directory.
So if you wanted to delegate some part of that to some other author who wanted to maintain a piece of that directory, all they would have to do is produce an OPML document.
And then make sure that’s on the public web so that the server software can access it.
And then whenever they update it within an hour, our server will pick up those updates.
Oh, yeah, right.
I remember how that works, yeah .
It’s a way to sort of branch out, cover it.
Yeah.
It’s a good time to use it.
I mean, it would be nice to see that OPML gets well used in this context, where there was a lot of fighting over and a lot of sort of good things when it came to our creators.
Like people that would output things but change the names of things.
And you’d ask them, why did you change the name of that? Oh, I just didn’t like the name that you used.
And I’d go, come on.
Why do you do that? So the hope here is that we can bootstrap something that is because podcasting should be very broad.
It should cover basically every human activity.
So the directories should be very broad, too.
Right, right.
OK, yeah, that’s good.
So indeed, I remember now how that worked.
If you just need to produce an OPML document and send a URL, and then I just hook a node into that URL, right? And then it’s seamless.
And then when you click on that , even though it’s being sucked in from somewhere else or cached or whatever, then is it cached or is it a live update? It’s cached.
It’s cached.
It’s cached for up to an hour.
Where after an hour, it throws out the cache and rereads it.
That’s how you do the updates.
And the suggest a link feature, when somebody’s browsing the part of the directory that someone else authored, the suggestions go to that person.
They get the full– Oh, OK, so if someone else– oh , right.
So it won’t come to me.
It’ll go to the person who’s maintaining that particular node or the directory.
Because of course, that would be– yeah.
Oh, right.
And I also want to– and this probably will have to wait until after BloggerCon, because it’s going to keep me pretty busy.
But I also want to make it so that basically if somebody suggests a link to you and you want to use it, that it should just be a one-step operation.
You should just basically– Click.
–click on a link and say it that says yes.
Yeah, right.
There you go.
And not have to go edit anything.
And also stuff that– And shorten that process.
Yeah, also stuff that I was thinking as I was using the directory myself.
So in the suggest a link, it actually gives you a space.
And people are using that.
Why this link should be in the directory.
But right now, we’re just linking to the RSS feeds.
It might be– is there a way to do it so you can also go to the website? Well, that would require customization of the directory code.
It was never designed for that purpose.
But I’m totally into doing that , that kind of customization.
But that has to– well, we’ll see what happens.
Oh, wait a minute.
Maybe I could just add the– if I just add the link, if I add the HTML link code to the node, that would work, wouldn’t it? You can do that.
Yeah, it would work.
It’s less than optimal.
I mean, you kind of want to have more of a database behind there.
And we can do that.
But it’s not going to be something I can do right away.
I hate it when people say that.
Oh, that’s a disappointing day.
If you’ve just totally blown my entire day now.
I know.
You’re too busy.
Well, something happened.
I’ll tell you, we were at this Microsoft thing.
It’s for two days.
And there were about 30 blog gers in the room.
And there were about 30 Microsoft people.
And of course, they didn’t do it in an unconference format.
They had the Microsoft people who were in front of the room.
And we were the audience.
But there was a point when we just sort of broke out of that mold and just started screaming at them.
But it was funny.
Yeah, it was really something.
And they tried to get hold of it.
And I said, don’t do that.
Don’t do that.
I mean, this is welcome to the blogosphere.
It’s a lot of people yelling at each other.
But we actually get shit done this way.
Now I forgot why.
Oh, right.
So it’s like the poor Microsoft people.
Because we were telling them, hey, we want this.
We want that.
We want this.
Do this, do this, do this.
Well, OK.
So then they kept saying, well, thanks for the feedback.
Oh, thanks.
Oh, hey, we appreciate your work.
Thanks for your input.
It’s really valuable that you guys were here today.
Exactly.
We’ll put that on the list for the things we do after we do everything else.
That’s the way we want to do it .
That’s kind of the way we heard it.
And then, so of course, we took this one guy during one of the breaks.
He came to talk with a couple of us, and me and Chris Perillo.
And we just beat the crap out of him.
We got a lot of success.
No, no, no.
You just got to do it.
Stop making excuses.
It’s really easy.
It’ll take you half a day to do it.
If you tell me you have to take six months, I know you’re bullsitting us.
And the poor guy, his gears were stripped.
But he came back after the break, and he said he had gone to visit with the program manager, and he got it on schedule for two weeks from now .
And so we all stood up and gave him a standing ovation.
Standing ovation.
And he was glowing for the whole rest of the time.
And I said, that’s what we got to do.
We got to do more of this kind of stuff where we don’t have to beat you up to do something really simple that makes it possible for us to take your work and use it in 50 billion different ways.
That takes the burden of innovation off of the EU.
So of course, what I’m doing now is I’m saying, well, I’ll do this after I do everything else I have to do.
It’s all about Microsoft magic rubbing off on you, man.
That’s what it is.
Death Star Pixie Dust.
Yeah.
Well, we’ll get to it.
No, I want this to be my top priority.
And frankly, that’s kind of been the problem, is that it has been.
And that’s why BloggerCon has sort of suffered a little bit, because here we are in podcast- fill, and everything’s going great.
Definitely is.
This is actually one of our quality-wise– this is really good.
I’m using a little different setup today, and I’m pretty happy with it.
And how is that? What is the different setup? Well, you heard about the Engad get guys, right? Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
So they spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to do this.
And they were using all the same bits that I’d been using, that Hugo Schottman had been using.
But there was one additional thing called Soundflower Bed, which is just– basically, the only thing that I could get everything working the way it is now, except then when I talked, I would hear myself with a second delay, which makes it impossible to talk if you have that on the headphones.
And so this Soundflower Bed basically lets you listen to the audio before it’s routed to a different place.
So I had the general setup already figured out, but now they’ve figured out how to– or they pointed me to this thing that lets me monitor it in the right way.
So it’s good.
And it’s working.
Knock on wood.
Wait.
Stand on some guard like as usual, Dave.
Yeah, that’s pretty funny.
So what do you think about privacy? Do you think we ought to have it? Do you think we ought to depend on Microsoft for passport? Well, it’s funny because as liberal and as– let me turn that off– as liberal as the Netherlands is when it comes to a whole bunch of things that we can do that you can’t do anywhere else, particularly in the United States, the one thing that really freaks me out is that they have– they, the big they, the man, have the power, for any reason whatsoever, to tap your phone line.
And I’ve heard statistics that are doing 50,000 phone taps a month.
Wow.
And it’s that kind of stuff that really freaks me out.
When it comes to the internet, I don’t know how good the monitoring systems are and all that.
But I know that if someone wants to get your shit, if someone wants to get into your accounts or anything, right now there is– as far as I know, there’s no real protection.
I like what my bank does with a challenge string on a card and all that because I think that’s reasonably secure.
But I don’t know anything about their system.
I don’t know what kind of back ends or holes they might have.
But yeah, of course it’s important.
It’s really important for a number of reasons.
You’re seeing with this phone tap shit that’s going on here that people are being– it’s like Razia’s.
It’s like breaking down people ’s door in the middle of the night.
We know you’re a terrorist.
And we heard you mentioned these things.
You talk about a big game.
We know what the code word “big game” stands for.
And it turns out it’s a perfectly nice Moroccan family.
It has nothing to do with anything.
So everyone was lucky that time .
So it’s real important that you have privacy and that there are certain rules that have to be followed in prosecution of breaking those rules.
So let’s see in switching gears a little bit.
What is the European view of the US presidential election? Do you hear from people talking about that? Or what do they think? On the presidential debate, first of all– because that’s kind of been dominating the news everywhere– everything I read in Europe, including the UK, did not come out the winner of that debate.
And everybody here in the press as well– it is common knowledge that there’s a war being fought where Osama bin Laden is not.
And that is pointed out continuously.
So that’s pretty good.
But that’s about it.
So are we totally fucked if we re-elect this here? Well, from a European perspective? Yeah, or whatever, from the Adam Curry perspective.
Definitely.
Definitely.
Cool.
I’ve gotten into the– [INTERPOSING VOICES] I’ve totally gotten into the vibe of the big conspiracy.
And it’s there.
I believe it.
Hey, wait, wait, something just came over.
You guys check this out.
They announced Howard Stern will move to satellite radio in 2006.
Really? So he’s off commercial now.
Yeah, they had a little interview with him there.
Well, that’s going to be a huge , huge boost for XM.
That’s going to be big for those guys.
Maybe we can get him to do a podcast.
And the Engadja guys were talking about that.
And I played a clip on the source code.
This would be perfect for him.
Leave the commercials in.
No problem.
We’ll listen to the commercials .
It’s just like radio that he’s used to, except he doesn’t have to go clear all these frigging markets.
And he can finally do it unc ensored, which I think is what he wants anyway.
Yeah, that would be great.
Because he won’t be able to do it uncensored on XM radio.
I think they have some regulations we have to find out .
But I don’t think he can go totally uncensored there.
Interesting.
So you know that Bush didn’t like the way he did in the debate either.
And so tonight he’s giving an address to the nation where he’s going to try to do it again, except this time the innovation is no John Kerry.
Wait a minute.
So he can talk to him.
Is everyone going to take that up? That’s fucked up.
That’s not equal air time.
It is totally.
It’s like breaking the rules.
Yeah.
It’s going to backfire on him.
I mean, basically there’s a certain sense of fair play that we’re in the period where, unless there’s something really dramatic happens, that Bush is a candidate for president who happens to be the White House.
And he gets a lot of advantages , like Cheney said last night that Bush in Iowa signing some bill that gives money to people.
And I don’t think it was a coincidence that it gives money to people who he needs votes from.
Joc.
Joc.
It’s not– it’s the one time that he’s not giving money to his CEO, Fat Cat friends.
And he’s giving it to middle class people in Iowa.
Right? Oh, well, maybe he had something to do with the fact that he wants to win Iowa.
No, really.
You don’t say.
No.
Couldn’t possibly be.
I mean, of course it couldn’t be.
I mean, but then he’s going on TV.
And it hasn’t been a big stink about it yet.
But– But the rules are equal air time.
And I mean, he’s going to address the nation.
But– No.
Oh, no.
I don’t think so.
No, no, no, no.
When Bush went on to talk about there is equal air time for things that are institutional, like the state of the union address.
There is equal air time.
Not equal, actually.
But they get a chance to give their point of view.
When I signed my– Right.
You know the rule, though.
When I signed my license, my radio operator’s license, very specifically stated the equal air time rule.
And it doesn’t matter when or in– see, the state of a union address is something very defined.
But as far as I understood the rules, if I let a Democratic person A on the show for five minutes, I have to give five minutes to an opposing party.
That’s the rules that I always learned.
Well, it was a radio broadcast license.
But it’s the same thing, I believe.
I think there’s a difference when the president goes on TV to address the nation.
I mean, that’s string of words.
You know, that– Yeah.
I don’t know.
Well, it depends on what he’s going to– if he talks about all the same issues as the debate, which was Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, and he says the same– No, he can say that there’s an emergency.
He can say, oh, it’s an emergency.
I have to talk to the people.
Right.
I understand what you’re saying .
I’m not a Republican or a Democrat.
I’m the president of the United States.
And bring the camera in the O val Office, and we’ve got to have a talk here.
Well, it better be really good then.
If he’s going to waste my time and interrupt my prime time television programming, it better be damn good.
Oh, you know it’s going to be good.
I mean, he is extremely colleg ial, genial, avuncular, friendly, white-s mooth, whatever her name is, Laura Bush.
I’m sorry.
He’s the husband of Laura Bush.
He opened his speech.
He was on TV just before this thing started.
And he opens it up and says, yeah, I know you guys would rather hear from Laura.
And they all go crazy.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We’d love to hear from Laura White.
And then so you think, well, why doesn’t he just go up and spate her already? I mean, jeez.
He could be the first– maybe she could be the president, or he could be the pope.
Oh, I was just– I’m going to see if I can find this.
I have something that I want to play.
It would be so cool.
Oh, I bet you I don’t have it.
Oh, man.
Have you ever heard the first black president? Have you ever heard that? That song? No, I don’t think so.
Who does it? Curtis Blow.
Let me see.
I don’t know.
No, I don’t know.
I’ll have to get that one next time.
Shoot.
That would have been perfect for this.
You want to play a song? I’m sure you– let me guess what you want to hear.
Want to play some pranks? I’d rather be the president.
No, you could be the president.
I’d rather be the pope.
You could be the pope.
And then I’d love to hear right after that– I would just love to hear that butt-gusting, stream of nonsense from George Bush of the first debate if you haven’t had that around.
Wow.
Damn.
Now you go ask me for that, eh? Hold on.
Let me see if I can find that.
That I could probably play.
Hold on.
Let me see.
No, I– The calm-scrippling news.
I mean– Oh, yeah.
Hold on a second.
Man.
Hey, you got to warn people about that one, though.
If you haven’t heard it, OK? You got to put down your coffee cup.
You got to, like, basically get yourself into a place where there are any sharp objects around.
You have to be near a toilet because you just never know what’s going to happen.
That’s a loaded question.
First of all, I admire Senator Kerry’s service to our country.
I admire the fact that he is a great dad.
We’re facing a– Let me finish.
And so the answer to your question is, no doubt about it, it’s tough.
It’s hard work.
It’s incredibly hard.
And let me– I just know how this world works.
There’s a lot of good people working hard.
And we’re making progress there .
Never– when I was running, when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I’d be doing that.
And we’ve been effective.
[SIDE CONVERSATION] And I believe that in terms of D’Aufour, to– prior to D’Aufour, secondly, we’ve set up what’s called the– well, first of all , I agree with my opponent that it’s hard work.
Everybody knows it’s hard work.
But by speaking clearly, it’ll mean it’s less likely we have to use force.
That wasn’t a popular move.
And it’s hard work.
And I made some tough decisions .
So you say was it worth it? It wasn’t– Yeah, I understand what it means to be the commander-chief .
We’re making progress.
It is hard work.
Of course, I know Osama bin Laden attacked us.
I know that.
Of course, we’re after Saddam Hussein.
I mean, bin Laden.
Let me say it.
I certainly hope so.
Before I– to– more of the– and it is– one of the things I’ve learned in the White House is that there’s enormous pressure on the president.
And you cannot wilt under that pressure otherwise.
I just think, how can I follow this guy? I think that by speaking clearly, let me– you know, my hardest– the hardest part of the job is something as fundamental as what you believe in your core and your heart of hearts is right for– in Iraq.
You cannot lead if you send mixed messages.
You know, it’s hard work to try to– I know what I said was that democracy will best– I believe that we’ve done a lot of hard work together over the last three and a half years.
You know, we have to be right 100% of the time.
It’s– and it’s hard work.
That’s not going to happen so long as I’m your president.
Oh, I’m a pretty calm guy.
I don’t take it personally.
I understand that we must– let me tell you one thing.
Actually, we’ve increased funding for dealing with nuclear proliferation.
Let me– first, of course, we ’ve done everything we can to protect America.
I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America.
That’s my job.
There’s a lot of really good people working hard to do so.
It’s hard work for so long as I ’m the president.
Sometimes you feel like a nut.
Sometimes you don’t.
[MUSIC - “CALL IT”] Call it, call my name.
Call it, call my name.
I heard your voice this morning .
Call it now, my name.
It’d been so long since I’ve heard that it didn’t really sound quite the same, no.
But it let me know that my name had never really been spoken before.
Before the day I carried you to the bridal path, though.
It never says the day I haven’t wanted anyone but you.
And anybody who really knows me knows the truth.
I just can’t stop writing songs about you.
I love you so much.
I just can’t wait to get my arms around you.
Maybe you’ll touch it.
If I don’t see you real soon, baby girl, I might go insane.
No, it’s only been three hours, but another when you call my name.
Yes, I do.
I heard a voice on the news saying people want to stop the war.
Stop the war.
If they had love as sweet as you, they’d forget what they were fighting for.
What’s the matter with the world today? Land of the free, somebody lie.
They can blow my phone and people round my home.
They’ll only see you and me naked, lying inside.
I just can’t stop writing songs about you.
I love you so much.
I just can’t wait to get my arms around you.
Maybe you’ll touch it.
If I don’t see you real soon, baby girl, I might go insane.
Oh, crazy.
I know it’s only been three hours, but another when you call my name.
Never seen the moon look so lovely as the night I saw you.
Let me know I’d never seen the moon before.
Never seen the moon before.
So many speak of the moon as though it had no flaws.
But to compare it to a beauty like yours, what you want to fall.
Nothing about you is false.
That’s why your love is real.
That’s why your love is real.
God forbid, if you belong to another, I’d have to stay here.
I might be tempted to break the law.
Because your beauty gives it one point.
It slows me down in time.
Just can’t stop writing songs about you.
I love you so much.
I just can’t wait to get my arms around you.
Maybe you’ll touch it.
If I don’t see you real soon, baby girl, I might go insane.
Crazy.
No one’s soul has been three hours, but another when you call my name.
Honey, what you call? Call, call my name.
That’s right.
And I love you.
So I don’t know where we got cut off, but my closing, I was ready to sort of move on.
Except I was said that’s why everyone’s so excited about the podcasting thing is because it’s almost like a mathematical thing is that for blogging to really achieve its destiny, it’s got to have this element to it too.
It’s got to reach into the car stereo and into, you know, when you’re away from your computer, but you want that.
What was the guy from CBC who pointed to him today and said the reason why radio is so cool is because it taps into your imagination.
Exactly. Theater of the mind is what we call it.
So true. Exactly.
So it feels good because this is one of the checkboxes we need to fill in.
We need to know how to do this and we need to have a distribution system for this kind of expression.
So it’s cool.
I think we’ll pass the leading.
I think we’ll have more flow for the blogs than any professional medium very soon.
Excellent. You know more than we do, Dave. That’s for sure.
Well, I don’t know about that.
It’s just to sort of like put my finger in the wind and, you know, wind it up a little bit and see what it feels like.
Well, that’s what you guys do in Seattle in Holland.
We just put our finger in the dike. You know, that’s my job.
There you go.
So let’s hear the theme song now.
Let’s get the fuck out of here.
All right, Dave, we’ll talk to you soon, buddy.
See you soon. Bye-bye.
[Music]
Today is Wednesday, October 6th , 2004.
I’m Adam Curry in Belgium.
Dave Weiner here in Seattle.
And you’re sounding mighty fine , my friend.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah.
So– We like it.
Yeah, we like it, man.
We like it very much.
How you doing, Dave? Pretty good.
Yeah? Pretty good.
We had a debate last night and it was kind of, it was weird, but you know, interesting times.
I didn’t see the debate because it was, you know, it was another 3 AM deal for me here if I wanted to see it.
And I was actually, I was kind of hoping you were gonna do another one of your, you know, let’s listen along to Dave comment on the debate.
Oh, listen, then you would have heard was me snoring ‘cause it really put me to sleep.
Really, it was that bad? It was boring.
It wasn’t that it was that bad, it was just that it wore on you .
I mean, they were extremely belligerent and, you know, and I think that they had pre pped Edwards basically that, you know, Chaney’s gonna be this grouchy old dude, so you have to turn the grouch iness up yourself.
And so they were both sort of like, you know, whining at each other .
(laughing) Okay, so– And it was like, it got old after a while, it was like, “Oh, okay, great, so you guys don’t like each other, I get it. " So no fireworks, no– Yeah, well, there was actually more fireworks than this one than in the presidential one, but the presidential one was sort of like, you’re sitting on the edge of your chair the whole time.
Yeah, because it’s so presidential.
You know, they’re gonna be, well, they’re gonna be some just great mixes coming out of that one.
(laughing) Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
There were.
It’s so cool.
Did you ever chance to listen to the source code today yet? Haven’t, no.
Okay, ‘cause I found another one, I found a great song which was “Trigger Happy,” and it’s a real song, you know, well produced and everything.
Another– Yeah, another– I’m still, I would lag you by about, generally these days by about 24 hours, so I’m really up on the Peter Sellers singing, “She loves you,” I got that one .
Yeah, that was a classic, actually.
That was, I’ve heard that one before, but it just kind of fell into my iPod the other day.
Now that wasn’t really Peter Sellers, was it, or? I know that Peter Sellers did an album like that.
He also did– I think that was– Yeah, I think it was, yeah, he did “Hard Days Night,” he did, what was it, does she loves you, and she also did, he also did " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” in the same– No, no.
Yeah, yeah, I’ll look it up online later.
Are you sure that wasn’t William Shatner, he did– He did exactly the same, he did exactly the same, yeah.
He did “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” I don’t think he did “Hard Days Night. " (laughing) Why are we discussing the disc ography of William Shatner? (laughing) Oh man.
Listen, it was really funny, I heard an interview with William Shatner, I think I was like in Tennessee , it was on a drive across country, and the funny thing about it was, is that he was serious, and he’s– He’s deadly serious.
William’s kinda cool, everybody ’s making fun of it, but he thought he was adding something to the culture.
Do you know what his big thing is, you know what he’s really into? ‘Cause I know him, I’ve met him a couple, I’ve interviewed him.
His big thing is horses.
No kidding, really.
Yeah, and he has a web blog, his daughter keeps a web blog, BillShatner. com, and it’s current every single day, and it’s about, you know, Bill ’s appearances, Bill’s horses, yeah, it’s really good.
How about it? Sorry? Have it like a category for his hair, does it have a category for his hair? Why is it people who are losing their hair that are always ragging on people’s hair? You know, what’s up with that? (laughing) Listen, we’re all losing our hair.
Yeah, I know.
I’m doing okay.
I know you, I’m doing okay.
(laughing) All excepting yours, Julie, that’s true.
You were blessed with incredible hair, I know.
I’m lucky that way, boy.
So.
Well, it reminds me of the time in 2000, you and I were walking somewhere in Greenwich Village, coming out of some blier’s or whatever, and you said, you know, all ge eks like you and me, and I stopped, I had to look at , come on, Adam, you’re not a geek.
No, I remember very well.
I think it was sort of like, it was like, you know, I don’t know, whatever.
No, I remember this.
I remember this, I remember.
And it was, it was such a let down, because at that point I was like, oh man, I’m hanging with the real geeks now.
And then all of a sudden it’s like, no, you can’t be a part of our little team.
It’s funny, the grass is always greener, isn’t it? Yeah.
I mean, like you’re a TV star, you’re a TV star.
Somebody needs to tell you that , you’re a TV star.
Everybody now, yeah.
You need to hear that.
You know, video killed the radio star though, Dave, you know that, right? I heard that one, I heard that one.
So the radio industry is tuning into podcasts.
They’re waking up, sure.
It’s really a thing.
Yeah, that NAB prediction that you made, well, we saw a newsletter, and at the top of that newsletter, I forget which, you leaked to it, right? Yeah, it’s the radio and internet newsletter, that’s what it was.
Exactly, and at the top of the thing, he says, if you’re gonna be at the NAB, in fact, I’m watching CNN right now, and they’re at the NAB.
At the NAB.
First Limbaugh is giving a speech.
Yeah.
Hey, y’all wanna buy some pills for me? Oh, yeah, yeah, I would actually.
(laughing) Oh, Patricia has some great pills.
I tell you this, Patricia has some great pills.
Yeah, actually, that’s what they’re talking about, Adam, they’re talking about.
Exactly that.
Yeah, Patricia has some great pills that she’s gonna try.
Medical records, what? Record seizure did not affect Limbaugh’s privacy.
Wow, wonderful.
What did they say? He’s going to hang out with Martha Stewart.
(laughing) Play some golf with Martha.
(laughing) I was gonna say, Patricia has some great pills for all the heart trouble, and I gotta find out what the name is, but she says, you take one of those, and if you have any anxiety, just remove the anxiety, it’s wonderful.
That’s gotta be Xanax.
Xanax, that’s it, Xanax, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, oh well.
Yeah, you could tell when they gave Bill Clinton the Xanax, so he was in there pretty.
He got real mellow.
Back-up surgery.
Yeah, he wasn’t worried about anything.
He stopped calling Larry King at that point.
(laughing) He sort of let it all go.
Exactly, exactly.
Gary Bush, what’s the difference? Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Okay, so.
So is this lag, and I hear an echo? There’s an echo, and I hear a lag, so it’s like, this is choppy today.
Really? Okay, I don’t have an echo.
You’re coming through fine, but what we really wanted to try and set up, which I would have loved, is to have you record your voice locally on MP3, and then just send me the file, and I wanted to sync them up, but couldn’t get that to work.
I hate that, I hate that.
No, that’s the story of my life .
That’s the story of my life, Adam.
We couldn’t get it to work.
Couldn’t get it to work? We couldn’t hook up.
That’s what it’s gonna, that’s my epitaph.
It’s gonna save that on my tomb stone.
He couldn’t get it to work.
(laughing) It didn’t work.
(laughing) It didn’t work.
(laughing) No, that’s great.
Yeah, well, yeah.
So I heard you a bit about– At least you could have a good laugh about it.
Yeah, I heard you a bit about security on the morning coffee nose.
By the way, good morning coffee nose.
Your best ones are done at late at night, I think.
It was– Yeah, isn’t that funny how that works? Yeah, no, it was good, but the whole bit about privacy , and it was just, I played a bit on the source code, ‘cause it was, you know, the stuff you don’t think about , you get so easy with your data, and you forget about it.
You forget what’s going on, and shit starts to happen.
Not me.
I’m doing all my banking on the internet now, and I don’t even know if I wanna say that on a podcast.
Don’t worry, we’re not gonna tell anyone else.
But yeah, sure.
But the security is appalling on these machines, you know? And– How does your bank do security? I just got an email.
Huh! Huh! (laughing) I laugh, I mean.
Yeah.
You know, it’s got so many holes in it, it’s ridiculous.
And then today is really funny.
After recording that piece, I got a spam that somehow rout ed itself to my friend’s mailbox, so I actually saw it.
And they were offering me 10 free Visa Mastercard numbers if I joined this site.
In other words, this was a, yeah, they said, “No, you can have 10 for free, “and then you’d have to pay after that. " You know, it’s sort of like, oh , cool.
Oh, don’t worry, I think I can withdraw enough to pay for that.
Yeah, right.
So the next thing is gonna be body parts.
Yeah.
Well, I do online banking, and my bank has a card reader.
You put your bank card in, it gives you a challenge string, which is kind of the way I’m used to doing it from the old Unix days.
And then you type that challenge string in, and then you’re in.
So there’s a separate authentication process step in the middle.
You don’t have that with your bank? No, none of that.
Oh, really? Yeah.
No.
That doesn’t sound good.
I mean, I’ve tried to put rules on the other end where I’ve said to them, if there’s anything other than this exact amount transfer , I mean, I’ve got two accounts, right? One is where, you know, is a brokerage account where I keep most of my money, right? And then the other one is my checking account where I write checks from, you know? And so that’s, again, and you know, I transfer money from the brokerage account into the regular account on a fairly, you know, regular basis.
And I’ve tried to tell them at the brokerage account, never accept a transaction for anything other than this exact amount.
Right.
And if it’s anything, just reject it.
Well, I tested it.
Yeah, it doesn’t work, does it? No.
They’re perfectly happy to transfer whatever amount I have .
But you know, you just leave your money in your investment account, and it’ll dwindle all by itself.
You don’t have to do anything.
Well, no, I haven’t invested.
Are you kidding? What do you mean it’ll dwindle? I’m doing really well.
Really? Oh, OK.
Yeah, yeah, I’m making shit loads of money.
I mean, I mean, I have also lost shit loads of money.
I mean, it all kind of evens out in the end.
But actually, net net, I’m making money.
This year, actually, it’s been really good.
Yeah, I haven’t been in the market for three years.
Really? So what do you do? You just keep it under your pillow or something? I’m sitting on it right now.
Really? You just keep it in your ass.
OK, that’s cool.
Right there with the steel rod, right? It’s a real tight wad, man.
So that was good, that bit you did.
I mean, I can see the whole iP od, our thing is developing really, really nicely now.
The directory looks great.
I have to link to the directory today so everybody can see what the other side is.
I was thinking.
I wanted it to look better.
Maybe I should ask– give Brian Bell an assignment to come up with a nice theme.
This looks so– You know? Well, that would be cool.
Brian’s time is hard to come by .
But of course, his work is absolutely the best.
Yeah, I love what he does.
But he does it commercially, right? He does themes.
He does those for a living or doesn’t do that anymore? I thought he did that.
I didn’t.
Well, I don’t want to– I can’t speak for Brian.
I mean, basically, I don’t know .
He did the white on our injects and L button that has become so ubiquitous.
Yeah, that’s cool.
I said to him, Brian, give me something.
Give me something that’ll represent my RFS feed.
Right.
And then he asked us some basic parameters.
And I gave them to him.
And being nuts, it came back.
And now it’s the standard that everybody’s fucking with.
Yeah, from Apple to– You name it.
Oh, Apple.
Well, yeah, Apple’s fucking with it.
Yeah, they changed the colors.
You know, they changed the colors.
Yeah, fuck that shit.
Right.
So I was talking with the Microsoft guys the other night.
And they were asking me, what’s going on with Google and Yahoo and the rest of those guys? And I said, it’s really funny.
But the techies are the ones that basically– Zigg when I asked them the zag.
But the publishing industry goes straight down the middle of the road.
They don’t innovate.
They don’t– they just basically are being really compatible.
And I said, Microsoft’s been one of the biggest supporters of this.
And Apple has too.
I mean, Apple’s RSS has been exemplary.
It’s been really cool.
Azure has Microsoft.
And so he asked about that.
I said, don’t you change.
Don’t even think about change.
But it’s funny how that works out.
I mean, engineers just– whatever reason– you know, the big picture is, hey, we’d all be a lot better off if we did this sit the same way and that we competed on the basis of the quality of our service and our innovation in other areas.
But somehow that big picture– it’s a shortcut they can use.
And so you end up with Google offering Adam feeds for Gmail, but not R SS feeds.
Interesting that Evan left, huh ? Yeah.
And you know what? After the left, he signed up for BligerCon.
So maybe there’s some for the world.
I mean, I still try to figure out what the hell happened there.
Why all of a sudden do they become so hostile to RSS at Google? And what’s the upside? Why? What do they get for being such jerks about this stuff? And I don’t know.
I mean, I have a new rule, by the way, that every time I mention the name Google, I have to put $100 in a jar somewhere.
Oh, boy.
It’s a joke, Adam.
That’s a joke.
Well, no, I was going to send you my paper.
Just drop it in my tip jar there, Dave.
No problem.
We’ll accept it.
Oh, cool.
We’ll accept it from you.
Actually, it reminds me of money.
We’re going to have to start raising money for BligerCon pretty soon.
Yeah, you’re going to do a PayPal thing for that? I am.
And I just was working on in the last hour an RSVP page where people who aren’t going to be able to make it will be able to say, hey, I’m not going to be able to make it so that we can make room for people who are going to be able to make it and really want to come .
And we’re going to juggle things.
I think we actually will put something opposite the podcasting session now.
Because the question is, will more than 160 people show up at that time? And the answer is, yeah, there probably will be more than 160 people.
And rather than having them standing out in the hall making a lot of trouble, let’s give them something to do.
Is how many people can sit in a room for a session? Well, I have on the grid, which is at www. bligercon. org/iii/sch edule.
If you look at that, in the left-hand margin, the rooms are listed and the capacities are also listed.
So I’ll bring these up and I’ll answer your question.
I’m not going to fire up any browsers.
Yeah, that’s a good idea.
Well, I guess I’m firing up the browsers.
You were talking about– just going back a second, you were talking about how we should have all this stuff work the same.
And it hit me last night.
I saw that someone had made a podcast icon that you could attach your RSS feed to, so just like an XML icon, which is, of course, a really good idea.
But then we bumped into the holy grail of web logs where we can’t have one uniform podcast icon if we’re expecting it to auto-s ubscribe since we have 15 different iPod or engines out there.
And that’s going to be my next call to the community, the iPod or development community, is can we come up with a standardized subscription mechanism so we can actually have a podcast icon? You know, that’s the same problem that RSS has.
And I’m getting the echoes really bad right now, so– Oh, really? Yeah, so– and there is a solution to that problem.
So that’s kind of what I wanted to say is, you know, it’s like if you come up with a solution, great.
If you don’t, we will have them to offer soon, I think.
Right.
There is a way to solve that problem.
I think it’s with a centralized service and a little bit of user preferences.
A centralized service for the subscriptions, you mean? Yeah, to do the translation so that you tell it– in this case, the iPod is an aggregator, right? And you tell it what aggregator you’re using.
The reason is if you try to set a standard on the desktop for what these guys do, then you won’t be able to run more than one.
Exactly.
So they kind of all have to do it differently.
I mean, you should– you know, it sounds stupid to have two iPoders, but let’s say you want to try another one out.
But in the meantime, you have to keep listening to the things you subscribe to.
Right.
Well, you’re not going to want to throw the old one off until you’re actually sure that the new one works.
So they’re right there.
You kind of need to have them not collide with each other and not all do it the same way.
On the other hand, I kind of wonder why you even need to do that.
Because an iPod or a podcast feed is just an RSS 2. 0 feed.
Oh, yeah.
Why not use exactly the same mechanism? Right.
But that’s what I’m– yeah.
OK.
The same mechanism.
Right.
I’d like to use the same mechanism, but there’s a back end that’s not baked into the iPoders yet.
Right.
They don’t have a– right.
They don’t have a web server running and all that stuff.
Yeah.
Since they’re not web servers, that’s probably not going to be that easy to do.
No, exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
And although, on the other hand , you’re right.
Everyone’s pretty much– anyone who’s used an aggregator by now, I think, knows, OK, there is going to be some copy/ paste involved.
And it’s not a big deal.
But iPoders is all about simplicity, right? Right.
And you’re doing really good work there, making it really simple.
But your previous statement is just right on there.
There’s nothing we can do.
Other than if we own the browser at them, then there would be a lot we could do.
But we don’t own the browser.
So we’re basically fucked.
Yaw.
Yaw.
Yeah.
So the directory, I think– let ’s talk about that for a minute.
On the iPod or not, we’re sure.
I think what’s going to– yeah.
I mean, the redirect is happening right now.
So the site, it will look a lot better for everybody, although very much like it looked.
You know, there’s a very smooth transition here.
It’s just going to get better.
And sort of things, bugs were fixed, and things look better.
But maybe it even performs a bit better, because it’s not running on an overburden server anymore.
But then what are the next steps? It occurred to me that– then you’ve got a phenomenal directory there.
And I think that we ought to develop that.
And however– We just go with categories, you mean? Well, what other people contribute to it? One of the nice things about O PML– which, by the way, that is an OPML directory you’re working on– is that you can include other O PML directories in your directory.
So if you wanted to delegate some part of that to some other author who wanted to maintain a piece of that directory, all they would have to do is produce an OPML document.
And then make sure that’s on the public web so that the server software can access it.
And then whenever they update it within an hour, our server will pick up those updates.
Oh, yeah, right.
I remember how that works, yeah .
It’s a way to sort of branch out, cover it.
Yeah.
It’s a good time to use it.
I mean, it would be nice to see that OPML gets well used in this context, where there was a lot of fighting over and a lot of sort of good things when it came to our creators.
Like people that would output things but change the names of things.
And you’d ask them, why did you change the name of that? Oh, I just didn’t like the name that you used.
And I’d go, come on.
Why do you do that? So the hope here is that we can bootstrap something that is because podcasting should be very broad.
It should cover basically every human activity.
So the directories should be very broad, too.
Right, right.
OK, yeah, that’s good.
So indeed, I remember now how that worked.
If you just need to produce an OPML document and send a URL, and then I just hook a node into that URL, right? And then it’s seamless.
And then when you click on that , even though it’s being sucked in from somewhere else or cached or whatever, then is it cached or is it a live update? It’s cached.
It’s cached.
It’s cached for up to an hour.
Where after an hour, it throws out the cache and rereads it.
That’s how you do the updates.
And the suggest a link feature, when somebody’s browsing the part of the directory that someone else authored, the suggestions go to that person.
They get the full– Oh, OK, so if someone else– oh , right.
So it won’t come to me.
It’ll go to the person who’s maintaining that particular node or the directory.
Because of course, that would be– yeah.
Oh, right.
And I also want to– and this probably will have to wait until after BloggerCon, because it’s going to keep me pretty busy.
But I also want to make it so that basically if somebody suggests a link to you and you want to use it, that it should just be a one-step operation.
You should just basically– Click.
–click on a link and say it that says yes.
Yeah, right.
There you go.
And not have to go edit anything.
And also stuff that– And shorten that process.
Yeah, also stuff that I was thinking as I was using the directory myself.
So in the suggest a link, it actually gives you a space.
And people are using that.
Why this link should be in the directory.
But right now, we’re just linking to the RSS feeds.
It might be– is there a way to do it so you can also go to the website? Well, that would require customization of the directory code.
It was never designed for that purpose.
But I’m totally into doing that , that kind of customization.
But that has to– well, we’ll see what happens.
Oh, wait a minute.
Maybe I could just add the– if I just add the link, if I add the HTML link code to the node, that would work, wouldn’t it? You can do that.
Yeah, it would work.
It’s less than optimal.
I mean, you kind of want to have more of a database behind there.
And we can do that.
But it’s not going to be something I can do right away.
I hate it when people say that.
Oh, that’s a disappointing day.
If you’ve just totally blown my entire day now.
I know.
You’re too busy.
Well, something happened.
I’ll tell you, we were at this Microsoft thing.
It’s for two days.
And there were about 30 blog gers in the room.
And there were about 30 Microsoft people.
And of course, they didn’t do it in an unconference format.
They had the Microsoft people who were in front of the room.
And we were the audience.
But there was a point when we just sort of broke out of that mold and just started screaming at them.
But it was funny.
Yeah, it was really something.
And they tried to get hold of it.
And I said, don’t do that.
Don’t do that.
I mean, this is welcome to the blogosphere.
It’s a lot of people yelling at each other.
But we actually get shit done this way.
Now I forgot why.
Oh, right.
So it’s like the poor Microsoft people.
Because we were telling them, hey, we want this.
We want that.
We want this.
Do this, do this, do this.
Well, OK.
So then they kept saying, well, thanks for the feedback.
Oh, thanks.
Oh, hey, we appreciate your work.
Thanks for your input.
It’s really valuable that you guys were here today.
Exactly.
We’ll put that on the list for the things we do after we do everything else.
That’s the way we want to do it .
That’s kind of the way we heard it.
And then, so of course, we took this one guy during one of the breaks.
He came to talk with a couple of us, and me and Chris Perillo.
And we just beat the crap out of him.
We got a lot of success.
No, no, no.
You just got to do it.
Stop making excuses.
It’s really easy.
It’ll take you half a day to do it.
If you tell me you have to take six months, I know you’re bullsitting us.
And the poor guy, his gears were stripped.
But he came back after the break, and he said he had gone to visit with the program manager, and he got it on schedule for two weeks from now .
And so we all stood up and gave him a standing ovation.
Standing ovation.
And he was glowing for the whole rest of the time.
And I said, that’s what we got to do.
We got to do more of this kind of stuff where we don’t have to beat you up to do something really simple that makes it possible for us to take your work and use it in 50 billion different ways.
That takes the burden of innovation off of the EU.
So of course, what I’m doing now is I’m saying, well, I’ll do this after I do everything else I have to do.
It’s all about Microsoft magic rubbing off on you, man.
That’s what it is.
Death Star Pixie Dust.
Yeah.
Well, we’ll get to it.
No, I want this to be my top priority.
And frankly, that’s kind of been the problem, is that it has been.
And that’s why BloggerCon has sort of suffered a little bit, because here we are in podcast- fill, and everything’s going great.
Definitely is.
This is actually one of our quality-wise– this is really good.
I’m using a little different setup today, and I’m pretty happy with it.
And how is that? What is the different setup? Well, you heard about the Engad get guys, right? Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
So they spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to do this.
And they were using all the same bits that I’d been using, that Hugo Schottman had been using.
But there was one additional thing called Soundflower Bed, which is just– basically, the only thing that I could get everything working the way it is now, except then when I talked, I would hear myself with a second delay, which makes it impossible to talk if you have that on the headphones.
And so this Soundflower Bed basically lets you listen to the audio before it’s routed to a different place.
So I had the general setup already figured out, but now they’ve figured out how to– or they pointed me to this thing that lets me monitor it in the right way.
So it’s good.
And it’s working.
Knock on wood.
Wait.
Stand on some guard like as usual, Dave.
Yeah, that’s pretty funny.
So what do you think about privacy? Do you think we ought to have it? Do you think we ought to depend on Microsoft for passport? Well, it’s funny because as liberal and as– let me turn that off– as liberal as the Netherlands is when it comes to a whole bunch of things that we can do that you can’t do anywhere else, particularly in the United States, the one thing that really freaks me out is that they have– they, the big they, the man, have the power, for any reason whatsoever, to tap your phone line.
And I’ve heard statistics that are doing 50,000 phone taps a month.
Wow.
And it’s that kind of stuff that really freaks me out.
When it comes to the internet, I don’t know how good the monitoring systems are and all that.
But I know that if someone wants to get your shit, if someone wants to get into your accounts or anything, right now there is– as far as I know, there’s no real protection.
I like what my bank does with a challenge string on a card and all that because I think that’s reasonably secure.
But I don’t know anything about their system.
I don’t know what kind of back ends or holes they might have.
But yeah, of course it’s important.
It’s really important for a number of reasons.
You’re seeing with this phone tap shit that’s going on here that people are being– it’s like Razia’s.
It’s like breaking down people ’s door in the middle of the night.
We know you’re a terrorist.
And we heard you mentioned these things.
You talk about a big game.
We know what the code word “big game” stands for.
And it turns out it’s a perfectly nice Moroccan family.
It has nothing to do with anything.
So everyone was lucky that time .
So it’s real important that you have privacy and that there are certain rules that have to be followed in prosecution of breaking those rules.
So let’s see in switching gears a little bit.
What is the European view of the US presidential election? Do you hear from people talking about that? Or what do they think? On the presidential debate, first of all– because that’s kind of been dominating the news everywhere– everything I read in Europe, including the UK, did not come out the winner of that debate.
And everybody here in the press as well– it is common knowledge that there’s a war being fought where Osama bin Laden is not.
And that is pointed out continuously.
So that’s pretty good.
But that’s about it.
So are we totally fucked if we re-elect this here? Well, from a European perspective? Yeah, or whatever, from the Adam Curry perspective.
Definitely.
Definitely.
Cool.
I’ve gotten into the– [INTERPOSING VOICES] I’ve totally gotten into the vibe of the big conspiracy.
And it’s there.
I believe it.
Hey, wait, wait, something just came over.
You guys check this out.
They announced Howard Stern will move to satellite radio in 2006.
Really? So he’s off commercial now.
Yeah, they had a little interview with him there.
Well, that’s going to be a huge , huge boost for XM.
That’s going to be big for those guys.
Maybe we can get him to do a podcast.
And the Engadja guys were talking about that.
And I played a clip on the source code.
This would be perfect for him.
Leave the commercials in.
No problem.
We’ll listen to the commercials .
It’s just like radio that he’s used to, except he doesn’t have to go clear all these frigging markets.
And he can finally do it unc ensored, which I think is what he wants anyway.
Yeah, that would be great.
Because he won’t be able to do it uncensored on XM radio.
I think they have some regulations we have to find out .
But I don’t think he can go totally uncensored there.
Interesting.
So you know that Bush didn’t like the way he did in the debate either.
And so tonight he’s giving an address to the nation where he’s going to try to do it again, except this time the innovation is no John Kerry.
Wait a minute.
So he can talk to him.
Is everyone going to take that up? That’s fucked up.
That’s not equal air time.
It is totally.
It’s like breaking the rules.
Yeah.
It’s going to backfire on him.
I mean, basically there’s a certain sense of fair play that we’re in the period where, unless there’s something really dramatic happens, that Bush is a candidate for president who happens to be the White House.
And he gets a lot of advantages , like Cheney said last night that Bush in Iowa signing some bill that gives money to people.
And I don’t think it was a coincidence that it gives money to people who he needs votes from.
Joc.
Joc.
It’s not– it’s the one time that he’s not giving money to his CEO, Fat Cat friends.
And he’s giving it to middle class people in Iowa.
Right? Oh, well, maybe he had something to do with the fact that he wants to win Iowa.
No, really.
You don’t say.
No.
Couldn’t possibly be.
I mean, of course it couldn’t be.
I mean, but then he’s going on TV.
And it hasn’t been a big stink about it yet.
But– But the rules are equal air time.
And I mean, he’s going to address the nation.
But– No.
Oh, no.
I don’t think so.
No, no, no, no.
When Bush went on to talk about there is equal air time for things that are institutional, like the state of the union address.
There is equal air time.
Not equal, actually.
But they get a chance to give their point of view.
When I signed my– Right.
You know the rule, though.
When I signed my license, my radio operator’s license, very specifically stated the equal air time rule.
And it doesn’t matter when or in– see, the state of a union address is something very defined.
But as far as I understood the rules, if I let a Democratic person A on the show for five minutes, I have to give five minutes to an opposing party.
That’s the rules that I always learned.
Well, it was a radio broadcast license.
But it’s the same thing, I believe.
I think there’s a difference when the president goes on TV to address the nation.
I mean, that’s string of words.
You know, that– Yeah.
I don’t know.
Well, it depends on what he’s going to– if he talks about all the same issues as the debate, which was Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, and he says the same– No, he can say that there’s an emergency.
He can say, oh, it’s an emergency.
I have to talk to the people.
Right.
I understand what you’re saying .
I’m not a Republican or a Democrat.
I’m the president of the United States.
And bring the camera in the O val Office, and we’ve got to have a talk here.
Well, it better be really good then.
If he’s going to waste my time and interrupt my prime time television programming, it better be damn good.
Oh, you know it’s going to be good.
I mean, he is extremely colleg ial, genial, avuncular, friendly, white-s mooth, whatever her name is, Laura Bush.
I’m sorry.
He’s the husband of Laura Bush.
He opened his speech.
He was on TV just before this thing started.
And he opens it up and says, yeah, I know you guys would rather hear from Laura.
And they all go crazy.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
We’d love to hear from Laura White.
And then so you think, well, why doesn’t he just go up and spate her already? I mean, jeez.
He could be the first– maybe she could be the president, or he could be the pope.
Oh, I was just– I’m going to see if I can find this.
I have something that I want to play.
It would be so cool.
Oh, I bet you I don’t have it.
Oh, man.
Have you ever heard the first black president? Have you ever heard that? That song? No, I don’t think so.
Who does it? Curtis Blow.
Let me see.
I don’t know.
No, I don’t know.
I’ll have to get that one next time.
Shoot.
That would have been perfect for this.
You want to play a song? I’m sure you– let me guess what you want to hear.
Want to play some pranks? I’d rather be the president.
No, you could be the president.
I’d rather be the pope.
You could be the pope.
And then I’d love to hear right after that– I would just love to hear that butt-gusting, stream of nonsense from George Bush of the first debate if you haven’t had that around.
Wow.
Damn.
Now you go ask me for that, eh? Hold on.
Let me see if I can find that.
That I could probably play.
Hold on.
Let me see.
No, I– The calm-scrippling news.
I mean– Oh, yeah.
Hold on a second.
Man.
Hey, you got to warn people about that one, though.
If you haven’t heard it, OK? You got to put down your coffee cup.
You got to, like, basically get yourself into a place where there are any sharp objects around.
You have to be near a toilet because you just never know what’s going to happen.
That’s a loaded question.
First of all, I admire Senator Kerry’s service to our country.
I admire the fact that he is a great dad.
We’re facing a– Let me finish.
And so the answer to your question is, no doubt about it, it’s tough.
It’s hard work.
It’s incredibly hard.
And let me– I just know how this world works.
There’s a lot of good people working hard.
And we’re making progress there .
Never– when I was running, when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I’d be doing that.
And we’ve been effective.
[SIDE CONVERSATION] And I believe that in terms of D’Aufour, to– prior to D’Aufour, secondly, we’ve set up what’s called the– well, first of all , I agree with my opponent that it’s hard work.
Everybody knows it’s hard work.
But by speaking clearly, it’ll mean it’s less likely we have to use force.
That wasn’t a popular move.
And it’s hard work.
And I made some tough decisions .
So you say was it worth it? It wasn’t– Yeah, I understand what it means to be the commander-chief .
We’re making progress.
It is hard work.
Of course, I know Osama bin Laden attacked us.
I know that.
Of course, we’re after Saddam Hussein.
I mean, bin Laden.
Let me say it.
I certainly hope so.
Before I– to– more of the– and it is– one of the things I’ve learned in the White House is that there’s enormous pressure on the president.
And you cannot wilt under that pressure otherwise.
I just think, how can I follow this guy? I think that by speaking clearly, let me– you know, my hardest– the hardest part of the job is something as fundamental as what you believe in your core and your heart of hearts is right for– in Iraq.
You cannot lead if you send mixed messages.
You know, it’s hard work to try to– I know what I said was that democracy will best– I believe that we’ve done a lot of hard work together over the last three and a half years.
You know, we have to be right 100% of the time.
It’s– and it’s hard work.
That’s not going to happen so long as I’m your president.
Oh, I’m a pretty calm guy.
I don’t take it personally.
I understand that we must– let me tell you one thing.
Actually, we’ve increased funding for dealing with nuclear proliferation.
Let me– first, of course, we ’ve done everything we can to protect America.
I wake up every day thinking about how best to protect America.
That’s my job.
There’s a lot of really good people working hard to do so.
It’s hard work for so long as I ’m the president.
Sometimes you feel like a nut.
Sometimes you don’t.
[MUSIC - “CALL IT”] Call it, call my name.
Call it, call my name.
I heard your voice this morning .
Call it now, my name.
It’d been so long since I’ve heard that it didn’t really sound quite the same, no.
But it let me know that my name had never really been spoken before.
Before the day I carried you to the bridal path, though.
It never says the day I haven’t wanted anyone but you.
And anybody who really knows me knows the truth.
I just can’t stop writing songs about you.
I love you so much.
I just can’t wait to get my arms around you.
Maybe you’ll touch it.
If I don’t see you real soon, baby girl, I might go insane.
No, it’s only been three hours, but another when you call my name.
Yes, I do.
I heard a voice on the news saying people want to stop the war.
Stop the war.
If they had love as sweet as you, they’d forget what they were fighting for.
What’s the matter with the world today? Land of the free, somebody lie.
They can blow my phone and people round my home.
They’ll only see you and me naked, lying inside.
I just can’t stop writing songs about you.
I love you so much.
I just can’t wait to get my arms around you.
Maybe you’ll touch it.
If I don’t see you real soon, baby girl, I might go insane.
Oh, crazy.
I know it’s only been three hours, but another when you call my name.
Never seen the moon look so lovely as the night I saw you.
Let me know I’d never seen the moon before.
Never seen the moon before.
So many speak of the moon as though it had no flaws.
But to compare it to a beauty like yours, what you want to fall.
Nothing about you is false.
That’s why your love is real.
That’s why your love is real.
God forbid, if you belong to another, I’d have to stay here.
I might be tempted to break the law.
Because your beauty gives it one point.
It slows me down in time.
Just can’t stop writing songs about you.
I love you so much.
I just can’t wait to get my arms around you.
Maybe you’ll touch it.
If I don’t see you real soon, baby girl, I might go insane.
Crazy.
No one’s soul has been three hours, but another when you call my name.
Honey, what you call? Call, call my name.
That’s right.
And I love you.
So I don’t know where we got cut off, but my closing, I was ready to sort of move on.
Except I was said that’s why everyone’s so excited about the podcasting thing is because it’s almost like a mathematical thing is that for blogging to really achieve its destiny, it’s got to have this element to it too.
It’s got to reach into the car stereo and into, you know, when you’re away from your computer, but you want that.
What was the guy from CBC who pointed to him today and said the reason why radio is so cool is because it taps into your imagination.
Exactly. Theater of the mind is what we call it.
So true. Exactly.
So it feels good because this is one of the checkboxes we need to fill in.
We need to know how to do this and we need to have a distribution system for this kind of expression.
So it’s cool.
I think we’ll pass the leading.
I think we’ll have more flow for the blogs than any professional medium very soon.
Excellent. You know more than we do, Dave. That’s for sure.
Well, I don’t know about that.
It’s just to sort of like put my finger in the wind and, you know, wind it up a little bit and see what it feels like.
Well, that’s what you guys do in Seattle in Holland.
We just put our finger in the dike. You know, that’s my job.
There you go.
So let’s hear the theme song now.
Let’s get the fuck out of here.
All right, Dave, we’ll talk to you soon, buddy.
See you soon. Bye-bye.
[Music]