This Week in Tech 462 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It’s time for TWIT This Week In Tech. Dwight Silverman joins Jolie O’Dell and John C. Dvorak. It’s a hot mess. We’ll talk about Verizon, we’ll talk about Comcast, the NSA, the new phone from Amazon, if it really is a phone and a whole lot more. It’s a crazy train coming up next on TWIT.

Netcasts you love. From people you Trust. This is Twit!

Leo:  Bandwidth for This Week in Tech is provided by Cachefly. At C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y dot com. This is TWIT, This Week in Tech, episode 462, recorded June 15^th 2014

Crazy Train

This Week in Tech is brought to you by ZipRecruiter, ZipRecruiter makes hiring faster, easier and cheaper. Post your job to 50 plus job boards with one click. Try ZipRecruiter for a free 4 day trial now at ziprecruiter.com/twit, that's ziprecruiter.com/twit. And by Audible.com, sign up for the platinum plan and get 2 free books. Go to Audible.com/twit2 and don't forget to follow Audible on Twitter, user ID audible_com. And by Personal Capital, with Personal Capital you'll finally have all your financial life in one place and get a clear view of everything you own, best of all it’s free. To sign up go to personalcapital.com/twit. It’s time for TWIT This Week In Tech, the show that covers all the tech news and every once in a while, you know these certain people we have on TWIT that are just fan favorites. And we try to spread it out a little bit, kind of make it a special thing. This is going to be one of those TWITs where you probably already know because you looked at the label on the box, you're going to want to listen to this because, yes we have Jolie O’Dell. It’s great to have you.

Jolie O’Dell: My pleasure.

Leo: From venturebeat.com right?

Jolie: Venturebeat.com, I am now the managing editor. They put me in charge.

Leo: The woman in charge of Venture Beat. Managing Editor Jolie O’Dell, great to have you.

Jolie: Thank you.

Leo: She brought us luscious fruit and Shandy’s Beer and Lemonade.

Jolie: Because it’s summer time.

Leo: It’s perfect for the hot weather. John C. Dvorak is also here because it’s like bookends, if Jolie’s here John must be here.

John: …my hair there.

Leo: Yeah, look at that. You know you're blonde, I always thought you were grey but you're actually blonde.

John: You know that's funny, you're grey.

Leo: I'm grey.

John: You can change it. Look at Jolie, she used to be a redhead.

Jolie: Precisely – blue head.

Leo: …you have different, you have different—

John: Outrageous redhead.

Jolie: I go through phases, although I know ladies they get that nice tint put in so they can be silver or purplish or bluish of golden.

John: You know I liked it when you had the rainbow colors in your head.

Jolie: Go home Leo.

Leo: And also here from the Houston Chronicle, Mr. Dwight Silverman, always good to have you.

Dwight Silverman: Hey good to be here Leo.

Leo: And we are going to talk about the week’s tech new, in fact let’s start off with a story that Dwight broke this week. Houston, varying numbers you said 50,000 Comcast users in Houston. I saw another that even larger are now sharing their internet whether they like it or not. Comcast has been doing this all over the country since last year, we've had it here in the Bay Area. If you're a Comcast customer and you noticed “Gee, WiFi everywhere”, that's because residential WiFi routers from Comcast are automatically being put into hotspot mode.

John: What?

Dwight: Yeah they launched 50,000.

Leo: 50,000.

Dwight: …here in Houston but the goal by the end of the month is for them to have 150,000 of them. And basically what they've done, Comcast has this one router that they been distributing here and other cities for about 2 years, it’s an Arris router. And they have split off one of the channels and separated it out of the residential routers and set it up with and SSID that says Xfinity WiFi. And anyone else who’s a Comcast customer can come in and connect to it for free, they just log in with their Comcast log in.

Leo: In San Francisco you could go almost anywhere in town and get on WiFi if you're a Comcast customer by logging in to WiFi access points. But this seems to me a classic example of a company doing something good for them that's bad for their customers.

John: Why is it bad for the customers?

Leo: Because it’s using your bandwidth. No they say there's no security issue right?

Jolie: So this is why—

Dwight: Well the reason is it separates it into two channels you know, in a Docsis 3 modem you have multiple channels and the way they achieve the different speeds on it – I got to, I'm blustering here with this mic.

Leo: There you go, that looks great.

Dwight: The way they – that looks really weird.

John: Terrific.

Chad: If you straighten that, if you straighten the boom, don't have it tilted towards your mouth.

John: Great product.

Chad: Don't have it—

Dwight: It’s down under my mouth now.

Leo: That's good, you sound good.

Dwight: All right so the way it works is that in the Docsis 3 modem  there are multiple channels that can be bound to provide you services, how they get different tiers of speed and they've broken one off and are dedicating it just for this.

Leo: So it doesn't count against your cap or your total bandwidth?

John: There's no cap, there's no cap.

Dwight: No.

Jolie: Uh-hmm.

Leo: Oh yeah there's a 350 gigabyte cap on Comcast.

Dwight: Not anymore, they dropped that.

Leo: They did?

Dwight: They dropped that a while back. There are some cities where they're experimenting with tiered services similar to the way cellular broadband works but in Houston and in most of their markets there is no longer a cap.

Leo: So the 250 gig even when they launched it, they said “We're going to experiment with this”, I guess the experiment was a failure because I've received notices saying you've exceeded the monthly cap.

John: What are you doing all day?

Leo: Downloading massive files. So now I'm on the Xfinity WiFi sites and it says over 50,000 hot spots, find one near you. When you wrote this article, I think a lot of people were kind of surprised and taken aback that Comcast is doing this. What was the reaction in Houston?

Dwight: Well in Houston there was – and what's interesting is I looked at a lot of the coverage in some other cities and a lot of other papers are just going “Oh look, we have free hot spots” and that was the extent of it.

Leo: Right.

Dwight: But here, I think people were upset that Comcast essentially did it without asking permission. They sent a stalemail letter saying that this was coming but I suspect a lot of people didn't pay much attention  to that.

Leo: And they really did pitch it as “Hey were going to use your WiFi access point”.

Dwight: Right, right.

Leo: …convenience to you. Now if you look at coverage map it’s mostly metros.

John: I bet you in the terms of service it’s in there.

Leo: Oh yeah and you can turn it off.

Jolie: But shouldn't that be an opt-in kind of thing not an opt-out.

Leo: It’s an opt-out thing.

Jolie: Yeah I believe in opt-in.

Leo: I think we all do.

Dwight: Yeah it probably should be opt-in, although then they wouldn't have that many hot spots.

John: No, nobody would opt-in. Well let me interrupt you for a second, because I didn't know about this and I want to know how do I use it. Do I go in and I got some sort of a password, I guess my name?

Leo: No, you have you're Comcast login, if you're an Xfinity customer.

John: Okay.

Leo: So whenever you're going around town and you'll see this in San Francisco and you look for WiFi hotspots, you’ll see an Xfinity hotspot, you click it and it’ll pull up the normal sign-in thing, you sign-in with your normal Comcast credentials, now you're online.

Dwight: Once you do that—

John: This is great.

Leo: Yeah, well I mean it’s great, yeah okay it’s great.

Dwight: So here's the deal—

John: It’s Comcastic.

Dwight: It’s residential and so these modems, these are 802.11 end modems, they're in people's homes and they're not necessarily pitching it as a way to provide the city with open WiFi anywhere you go, they're pitching it as, you go over to your friend’s house and now you don't have to ask them for their password to get into their network.

John: Now I have a—

Leo: So you have a guest channel in your – a de facto guest channel.

Jolie: We used to call this Wardriving.

Leo: Right.

Jolie: Yeah.

Leo: But in the old days you had a, you know find an open access spot now they're all—

John: Well, those days are over.

Leo: So you know what, people are saying—

John: I have another question. Okay so I, and I advise everyone to do this, I gave up on the Comcast gear. I got rid of it because it’s costing me so much money a month and so I bought my own Motorola Docsis 3 modem, which doesn't have WiFi on it that I know of because I didn't buy one with WiFi. But I do go through a WiFi gateway, can people get to—

Leo: No.

John: So I'm clean.

Leo: Yeah. You can opt-out by going to your Comcast account or going into modem settings. You can also just not use a Comcast modem or not use a WiFi modem and you won’t be affected by it.

Jolie: Or not have internet access.

Leo: Or you could be with, you know offline.

John: You could be in a log cabin.

Jolie: Reading the encyclopedia at my house.

Leo: So what I'm trying to get at, and the chat room is saying “Oh Leo, you're just old fashioned. This is good for everybody, who loses?”, were people in Houston pretty much saying “Hey, this is great”?

Dwight: I think people, there were some people in Houston saying that. Other people I think were upset by the principle of not being asked first. And there was a lot of skepticism regarding the issue of security. Comcast is saying this is a separate channel, it’s not the same IP address, it’s not the same SSID that you have on your existing WiFi router and so it’s a completely separate channel. But the suspicion is that given how prevalent hacking is and how skilled some of these evil doers could be, a lot of people think it’s just a matter of time until it’s hacked because it is all in the same box. And I suspect if there's a vulnerability at the modem or at the router level that allows them to join these channels, it’ll get done.

Leo: And also it just feels wrong that they're taking – and yet you do benefit. I don't know what to think.

John: I like it.

Leo: It feels wrong that they didn't let us know. I think it should be opt-in but as people say, if it’s an opt-in nobody’s going to do it.

Jolie: No, there are people who would do it like you and John.

John: Actually a lot of people in the Bay Area were all for meshes and stuff like that.

Jolie: Yeah, yeah.

John: Brewster Kahle was going to set up a mesh.

Leo: In the early days of WiFi I used to leave my access open. Just, you know borrow a couple of WiFi.

John: Yeah that's – and by the way which makes you plausible deniability when you get caught.

Leo: I didn't do it.

Jolie: You know—

Leo: That [?] across the street must’ve been using my WiFi.

Jolie: Richard Stallman convinced my husband to put in a completely free and open WiFi signal and we can use it from the park across the street so we know everyone from the park is using our free WiFi too.

Leo: That's not as good frankly, worse as safe as what Comcast is doing because it does count against any bandwidth limits you have. Now, this is my question. It sounds like there is so much extra capacity that nobody’s using, that they can do this and it’s not slowing down your own internet? Is that what they're saying Dwight?

Dwight: Yes, yes they're saying that it doesn't impact your speed that they have allocated on the network enough so that you can—

John: How about giving me a little more speed.

Jolie: Well then how come my HD streaming porn is always blurry if that's true?

Leo: [Laughter], because you're using Pornhub and it’s been my experience.

Jolie: Well, I mean Netflix. No I use Redtube.

Leo: Oh okay.

Jolie: Okay.

Dwight: So here’s one other aspect about this. One of the things that Comcast has said in it’s public, in one of its filings with the FCC regarding the Time Warner merger, is that they talked about the Time Warner merger will allow them to do certain things like create their own cellular phone network. And the cellular phone network that they described would rely heavily on existing WiFi.

Leo: You don't need 3G or 4g of LTE.

John: Ha, nice cheat.

Leo: You can use WiFi.

Dwight: So essentially they're building the infrastructure for the future that will allow them to have a cellphone service. They have a deal with Verizon right now that allows Comcast to use the Verizon cellular network when they bought some spectrum from Verizon they wound up getting this as part of the deal. So an analyst I spoke with said what they could do is say essentially create a phone that hands off as you're moving from WiFi to cellular back and forth and it allows them to very cheaply get into the cellphone business.

Leo: I don't know what to say, I mean it is, you're using their cable modem, you rent it, you pay five bucks a month for it. It feels wrong but I can't really, except for this potential security risk, I can't think of any real negatives to the end user.

John: I think the idea of the cell – you know I was years ago in Sweden and they had showed some guy had this technology and think these guys want to use, where you could walk from cell to 3g to cell to 3g to cell to 3g seamlessly with you walking around talking on your phone.

Leo: You could do that now with Republic Wireless. That's how their system works.

John: And that's they want to do right? They want to put your – you get on the cell and all the money is safe.

Leo: It offloads their cell sites.

John: Yeah it’s what you want.

Leo: Yeah it’s what you want. The art of providing big data.

Dwight: I think – devices could do that too.

Leo: Yeah, that's how Republic Wireless works. It uses WiFi, unless there's no WiFi and then it will reluctantly go to the cellular network.

Dwight: I did a blog post following up on this telling people how they can, you know the process to go through to get your own cable modem like John did. I have my own cable modem and a separate router and a lot of people kind of didn't realize they could do this but Comcast will—

John: Pays for itself.

Dwight: It does pay for itself. Here they're charging 8 dollars to rent a wireless modem.

John: Too high.

Dwight: Yeah so—

Leo: That's the least they could do is say if you turn this on or you allow it to be on, we won’t charge you rent for your cable modem because you're giving us some infrastructure. I think that would be a good would to respond to this.

John: That would work. I would go for that.

Leo: I would be getting something for given away—

Dwight: You're leasing it, it’s their infrastructure to start with.

John: There was Comcast—

Leo: Yeah but it on my premises. Yeah it’s their cell tower too but I bet you they pay rent to the buildings that it’s on. That WiFi modem’s on my premises. They're using my premises to create a WiFi mesh network. It seems like I should get something for that.

Jolie: What I'm hearing is that you don't like the fact that a corporation is making decisions for you and deciding what's best for the community without consulting you.

Leo: I think you're right. You need to be consulted but you don't have to be compensated.

Jolie: But you have to remember, corporations don't have to be fair. They have to—

John: And it’s for the good of the community.

Jolie: …create value for their shareholders.

John: It’s for the good of the community, Leo. Think of the children.

John: Oh let’s not pretend that Comcast wants anything for the good of the community. The good of their shareholders is what's important to them.

John: …cynical.

Leo: I've found an interesting statement from Comcast.

Jolie: From you.

John: That's right.

Leo: AT&T is saying that we have to merge with U-verse and that's good because it will make everything cheaper or with the Directv—

John: Oh they're going to save us—

Leo: Everything’s going to be cheaper if we merge with Directv.

John: It’s always been cheaper. You know they manage to make things cheaper. I admire that.

Leo: The funny thing is when asked the same thing, Comcast said “Well, no in fact we can't guarantee that a merger with Time Warner would make anything cheaper or that even the bills will increase less rapidly”. This is Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen.

John: That was a screw up.

Leo: We are certainly not promising that customer bills are going to go down or even increase less rapidly.

John: Totally screwed up.

Jolie: They're going to go up.

Leo: At least he’s on.

John: No, that guy should be fired.

Leo: Yeah, you're being a little honest. Comcast is also looking to replace the GE on 30 Rock. You know the 30 Rock the—

John: What?

Leo: …the traditional building that houses NBC.

John: They're going to recut 30 Rock.

Leo: It’s called 30 Rock colloquially but it’s the GE building. Now actually it was controversial when GE bought NBC and made it the GE building.

John: Right.

Leo: Actually they bought RCA.

John: RCA, yeah.

Leo: Which owned them.

John: Used to be the RCA.

Leo: Now Comcast owns – this is so confusing, Cable Town owns NBC and they want to take down the GE sign.

John: She’s giving you a quizzical look because she doesn't know your reference to cable town.

Leo: You didn't watch the—

Jolie: No, I do.

Leo: Yeah.

Jolie: Yes, I do.

Leo: They want to take down the GE sign but the funny thing is New York city’s landmark preservation commission has scheduled hearing. I guess if you're on the building long enough, the – GE, hasn't been GE—

Jolie: Do people really actually care about a sign on a building? I mean, oh obviously some people do or they wouldn't be having a hearing. Those people.

Leo: It was the loftiest neon sign on the planet when it was first illuminated in 1937. Of course it said RCA.

John: RCA, right.

Leo: And I still call it the RCA building but it became the GE building.

John: Why didn't they stop them from doing that?

Leo: Well they probably had a hearing. I'm thinking they had a hearing. It will be a 12 foot high light emitting diode LED sign.

John: Ooh, nice.

Leo: And instead of GE, it’ll say—

John: It’s a good idea.

Leo: Com Cast.

Jolie: It’s ugly. Those lights are ugly.

John: Where is it?

Leo: 57 stories high.

John: Where is it ugly?

Jolie: It’s going to be ugly.

Leo: It’s way up the top of the building.

John: I don't see nothing.

Leo: You know it was worse when they closed the rainbow room. Now that was a bar.

John: Wasn't really a bar.

Leo: Had the big blimp, the rainbow room.

John: Why remember the rainbow room.

Leo: On the top of 30 Rock, it had the blimp over the—

John: It was a dance place.

Leo: I loved it.

Chad: I thought you were going to say “Now that was a travesty” but you said “But that was a bar”.

Leo: That was a bar, it was a bar. Anyway, okay moving on.

John: Fascinating.

Leo: You know I feel like I want to be up in arms over this Xfinity WiFi thing. It feels wrong and yet who is really not, who is really harmed?

John: Who is harmed by this?

Leo: Who is really harmed?

John: And it’s so good for the community. I think you should give these people kudos where they deserve it.

Jolie: Well I think we should wait and see whether or not it’s good for the community. What if causes cancer?

Leo: Oh we know it causes cancer.

Dwight: Too late for that.

Leo: We're just okay with it, that's all.

John: Take the WiFi of your house.

Leo: There is a guy who comes here, he’s not here today. He comes here a lot and sits out there with his laptop and he’s on our WiFi but he is trying to get WiFi out of all the schools in Petaluma, consider the children.

John: Good for him. Think of the children.

Jolie: Do they need WiFi, at school? They would just be goofing around on their phones. It’s a distraction.

Leo: Would you have us go back to slates, chalk.

Jolie: Yes, slates and no tank tops.

Leo: No tank tops.

Jolie: No tank tops.

Leo: No and yoga pants, right out.

Jolie: Absolutely.

John: It depends on who wears them. Now, I will tell you this.

Jolie: That one’s true.

John: I had a repeater in my bedroom, which beamed down to the lower floors of the house.

Leo: When?

John: Recently, it’s still there but I keep it turned off because I was having nightmares when it was on.

Leo: What were the frequencies?

John: Kenneth?

Leo: Was it a – it was a gigahertz, it was 2.4 or 5.

John: It was both a 2.4 and a 5.

Leo: And it gave you nightmares. And when you turned it off the nightmares [?].

John: Yes.

Leo: Fascinating.

John: Just saying. Just a tip for everybody out there who has a repeater near their head.

Leo: You think it really was causing nightmares?

John: All I know—

Jolie: You should just get a tin foil night cap.

John: No I didn't even know this, this is the first time I've ever revealed this to anybody. I'm being quite honest and sincere here.

Leo: And so what were the nightmares about?

John: I can’t remember dreams very well.

Leo: But you would have disturbed sleep.

John: Yes.

Leo: You were tossing and you were turning and then the minute you turn it off.

John: Unplugged.

Leo: Unplugged it.

John: Yeah, yeah.

Leo: It was gone.

John: Yeah.

Leo: You having any—

Dwight: John you know if you cover your head with tin foil that probably wouldn't have happened.

John: Yeah, no see this is why I don't bring this stuff up even though it’s a helpful hint for anybody out there.

Leo: Maybe you have—

John: But instead I get ridiculed.

Leo: …a guilty conscience.

John: I get ridiculed by the minions. It’s ridiculous.

Jolie: [laughter].

Leo: Maybe it was your years as a war criminal.

Dwight: Tin foil cap works every time.

John: That's the end of my confessional.

Leo: No, I'm not going to—

John: I'm not going to bring anything like this again.

Jolie: I have great PTSD meds. We should talk after

John: Yeah, I bet. You know those things are bad for you.

Jolie: Are they?

John: Oh yeah.

Jolie: Really?

Leo: Our show today brought to you by ziprecruiter.com. God, get me out of here, get me a new job. If you would like to get—

John: How could you get a job that pays this much?

Leo: No I'm stuck here.

John: You are.

Leo: I'm forced.

Jolie: You get just slammed with HERE complaints if you did.

Leo: I would.

John: Why that's true.

Leo: I would. Our show today brought to you by ZipRecruiter, makes hiring faster and easier because really if you're hiring for your business, where are you going to post it? There are many job boards, dozens of job boards, who knows which one is going to be the right one for the particular position you want to fill. Well you don't have to worry anymore. Ziprecruiter posts to 50 different job sites, all with a single click. Also, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus. They'll add your company logo, they'll add your colors to make your job pages look just like your business, it really is an extension. You can even create an instant job page on your website, include a company careers page to use as a careers link. And of course unlimited users in your account means you can delegate this whole problem away. Post once, watch the qualified candidates roll in to ZipRecuiter’s easy to use interface. They'll literally automatically highlight the best candidates. So you screen them, rate them and hire the right person fast. It’s a painful thing looking for employees, make it easy, make it simple, make it fast. Ziprecruiter.com, find out why Ziprecruiter’s being used by over 100,000 businesses including ours. Ziprecruiter.com/twit for a free 4 day trial, Ziprecruiter.com/twit. Give it a try and watch your hiring dreams go bye bye. Somebody said Adam Curry’s banned from TWIT, he is not. We want to get him on Triangulation.

John: This idiot here said John C. Dvorak adds absolutely nothing to the show. Ban him now.

Jolie: Yeah and someone over said I was joking about PTSD and I just like to say no I'm not. I take Prazosin for PTSD.

Leo: What is it? Pravosin?

Jolie: Prazosin.

John: …send you documentation you should stop—

Leo: Does it relax you?

Jolie: No.

Leo: It just eliminates – do you have the bad dreams.

Jolie: I have night terrors, yeah.

Leo: Also gets rid of the—

Jolie: Cold sweat, more or less.

Leo: I'm so sorry that—

John: Are you running maybe a WiFi hot spot near your bed room?

Jolie: Oh my god John.

John: I would look into this.

Leo: Give John some of the Prazosin, you turn of your WiFi and we’ll see what happens.

Jolie: Yeah, we’ll do a control experiment.

Leo: Controlled experiment.

John: We’ll do science.

Leo: Prazosin.

John: Science.

Leo: Science. Speaking of science, I love this. Elon Musk has announced the company Tesla will open up its patent and other intellectual property to competitors. Not only will they not initiate patent lawsuits against competitors but they in fact want them to use their inventions.

John: Uh-huh. You know what this means.

Leo: What a concept.

John: Yeah you know what this means?

Leo: What?

John: That's means that the whole thing is a scam. It’s a sham. That means there's no reason anybody in their right mind would give a patent that worth this kind of money.

Jolie: Ah-ah, right mind, is Elon Musk in his right mind?

Leo: I believe Elon Musk is more than in his right mind.

Leo: What if—

John: The only reason he did this is because he knows this whole thing is a dead end.

Leo: You mean the electric car?

John: He gets 35,000 dollars per car, just from the government because—

Dwight: So what he’s giving away, what specifically he’s giving away is the patents and the technology he used in the charging system, Supercharger which involves some of the technology in the car. What he wants to do is get competitors to adopt his standard for charging, which is very different from what they're using now.

Leo: Then there'll be more Superchargers from Tesla owners.

Dwight: And then there'll be more Superchargers for Tesla.

John: Well.

Dwight: That's the good thing.

Leo: Everybody wins, it’s just like the Comcast story.

John: There's no way everybody wins but okay. All right, next.

Dwight: [laughter].

Leo: I want to pat the guy in the back. You know what if he gets a business benefit from it—

John: If you pat him on the back he’ll sue you.

Leo: …all the more power to you. You don't like Elon Musk?

John: I love the guy.

Leo: I think he’s the Tony Stark of all Europe.

John: He is Tony Stark.

Jolie: All right fan girls, quiet down. Dwight is it just the Superchargers of the batteries too because he’s kind of killing it on the battery side and we're hearing rumors that that's going to be Tesla’s big business in which case he would need—

Leo: He’s building giant battery factories.

Jolie: Yeah but then who’s going to build all the Superchargers for those electric batteries?

John: And by the way, he’s moving a lot of this stuff to Texas and we have Dwight Silverman over here defending him who happens to be in Texas. What do you think?

Jolie: You've just unraveled everything, you blew it wide open.

Dwight: It’s a big state.

John: Conflict of interest.

Dwight: So in order for the Superchargers so work he’s got to open up some of the patents in the batteries and the car itself because the two interact.

Leo: So it’s a win-win, I mean John maybe right that the intellectual property involved isn't worth that much but I doubt it. I bet it is worth quite a bit. He wins because he’s got superchargers and others win because they can build – look it’s good for Tesla to have more electric cars in the road right?

John: Right.

Dwight: Why?

Jolie: Why?

Leo: Because it proves the concept, it proves the, it promotes the notion—

Jolie: It doesn't create value for the company.

Leo: Sure it does because it’s a boutique—

Dwight: …competitors.

Leo: It’s a boutique electric car maker. So he makes something that expensive and high end, if more people drive electric cars it’s going to be good for his business, it’s not going to impinge in any way on the business at all because he’s a specialty company.

John: Oh no, Jolie knocked over. Waiter.

Jolie: Oh I'm such a meatball.

Leo: No don't worry about it, we’ll get a little paper towel. By the way they have not yet decided where the factory’s going to be. It’s got a five billion dollar factory and he’s currently looking at Arizona, Texas, Nevada and New Mexico.

John: I already tell you, Texas.

Leo: Will Texas win?

John: Oh yeah.

Dwight: Texas is where he’s putting his spaceport down near Brownsville.

Leo: Well that's where you put spaceports. There's a reason NASA’s there, there's a reason a space, what is it, SpaceX is there. There's a reason.

Dwight: Space X, Space X.

Leo: Well it’s just the right place.

John: It’s a good spot.

Leo: It’s a good spot, lots of – The Gulf of Mexico, it’s right there—

John: …could fall in the water, what's the worst that can happen?

Jolie: Hit Cuba? I don't know.

John: What's the worst that could happen?

Dwight: It’s a Mexican fishing boat [?].

Leo: Okay, 3 reasons why Tesla should choose Texas according to Green Tech Media. By the way do they allow direct sales as a Texas guy?

John: The guy in the chat room says Musk won’t locate the battery plant in the state that banned. No that'd be a quid pro quo. He says “Look I’ll put the battery plant in here. You got to let me sell cars because there's a lot of people in Austin for example that would be perfect for a Tesla. You know they would buy them in a minute”. So he’ll do a deal, he’ll do a deal.

Leo: The Texas State legislature—

John: You watch.

Leo: The Texas State legislature said no, you cannot sell direct, you got to go through a dealer.

John: Yeah but that's going to end.

Jolie: Well Tesla could make lower end cars under another brand and create a dealership system of their own.

John: I don't think he wants to.

Leo: In that case he should build it in New Jersey. New Jersey doesn't allow direct sales either.

John: I'm telling you, he’ll make Texas change their minds for the jobs.

Jolie: Now what's that Dwight, what you say?

Dwight: They have a, they have kind of quasi dealership system here with Tesla. You could go into a show room in say, in Houston in the galleria, which is the big fancy high end mall here. You can go in there and you can look at a car, you can ask to drive one but they're not allowed to refer to is as a test drive. It’s kind of “Say I’d like to drive one. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge”. And the sales person says wink, wink, nudge, nudge and they arrange for you to meet somewhere and you drive the car.

Leo: Is there any rationale aside from the fact that the car dealerships give the legislature lots of money?

Dwight: No.

Leo: There's no consumer protection element. It’s not just Texas, Ohio limits the number of Tesla dealerships to 3. New Jersey’s fighting them. They had a suit in Massachusetts, they won there. They're suing in Minnesota. This just shows that car dealers give a lot of money to the state legislatures.

John: Crazy. Back in the 1940s you used to be able to buy a car in a Sears catalog. What's the difference?

Leo: Seems like you should be able to buy a car directly. I don't really understand any rationale for [?].

Dwight: I think it’s one thing for Tesla to be able to sell directly. You know if Ford or GM or Chrysler started saying “We’re going to sell our cars directly and you don't have to worry about our dealers”, that would be a whole other thing.

John: They kind of do with Costco.

Leo: Well what's wrong? I don't understand what's wrong—

John: You go to Costco and you just—

Leo: Isn't that good for consumers. What do we need these dealers for?

Dwight: Well right, right but I'm saying that's argument—

John: There has to be some breeding ground for douchebags.

Leo: Oh.

Jolie: And marking up the prices too. Middlemen make so much money.

Leo: Deceptive sales practices.

John: And then you get to practice your salesmanship.

Leo: What about the undercoating manufacturers of the world?

Jolie: Bad suits.

John: Bad suits is important. And then he has to go to his manager. They have to play that game, that's fun. I’ll be right back with my manager, I got to talk to manager about this deal.

Leo: And he goes back there, waits a minute.

John: Yeah comes back.

Jolie: Has a cigarette, yeah.

Leo: Everybody knows they're doing that. I don't understand why that works. Google has just spent or is about to spend half a billion dollars for a company called Sky Box Imaging. They make micro, little micro satellites. Tiny little satellites in Geostationary orbit that currently take live video images, satellite video images. The business is not for mapping apparently, but Skybox sells data to companies. For instance, they give us an example, they can look at the plume of a factory and determine how much production it’s doing based on the size of the plume. They can look at the number of cars—

John: So they don't take into account anything to do with the efficiency of the burning or with the—

Leo: Well the company has that information, so the company matches – apparently it’s further additional information.

John: Yeah okay.

Leo: But what Google says, which is kind of interesting, I mean imagine what Google is looking at is using this – well I mean certainly it’s a good business but using this data also maybe for it’s maps to have a live video imagery. And it’s maps would be kind of amazing.

John: You know I was using Google Maps the other day and I can't find the traffic button anymore. They've changed the interface on the Google Maps that I get to when I use Firefox.

Jolie: Sweetie you're going to have to help grandpa with the computer.

Leo: That's so sad.

John: She’s hilarious.

Leo: Skybox says – they took the button off.

Jolie: Well this is just spy technology for corporate purposes.

Leo: It is, it says we empower—

Jolie: And I feel really comfortable with Google having more spy technology after the past couple of years. Give them more satellites.

Leo: We empower global businesses to make better decisions with timely high fidelity imagery and infinite analytics.

John: Broader.

Leo: But Google also says we may want to be looking at this also to provide internet access to areas that can't get wired because these inexpensive satellites.

Jolie: Well isn't Zuckerberg doing that too?

John: Thanks John C. Dvorak, the new maps is horrible.

Jolie: Oh I agree that it’s horrible.

John: Anyway I'm sorry. I pay attention to what's going on around.

Leo: You don't pay any attention to what we're talking about though.

John: Yeah, something about Google.

Jolie: There's more chat room activity then there is news this week.

Dwight: Bumble, bumble, Google, Google, bumble.

Leo: There's plenty of news.

Jolie: No, no, no girl.

John: Hey after the last couple of weeks we watch these shows. You need the two of us.

Jolie: I don’t watch, what happened?

John: I did.

Jolie: Yeah.

Leo: What happened?

Jolie: Was it a train wreck?

Leo: What?

John: You don't want to know.

Leo: What?

Jolie: Okay.

John: The show, when we're on the show, the show’s lively.

Leo: And you thought it was a little dull last week? I think it was actually quite good last week. We had Christina Warren and I wish—

Jolie: Oh I love Christina.

Leo: I know she’s super smart.

Jolie: Oh I'm the biggest fan. She and I worked together.

Leo: And Ed Bott, you know Ed, we worked together for years.

John: I used to work with—

Jolie: Christina is the other smart woman in technology. She’s the only woman I know who knows developers stuff.

John: Are you insulting all the other women in technology.

Jolie: Pfff, grl.

Leo: I'm just saying, it was a good show.

Jolie: Get it together.

Leo: I don't know what show you listened to.

John: I didn't say anything bad.

Jolie: Christina’s kind of a fast talker.

Leo: I wish they were back there right now.

John: I was looking – well I can imagine. I was talking about the show before that.

Leo: Did you see the fun that John Stewart, The Daily Show, Glassholes?

Jolie: He was a glass roll, oh.

Leo: I thought it was very funny. We’ll take a look in just a bit.

John: She’s so proud of that.

Jolie: Yeah.

Leo: Say it again Jazz troll hole.

Jolie: No a Jazz troll.

Leo: Glass, trazz.

Jolie: If you troll glass holes, you're a glass troll.

Leo: A glass troll.

Jolie: Do you understand what a troll?

Leo: I don't know, where’s the button on Skype?

Jolie: Where the button on maps is, same place.

Leo: The Skype button on maps.

John: I’ll show you. I’ll get a map, I’ll show you what I'm talking about.

Leo: Let me queue and we’ll show that in just a second. But first I want to show you how good TWIT was last week and all the other shows we did with this look.

John: Wait, wait, stop.

Leo: It’s called a house ad, yes thank you John.

Previously on Twit:

Windows Weekly.

Paul Thurrott: Microsoft has spent the past year capitulating to the complainers culminating in the release on Monday of the Xbox One without Kinect. Even as I say this it’s hard not to laught. Like Microsoft is actively soliciting the feedback of its fan and users to guide the direction of this product going forward.

This Week in Enterprise Tech.

Fr. Robert: Netflix has been adding a piece of text to their buffering screen that lays the blame for congested networks at the feet of those networks.

The social hour.

Guy Kawasaki: I think value in an post comes from providing information or analysis or assistance or entertainment. So it’s one of those four things coupled with a great graphic and that's the gist of great social media.

Triangulation.

Leo: We've written an article on celebrating your washing machine. And that's a perfect example of something we just normally just completely take for granted.

Mark Miodownik: It sounds ridiculous but of course if you did go around with dirty and stained clothes all the time, people do in a sense don't want you around them. That's what culture is. I think the urban world we've created is every bit as marvelous as a tropical jungle.

TWIT, making the world safe for technology.

Your connection was horrible and then suddenly it’s so good that you don't leave.

Like a really good penny or like a really bad zit when you're twelve. That's how I am. Enjoy that.

Leo: Anybody have Verizon internet access? If you do have you seen the error message that Netflix puts up when the traffic is congested. The Verizon network is crowded right now. Adjusting video for smoother playback. Netlflix, I think very cleverly has decided to let you know if it’s your ISP that sucks, not Netflix but people blame Netflix.

Dwight: Yeah it’s not just Verizon customer seeing that. It’s any ISP but Verizon’s the one that's complained about it.

Leo: Verizon sent a cease and desist letter saying we're going to sue you because how can you possibly know it’s us. Netflix says we know it’s you because we can see it’s you. The congestion is at the interconnect and Verizon customers are all getting very poor speeds whereas other customers of other ISPs aren't. Netflix has pulled it down for the time, I think we all are, but Netflix has pulled it down for the time being. But now the FCC’s decided to get involved. Tom Wheeler – well of course I trust to make a judicious and fair decision involving cable companies.

John: Yeah, yeah just let the government in, great idea.

Leo: He says the bottomline is that consumers need to understand what is occurring when the internet service they've paid for does not adequately deliver the content they desire, especially content that they've paid for. That the right sounds. Those are the right sounds.

Jolie: Well he is a politician.

Leo: Yeah but he’s also a cable company and a wireless company lobbyist. We’ll see what the FCC does on this. I think, I completely sympathize with Netflix. People assume “Oh there's something wrong with Netflix”, not there's something wrong with my ISP, right? Don't you, when you get a bad—

Jolie: No.

Leo: You even said that, you just said “Everybody’s getting bad Netflix”. It’s not true.

John: I don't know.

Jolie: No it’s because all the wireless providers are poo poo.

Leo: But this is not wireless, this is on your home internet.

Jolie: I don't know what I mean. Everyone is poo in getting you internet access.

John: You used the word poo three times now.

Jolie: Poo poo poo.

Leo: Poo poo and poo.

John: That was another three.

Dwight: Triple poo.

Leo: Some do better than others and what I am convinced is the fact is that big five broadband providers in the United States are intentionally not upgrading their interconnects with Netflix until Netflix gives them money. Comcast and Verizon folks—

John: I talked to Dane about this.

Jolie: Well that’s the whole Net Neutrality question.

Leo: Did you talk Dane Jasper, SonicNet? What did he say?

John: He says it’s not a big issue because everybody uses the Netflix appliance. He’s got six of it. He’s got six of it.

Leo: No everybody doesn't. I agree with you and that's what Comcast refuses to do and Verizon refuses to do.

John: That's because these things cost a lot of money to run and Comcast I think will probably need a thousand of them. He’s got six and does he also uses the GGC.

Leo: This is Netflix’s open connect plan.

John: It’s a box.

Leo: Which gives the – which puts the Netflix content directly in this operation center for the internet service provider, eliminates these over the internet bandwidth.

John: In a box. You get a box.

Leo: With all the movies.

John: It’s got a hundred terabytes in the box. It’s loaded with the movies, most of the movies, not all of them I would say.

Leo: Not all of them.

John: No and it saves you a one leg of the transfer.

Leo: Right.

John: So it’s faster for the customers. Comcast, my thinking on this whole thing is Comcast decided because these things do cost money to operate, they don't cost anything to own, they said screw this, this is going to cost us thousands of dollars to run this crap.

Leo: You give us money, we don't give you money.

John: Right.

Leo: Let’s get this straight.

John: Right.

Leo: In this business you pay us, we don't pay you.

John: Exactly.

Leo: Netflix says Verizon decided to – it’s as if there were a bridge and Verizon decided to leave three lanes closed.

John: These lanes, freeways, these analogies are, I find them annoying.

Leo: I think Governor Christie’s running the Verizon data centers, that's what’s going on.

Dwight: It’s the Chris Christie excuse.

Leo: He says “Trying to shift Netflix is trying to shift blame for performance issues arising from interconnection congestion is like blaming drivers on a bridge for traffic jams when you're the one who decided to leave three lanes closed during rush hour”. I think that's actually a good description. But we’ll find out what the FCC does about it.

John: Yeah they're going to get in. Next thing you know, were going to have regulated internet, you're going to have to have a podcasting license that'll be renewable every year.

Leo: God, I hope not.

John: Oh yeah.

Leo: That's would be bad. Then we couldn't swear. We couldn't say poo poo.

Jolie: Oh geez. Yeah I remember doing radio and getting your license revoked from time to time.

Leo: I still do. Did you get your license revoked?

Jolie: Yeah because we were broadcasting on someone else’s frequency.

John: Do you have a first class phone? Second class phone? Third class phone? What do you have?

Jolie: Well we had to get the message out. It was college radio, punk rock and way off topic, sorry.

John: College radio.

Leo: So they took your license?

Jolie: Yeah, yeah for a few years it was revoked, yeah.

Leo: Wow.

John: What station was this?

Jolie: I don't remember.

John: What college?

Jolie: Shenandoah University.

Leo: She does no recollection.

Jolie: In Northern Virginia.

Leo: Northern Virginia. Nova.

John: Oh no, don't get started on this again.

Jolie: Yeah.

Leo: Okay I have to apologize because Eugene Goostman, the 13 year old chat bot who reportedly passed the Turing test on the 68^th anniversary of Turing’s death didn't—

Jolie: Did it pass or wasn't a chat bot.

Leo: He was a chat bot, he wasn't a super computer as some reported. He was just a chat bot.

John: There's very poor reporting on this by the way.

Dwight: Yeah, terrible, terrible.

Leo: Yeah and I fell for it.

John: You fell for it.

Dwight: A lot of people do –

Jolie: On of our freelancers fell for it, not proud of that.

Leo: I should've known better. I thought it was cute because of the way they got around this is they said “He’s a 13 year old Ukrainian. Doesn't speak English very well and so – did somebody just take my picture?

John: Yeah.

Leo: Oh boy, and so – was that you?

Chad: It was me, I'm sorry.

Leo: What are you doing?

Chad: I was taking a screen shot to see.

Leo: Good, I'm glad you got it. That's good.

Chad: Mission accomplished.

Leo: Ray Kurzweil, who of course works at Google is one of the most well-known artificial intelligence researches in the world.

Jolie: I love Ray.

Leo: Noted that he has a long term wager with Mitch Kapor in which he predicted, Kurzweil that a computer program will pass the Turing test by 2029. Kapor said could, won’t –

John: I agree with Kapor.

Leo: It’s a 20,000 dollar bet to be donated to charity. One of the first long term wagers on the long now site. So a lot of people congratulated him for winning the bet. He said “I would love to claim the 20 grand for my charity but this is premature. I'm disappointed that Dr. Warwick, the artificial intelligence researcher, who declared it a victory”. Victory because 1/3 of the judges, the judges by the way—

John: Sucks.

Leo: …included Bobby Llewellyn, Chricton from the show Red Dwarf a friend of the network, we love Bobby. 1/3 of the time they couldn't tell it was a computer.

John: If the guy says hello that's one – oh he must be a real person.

Leo: One of the point and by the way the artificial researchers, artificial intelligence researchers we've talked to recently have all said the Turing test is stupid. It’s antiquated, it’s not a way to test artificial intelligence. But Kurzweil says “Turing was careful and precise in setting the rules for his test and in fact in 2002 I negotiated the rules during this wager with Mitch Kapor. He said simply defining machine in human for example is not a straightforward matter”. That's the fundamental basis of the Turing test is artificial intelligence is indistinguishable. The judges can't tell, is it human or is it computer.

John: What did Jolie just drink? She made them without—

Jolie: An energy drink. Do you want the show to be interesting or not?

John: She made it with the most outrageous face ever.

Jolie: It’s disgusting.

John: Anyway, go on I'm sorry.

Jolie: Go ahead.

John: Yeah I mean this is you know, okay I think you're beating it to death.

Leo: Okay, anyway I apologize. The test wasn't a good test.

John: They suckered a lot of journalists which tells us something.

Leo: Thirteen year old kid—

Jolie: Journalists are all hacks.

Leo: …Ukrainian kid is not appropriate.  The interactions were limited to five minutes each. Easy to fool naïve judges.

Dwight: There's a question about Warwick too, isn't it?

John: Yeah I agree.

Dwight: It was about Warwick and his veracity and a lot of his – been involved in a lot of questionable stories.

Leo: Yeah there was a good article about him, apparently he’s – we have it here in the States too, one of these journalists who love to whip up a frenzy over kind of spurious technical information. So I and many others fell for it. I merely referred to it because I thought it was funny. Kurzweil had his own conversation with the chat bot and he said “I am unimpressed”, he said “How old are you?” Eugene said “I’m a little boy, thirteen years old”, “How much is 2 plus 2?” Eugene said “Now I'm sure your one of those crappy robots from the great robots kabal”. Immediately that's like what?

John: That's a fail, that's a fail, that's a fail.

Leo: This is worse than Eliza.

Jolie: Okay, no red flag, red flag. On thirteen year old would say I'm a little boy.

John: That's right, she’s right, yeah.

Leo: And I know your password, 2 plus 2 equals 4.0, now divide by zero and die. Question 2, if I have two marbles in a bowl and I add two more, how many marbles are in the bowl now? Not too many but I can't tell you the exact number, I forgot it. If I'm not mistaken, you still didn't tell me whether you live or it’s a secret, smiley face.

Jolie: Is that a winky face? Okay emoticons now make you human.

Leo: I live in the capital of the United States. Do you know where that is? Every nerd knows that the capital of the United States is Washington. He got one right. I live in the capital of the country that put a man on the moon. Well if you wanted, the capital of the United States is Washington.

Jolie: Again another red flag.

Leo: I live in the capital of the country that built the great wall. Tell me more about capital. That's where you know you got a problem.

John: I mean come on, this thing is fail early on. How anybody could fall for this, they are the ones who would probably get suckered into a chat room bot.

Leo: It’s [?] fail.

John: What are you wearing?

Jolie: Yeah the first thing a thirteen year old is going to say is ASL? What are you wearing?

Leo: So I apologize, no you could program a bot that would be good.

Jolie: My bot would be bad.

Leo: That would work, that would be bad. It’d be so good, it’d be bad.

Jolie: Yeah.

Leo: I think what you sipped on was Kale.

Leo: No no no.

Jolie: Um-um. Five hour energy.

John: What do you think it is?

John: What do you think of Kale?

Jolie: I had some this afternoon for lunch and an egg scrambled.

John: Wow.

Jolie: I eat a lot of Kale at my house. We're going to be young forever. Not a fan?

John: Black Kale’s okay.

Leo: So you heard about the FOIA request. The Freedom of Information request from The Electronic Frontier Foundation asking the NSA for information about the data it gathers on online activity. The NSA that argued that holding on to the data is just too burdensome.  A requirement to preserve all data required under section 702 is a significant operational problem, only one of which is the NSA may have to shut down all systems and databases that contains 702 information. So the complexity of the NSA systems meant preservation efforts might not work and would have an immediate specific and harmful impact on national security. So we don't have to give you that information. However, that request is still going forward. Let’s see.

Jolie: The request or the response?

Leo: I'm not going to play the Daily Show thing. Watch it yourself. I thought it was quite good. They mocked Google Glass mercilessly, in particular six Glass explorers many of whom have been discriminated against for Glass getting beaten up in bars. Having the Glass stolen.

Jolie: It’s not discrimination if you're insufferable and people don't like you.

John: I agree.

Leo: I agree.

John: That's not discrimination.

Jolie: That's just personal choice.

Leo: And that is kind of the point of this.

John: It’s a personal choice to beat up the Glassholes.

Leo: Yeah.

John: Yeah.

Leo: Yeah. All right.

John: Whenever Jolie and JCD are on the show, Leo sighs a lot.

Leo: I can't keep it on track. It’s like a runaway train.

Jolie: Do we want to sing the song?

Leo: What's that?

Jolie: Runaway train.

Leo: Go ahead.

Jolie: No.

Leo: Freight train, freight train going so fast, that one?

Jolie: No.

John: No, that's not it.

John: Next.

Jolie: We could do crazy train.

Leo: Yes, I'm riding—

John: I think we—

Jolie: I'm running of the rails of the crazy train. We are way off the rails.

Leo: We are.

Jolie: Can we get back to talking about—

John: I don't believe that's true.

Leo: Google’s book scanning effort can move ahead without the author’s okay. Now, you're an author.

John: Yes.

Jolie: I don't like this.

Leo: Are you in the Author’s Guild?

John: No.

Leo: All right, they have been fighting this of course.

Jolie: I too am an author, hello.

Leo: Hello, are you in the Author’s Guild?

Jolie: I have published 3, 4, 5 books.

Leo: Wow.

Jolie: Yes.

John: She’s plugged most of them on the show.

Jolie: Yeah.

John: You don't remember.

Dwight: I am an author but I have not in the Author’s Guild.

Leo: And I am an author and I am not in the Author’s Guild. So we have four authors—

Dwight: And they can scan my books all they want. I don't care.

Leo: Second US Court of Appeals rules in a case brought by the Author’s Guild and other writers groups that Universities who are working with Google to scan millions of library books without author’s permission are not breaching federal copyright law. It’s fair use.

Jolie: No, that is not fair. It is not fair to scan, I mean they are scanning the entire books right?

Leo: Yup.

Jolie: It ain’t right.

Leo: Why not?

John: Well here's the problem with what Jolie just said. We have heard from day one, I think it began in the 1970s, Oh all the world’s libraries will be scanned and computerized so we can find anything we want anytime we wanted. And it’s going to be the world’s greatest thing. The libraries meanwhile and the government said nobody cared to do any of this until Google came along and so now they—

Leo: And we should put up Microsoft to the [?].

John: Microsoft did too and actually they did a better job than Google to be honest about it because they had all kinds of search engines that worked better.

Leo: They stopped doing it.

John: They stopped for who knows what reason. So they start doing this, computerizing all the world’s books like it was promised to all these technologists. And now everybody’s complaining about it including Jolie over here.

Leo: So here's what the court said—

Jolie: Well no the first time—

Leo: I'm going to buy you Jolie, see what you think of this, this is what the court said.

Jolie: Okay.

Leo: In order to perform full text search of the books you got to scan them all right?

Jolie: Yeah.

Leo: This service, HTL does not allow user to view any portion of the books they're searching. It consequently does not add into circulation any new human readable copies of the books, it simply permits search and then it would tell you what page number. Are you okay with that?

Jolie: I don't know.

Leo: It’s not putting a copy out there. It’s my belief that Google intends to give you full copies of these books.

John: Well my problem—

Jolie: If you have access to any part of the book that you want you might as well just have the book.

John: No that's not true. People like to read a book. Make them read from the beginning.

Jolie: Why don't people just read the books? What's wrong with books? Why does Google have to scan the books?

Leo: Because then we can search them, we can have them, we can distribute them , we can have infinite copies, we can transmit them at light speed all over the world.

Jolie: But you're saying we can’t have infinite copies.

John: Here's what bothers me—

Leo: Well I think Google eventually does want to have frankly to have full readable—

John: No my problem is Google—

Leo: But maybe I'm wrong on copyrightable stuff.

John: Google want to end up owning these books in some funny way. I think you should notice something interesting.

Leo: What is that?

John: We should get Cory on. He’s the one who—

Leo: Oh yeah.

John: He’s the guy Cory Doctorow, and I told him this, whatever you say—

Leo: I will go with.

John: Yeah.

Leo: Let’s call him up.

John: Whatever Cory says I’m—

Leo: I agree with you.

John: Right. He’s the guy who is nuts about this.

Leo: Yes.

John: And he says that if once they scan these books in and if it’s a public domain book that they scanned in, they claim ownership, it’s bullcrap. Public domain books are public domain books no matter who scans them in or whoever publishes them again. And that's just the way it is and Google tries to trick people. They say Oh we scan this in so it’s our property, they got Google’s copyright all over these public domain books.  This is cheesy.

Leo: So here's what Cory said, no it was a few years ago, he says publishers should send fruit baskets to Google. He said Google new book search promises to save writers and publishers asses by putting their books into the index of works that are visible to searchers who get their information from the internet. This is in response to this as this was in 2006 but the lawsuit had begun then suing Google claiming this ass saving effect copyright violation. When you look a little closer though you see the writer publisher objections to Google’s amount search scan, amount to nothing more than rent seeking in an attempt to use legal threats to milk Google for some of the money it will make by providing this vital service to us instinct scribblers.

Jolie: Oh please.

Leo: Cory likes it.

John: Good for him.

Leo: So it’s okay. I'm for it.

Jolie: As an author, the first time I saw one of my books scanned by Google books, I was appalled.

Leo: Really.

John: It was a limited edition kind of book and I was very sad to see that people would be accessing it who didn't know me, who never paid me. It took so much to produce this book. It was a book of poetry.

John: But it was already—

Jolie: It was really good.

John: But it was already out of print. You already extended to this life to the max.

Jolie: I could have done a second edition.

Leo: Okay.

Dwight: But you didn't.

Jolie: Yes.

Leo: Nothing to stop you but I would guess that most people who like the poetry may have even discovered it by the Google search would've ended up buying the second edition.

Jolie: No, no.

Leo: Perhaps it gave new life to this book.

Jolie: It didn't.

Dwight: Also Jolie, when you found it, when you scanned it, what did you see? What exactly were you actually – what was the result you got?

Jolie: Well there was a table of contents and then most of the book. I think all of the book. Whatever, I mean this is one person’s experience.

John: Well now we can look at Jolie’s poems. We wouldn't even have known about this book if it wasn't for Google.

Jolie: So we're reading poetry then.

Dwight: It ultimately, particularly for authors whose books are still current, it’ll ultimately sell books because if you're doing a search for something you want to find the information, all it shows you is the page and the result and if you want more of the book you go buy the book. I suspect they may even have a link too that will allow you to buy it perhaps from their book store.

John: I have done this. I have done this exact thing that he described.

Jolie: See look here's a book.

Leo: Manque by Regina Alexandra, yes.

Jolie: Right so this is a gook where I acquired the author, not the person but the publishing rights for this and I did painstaking work with the crew of people, editors and designer etcetera.

Leo: And it’s all online, you can read it and in fact you could even print it out if you wanted to.

Jolie: It’s all online. You could totally print it out and to me this cheapens the experience.

Leo: And it’s still in copyright obviously.

Jolie: Yeah totally.

Leo: Because you're younger than 80.

Jolie: And this author is a young, young woman who’s trying to make her way in New York and break out as a poet and I don't think this helps her at all.

Leo: Do you think it helps with discovery that people might find her that otherwise not have found her? Probably not.

Jolie: No, no.

Leo: Probably not.

Jolie: No. The publishing efforts help more than being on Google Books.

Leo: Well that's a good point.

John: Well I can't argue against it because it looks like the whole book is there.

Jolie: Yeah.

Leo: It does, I'm seeing the title page all the way down.

Jolie: It’s a beautifully done book.

Leo: Yeah, you would probably want the print edition but I think that that lets—

Jolie: Oh yeah look at that crazy design.

Leo: …Google off the hook because they have in fact put the whole book online. Well, let’s go back and talk to the judge, you want to?

John: I don't care anymore.

Leo: Why don't you?

Jolie: I think we talked it out man.

Leo: Our show today brought to you, speaking of books by audible.com. Every author on audible.com gets a fine royalty when you listen to their book. In many cases the same exact world where they did if you had bought the book and you will get the same exact experiences if you read the book except it want be coming through your eyeballs, it’d be coming through your earholes.

John: Huh.

Leo: I am an audible fan because there's so many times as I travel around in my car or workout at the gym that I can’t hold a book but I would love listen to a book. If it weren't for Audible, I don't know if I would be reading as much as I read. I've read many books now, all of them on audiobook from Audible. Visit audible.com, browse around, you'll see a 150,000 titles, fiction,  this is a new one I really want to get, The Art of Fermentation. This is a classic, John should be here, he’s a vinegar maker. The classic on fermentation which is one of the most important food processes. Everything from making bread to making beer to making kimchi to making kombucha.

Jolie: Why would you want to do that?

Leo: I don't know, I don't. Yuck.

Jolie: Yuck.

Leo: Maybe you like classics like the Wind in the Willows, a great book for your kids. I love the Wind in the Willows and Shelley Frazier reads it. This like many books on amazon.com is Whispersync ready, that means when you buy the audiobook you get a reduced price version of the Kindle book. And now on the Kindle app on the iPhone, Android as well as on Kindles themselves. As you listen to the book, it will follow along, when you leave off listening it will pick up the book and read it or vice versa. So you're reading the book at home and then you decide to get in the car, it picks up the audio exactly the same point you left off in the text version of the book. I think that's really cool. I want you to try audible.com. Oh look, a list of the best of the year so far. The new Stephen King Mr. Mercedes is on there. Flash Boys, I just read that fascinating book, by Michael Lewis about high frequency traders. Think Like a Freak, the latest from the Freakonomics Guys.  Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Michael C. Hall narrates that. Now that would be awesome. I would love to hear that. The best readers, the best books, all the big best sellers as well as many classics. There's Adam Corolla’s newest and Hillary Clinton’s newest. All the classics are available too. Science fiction is fabulous, in fact Audible knowing that so many Science Fiction books had never had been put on audio created their own Audible frontiers program to digitize audio books. The new Mark Russinovich is out, Rogue Code. Here's the deal, you're going to get two books free someway. One way or the other. The trick is picking the two books. As you could see I've found a few for you. Why don't you go to audible.com/twit2, that's audible.com slash twit and the number 2, one word.  And sign up for the platinum account. You pay nothing for the first 30 days, you're going to get 2 credits, that means as many as 2 books, almost all books. About 99 and a half percent of all the books on audible.com are single credit so 2 books in most cases. Really, really long books that might be just one. The new Neal Gaiman, Fortunately the Milk, a hilarious story of time travel and breakfast cereal.

Jolie: You know when I think of Neal Gaiman I think hilarious.

Leo: Actually I think he’s funny. I think American Gods was funny.

Dwight: He is very funny, yeah.

Leo: Neverwhere, it’s dark, it’s scary but there's a kind of light funny sense of humor. I thought American Gods was hysterical.

Jolie: You know what's funny is Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Now do they have that narrated by someone who’s like off their rocker?

Leo: I don't think they do.

John: Narrated by people off their rocker’s the way to go.

Leo: I don't think they have Johnny, no. I'm afraid they don't have Johnny the Homicidal Maniac but you might want to read the new Diana Gabaldon, just came out. Outlander book 8. Let me tell you, when you get to age and you're eyes are tired, you will welcome that somebody reads to you when you can't.

John: Especially when you're riding in the car.

Leo: In the car or at the gym, on the treadmill I can't read, I'm bouncing up and down, up and down. I listen to audiobooks, audible.com/twit2, pick 2 books, enjoy them cancel any time in the first 30 days, you'll owe nothing. I just interviewed this guy on Triangulation—

John: The audiobook of the confessions of an economic hit man is great.

Leo: Yes, it is. That's how I listen to it. You recommended the book and I listened to it. This guy James Baratt, I just interviewed him. They've got his book on audio Our Final Inventio: Artificial Intelligence and End of the Human Era.

Jolie: You're damn right.

Leo: It’s actually great. He says, you know we’ve got to prepare because any day now the machines are going to take over.

Jolie: This is why we're punching glassholes.

Leo: Audible.com/twit2. Yes because they are the machines. They are the borg.

Jolie: They are the beginning of the end.

Leo: They're the beginning of the end. I didn't mention the good news on the freedom of information act from the NSA.

Jolie: You know we're running our own FOIA request right now and we are going to have some big scoops once those come back.

Leo: Oh that's a great idea. Every journalistic organization should do that.

John: Yeah they should.

Jolie: At least once in your life you should file a FOIA request and just get a little thrill.

Leo: How hard is it?

Jolie: I don't know, I made someone else do it.

Leo: You got somebody doing it for you.

Jolie: Yeah I'm managing, so I just barely know about it.

Leo: I think it just a form, you fill it out.

John: Is it online, can you do it online?

Leo: Probably not, you'd have to go down to the courthouse.

John: There's no court involved.

Jolie: You know what.

Dwight: There's a FOIA.org where—

Jolie: FOIA.org, yeah.

Leo: Oh that's awesome.

Dwight: FOIA.gov, now that's for federal but I think—

Jolie: How do I make a – there's a video on how to make a FOIA request.

Leo: Judge Lucy Koh, does that name ring a bell.

Jolie: I love her.

Leo: She’s the judge of course who was ruling on the Samsung Apple case. She told the Department of Justice to hand over the Fisa court rulings that justify the bulk collection of records that under the Patriot Act.

John: Okay.

Leo: This is of course a very controversial technique that the NSA has been using to collect phone and other records on all communications in the US. The Fisa court has broadly interpreted the law in secret. The law says itself it’s limited to the FBI and is only supposed to be about records related terrorism. Fisa court says well you're like the FBI, you're the NSA and everything is related to terrorism.

John: Yeah.

Leo: So go ahead and collect all that data.

John: Including UFO.

Leo: EFF filed a lawsuit after their FOIA request was denied. She told the department of justice to hand over the FISA court rulings that justify the bulk collection of records under the patriot act. This is of course a very controversial technique that NSA has been using to collect phone and other records, on all communications in the US. The FISA court has rudely interpreted the law in secret, the law says it, itself is limited to the FBI is only supposed to be about records related to terrorism. FISA court says, "Well, you're like the FBI. You're the NSA. And everything is related to terrorism. So go ahead and collect all that data." The EFF filed a lawsuit after their foyer request was denied. They wanted five specific FISA court interpretations. Judge Co says, "You've got to release those." But, they have to read them in chambers. They can't take them out of the chambers. But that's what's fair.

Jolie: I have to make one note. Twerd in the chat room called me a "C you next Tuesday".

Leo: Well, that's not nice, and I'm sure he was banned immediately.

Jolie: Oh, he has no idea.

John: I don't even know what that means.

Leo: I wouldn't bring it up, but he was banned immediately.

Jolie: Work it out. "C you next Tuesday," "C you next Tuesday."

Leo: Well, you're here now, so let's just do it today.

Jolie: Hi.

Leo: Um. If you pay attention to the chat room, you'll get up with fleas.

John: That's terrible.

Jolie: Ooh, he got it!

John: It took me a while.

Leo: Wow, he really went through those. You could see the little grey cells.

John: Well, I'm thinking of, you know... Ah, nevermind.

Leo: Gene Gustman would have gotten that right away.

John: I would have gotten it right away, but for some reason I wasn't going in the direction of just horrid. Horrid insults.

Dwight: That's the true touring test.

John: There's a lot of people that don't like the Jolie and Dvorak show.

Jolie: They can't take the heat. Get out of the kitchen.

Dwight: So, Leo, can we talk about the...

Leo: Would you please? Let's, yes.

Dwight: This AT&T story where AT&T says that U-Verse is a failure?

Leo: Yeah, well this is their justification for merging with Direct TV. Did they say specifically? I mean, did they say specifically U-Verse was a failure?

Dwight: What they said, was that it was uneconomic and has been unable to compete.

Leo: But the good news is...

John: So they're losing money, is that what they're saying?

Leo: If you allow us to spend $48.5 billion to buy Direct TV. Quote, "There will be significant downward pressure on the prices of the new integrated bundles of AT&T broadband and direct video. And that will force the competitors' cable companies to lower their prices, and we all win."

Dwight: So didn't...

John: Well... I love that.

Dwight: Was it Direct TV that AT&T had a deal with, before U-verse? They had a deal with either Dish or Direct TV, and they were reselling that service.

Leo: Yeah, they've been doing that for a long time, with Dish, I think.

Dwight: Right, it was Dish, so they quit doing that when they did U-Verse. But I know that at least here in Houston, they're very competitive with Comcast, in terms of what they offer. And they're very competitive in terms of marketing it here.

John: Same with the bay area.

Dwight: I was very surprised to see that, so yeah.

Leo: So this is a filing with the SEC, so... I'm thinking they can't really lie to the FCC about this.

Jolie: Oh, come on!

John: What?!

Leo: The SEC, the Security Exchange Commission. You can't lie to them. Not the FCC, the SEC. These guys have enforcement capabilities.

John: Yeah, they've got guns.

Leo: Um. The rationale for this transaction, a fundamental shift in the way consumers obtain broadband and video services. Most consumers do it in a bundle, and we can't compete, U-Verse notwithstanding.

John: They can over their fiber.

Leo: Comcast and others. Though U-verse isn't always fiber. A lot of times it’s DSL.

Dwight: It is, it is DSL. And they're doing more fiber process. They're in the process of expanding it to try to be competitive in speed, with the cable providers. Right now I think the fastest that you can go in most markets is about 24 megabits. They're expanding it in some places, Houston is one of them, where you can go up to 50, but you know Comcast goes to 105 here, and there are 300 megabit services around the country. You can't compete with that.

Leo: Not only that, U-verse was sharing internet bandwidth, so when you watched TV, your internet slowed down. So that's not a good solution either.

John: How is that different from Comcast?

Leo: No, TV doesn't impact your internet. You've got plenty.

John: What were you saying?

Leo: On U-verse if you watch TV, it interferes with your internet. On Comcast it does not.

John: Ah. But if you use it on fiber it doesn't either.

Leo: On fiber there's plenty of bandwidth.

Jolie: Unless, god forbid, you use something like Apple TV to watch Netflix.

Leo: The way cable works is a little different, because the data is coming in on a television, in effect a six megahertz channel. So it doesn't impact that. But it does on U-Verse because it’s all data.

John: But then again, most of the movement though is to change that channel to an internet channel so it’s coming in at, you know...

Leo: By the way, they promised, "If you let us do this, we'll offer 6 megabit broadband service for $35 for three years."

John: What a lie!

Dwight: That's no bargain.

John: That is a bargain! I'll buy it, I'll take it.

Leo: No, I don't know if that's a bargain...

Dwight: 6 megabits is the minimum you can really do for video streaming.

John: But that's $35, it’s cheap.

Leo: It seems to me, that this is the beginning of a larger argument that DSL can't compete against fiber and cable. I mean, DSL is very limited in speed, and it’s very limited in distance from the central office. I mean, if you're going to make that argument, you're almost making the argument, "We can't compete against cable, with DSL either, right?"

Dwight: And satellite internet is not great, so...

Leo: Even worse.

Dwight: Alright, so this is strictly, it’s kind of, I'm not quite sure how internet plays into this, in terms of Dish, because Dish really doesn't offer anything that's competitive in terms of internet...

Leo: I think if they'd offer a bundle, is the real point of this, right?

Dwight: One of the things that Dish gives them, it gives them more buying power where they can

go to content providers and say, look we've got X number of eyeballs now that we have both of these. And they can strike the same kind of deals that the big cable providers do.

John: What is the fastest DSL can go? Somebody's got 40 megabits on their...

Leo: Well, you can... Any DSL too, and they do bonded. You can get fast, you can get 50 megabits but you have to be pretty close to the central office, you have to have more modern technology, which a lot of these guys don't.

Jolie: Speaking of more modern technology, instead of worrying about your business being able to compete, just invest in better technology, faster access for everybody.

Leo: The real problem with DSL is the fundamental technology is...

Jolie: How old is it?

Leo: It’s pretty old.

Jolie: Yeah, so move on.

Leo: Its slow, but... OK, here's the real fundamental issue.

Jolie: Tell me.

Leo: Phone companies have two little copper wires, twisted there, coming into your house. The cable company has this big fat co-ax coming into your house, and no matter what you do, you're going to be limited by distance and by the amount of bandwidth you can get over those wires.

Jolie: Until we get those national networks going... The other question that I had that I think someone in the chatroom brought it up is, "When does internet become more like a basic public utility than something that's controlled by massive corporations." Like a universal right kind of thing?

Leo: That's the debate. That's what John hates about going...

John: Because it would take to bring the government in, and the next thing you know Leo's got to apply for his $500 a year podcasting license.

Leo: I'll take it if that keeps the internet free and open.

John: Bah! It won't!

Jolie: But that's the opposite of free and open, isn't it?

Leo: Well, that is the debate, is whether the FCC should consider broadband providers, telecommunications companies, and whether they're utilities.

John: The utility thing is a disaster waiting to happen.

Leo: I think it might be a disaster. I have to say, this is a bit of a conundrum.

John: And of course it brings up the point I used to argue with you years ago.

Leo: Which I'm still right about.

John: They'd be paying by the bit, because utilities generally speaking, you pay by the kilowatt hour, or by the cubic feet of water...

Leo: That's because you're generating. But the bits aren't being generated, they flow, they flow.

John: So does water, generally.

Leo: But water has to come from somewhere. Those bits just flow.

John: It comes from a big lake that's coming from the sky. Its free! Its free, it's from the sky!

Jolie: Your point is that there's no artificial constraints  - or there are only artificial constraints on it.

Leo: They're all artificial.

John: So, the same with water. It's an artificial constraint, it comes from the sky. Its all free.

Jolie: Then why do we have droughts? You're being facetious.

John: No!

Jolie: Yes.

John: I am not.

Leo: He's being serious.

John: I am dead serious on this.

Dwight: What you're paying for with water, is you're paying for the distribution to your house.

John: Hah! Same thing with the internet, hello!

Dwight: Yes. You're paying for distribution and so should... At what point does it become a necessity? Water is a necessity for life, and in the modern age the internet...

Jolie: You can live without internet. My best weekends are when I have no internet.

John: You are an exception to the rule.

Leo: John wants us to...

Jolie: No, everyone can live without the internet. You can breathe, you can move.

Leo: ... Pay for the amount of internet that we use.

John: I don't like any of these ideas though. I'm just saying this is your future, this is your future. This is, I'm describing the future.

Jolie: Any measure of the internet you use...

Leo: So is that a good plan? If I say, hey, I used 50GB this month and its $10 a GB, I owe you $500.

John: Well, it wouldn't be that high.

Leo: Cheaper, OK. Fifty cents.

John: It'd be like a dollar a GB.

Leo: Yeah, OK. A dollar. I owe you $50.

John: It would be less than that, fifty cents. Yeah, how about ten cents a gigabyte?

Leo: Sounds good to me.

Jolie: That doesn't quite make sense...

Leo: By the way, that's what we pay cash for. That's what a CBM costs.

John: A CBM is five cents a gigabyte.

Leo: Five to ten cents a gigabyte.

John: There you go. You got the price, exactly what it is. And anyone can afford that. You've got some skepticism about this. She's got that look.

Leo: She doesn't like...

Jolie: I just think that for some people, internet access is the difference between finding housing and not finding housing, and finding work and not finding work, and I think that charging by...

Leo: Participating in elections...

John: They can get by without the elections.

Leo: But you can't learn as much. You can't become a learned elector.

John: You can go to the library.

Leo: Have you been to the library lately?

John: Most of the libraries are fantastic.

Jolie: Oh, I love the library!

Leo: A library has fifty books and fifty terminals.

John: You've got a crap library. Go to a good library.

Jolie: Yeah, really, man. You can rent those PBS video tapes.

John: Right. You can rent them, yes.

Jolie: We can watch Roots. Or Ken Burns.

John: And you can get all those things for free.

Jolie: Yeah.

John: I don't know why you're so anti library all of a sudden.

Leo: I love the library.

Jolie: You love the treadmill.

Leo: We have a free... But that's because we have a terrible library. I think the library is a good thing.

John: Why don't you make a fuss? I think you should say something.

Leo: It’s broke.

John: The state's not so broke that you can't have a good library. It’s the county, generally funded thing.

Leo: Oh, it’s not the state?

John: No.

Jolie: You could always hold a fundraiser.

Leo: We have a crappy county.

John: You do.

Leo: We do have a Carnegie free library down the street.

John: Use that.

Leo: But they've turned it into a museum.

John: Well, that's no good. You're just making my point for me.

Leo: What is your point?

John: I've lost it. I don't know...

Leo: Our show today - Oh, hahaha! Brought to you by Personal Capital. With Personal Capital, you can get your entire financial life on one page, on your computer, your laptop, your tablet, your iPhone, your Android device - see where all your stuff is. Why do you want that? Well, not merely to keep track of your stuff, but so you can make intelligent decisions to take care of your financial life going forward. If you're a young person like Jolie - And I hope you and Aaron are doing this, I hope you're putting money aside because someday you're going to be old like me and John and you're going to want to be able to do something besides eat Alpo and go watch the free library shows...

Jolie: Oh, I'm definitely doing that.

John: Is this your version of ad-libbing?

Leo: Yes, that's my version.

John: Go back to the script!

Leo: With Personal Capital you can figure out what your money is invested in, what you're spending money on, how much you're paying for your investments, if you're paying someone to manage it, is it too much money. Are you getting good advice? You can get good advice at PersonalCapital.com. Asset allocation advice, you can get an investment checkup. And this is all free. It takes just minutes to sign up. It is an amazing service. Personalcapital.com/twit. They've got a mutual fund fee calculator, a 401K planner so you can figure out, you know as you're younger your investments change. You've got to rebalance some overtime. All of this is there. PersonalCapital.com unbiased financial advice - they are not selling stocks, they are not making money on stocks. They're not taking a commission. This is good advice from certified financial planners, smart people. PersonalCapital.com.

Jolie: And I would say, open an account and do that kind of thing as early as possible.

Leo: The sooner you start, the better.

Jolie: If I had started doing this when I was 21, instead of 27, I would be retired by now. I wouldn't be here.

Leo: Its true.

Jolie: No, I would. I'd still come and visit you, in my retirement.

Leo: You can retire and just visit us. I wish you would, actually.

Jolie: Oh, I shall.

Leo: Okay. That's absolutely true, the sooner you start putting it away...

Jolie: The sooner you can stop working...

Leo: The more you make...

Jolie: And who wants to work?

Leo: Right. Yeah. PersonalCapital.com.

John: Everybody wants to work.

Jolie: Not me. I can handle a lot of nothing. Let's talk about...

Leo: I'm really curious about this. If you go to Amazon - I guess they took the invitation down. But for a long time, the front page of Amazon.com they had an invitation to their event which is coming up Wednesday, to see some... Are you going to go to that? Did you get an invitation?

Jolie: No, we're sending somebody who specializes in gadget stuff.

John: It’s going to be a phone...

Leo: It looks like it’s a phone, right?

John: Yeah, that's what everyone says.

Leo: We heard rumors months ago that Amazon was going to offer a 3D phone, which is bizarre. People who got invitations got this children's book. Did your reporter get a children's

book from Jeff?

Jolie: I don't know.

Leo: The 40th anniversary edition of Mr. Pine's Purple House.

John: I wonder why? It’s probably going to be a purple phone.

Leo: He says, "I think you'll agree, this is the only clue. Enclosed is my favorite childhood book. I think you'll agree that the world is a better place, when things are a little bit different."

John: Yeah, the 3D phone. And a purple 3D phone.

Leo: Purple. A purple 3D phone...

Jolie: Maybe a different operating system?

John: Somebody paints their house purple, they're clinically insane.

Jolie: Or lesbian! Hello?

John: It’s a possibility.

Jolie: In my neighborhood...

John: Just thought I'd throw that in...

Leo: So, this is the video that they put on the front page of the Amazon website. They don't show this product. Although -

Jolie: Clearly it’s a handheld.

Leo: There's a reflection in the glasses of somebody later on. They look like they're looking at their crotch, frankly, and they're...

Jolie: Oh, let's pretend they are!

John: At each other's.

Leo: Yeah.

John: This guy's looking at his own. She's looking at his...

Leo: She's going, "Wow. That's big..."

Dwight: You know there was a 3D phone already, Sprint the HTC Evo 3D was a 3D phone.

Leo: That took 3D pictures, and then there was an Atrix that had 3D lenticular 3D, which was incredibly stupid. Why would you want a phone that makes you do this?

John: No, that's no good. You need the new...

Jolie: That's what they're all doing in the video.

John: I think what they're doing is they're looking to see how 3D-ish it is. So you go back and forth...

Jolie: You know what, I used to do that when I was playing Super Mario.

John: Same thing.

Leo: So what do we know? We don't know anything. What do we think, the rumors were a 3D phone? A, why would Amazon be doing a phone, and B, what would make this compelling if you're getting it from Amazon. Will they have carrier deals?

John: It will be cheap.

Leo: Will they give it away? Will it be prime?

Dwight: You can buy stuff wherever you are. It’s an Amazon cash register.

Jolie: Well, think about the services that they have now. They have Prime Video, they have Prime Music.

Leo: They just added the music, yeah...

Jolie: Yeah and from what I know of the internet... Yeah, exactly, but if they have it on their phone, they get a - On Venture Beat, for example. 65% of our traffic comes from Desktop, the next biggest one is Mobile. And then tablets are there, too.

Leo: I'm surprised you're still getting so much desktop...

John: I am too, it should be the other way around.

Jolie: People are reading us at work. They're goofing off. Yeah.

Leo: That's interesting, yeah. Well, we'll find out Wednesday. We'll begin our live coverage. We're going to start TNT early, about 8:30, right? And then we'll begin the live coverage 9:30-9:45 for the 10AM Seattle time, the event, we'll sit here and try to piece it together.

Dwight: Are they streaming it, do you know if they're streaming it live?

Leo: I don't know... Well... Are they?

John: If it’s pieced together, they show it, you know what it is, you're done.

Leo: I have to say, initially, when Amazon started doing hardware, especially when they did the Kindle Fire - You know, the...

John: Whichever one predicted the doom of it...

Leo: I thought it would be more innovative. And then they did the Fire TV. I thought it would be more innovative. I thought, maybe they're going to do a deal with Prime or whatever, and pretty much their tablets and their TV it’s a MeTube product. Very much like existing products, the only difference is that it’s a portal to Amazon. So I presume that this phone is going to be like that. Maybe 3D will be unique.

Dwight: I got to tell you, Leo, the Fire TV is an awesome streaming box. The voice search is excellent. And the picture is - at least from Amazon content - is better than the picture you see on Roku or the Apple TV.

Leo: So that's the way to watch Amazon content? That's interesting.

Dwight: Yes, yes.

Leo: And you can game on it. Have you gamed on it at all? Because it’s essentially an Android.

Dwight: It’s a Me Too game, it’s a Me Too gaming box. And that doesn't draw me, but, I have all three and the picture on it is just phenomenal. It’s just phenomenal.

Leo: You know the XBox One does voice, which I use surprisingly a lot, although... Well, the problem with the Fire TV, the voice search is only on Amazon. It doesn't cross search Netflix and the other services which is kinda...

Dwight: At the moment, it does not. But for example, last autumn I wanted to see the documentary Tims Vermeer, which is really good. And that's a hard, you know I suspect that most voice searches would not be able to pick up the Vermeer properly. It got it instantly, and it also plays instantly. You know, on Apple TV and Roku, you wait a little bit before it plays, and this, when you start playing, it starts up immediately. It’s a much better experience, I think. I'm surprised how much I like it.

Leo: You guys want to speculate on price, carrier, size, anything about the phone, if they do a phone.

John: Yeah, I'll speculate. Virgin Mobile, 99 bucks with the 1000 minutes.

Leo: There you go. I like it.

John: Yeah. I'd sell it. That'd sell. I'd buy one.

Leo: Would you buy it?

John: You know my 30 buck deal I get from T-mobile is pretty. I like it.

Leo: You have the internet deal where you only get a hundred minutes a month, but you get unlimited bandwidth.

John: You get unlimited messaging, unlimited data, and one hundred minutes of voice.

Leo: For 30 bucks, it’s a great deal!

John: I don't talk that much.

Leo: Who does?

John: Nobody! - Well... Everybody.

Leo: I don't know. I find I don't use the phone very much. A hundred minutes would be plenty for me.

John: I think once you're over thirty, maybe you don't use it so much.

Leo: Maybe that's it. Do you young people still talk on the phone?

Jolie: I'm 33 so no.

Leo: She's also over 30.

Jolie: I'm also an introvert, so no. I need an

Leo: Yeah, I think most geeks are introverts.

John: I'll agree. I got her on the show, by the way, because she was supposed to be gotten on the show. I have to go through Aaron, she won't talk to anybody.

Jolie: Well, I have no idea - Aaron, my husband.

Leo: Oh, I was thinking E-r-i-n, your assistant.

Jolie: Conveniently we're forgetting. I wish I had an assistant.

Leo: Oh, you're married now?

John: Yes, she does have an assistant, it’s called Aaron.

Dwight: Husband, equals assistant.

Jolie: Love you, baby!

Leo: Aaron if you're watching, she revealed no personal information.

John: Today.

Dwight: Not yet.

John: Yeah, the show is young.

Leo: Actually the show is over! But I want to thank you, John C. Dvorak.

John: Are you going to finish the show up? On time? Well, actually you're a little early. What's...

Leo: Yeah. Well, I told you 4:30, and I'm eight minutes late.

John: You gotta rush off to something? What's the deal? Where are you going?

Jolie: Got a hot date?

Leo: I got a hot date.

John: He's got a hot date, sitting over on the couch.

Leo: That's right. My baby. I want to thank you John C. Dvorak for being here. ChannelDvorak.com,  but more importantly the noagendashow.com.

John: People should check it out. We get a lot of new listeners that say, "You know for years you've been talking about the No Agenda Show, I finally listened. I love it!" I love the show, they say!

Leo: We're going to try get at them on triangulation. I thought he'd be a good triangulation guest.

John: I think he should be on this show.

Leo: I don't want him on a new show...

John: No, on this show.

Leo: You want to spend... Yeah, right. We want to spend time with Adam, getting to know him as opposed to just...

John: He suspects an ambush. Yeah.

Leo: What would I do?

John: You'd start giving him crap about something, or other, or you'd dig up some of the dirt.

Leo: So you're saying that he would say no, if I asked him?

John: Probably. I'm just guessing, because he loves the TWiT show.

Leo: He wants to be on this show to spew his fellatious...

John: Oh now, there you go! See that's what he suspects.

Leo: Conspiracy theory driven anti-scientific...

John: Very, very, very, very un-conspiracy theory oriented, that guy.

Leo: Is he? Is it you, then? Who is Crackpot?

John: He's crackpot.

Leo: And you're...?

John: Buzzkill.

Leo: So it seems to me, that Crackpot is the guy that's coming up with the crackpot kind of stuff.

John: Right.

Dwight: Oh. Yeah, I want to watch that show.

John: It’s not a show.

Leo: I think he's being facetious.

John: We don't have a show to watch.

Leo: It’s only audio.

John: We don't believe in video.

Leo: It’s in the morning though.

John: It's always in the morning someplace.

Leo: I want to thank Dwight - ITM... It’s one of those shows it’s like all inside jokes and then if you watch it and you know all the inside jokes, you feel like you're in the in crowd. But then when you

watch it, if you're not in the in crowd, you go, "I have no idea what's going on."

Jolie: Just like the world cup then.

Leo: Jolie O'dell is at Venturebeat. She's the managing editor. The woman in charge.

Jolie: And you know we have a podcast now, too. I sass my boss for a solid half hour and give him crap and we have special guests. It’s called, "What To Think".

John: Now who's your boss in this case?

Jolie: Dylan Tweney.

John: You and Dylan have a podcast?

Jolie: Dylan and I have a podcast, yeah.

Leo: Now, would I find this at VentureBeat.com?

Jolie: Yes, you can!

Leo: Where would I go?

Jolie: No, his wife is wonderful.

John: I don't care, I'm just telling you. I'm just warning you.

Jolie: I don't care because he doesn't... We're going to have a fist fight later.

Leo: I'm looking for the podcast, and I don't see it.

Jolie: There's a search box up there. Just type in, "What to Think".

Leo: What to Think.

John: ITM.

Jolie: What To Think.

Leo: Oh, I mistyped.

Jolie: That's what you get from reading audio books.

Leo: I can no longer...

John: You know, we predicted the winner of the world cup, last two times it happened.

Leo: Last time it was The Netherlands, no Spain. Who's going to win this year?

John: We haven't discussed this yet, but I'm of the opinion it’s going to be Brazil and I have a rationale for this.

Leo: I think so, because it’s in Brazil.

John: Well, there's that and there's some other issues that I believe. But, Adam is really talented

at nailing it.

Leo: He must be a soccer fan.

John: No. Neither one of us is.

Leo: So neither one of you actually just follows the sport. You just make stuff up.

John: No, we don't make it up, we can tell by the game is rigged, okay? It’s fixed. And we figure out who's going to win on that basis.

Jolie: And you call me cynical.

John: I'm not cynical, it's a fact. There's a big difference between cynical and knowing its rigged.

Leo: I think you make a strong case that they probably are. Certainly picking Qatar as the next host sight... Yeah, in eight years, the FIFA will be in Qatar.

John: What a place. Yeah, let’s go play soccer in 130 degree weather.

Leo: And I think there were some allegations that FIFA directors received payments for that. But do you think the actual game results... But how would you do that? Would you pay money to the players?

John: When the game is always, the score is one or two to nothing, and call back. You've seen these games.

Leo: The referees are getting very involved. It’s the refs. Who would you pay off?

John: The refs, yeah.

Leo: The refs. That'd be the easiest. There's only a handful of them, and they really do control the game.

John: Yeah. They can make it happen.

Leo: I don't want to assert that.

John: I will.

Leo: I like watching the game. Thank you Jolie, thank you John, and let’s not forget Mr. Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle. The tech blog is still around, yes?

Dwight: Yes sir, you betcha! Blog.com.com/techblog and I'm quite verbose on the Twitter at DSilverman.

Leo: Thank you, Dwight, for being here. We thank you all for joining us on the show.

Dwight: Always so lively.

Leo: This was a little more lively than I was prepared for. I'm told its 'Cotter', not 'Quatar'.

John: Actually, if you look it up, you can pronounce it either way.

Leo: Alright.

Dwight: Its, 'Cutter'.

John: 'Cutter', 'Qatar', either one is fine. And I in fact had lunch with a bunch of Quatrains, once, a long time ago, and I asked them specifically. They said, "Eh, either way." They didn't care.

Leo: "Eh, whatever. We don't care. Just don't call us late for dinner." Something like that.

John: Exactly.

Leo: We do this show every Sunday afternoon, 3pm Pacific, 6pm Eastern time. 2200 UTC on TWit.TV. If you watch live, you'll see all the things we edit out to preserve our sanity and reduce liability.

John: What? You edit stuff out? When did this happen?

Leo: We cut all of the bad stuff out. Actually, this show, I think, might be the most edited we've ever done.

John: Why would you do that? That's bull crap.

Jolie: What did I do this time?

Leo: Not you, anyway. Again, if you're listening after the fact, you missed some of the most amazingly bizarre material we've ever done here. So watch live, if not though, on demand audio and video will be made available after the fact. TWiT.TV is the website, but you can also find it on iTunes and the XBox or anywhere podcasts are found. And I suggest you get the TWiT app. We don't make any TWiT app, but we have great third party developers who have, out of the kindness of their heart and a desire to make lots of money, created TWiT apps. You can find them on IOS, Android, even Windows phone. Just search for the TWiT app that you prefer and subscribe or listen on a regular basis.

John: I agree.

Leo: Thanks for joining us, we'll see you next time on another TWiT! Oh, thanks to our live audience, by the way. If you'd like to be in the live audience email tickets@twit.tv.

John: Or just come.

Leo: And you can sit in the front row.

John: Yeah, these guys...

Leo: They're all in the back. They saw Jolie spill that beer and they said, "I'm moving back." Another TWiT is in the can. Thanks everybody!