The Red Sox won, so it's time for Trade Secrets

Bruce Springsteen plays for the Boss in Madison.

The Red Sox win.

Adam and Dave shoot the shit for an hour or more.

And the MP3 actually made it to the Web!

Now that’s some shit!

(upbeat music)

• Hi everybody, good afternoon, good evening, good morning, wherever you are.
  It is Trade Secrets.
  I’m Adam Curry, coming to you from Flanders, Belgium.
  Hello Q Dave.
• Uh yeah, I’m here, but I have a little problem.
• Ah!
• You have a little problem.
  That’s Dave Weiner, my good friend in Seattle, Washington.
  And this is Trade Secrets, everybody.
• Oh well, fuck that shit.
  (laughing)
• What are you talking about?
• I tried playing B, well I thought I’d put on my headset with the microphone, you know? The cool, like, broadcaster type thing.
• You should. - Yeah.
• Oh there you go, hello.
• You know, it didn’t work.
  So now I’m using like, well I’m gonna get carpal tunnel here, using this thing, but yeah.
• What are you, are you using your regular microphone now?
• Whoa, am I late?
• Hello?
• Hello, hello.
• Yeah, are you late for what?
• I’m late for this thing, whatever it is.
• Whatever mic you were using a second ago sounded better.
• You mean this one?
• Well if you talk into it.
• This one, that’s my, that’s my, that’s my laptop’s mic.
  Let’s try this one, hold on.
• Yeah, ‘cause the last thing I want is tomorrow for you to say, you know, I really sounded like shit.
• Yeah, like I was having my teeth operated on.
  (laughing)
• You have good teeth.
• What?
• You have good teeth, don’t you?
• Well I have, okay, I don’t have great teeth, I don’t really, couldn’t say I have good teeth.
• Well you hide, you’re hiding them with your mustache.
• True, yeah.
• Isn’t that true that all guys with a mustache are hiding something?
• Oh totally.
  (laughing)
• Hiding the fact that we don’t like to shave.
  (laughing)
• Alrighty.
• Oh, I can hear you fine, okay .
• Okay.
• Is that better?
• Yeah, that’s better, it’s definitely better.
• Yeah, I’m wearing a different headset now and I won’t get carpal tunnel.
• It also looks very cute on you, I have to say.
• Shit, I didn’t know you cared .
  (laughing)
• Hey Dave, I thought of a new way to start the show.
• How’s that?
• By telling everyone that, welcome, this show is actually airing.
  (laughing) This is not a show that was lost.
• Oh, whoa, yeah, go ahead.
  Oh I have to straighten you out on something, when you talk about Murphy’s Law.
• Yeah.
• And if you say something’s really gonna work and how that, you have to remember Murphy’s Law.
• Yeah.
• So you sort of imply that Murphy’s only around when you do things like that, but first, no, that’s not true, right? No matter what you do, Murphy’s Law applies.
  It’s, famous last words is what you’re tempting.
  So say, if people hear this, you know you just lost the whole recording.
  (laughing)
• Right, okay, so it’s famous last words, but isn’t it tempting, Murphy?
• Murphy doesn’t eat any tempt ations.
• He’s always there.
• Yeah, you’re like, the only proper attitude to take there is, I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy.
• All right.
• Which reminds me of Don and Drew.
  (laughing)
• You mean Wayne’s World.
• Yeah, well, same difference.
  Everybody else is tapping into that, and I have not ever said that publicly.
• No, you told me, and then I started telling everybody.
• That what it is.
• Oh.
• And did you finally hear the WNYC interview?
• Oh, I haven’t had a chance to see that yet.
• Because I’m glad, because I disclaimed it in the source code yesterday.
  As I was listening to the interview, I opened my mouth and you came out a couple times.
• Oh, what’s wrong with that?
• Nothing, nothing.
• My mother would like that.
• Yeah, but there was no little copyright line that said, yeah, hon? (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language)
• Oh, but we did check your answer a lot.
• Now I’m talking to Dave, we ’re doing trade secrets.
• Oh, from that I didn’t know, your name is really crazy.
  (laughing)
• I’m the play date, remember?
• We’re having a play date, remember?
• I didn’t know that.
• Okay, yeah.
• I thought you were talking to yourself.
• No, but we’re talking about you, don’t worry.
  You and David, your lover boy.
  She’s great.
• So I want to tell you this little epiphany.
  When I saw yesterday that, what was it? Northwest Public Radio? This was straight out of the blue.
  I just happened to be reading audio. weblogs. com just sort of poking around to see if there was anything new there .
  And I saw this feed from Northwest Public Radio and I clicked on it and looked at it and lo and behold, there’s a podcast feed.
  And I went to the site and it’s run by, it’s coming out of Washington State University, Wazoo.
• Yeah, it makes sense.
  Yeah, well there’s a lot going on in the Northwest with podcast ing.
• Wasn’t that that hit me? What it was that I realized now that here you and I are, we’re like two schmucks, or at least that’s how I think of it.
• Boy.
• And we decide to do something and then three months, two months or three months or four years later, it doesn’t matter how long it is.
  We just decided to do it and now they’re all doing it.
  And it feels like the world works differently that now, than the way I always thought, we’ve succeeded at something basically.
• Hey mom, look no hands.
• Right, that’s it.
• We’ve succeeded, that was the feeling.
  It was the feeling of, oh my God, we actually succeeded at something.
  ‘Cause I’m used to trying really hard and fighting the good fight, being a good person and not cutting corners and not succeeding.
  But this thing, now I kinda wonder if they would let me do it again.
• Well that’s interesting and you should be congratulated because a lot of, well all of this is because of RSS.
  And it was interesting ‘cause I was talking to a friend of mine today and he was trying to figure out what this is all about and was interested in podcast ing, et cetera, not technical at all and said, so is RSS really what makes, is that what powers podcasting? Or am I also seeing that podcasting is shining a new light on RSS? And I thought, wow, that’s a good observation.
  It is, it’s both, both are true .
  And that came up and I did an IT conversations interview yesterday with Doug Kay.
• He has that out yet?
• Oh, it’ll be out on Monday.
  And that came up and we talked all around that.
  It’s sort of like, you know, podcasting is a conversation shifter, basically, for RSS.
  And we sort of figured that out after I had talked for quite a bit about how important it is to focus on users, that too much focus has been on the developers.
  And it’s just not that interesting a story.
  Most people don’t care about things that developers care about.
  And frankly, developers should only, in my opinion, should only care about the things that they care about insofar as it enables the users to do things.
• Right.
• So much of the conversation about RSS, if you were to like just sort of like, you know, read every article about RSS, tell me what percentage of the articles was about the cool things people were doing with it versus the arguments that geeks have about it, you know?
• Well, probably 1%.
• Yeah, and now it’s completely flip flopped.
• It’s flip flopped, yeah.
• And so when like, when you look at that New York Times article that came out yesterday, you know, my ego takes a little bit of a hit.
  Although, you know, it’s not so bad because, you know, I like, I even love everybody that is getting the light shown on them.
  I really, you know, this is, nobody’s, you know, it’s a beautiful little community.
  Everybody kind of likes each other.
  Yeah, there’s some jealousies here and there, of course, ‘cause we’re human beings.
  But, you know, the technology got put in its proper perspective as enabling this nice thing.
  Not as, not as being the thing itself.
  And this is sort of a disease that has been, ever since I came to Silicon Valley in like ‘79, you know, that was sort of the beginning of the rise of Apple.
  Apple had just gone public then .
  And they were, you know, this whole idea that, oh wow, these guys must really know something because they can take this, you know, like little computer that we don’t understand and turn it into billions of dollars, right?
• Yeah, that’s a good trick.
• Right, well, people really are in awe of that.
  They look at that as well.
  You know, we need to understand more about this.
  So, and of course, the people that made the billions of dollars really didn’t understand much more than the people who didn’t make the billions.
• They were just as amazed as the rest of us.
• Right, but some of them were good at acting, not so amazed, like Steve Jobs.
• Steve Jobs, right.
• Steve Jobs put his fingertips together and took a deep breath and looked peaceful.
  And everybody said, well, there ’s a young man who gets something and we wanna get some of that.
• And you know what? I am in many ways a student of Steve Jobs.
  Not that I model myself after him, but I think he does a good show , man.
• Totally, I mean, you know, I said about, I was at the Democratic National Convention this year, you know, blogging it, and that was one of my comments, was these guys could learn a lot from Steve Jobs.
• Yeah, you’re fucking A, absolutely.
• There was no moment of, there was no showmanship to it.
  It was no sort of pregnant, I mean, Steve Jobs is like a Ron Popeal , you know.
• Yeah, with the pocket fisherman.
• Shameless, I mean.
  (laughing) A lot of something I should tell you about this, and you go, yeah, sure, come on .
• Right.
• Do you forgive him for it? Because he’s just so smart.
• Although he went overboard, man.
  They’re getting lazy over there with the whole U2 thing.
  It was like, that to me is not a slam dunk anymore.
  That was pathetic.
  Did you hear the comment Christina made, my daughter? She said, ‘cause I was watching U2 with her doing this iPod presentation, and Bono was going on and on about, you know, it was just, it was sickening.
  And she says, hey dad, I said, yeah.
  Did U2 ever not suck? (laughing) She’s 14, you know, like right on.
  (laughing)
• Well, the answer is that there was a time when they did not suck, when they were doing the kind of shit we were, that we’re doing now, you know.
• Yeah.
  Although I have to say, I met Bono a long time ago, and I kind of thought it was a dick, really.
• Really? - Yeah.
• I don’t usually hold that against people, you know?
• No, that could have been just a, it was like one of those backstage interviews at a concert, you know, he may have just been like, I don’t want to fucking deal with this.
  And the other guys were really nice, and they were like, oh, what’s wrong with Bono? (laughing)
• No.
  Yeah.
  Well, I don’t know, I think we could do a lot better than the iPod.
  I would like to see Apple trying to do that, but I’d also think that, you know, it’s kind of disappointing in a way that we’re not engaged in a conversation with Apple right now.
  I mean, you could have said until yesterday that it was not on the, you know, it was beneath their radar, how would they even see it, right?
• Right.
• You know, but an article, and maybe they didn’t see it because, you know, yesterday was also, there were also articles in actually today’s paper.
• Yeah, I was gonna say, because this came after the iP od press conference.
• Correct, and so there’s all this press in there, also about iPods, you know, news from Apple about iPods.
  You know, so it’s sometimes hard to forget, you know, we hear about things a little bit earlier, and, but there was a sort of news cycle there, and we were sort of mixed in with it, but, and this is something I regret not talking about with Doug K, and I realized, you know, a couple of hours after having done it, the one thing we didn’t talk about is, okay, from a technologist’s point of view, what could we do better in the iPod? What’s missing in the iPod? And now, after, you know, these months, many, many, many, many weeks.
• We have a pretty good idea of some improvements.
• Idea about where the feelings of this, you know, little product is.
  I mean, I got the first clue, it’s not just the iPod, it’s the whole system.
• Yeah.
• My first clue, where was I? I think I was in like Kentucky or Tennessee or something, and I was recording a podcast in my car driving, and I set it up in the rest area, and I got going, and I set it up so that all I had to do was click the mouse to start recording, okay?
• Mm-hmm.
• And just that act, I almost drove off the road, because the coordination required to do that, the eye, your eye has to be on the screen of the computer in order to actually pull that off.
  Otherwise you can’t move the, you can’t even move the mouse right.
• Right, or you move it a little too far and you click on the wrong thing.
  You have to be sure you’re on the target when you click.
  So that part really sucks.
• Imagine doing that in a helicopter, dude.
• No, I wouldn’t want to do that in a helicopter, dude.
• But tomorrow I’m doing one from an airplane though.
  I’m gonna do my source code from the airplane, but that’s another story.
• Yeah, I mean, I don’t want you doing it in the helicopter either, you know.
• No, I’ll have a safety pilot, don’t worry.
• Okay.
• Right, I mean, don’t drive into like any, you know, power lines or anything like that, you know.
• No, then that is the number one killer in helicopters.
• So then there’s the other side of it, which is the playback, which is far more common.
  I mean, most podcasts honestly aren’t recorded in cars, but why shouldn’t that be easy? It should be.
  And you know, following the, you know, what was the magic of the Apple II, or the IBM PC, or the Macintosh, or any of these, you know, I think we kind of lost sight of it after a while.
  What the magic was is that they weren’t just reading machines, they were also writing machines .
• Right on.
• You could develop software, and I think that you’re following through on that, and maybe it’s just an intuitive thing.
  Maybe there’s no way of proving that it’s right, but somehow it was wrong, it felt wrong.
  Like the VizyCal guys, for example, they did their Apple II development on a Macintosh.
  Iron.
  And I didn’t, I wouldn’t do that, and a lot of people wouldn’t do that.
  We felt we should develop our software on the computer that we wanted people to use, because that way we would learn the limits of the machine better, and our software would more fit into the flow of a user who uses the computer.
• Which is exactly what we’re doing with creating podcasts, where we’re all trying to figure out how to do it on the computer we’re using.
• But let’s point out something here that we’re not really doing that, because the desktop computer is like the mini computer, and the iPod is the platform.
  Remember we call this the iPod platform.
  So there’s something really out of whack here, because we have a playback machine, and you can’t create the content on the playback machine .
• Right on, okay, good point.
• That’s wrong.
  That almost certainly is a fatal flaw, okay? We can’t see it right now, because we don’t have any alternative, because there really is, you know, as bad as the user interface on the iPod is, and I think it’s really bad, even though it’s really bad, it ’s the best out there, okay? Really suck much worse.
  And, but you know, you can’t record on an iPod.
  I tried, you know, this is a, I was listening to Daily Source Code one day driving in, I was driving from the east side of Seattle, across Lake Washington, and then getting onto this big sort of freeway connector that gets you onto I-5, and it’s kind of a hairy little , but I was listening, you said something really funny, and I wanted to hear it again, okay? And– - Oh, you have to hit the middle button, swivel the wheel to the left.
• Adam, it’s ridiculous.
  I ended up listening to Daily Source Code from the beginning, and it was days old.
• But of course it was just like yesterday’s spaghetti, wasn’t it?
• It was really tasty.
  (laughing)
• No, but you know what? You’re absolutely right, and I get such a kick out of the Trio podcast.
  Have you been following this guy? Oh, he’s on the openpodcast. org .
  He checked, actually now he has mobilepodcast. org, is where you can find his podcast feed, and he’s figuring out, with all different kinds of software, how to actually create his entire podcast with music, with sound, on the Trio, and it’s really cool to listen to him figure it all out.
  And now you see that’s a cell phone.
  Who’s eating, who’s lunch?
• Tell you what, yeah, no, no, that’s right.
  Cell phones have, I mean, one of the ways to figure it out is where’s the best place to play this stuff, is to look to see what hardware you need to pull this off, right, and then the portable device that has all the hardware components is a pretty good chance that that’s the one you want.
  And cell phones have a lot of it, I mean, and a lot more than the iPod does.
• In fact, I think that the new gen cell phones I’m seeing here, in particular, there’s a Sony Ericsson, that I think it still needs some software to make it easy for people, but you can already do a full blown podcast.
  It’s not as simple because you ’re not dealing with a mouse, where you can just whip over to this and click that player and then have that player go.
  So we need some software to develop, but I think the hardware bits are in it.
• I don’t mind if I do the post , as you know, I don’t do very much post production, I don’t do any.
  I listen to it after it’s been uploaded, but I don’t mind doing that part on the laptop, especially if I can connect the device up to my laptop via a USB connection.
  And that’s the–
• That’s the big one, that’s the big clincher.
• That’s what the iPod does that the cell phones don’t, why is the iPod such an attractive way to do this? There are two reasons.
  One is, maybe three.
  First and foremost is the install base.
  It’s got a fucking huge install base.
• Six million.
• Okay, maybe it’s not that big , but–
• No, just the iPod, just the iPod is six million.
• And I think that, but it’s the install base relative to the, well, okay, let’s leave it there.
  Say that it’s the install base is big.
  It’s also the USB connection.
  And it’s the lame user interface that’s better than any other lame user interface.
  But you take that USB connection, and if the phone guys would get their shit together and realize that we need that kind of connection between our cell phones and our laptop computers, then something really could happen there.
  And the fact that we have a data format, we actually have two data formats.
• Three.
  What are the three? OPML, RS, and what?
• And MP3?
• And MP3, of course, duh.
  Right, so we’ve, but MP3 is well established, but we still have to convince the cell phone people and, for that matter, the iPod people that these are formats that are worth supporting.
  Once they’re supported, there’s a lot more that we can do with that USB connection.
• Well, I think the cell phone people, I don’t know how good they are at paying attention and listening.
  I know that they need this because that competition is unf ucking believable.
  Nokia, they freaked out about a year ago, and they said, Jesus, we’ve just lost all our market share.
  Now they’re flooding in with any kind of cell phone they can come up with, and you’ve got Sony Ericsson and also Pocket PC coming around the corner.
  I mean, this is very, very competitive.
• Well, let’s hope they read the New York Times at Nokia.
• Yeah.
• Let’s hope they get the idea that, we’ve got a guy with great hair and we’ve also got some great technology behind it.
  It has to be, we’ve talked about this, you and I.
  I’m saying that in all seriousness ‘cause we understand how people ’s minds work, right?
• I wasn’t laughing, I know what you mean.
• It’s appreciating the fact that you work.
  I mean, they need to get that it’s not simply a, we seem to have many, if not all of the pieces coming together here and an application and I think a cell phone provider that says, okay, we’re actually gonna take a side here and we’re gonna say, okay, we believe this is a good application for our cell phone and then do something to help promote it is going to, and by doing something, I mean, put an interface on the damn thing so that it’s very easy to write software on the desktop that not just moves raw bits of data onto the machine but move structured information that, you know, this whole idea that you run their software on your laptop to control, that’s just simply not gonna fly, you know? And iPodder, if it proves anything, it proves that, that even a cobbled together thing is vastly superior to whatever sort of locked trunk one of these guys is gonna come up with.
• So I hope Ed Pandengo is listening, remember him?
• I think so, it’s kind of like Firestein Theater for you.
• No, Ed, you met Ed in Amsterdam at we had a blogger dinner and he was the guy developing applications for cell phones.
• Did he sit right across from you at the dinner?
• Yes.
• Okay, I mean, that was kind of a, yeah, okay, I remember, right, a blonde-ha ired guy.
• Well, he’s Dutch, of course he’s blonde.
• He’s kind of beefy and–
• Yeah, his finger in the dike? (laughing)
• What kind of Dutch name is P entego? It sounds like Hispanic or something.
• No, that’s not his real name, that’s his weblog, Pente-Dingo, I think, Pente-Dingo.
• Out of Dutch in there, too.
• Do you know that Hans Brinker , the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, is not a true story that was made up by American tourists?
• Well, blow me away, I mean.
• All right, just wanted to give you a little bit of trivia, everybody.
• Yeah, and then there’s Pete, how do you pronounce Pete–
• Prodol?
• Prodol, yeah. - Prodol, yeah.
• He’s funny, do you hear slash dot audio comments?
• Yeah, yeah. - That was awesome.
• Well, I mean, the thing about his blog, his podcasts are is that they ’re so–
• Short, and they’re short.
• That’s what I mean, you just click on them and you laugh and you move on to the next one.
  I think, by the way, that is the answer.
  You did a good work, sort of the big question was, and this is, I get asked this all the time, it’s like, okay, if I listen to Adam Curry for an hour and I listen to you for an hour and I listen to any number of, I listen to Don and Drew for an hour, I listen to Dave Slushy–
• I have no time left for sex.
• Right, or to eat or to work, or whatever.
  And the answer is, is that first of all, the length of your podcast is sort of telling people how big you think your dick is.
  (laughing)
• And I’ve shrunk mine by about 20 minutes recently.
• You go to an hour and that’s fine, because you strike a balance, because people who just don’t have the time to commit won’t become part of your little world, or it could be a big world, of course, but if you are Pete Prud Hall, right? You’re not asking for a lot, so you could go up into the millions, maybe.
  And you were talking about this a long time ago, is that chaining these things together, like the tap dancing–
• Oh, the tap dance podcast news?
• Oh my God.
• I love that.
• Wonderful, I mean.
• God, did you hear the latest one? There’s a new one out.
• But I want to point to that on Scripting News, I want everybody to see that, which does say also that it would be really nice if we could get URLs with every daily source code.
  Like the Geek News Central is doing that.
• Yes, you’re right.
  Well, what I’m working on now is, I store all my rundown, my lineup of stuff that I’m gonna talk about, I store that on a Manila site, and I just want to add a couple bits so that it’s a lot of work, so I want to automate it, I know what I want, I want to automate it so that I don’t get stuck in this rut of doing it anyway and not getting around to writing the scripts to make it work.
• The way to do it is we raise some money or we hire somebody or we hire a production team and that’s just done for you, like you don’t have to do anything.
• Oh, that would be so nice.
• That’s what we gotta do.
• Oh man.

• We’re gonna get time to start

• Can we raise some money for blowjobs? I’m sorry, in my Dawn and Drew mode.
• Well, you don’t have to pay for those, I don’t think.
  (laughing)
• Hold on, what was I gonna play? Oh, it was–
• Don’t go into the song, I actually decided something during one of the little stretches and I wanna tell everybody about the decision.
  We need to have a developers conference for this stuff.
  We’re gonna do the users conference, the first one on November 6th.
  But I think we need to put together something where we can sit in a room and invite the, some of the manufacturers to come sit down with us and let’s say, okay, here are some formats that we can all support and we can get into this business within a year, within six months or a year.
• And I think there’s a real business there for a lot of people.
• Yeah, yeah.
  Yeah, well, we can do it.
  We just need, well, it’s not, actually we don’t really need anything.
  But wouldn’t it be nice to have , not to drive off the road when you’re doing a podcast and to have a big red button on your iPod that starts the recording right now and when you get home and you connect it up in the sync, not just goes out for the things that you bought from Apple, but also the things that you gathered when you were out in the world.
  Also come back and go up onto the internet so everybody else can have them too.
• Right.
• You know, like, we’re two way , human beings are two way devices, you know.
  We’re not just one way.
  And that’s what podcasting, of course, is all about.
  I mean, you know, we have, you know, I’m Starved for Wayne’s World, but I’m no longer Starved.
  Don Andrew provided for me whatever I want.
  And it’s got the advantage that they’re real people, whereas Wayne’s World were really, sort of like they seemed really real, right?
• Yeah, and you can meet Don Andrew at BloggerCon everybody, they ’ll be there all week.
• Yeah, no shit.
  (laughing)
• The Don Andrew Road Show.
• Thinking of giving them an iP od, you know.
  You know, sort of a ceremonial way.
  ‘Cause now they’re saying it, like in the “Infili-Enquirer” article.
• They’re saying that they traded the trip to BloggerCon instead of buying an iPod?
• That’s not what they said.
  They have a tip jar and they said, “If we get enough money, maybe we’ll actually “be able to afford an iPod. " (laughing)
• Yeah, of course, the reporters eat that stuff.
• Yeah, they love that, yeah.
  And you know what? These kids are smart.
  They know what they’re doing.
• I think they do.
• They know what they know exactly what they’re doing.
  Well, maybe not exactly, but I ’m very impressed.
  You know, I’ve been in media for half my life and you know, they’re like, they’re natural.
  Boom, they get it.
  And the way they slide in and out of interviews, it’s really good.
• Yeah.
• I’m very impressed.
• They’ll be saying that bit about wishing they had the money to buy an iPod when they’re worth $10 million.
• Yeah.
• That’ll be part of their stick, right?
• Yeah.
  (laughing)
• The thing we really enjoy about this stuff is, I mean, I do, I can’t speak for anyone else, is that you hear the farts and the belches and all the flaws come through, right?
• Like the human stuff?
• The human stuff, right? But what happens when Don and Jude turn into things world? If that should happen? Then what? Is it really gonna be still the same, is it gonna have the same charm ? Or do we create one mass media for another?
• Yeah, the wall.
  You know what?
• You don’t know.
• I don’t know, I really don’t know.
• We’ll find out.
• Hey dude, so when I come to America.
• America.
• America, we’re gonna have a new president.
  Or we’ll have, I’m sorry, we’ll have a president that, oh fuck, let me be positive, we ’ll have a new president.
• From your lips, they’re both starting, it’s coming down so close to the wire now that the commercials are starting to shift gear and they’re talking about that private moment when you’re in the voting booth and you can do whatever you wanna do.
• Yeah.
  (clicking) (laughing) I’m sorry I was voting.
• I got my card yesterday, it was so exciting.
  I mean, I had a little postcard from the, Kings County, State of Washington, United States of America, dear Mr. Weiner, you get to vote and here’s where you go.
• Cool.
• Yeah, and I said, wow, it worked.
  I get, actually, my plan was that I would vote and my vote would count.
  And Washington for a while looked like it was solid blue, well when I chose, Washington was a battleground state.
  And then it turned into solid blue.
  Basically I thought, oh shit, I went from one solid blue state to another and what did I accomplish? Well now it’s a light blue, borderline white light blue.
  I vote, will count and it’s really exciting.
  And I’m voting for Kerry, I will vote for Kerry even if at the last minute while I’m in the voting booth, I think, maybe I should vote for Bush, I’m still gonna vote for Kerry.
  (laughing) Well, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it could be to vote by proxy, ‘cause I’ve already voted.
• What’s a proxy?
• Well, that’s what they call it, voting by proxy.
• Really?
• Yeah, and so you have to, you can finally find the actual form in PDF that you download and then print.
  And then you have to fax it and call them unless you wanna send it by mail, but it’s very unsophisticated.
• Really?
• Yeah, and it’s not very apparent and easy, but yeah, is it ever? It’s certainly not as easy as walking into a voting booth.
• Uh-huh.
• I voted for John Kerry.
• I’m not kidding, really.
• And I think that my vote’s gonna be important this year because that’s the shit they pulled last time, right? Is, oh, it’s all the overseas votes.
• Well, where did you vote? What state?
• New Jersey.
• Oh yeah, New Jersey is not a battleground state, doesn’t show up all the time, but New Jersey’s contested.
  So yeah, your vote can’t–
• But I know that all my peeps from Jersey hometown, they’re gonna put the new boy in.
• Good, well, let’s hope we, you know, I mean, it’s gonna be a–
• Especially all my Italian friends in New Jersey.
  They’re not stupid.
  They don’t want a gangster bigger than them in the White House.
• No.
• Well, I–
• We want our boys run on the country, on the streets, not some dickhead in the White House.
• Yeah, no kidding.
• That’s the way I see it.
• So what do you think? Do you think that if Bushes re- elected, the Netherlands will invade the United States? (laughing)
• I don’t hope–
• The Netherlands are big fucking pussies.
• Really, what about France? What about Russia? What about China? I mean, are they gonna come like, you know, reclaim our democracy , you know, get–
• No, no, no, not at all.
  No.
• I used to have democracy here in the USA.
  I mean, no, but everyone’s all fucked up over here.
  They got their own problems.
  You know, they blew up the European Commission just on the eve of them installing the commission because the Italian, one of the Italian candidates, you know, hates gays, thinks women are lame and should be in the kitchen, you know, all these little minor details.
  So they got all their own problems over here.
  I’ve been asked by almost every single television show and some really good news programs, respected news programs, to be on the show during the elections.
• Oh yeah?
• I told every single one of them, I said, look, that means we’re gonna start around midnight.
  And if you think that we’re gonna have a president by morning, you’re fucking crazy.
  It could be three days.
  I’m not gonna sit around and wait for that.
• Well, I mean, you’re tempting fate there.
  I mean, it–
• I believe, that I believe, but I believe the Democrats are gonna be ready.
• Yeah, well, it could be the Democrats in the landslide.
  I mean, I’ve seen it said in places that, you know, when people get into the voting booth and even Republicans are gonna say, “Well, you know, I can’t stand behind this guy. " I feel that way.
  I mean, you know, I wrote about this on scripting news that Dennis Miller, the comedian, apparently has become a Republican, which I–
• Yeah, it was a couple days ago I saw you write about that.
• Yeah, and he said that if Kerry gets elected, he’ll get behind him and support him ‘cause he’s president of the United States.
  And I pointed out, we all did that with Bush after we were attacked.
  And I go back and read the things that I wrote three years ago on scripting news, and it makes me wanna puke.
• Yeah, you were like, “Yeah, I stand behind my president. "
• And I have to do that.
  You know, the country was attacked, and you know, my attitude on that is, whatever my personal feelings are about the guy, he is the president, and you try to create a bubble around him for him to rise into the role, you know? Because we needed a leader, and it wasn’t optional.
  He was the guy, and there wasn ’t gonna be anybody else.
  And so if he didn’t rise into it, I thought, “I felt we were pretty fucked. " So, and that’s the thing that I think that’s great about America.
  It’s sort of our business attitude about things is that when push comes to shove, it’s like we don’t care that much about our feelings, we care about the result.
• The cover of Time Magazine, which I just saw today, at least the European Time Magazine, was a picture of two suburban homes, side by side, and one kind of soft focus in the foreground, one a little bit sharper in the background, and you saw the Busce Cheney sign in yard one, and Kerry Edwards sign in the yard right next door.
  And you know, the whole, the whole, you know, this whole cover article is, they’re calling the Uncivil War, which will start on November 3 rd.
• Well, it doesn’t have to be that way.
  I mean, that’s what I thought that Miller was saying that was so incredibly constructive was that it’s, you know, I’m seeing that, because of what he said, I’m kind of glad that he’s a Republican, because a Democrat, you know, the problem is, is that I don’t see myself being able to make the same claim, okay? I mean, it’s, I gave Bush every opportunity to lead this country, and I feel I did my part, and I feel like he betrayed us.
  I feel he looked at that as an opportunity to further humiliate everybody, you know, but his cronies, but his buddies.
  They just use that support to enrich themselves at just an incredibly selfish thing to do, you know? And I just don’t want to, I don’t see myself, I think it would be dishonest for me to say I support that, even at this point, even if the country was attacked.
  And so I really think that the only viable answer here is to elect Kerry, because what I said to counter balance Miller’s offer was, is that if Kerry should get elected, I’m willing to put his feet to the fire day one, okay?
• Yeah.
• I will not cut him one minute ’s worth of slack, you know, that he’s got to be straightforward and honest.
  And frankly, I don’t understand why Kerry hasn’t put up something like an escrow, you know? Like how about his wife’s fortune? Let’s put her fortune on the line here.
  If he’s ever caught lying to the, if he’s elected president, he’s caught lying.
  She loses every dollar she’s got, you know?
• Well, that’s, I understand what you’re saying, but that’s not a good, that’s not a good, that’s not a good way to do it.
  That’s her money, that’s not his money.
• All right, so all of his money and he has–
• No, no, we cut off a testicle .
• Okay.
• Can you relate?
• That’s more humane than taking away all her money.
  (laughing)
• Yeah, I think that’s fucked up.
  You can’t, you know, I think a testicle is worth several hundred million dollars .
• The fact that he’s a prostate cancer survivor–
• Really?
• He’s not having any testicles .
• I’m sorry, I didn’t know that .
• Oh yeah, he had prostate cancer.
  Yeah, really, really too.
• Do you think he can still get it up?
• Oh, yeah.
• That’s fucked up, man.
  That’s what I liked about Clinton.
  I like a president that’s fucking.
• At least we knew that he could do that.
• Yeah, I like that.
  And you know what, I think that ’s, I wanna know that and I think the people at large in the country, ‘cause everyone ’s doing it.
• Fucking?
• Yes.
• Yeah, if everybody’s doing it .
• Let me just make an observation right here.
  And I’m glad that we can get around this sex because I was getting bored of politics.
  America is, ‘cause we sit over here and of course we still be here and laugh at the Janet Jackson Nipple Gates and Howard Stern having to move off of broadcast radio and how incredibly prudish the American media is and the political correctness of what you can and can’t say in the seven dirty words.
  And we laugh at the hypocrisy of this because in my opinion and the opinion of my wife, Americans are in general the most horny motherfuckers on the planet Earth.
  Everyone’s blowing everybody everywhere and the best porn is made in the good old US of A.
• All, USA all the way.
• All the way.
  And you know, and I have to say , I’m actually proud of that.
  I think it’s awesome.
  Not all of it, it’s a lot of bullshit.
  But then to see how, you know, the hypocrisy is whacked.
• Yeah.
• Oh my goodness.
  And it sounds like when I said whacked, Dave, hold on.
  Now see, this is good because now we had a crash, Skype crashed actually, but the recording continues.
  Now of course Dave is sitting there going, oh fuck man, we lost the show.
  And so I get the surprising for once.
  Hello?
• Yeah.
• We didn’t lose the show.
  We’re still recording.
• Are you sure?
• Yeah, 100% oh boy.
• All right, so let’s just keep going.
  Cause.
• Right in the middle of porn.
• Yeah, well I’m gonna take it back to some.
• Politics?
• No, related, related.
• Okay.
• Did Jerry Falwell, I saw Jerry Falwell on TV.
• Yeah.
• That’s not related to sex, okay?
• Wasn’t, didn’t he have a scandal? Didn’t he have a sex scandal?
• Did he? Honestly, I don’t know.
  But he said they had done a survey and the interviewer agreed with him that 40% of the American population is born again evangelical Christians.
  In other words, when you do a survey and you ask, are you a born again evangelical Christian? 40% say yes.
  And of course he saw this as being a trend that meant that pretty soon.
  And you know what? That’s confirmation.
  That’s why what you’re really observing there about the US being so uptight, you can’t make a blanket statement about that because there are a lot of Americans who feel the same way you do.
• No, no, I said media.
  I didn’t say Americans, I said American media.
• Okay.
• And by the way, may I quote from the National Enquirer, a homosexual scandal is rocking Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Arch-Conservative Liberty University where rumors are rampant that male students engaged in gay sex with a campus pastor.
• Yeah.
  Listen, I mean, we know that.
  People, well, we know that.
  But in your right, it is hypocr isy.
  But what I’m adding to it is that it’s reality here.
  And it’s like the trip I took to Europe where last, earlier this year, where the thing I heard consistently from people is, well, you know, we love the American people.
  We hate the American government or things or the–
• Right, yeah, yeah, you hear that a lot.
• We hate the American media or whatever.
  And you know, what I kept saying to them is, is that, well, you don’t understand because the reason why the American media is that way and the American government is that way, is that the American people are that way.
  They really are.
  And you know, if you go to Southern Illinois or to Southern New Mexico or to Orange County in California or rural Washington State or New Hampshire.
• Oh man, why is Skype crashing ? This is not right.
  This is just not very nice.
  And this hasn’t happened before .
  I do want to hear what Dave has to say here.
  So let’s find out.
  I’ll call him this time, maybe that helps.
  (phone ringing)
• Okay, we’re gonna be doing this regularly.
• Well, I don’t know, Skype is crashing for some reason.
  I have no idea why.
  But you were saying New Hampshire.
  I understand what you’re saying and you’re right.
  The majority of Americans–
• Find out, we’ll find out.
  This is a referendum on whether or not the United States still has a heart.
  That’s what I see this as, this election has.
• Okay, can I make another blanket statement?
• Sure.
• Okay, another thing, all Europeans, it’s become a little bit less over the years, but certainly 20 or 30 years ago, Americans were perceived to be completely insincere people.
  And what they mean by that, and here’s the parody you’ll hear of an American in Europe, a European parodying an American.
  Oh, how interesting.
  Oh, that’s wonderful.
  Mm-hmm.
  Oh yeah.
  Oh, well, I have a friend over there and we can stay at his house, okay? And they find this completely alien and they think that Americans are full of shit and are not interested and don ’t think it’s wonderful and are putting them on.
  And I have, for years, said that is the truth.
  Americans are like that.
  And in general, we love our neighbors.
  I can’t say that for Europe.
  People are killing each other over here.
  They’re beating each other up and they’re jealous and they hate each other’s fucking guts and no one’s working together.
  Look at the European Union.
  The European government is exactly the representation of Europe.
  Yeah.
  Yeah.
  So I don’t know why I’m going to fucking England.
  Christina, we should go back to America.
  Okay.
  (laughing) She goes, okay, why? Why do you want to go back to America? Why? TV.
  (laughing) Hot topic.
  (laughing) Hot topic.
  And cool high school.
  Okay.
  What’s the fortune coming to the United States? That would make everything a lot easier.
  We could do trade secrets with three hour time difference and maybe even a no hour time difference at some point.
  Well, look, I’m already going to be moving one hour closer, okay? No, I mean, London is easy.
  And London is sort of turning into, England is sort of turning into a hub.
  It is.
  It’s easy to get.
  And in all likelihood, my guess is I’ll end up on the East Coast, probably.
  You’re an East Coast boy, you ’re on a West Coaster.
  I know, you got to be careful about that though, because I tend to get really influenced by what people say.
  So I’m going to make my own decision on that.
  But it seems that way.
  And I have so many reasons.
  I’m going to be in New York in November, December, and now in January.
  There’s another Harvard’s heaven of conflict.
  But this is going to be really interesting, by the way.
  Harvard’s having a conference, joint conference, on blogging between Berkman Center, which is where I was at, and Sh orenstein, which is sort of the counterpart of Berkman, but in the school of government .
  And Shorenstein is for journalists who go on fellowships, basically.
  Now they have faculty and they have classes too, but.
  And the interesting thing about Shorenstein is the director there is a guy named Alex Jones.
  And if you look up Alex Jones, if you Google him, you’ll see a lot.
  He wrote an editorial in the LA Times during the Dean candidacy and basically said, and it was the most horribly inaccurate.
  I mean, it was just, it was lies.
  Infowars. com? Was that Alex Jones? I don’t, yeah, anything but Alex Jones, that’s gonna be, and the thing about it is I had lunch with Alex Jones and with Rebecca McKinnon.
  She introduced me to him.
  She was a fellow at Shorenstein .
  She’s now a fellow at Berkman.
  She’ll also be a blogger, too.
  And it was an adversarial conversation, but it was a very good advers arial conversation.
  If we had tape recorded it, you would have heard all of the issues coming out on both sides.
• Some writings by Alex Jones, covering ethnic conflicts, reflecting on a different era in political journalism, the vanishing voter, covering science and technology, and bloggers are the sizzle, not the stake.
• That was it.
  And he went further.
  There was more after that, too.
  There was a point where I just couldn’t believe it was the same person.
  Because this is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, former New York Times reporter, who has risen all the way to the top in academia and has written these very scholarly books that are very highly regarded.
  And when it comes time to debate whether blogging is making a contribution to journalism, he resorts to lies and go, “Whoa, what is going on here? “Is this guy scared or what?” You know?
• Really?
• Yeah, totally.
  And so, you know, I’m totally, and they invited me to the conference to their credit.
  They know damn well that I’m gonna stand up and argue with Alex.
  And, you know.
• Can we send Mark Cantor, too, just to really freak him out?
• Oh, let’s not do that.
• Hi!
• Hi, Alex!
• Mark is actually starting to make some sense now.
  You know, people are giving him shit about all this stuff about, you know, he says people should be blog ging.
  They should pay people to blog about your product, right? And so, the knee-jerk reaction is, “Well, you know, that will create conflicts of interest, “et cetera, et cetera. " The answer is it doesn’t necessarily create a conflict of interest if you disclose it.
  If you tell people you’re getting the money, you have not created a conflict of interest.
  And in fact, if I tell people I can write about anything I want to, and you actually do, there’s no reason why the company shouldn’t pay you to write about it.
  The company deserves a lot of credit if they actually can pull that off.
• Well, just like all of us are complaining about technology companies and entertainment and content companies not having their shit together and not going with the times, we need some adjusting, too.
• Totally.
  You know, it’s sort of like, ask yourself the question, okay, you’re now a developer, Adam.
  You know, I know you joke about it, but you actually are a developer, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
• Do I get a ribbon?
• No, you get a question.
• Okay.
• Let’s say Apple called you up and said, you know, we really think it’s great that you’re writing the software for our platform.
  We’d just like to give you some money.
  And they said, well, what would I get the money for? Said, no, no, we just want to give you some money.
  And you keep, you know, so this is kind of what, now if you really get it now–
• I’m waiting for my question.
  Is this a part of the question?
• I guess the question is, has this ever occurred to you? Because that, I should shut up and let you answer the question , but I should also explain it.
  The developers always seem to get to this point where you say they ought to just give me money for doing what I’m doing, you know? Because I’m helping them build a platform here.
  And so I guess that’s the question.
• So the question is, do I think I should get money from Apple for helping them build their platform?
• I don’t know, no, that’s a stupid question.
  Of course, if it’s something–
• Can I have the ribbon after all?
• The question on her sucks.
• Yeah, the question sucks, it ’s true.
• Well, then make a point, ‘cause I know you want to make a point.
• It’s sometimes, okay, what’s the alternative? So let’s say a company wants to take a ride on the clue train, right? They read Doc Searle’s, you know, David Weinberger, Doc Searle’s, Chris Locke, David Levine’s book, okay?
• Yeah. - The clue train, which is a great book, and you know, it’s approaching an idea from 50 different angles.
  You could have done it in one chapter, but they did it in 20 chapters.
• Clue train. org.
• Yeah, and you know, the clue train manifesto basically–
• Excuse me.
• It’s like the Bush guys say, “Well, we’re not reality based . " You know, the clue train says, “Get reality based,” you know? And in other words, when your customers call you up and say your product sucks, you know, the clue train says, “You don’t fight them on that, “you don’t disagree with them on that, you say, ‘Okay, “let’s, okay, our product does suck, “let’s figure out what we can do to make it better, “or to make your experience with it better, “and we’ll try to fix it later . " And you know, it’s basically, you know, just don’t play the old message game.
  Don’t treat your customers like individuals, and you know, that’s the new way to do business, right? So, you’re a clue train, devote e company, and you decide that you want to make an investment in transforming yourself to being, you know, clued in.
  So, what do you use the money for? Do you, like say to your employees, “Oh, here, go write a blog, right? “We’re not gonna tell you what to write, “you can write whatever you want, you know, “but go ahead and do this, and we won’t interfere. " Most employees wouldn’t know what to do, and they’d be scared to do it, because they don’t want to lose their job, right?
• Right.
• You put the CEO up there and say, you know, “Here, I’ll write a blog, and I ’ll tell you “what I think or how I feel about all these things. " Again, the CEO, it’s unfair to ask them to do that.
  They’ve had a whole life of training that says–
• Don’t do that yet, control the flow.
• Right, and you know, you could tell them to do it, or she could decide to do it, but you know, it’s not gonna ring true.
  Now, the best way, I think, what Mark is saying is, you know, go find some people who are interested in your product, maybe even love your product, and support them, but don’t tell them what to say.
  Just say, “All you have to do, all we want you to do, “never mind what you have to do , “what we want you to do is to, you know, “look at our products, use them , and write about them. " And it shouldn’t be a trick to find people to do that, because, you know, go find people who already use your products.
  And, you know, I– - Okay.
  Yeah.
  I take the money.
• Yeah, of course you would.
• Yeah, thank you, and can I make you some more?
• Right.
• Of course I would, and I think anybody else would.
  I think that’s right.
  But unfortunately, well, maybe we should tell people, don’t wait around for that call from Apple.
• Yeah, they probably are coming.
• Yeah, it is not, you know, and I had a, I really, I had a vision, man, for just like a second.
  I was just thinking, here’s Steve Jobs, he’s gonna be on stage, he’s gonna be introducing his new iPod.
  And if he only just said podcasting just once, you know, it just slipped out, you know, like, I just wanted to hear him say, “I hear people out there on the internet, “are talking about podcasting. "
• Not that one, that was clever .
• Yeah, that was good, wasn’t it?
• Yeah.
• But it was not to be.
• Of course, what would it cost him to do that?
• He doesn’t know about it.
  No, I mean, I think I can disclose this now that I heard several weeks ago when podcasting was just starting, someone sent me an email who I believe was probably telling the truth, and I said, you know, I spoke to the guy who was credited most for creating the iPod, and I was talking to him, and then the guy said, “What is this podcasting you speak of? “What is this?” And so he didn’t know, and he was gonna look into it, but they don’t know.
  I mean, when I heard Steve Jobs talk, he was only talking about music .
  He was, what you just said, Dave, only one way, one way only, one way street.
• Yeah, it pissed me off when he said that there was no video content , because one of the, you know–
• Well, he says, “Why?” I mean, he owns huge fucking volumes of video content.
• But going back to the two-way thing, it’s like, I’ve got this brown ie camera, the Nikon Coolpix, which is like point and shoot, it has a dialing, so you turn the dial to the little movie camera.
• Yeah, and you shoot a movie.
• Press the button down, and you let it up, and guess what ends up on your hard drive?
• A . mov file, right? It’s a little bigger, it’s a lot bigger than a picture, but it’s not that much bigger than a podcast is.
  We’ve already got the distribution system in place for that, so what he said was, was ignorant.
  It was simply not true.
  It was, that’s why it irritated me, it’s like, wouldn’t it be cool if they got on top of this thing, and then, well, they didn’t get on top of it, Adam, for a couple of reasons.
  One is the three, they didn’t know about it, so that sort of is a deal stop per.
  But the second, they don’t have a way to, they don’t have a product that really works with it, and third and most important is they don’t have a way to profit from it directly.
• Right, I know, but they always have every single fucking Yahoo on stage to demo their fucking software, and I just wanna see Ray or August or Andrew or one of our guys be up there and say, with fucked up hair and like half stone, and say, dude, got this iPodder ? I mean, that’s all I want from the company that I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on beta testing their product.
• Got a clue for you, though, that and $1. 50 gets you on the New York City subway.
• Yeah, right on.
• I’ve been there and–
• It gives you nothing?
• Nothing at all.
  I mean, basically, you get a few people going, oh, did Hellfree’s over too? But– (laughing)
• Yeah, right.
• You know, worth it, they actually literally said that, it’s like, wow, I can’t believe they let you up there, right?
• That’s nice.
• It doesn’t mean it’s nice, and the buzz lasts for about a negative two seconds, and after that, so where are the sales, and you don’t ever get, you don ’t ever see it.
  They set it up so that all the sales go to them.
  It wasn’t always that way, okay ? I mean, there were times when, and I talk about this quite a bit of length in the DUDK thing that I did yesterday, but there were two years, in my experience, when we really were able to do deals with Apple regularly, and they were win-win deals, and but it was only two years out of whatever, 20 years the Mac has existed now.
  So, you know, I wouldn’t, we gotta create our own platform.
  That’s the lesson of the internet.
  That’s the reason why I came back into software in ‘94.
  I had quit because the big companies, you know, just simply weren’t going to create or let the little companies do anything, you know? I told the story to Robert Sco ble the other day ‘cause he and I have been sort of like arguing in a friendly way about our relative, respective ignorances, you know ? And my thing about Microsoft, and Microsoft, of course, is quite a bit bigger than Apple, you know, is that they’re like this big sulking teenage giant, that’s like (coughs) and, you know, they moved into this neighborhood, moved right next door to this lovely trout salmon stream.
  They ate all the fish in the stream, and the cop comes along and says, “That’s illegal, let me slap your wrist. " And so the cop slaps the wrist, and then a year later, they’re starving and they blame the cop for it.
  (laughing) It’s like, well, no, the problem is is that you were really dependent on that stream because you guys never, ever come up with a new idea.
  All you do is chase the headlights, and now you don’t have any headlights to chase.
  So don’t complain to me, now you have to start investing in headlights again now.
  And, you know, you can’t do that within a large company like Microsoft.
  It just doesn’t happen.
• Yeah, it doesn’t work that, you’re right.
  Just, I mean, you have a company with 500 people, let alone 50,000.
  It doesn’t work that way.
• Keep companies, Adam.
  Companies don’t create software .
• No, they don’t.
  We have a platform without a platform vendor, and that is the charm of the internet.
  That’s why the internet is a charming platform.
  That’s why there’s room for you and me and Don and Drew and Dave Slus her and the iPod or X guys.
  That’s why we can do something.
  The minute we start grabbing for attention from the big corporations–
• That’s death.
• Well, yeah, and you know, we are already kind of doing it , you know? But yeah, we have to watch out for, like really, really defining success in those terms.
  It can’t, it won’t work for us.
  They won’t let us have any money.
  So we kind of have to create, the way I look at it is we have to create our own sort of uplift, our own updraft, and then we have to conspicu ously play by a different set of rules, which says that it’s okay to acknowledge somebody who is a competitor, okay? It’s okay to say, hey, you know , these guys really made a contribution here, you know, send some flow in their direction.
  It’s okay to do that.
  You’re not gonna melt, you’re not gonna fall apart.
  Just like Microsoft wouldn’t have fallen apart had they let Netscape exist.
• Right. - We now get that really clearly.
  And you have to apply that.
  You have to say, okay, we need some discipline here.
  You know, and to say, okay, we don’t have to be everything, you know?
• Right on.
• Yeah. - Right on.
• Like philosophy, eventually, you know, the Boston Red Sox had philosophy, right?
• How about them fucking Red So x, dude?
• Like 80-something years for the philosophy of pay-off.
• Yeah, it was 1918, right? 1918 was the last time? The only time?
• Not the only time.
  No, up until then, they were the team that won the World Series the most.
• I was at my mom’s this morning.
  I had to take her to the hospital, and she had, you know, she had like her Ted Williams beaming smile.
• Yeah? - Yeah, I told you she was a big Red So x fan.
• Everybody’s a Red Sox fan, except for the Anthony.
• And even they were Red Sox fans, but we won’t let them.
  (laughing) They have to sit in the corner and take their lumps right now, and we get to shake our fingers at them and go, “Bad Yankees, bad Yanke es. "
• Hey, Dave, we’re an hour and two minutes into this.
  Let’s hit on a couple things, because otherwise, you know, if we go too long, people will think our dicks are really big and we might disappoint them.
• Yeah, totally.
• Outage on iPodder. org?
• Yeah, that was a DNS problem.
  I don’t know exactly how it happened or whatever, but last night I couldn’t get through to iPodder. org.
  At first I thought the server was down, I went to look at the server, the server was all right.
  Then I thought basically it was something that happened with the DNS.
• The DNS that I set up, of course.
  Always go for the weak brother in the technology chain.
• Just I went to the server.
  (laughing)
• Right.
• Yeah, I mean, and then I thought, “Well, no, a DNS problem. " And you know, I didn’t realize that it was a local one.
  Then I went to go look at the server log and noticed that iPodder. org is getting hit.
  So I know that some people it’s working for, and then this morning I’m able to get through again.
• Yeah, ‘cause I saw your email and I was pretty late for me ' cause I was still up and I checked it and I was like , “Ah, that’s gotta be something local to you. " ‘Cause I was, unlike, I mean, I can get to iPodder. org.
  I unfortunately cannot get to the George W. Bush website.
• I think what that’s about, we figured this one out.
• Oh, you did?
• Well, NetCraft posted a theory and that got me thinking, okay? They said, “Well, basically, you know, “the best way to get a book popularized is to have it banned. " And so there are all these Europeans trying to get through to the site now.
  And there are ways to do it.
  And of course they never would have been doing it otherwise.
  And I, you know, but I thought, “Well, why should they care about Europeans?” And the answer is they don’t.
  What they care about is Americans and what they’re gonna do is hope to create a little bit of buzz around this, maybe a lot of buzz.
  And then Bush is gonna say in some campaign speech, “We take security seriously “and we have put a, erected these barriers “to keep the terrorists out of our country.
  “And we not only do it at the ports “and at the airports and, you know, “the railroad stations, but we do it on the intercom. " They don’t force much.
• You really think that’s their strategy?
• I think they want an uproar about this.
  They want people, you know, it’s one of these crazy stupid things where it looks like they’re being really clueless.
  So all the Democrats are gonna get up in arms and say, “Look at how clueless they are, “neener, neener, neener,” you know? And then they’re gonna have the last laugh because most people are too confused to even know what the fuck any of this is about.
• Yeah, but, you know, that’s not a very good strategy for foreign policy.
• Well, nobody cares about foreign policy.
  They care about–
• The foreigners do.
• The elected, well, tell me, yeah, right? So, that $1. 50 gets you on the subway, too.
• No, no, no, no, no, be careful what you say.
  We have a lot of influence over here.
  You know that the Netherlands, which is a country smaller than Rhode Island, with 70 million people living on it, is the number two exporter to the United States.
  It’s like $30 billion that we export.
  There’s a lot of fucking power here.
• Yeah, well, you guys used to own New York.
• Yeah, we sold it for like a fucking mirror and some beads.
• Well, it’s not our fault.
  (laughing)
• Leave that on us.
• Hey, dude, I’m American.
  I was born in America.
• American, American.
• I’m American, man.
• Everybody.
• From New Jersey.
  Well, you say that child.
• We’re from New Jersey.
• New Jersey.
• Izzy, she’s from New Jersey.
• She’s a joysy girl.
  Okay, shit, I think we hit on everything.
  Are we done?
• Yeah, we’re done.
• Oh, no, we’re not, we’re not done.
  No, I need a Dave Weiner blog ger con update.
  Update, update, update.
• Boy.
• Boy.
• I don’t know, we’re sort of closing in on it.
  What is today? Today is Saturday.
  It’s a week from Saturday.
• Oh, yeah, by the way, I forgot to say.
  Today is Thursday the 28th?
• Yeah, Thursday the 28th.
• 28th.
• Yeah, so we’re sort of organizing the last event now.
  We’re sort of up to that.
  We’ve got food has been, oh, we ’ve had an incredible fundraising drive, unbelievable .
  We’re gonna end up with a surplus, basically.
• That’s Dawn’s iPod.
• Yeah.
• I think if I give her an iPod , it’s coming out of my bank account, not out of that.
• Alrighty.
• I mean, it would be fun to do that, but I don’t think that’s Dawn’s iPod.
  I think that, use whatever we have left over to fund the next one.
  We’ll do another blogger con.
  Maybe the next one will be in Europe.
  I keep talking about doing one in Europe.
  Having done one, oh, we haven’t done it yet, but after this, we’ll have done one on the West Coast, two on the East Coast.
• And besides the money that was donated, the companies that donated, I think, was really important, Google and AP, and people who were saying, okay, this shit’s for real, these people are for real.
  And I saw the Google contribution as a real olive branch.
• Yeah, yeah, and I sort of verified that by an email afterwards that, you know, it makes sense for Google to reach out to the bloggers, and it’s good that they’re doing that.
  I mean, it’s much appreciated.
  And there’ll be great participants at the conference, and I’m glad to have them involved.
  And AP, of course, is the professional journalists participating in this, and blog ging is, of course, open to them as well.
  And, you know, it’s like Wood stock, man.
  It’s peace and love.
• Yeah, right on.
• It’s all breaking out, you know.
  Hopefully, it’ll be a great celebration of the new carry administration .
  On the other hand, you know, it could be that we’ll be watching election returns and during the breaks, you know .
• It has very possible.
  Well, who knows, who knows.
• A lot of different courtrooms in all 50 of the American states, and perhaps there’ll be a blockade by the French Navy or something like that.
• Well, you know, let me tell you this.
  America’s a great country, and Americans are great when they get together, and they do amazing shit, and they’re very spiritual together, and we can get shit together even if we don’t agree.
  And we know when, America, I think, basically, at its core, understands the fundamental what’s right and what’s wrong.
  That’s been my experience.
  And if Bush has re-elected, or if he steals the election, or whatever happens, if he is still president, you know, sometimes you have to pull an al Capone, you know.
  You can’t get him for rackete ering.
  Get him on tax evasion.
  We’ll get him.
• Yeah.
  Well, you gotta be careful about what you say there.
• What do you mean?
• How you do, I mean–
• I’m talking about legality, and about if someone’s breaking the law, if someone is doing us disservice.
• One that was talking, you told me about the time you’re a cover, and there is open talk about civil war here.
• But I don’t really believe that’ll happen.
• You know, it’s the logical consequence of a certain set of things happening.
  You know, it’s the consequence, Kerry wins the election, and the Republicans think that there was fraud, you know, voter fraud, or they can just make that noise, that maybe they don’t believe it, but they can make that noise.
  Or the Democrats feel, you know , there’s, oh, the Patriot Act three is coming, and it’s gonna include concentration camps.
  You know?
• What?
• Yeah, I mean, well, let’s say that for another trade secrets in another day, it’s too heavy to talk about at the end of one day.
• Yeah, yeah, I agree.
  Well– - And I don’t wanna talk about it until we know what happens in the election, right? Let’s first go in.
  This is the moment when we still have the power to change our government.
  You know, we have, that’s what I said before, I see this as a referendum on America’s heart.
  You know, do we still have that , you know, which you were talking about? This will do the right thing when called upon to do it.
  This is the moment, right? This is it.
  You know, our strength is that we have this thing called democracy, and it allows us to change our government without putting any troops in the street, okay?
• Our weaknesses is that most of the masses are hypnotized by television.
  That’s our weakness.
  That is our ultimate weakness is that our own, the best product we have in America, which is all things media, is what has us enslaved.
• And this is the moment when the shit hits the fan.
  This is it.
  November 2nd, 2004, that’s it.
• Well, we all have a real responsibility on the web to whatever happens, to keep reporting and keep pushing and keep, you know, keep stuff floating up to the top.
• I think even more specifically, we have an obligation to really promote the idea that, you know, that’s to promote the very candidacy, basically.
  That there is a consistent set of principles there, which says that’s the thing to do.
  That you promote the candidacy, and you also hold his feet to the fire after the election.
  In other words, there’s no big sigh of relief.
  We have to make sure he doesn’t do to the Republicans what the Republicans have done to us.
  We have to make deals with the Republicans.
  We have to listen to them.
  We have to try to meet their objectives.
  Reasonable objectives, if we win, okay? That’s very, very important.
  That’s how we avoid a civil war .
• Hold on, while you’re doing your little thing there, your soliloquy, I’m gonna play some Van Jellis.
  That sounds really cool.
• Yeah, we need to wind this up .
• Do the thing again about voting for Kerry.
• Vote for Kerry.
• Oh, come on, do it like a whole sentence.
  It’ll sound good.
• Please vote for Kerry, as if the life of your country depends on it.
• That was beautiful.
• I’m not a professional video guy like you are, you know?
• No, but that’s, you know what ? Both of us have the perfect face for radio.
• Oh yeah.
  (laughing)
• Hey Dave.
• Yeah.
• That was really, that was good.
  That was a nice chat.
• Thanks Adam, it was a pleasure as always.
• So what are we gonna do tomorrow? Do we have a play date?
• Tomorrow is what, Friday?
• Yeah.
  No, I’m going flying tomorrow, that’s right.
  Fuck it, I’m going flying.
• Yeah, I made two, that depends what the weather’s like here, but anyway, yeah.
  Actually have a lot of work to do.
  I get a comment up in less than a little over a week, so.
• Yeah, I hear you.
  Well listen, I’m coming out Thursday.
• A week from today then, huh?
• That’s right, I’m really excited about it.
• You too, excellent.
• Really excited.
  All right, man, so I’m gonna go sit with the women.
• Very good, talk to you later.
• All right, that’s not how we end the show.
• Okay, how do we end it?
• Let’s get the fuck out of here.
• They fuck you.
• Yeah, all right.
  Take it easy, buddy.
• All right.
• Bye Dave.
  ♪ It’s trade secrets now ♪ ♪ The doobiest clues ♪ ♪ Got a piece for you, boy ♪
• As trade secrets, you can send us your comments, Dave@scripting. com or Adam@cur ry. com.
  I’m probably gonna post this on iPod. org, ‘cause I do home for trade secrets.
• See you next time, everybody.
  ♪ Trade secrets, trade secrets ♪ ♪ These beats blow up your speakers ♪ ♪ Trade secrets, trade secrets ♪ (cars honking) (cars honking) [BLANK_AUDIO]