This Week in Tech 455 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It’s time for Twit, This Week In Tech, and what a week this has been! This may be, I don’t know, start your stopwatches, the longest Twit ever. John C. Dvorak is here, Natalie Morris, Denise Howell. We’ll talk about the Aereo decision, the new FCC rules, big earnings for Apple and the iPad is down. What is going on? The week’s tech news next on Twit.

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This is Twit. This Week In Tech, Episode 455 recorded April 27, 2014.

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Leo: It’s time for Twit, This Week In Tech. The show that covers your Tech news and boy there’s a lot of it. That means it is going to be a short show. Whenever I say there is no news the show is very long and whenever I say there is a lot of news is very short. John C. Dvorak, the master of irony. Good to have you. channeldvorak.com and also The Agenda Show. Also, here, Natalie Morris. I almost wanted to call you Natalie Clay Morris. But it’s not very fair to call you Natalie claim Eric Morris.

Natalie Morris: I am Mrs. Clay Morris. But I do have my own identity.

Leo: Natalie Del Conti Morris. When you got engaged at first you didn’t write Mrs. Claymore is 100 times just to practice.

Natalie: No, no, and I was engaged for about five minutes. We got married on a wham on our lunch hour.

Leo: That was cute!

Natalie: There was no engagement.

Leo: So nice to have you back. Welcome.

John C. Dvorak: No engagement?

 Leo: And I brought in a ringer today. Because we needed expert help from Denise Howell, who was the host of this week in law. She blogs at Bag and Baggage. Do you still blog at Bag and Baggage?

Denise Howell: Once upon a time I blogged at Bag and B Is itaggage. It sort of morphed into my website because I really don’t blog that regularly.

Leo: Nobody blogs anymore. Blogging is dead. Everybody knows that.

Denise: Exactly.

Leo: That is how I first met you. We were at a conference or something I was sitting behind you and I was watching you blog as we work listening to the speaker. Talk about somebody who is dedicated to blogging! And you’re right, you haven’t posted in a year and half. So that is over. Anyway great to have you. Denise does a great show on our network every week where they talk about stuff like from an expert point of view. Because they are all attorneys, but we thought we would bring you win on this FCC thing. By the way you have had two shows in a row that are very great. I’m trying to get the guy that you had in on his last invention.

Denise: Was he not great?

Leo: Fascinating. I got his book because of that. And I’m trying to get him on triangulation. He basically says as soon as we invent intelligent machines we are dead. It is over.

Denise: James Barrett.

Leo: James Barrett, thank you. So on Wednesday the Wall Street Journal published a story saying tomorrow the FCC is going to publish new proposed rules that will change how they treat the Internet. Essentially, that will allow paid access. Everything we are trying to fight with net neutrality. Allow Internet service providers to charge edge providers, people like us, people like YouTube, people like Netflix, for either full access or approved access to their customers. This is something, of course, a completely antithetical motion to net neutrality. The next day, they do in fact impose those rules but Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC writes of blog post saying wait a minute there is nothing different here, this is exactly how we've always done it. And a number of, I think fairly authoritative tech blogs, picked that up and said no, no, don’t panic everything is fine. Well it is a lie.

John: How is this?

Leo: It is a lie!

John: What is the lie?

Leo: Well I'll point you to it. I think a very good article, and I will let Denise comment, is from Barbara von Schewick from the Center for Internet society from Stanford Law school said the FCC’s change course on net neutrality and here is why you should care. We learned who is, by the way, not only a long time cable and wireless industry lobbyist before you became the FCC chairman but in the hall of fame of the cable industry and the wire this industry. He is in the hall of freaking fame for both industries.

John: Where is this Hall of Fame?

Leo: It’s not in Cleveland. That’s all I know.

John: Did he have his bus there?

Leo: I don’t know! I imagine it involves a plaque. But he was also made, President Obama made him chairman of the FCC. You remember that the FCC did create an open Internet proposal. What are you looking at?

John: I’m trying to figure out how to go to this page you’re on.

Leo: It’s in our doc. Do you have the dock? drivedocgoogle.com.

Natalie: Get prepared John. I did my homework.

Leo: cyperlaw.stanford.edu. I think of all the articles I have read, the clearest. I will just set this up and then Denise, I would love to get your take on this. You have obviously thought a lot about it. According to the Journal on Wednesday, regulators are proposing new rules on Internet traffic. That will allow broadband providers to charge companies a premium for access to their fastest lanes. This is the journal, trying to make it understandable. The proposal would allow providers, Comcast as an example here because they are about to become the largest Internet provider. When they merged with Time Warner they will be even more humongous powerful internet service provider. The proposal would allow providers to give preferential treatment, those words should bother you, to traffic from some content providers as long as such arrangements are available on commercially reasonable terms for all interested content companies. The FCC will decide what is commercially reasonable on a case-by-case basis. In a blog post in response, Chairman Wheeler calls that setting the record straight. “There has been a great deal of misinformation that surfaced. This is not a change”. So, I think this is an example of the big lie. If you lie big enough and bold enough with enough confidence people say, well, no problem.

John: Why is he saying that? Does he believe it is not a change or do you think he is actually overtly lying. Which is what you just said.

Leo: I personally think he is overtly lying, that he knows this is a revolving door. And just as other commissioners and chairman, by the way his predecessor Michael Powell is now has his old job back at the NCAA, he is the boss there. This is a revolving door that commissioners routinely go back to the industry were they make big bucks. I think Chairman Wheeler expects this.

John: So you are accusing Wheeler, an Obama appointee I might add, of corruption.

Leo: Yes. Absolutely corrupt.

Natalie: Well, of being played to the system that already is corrupted. You know, for a fact that he is greased and wined and dined by lobbyists.

Leo: He is a lobbyist! He doesn’t have to be greased. Obama appointed him, put him, the Fox, in charge of the hen house! All right Denise Howell. What this comes down to, and there is hope, this is a proposal, the FCC will vote on it and then after of the commissioners vote there will be a period of public comment. This goes back to the recent court case Verizon sued the FCC over this open Internet proposal and won. The court, and we had you on that time Denise, gave them a very clear roadmap. They said that telecommunications act, specifically section 706 of the telecommunications act, requires the FCC to allow these kinds of fees. The court said there is an exception. If you declare the Internet service providers to be common carriers, to be utilities, then you can block fees. You can have an open Internet. Chairman Wheeler, for reasons we don’t know, for reasons he doesn’t say, has decided not to follow the court’s suggestion. Not to declare ISPs as common carriers, and so as result he has no choice but to allow access fees. Denise is that a correct summary?

Denise: You have keyed this up really well Leo. It is a complicated issue. So kudos to you for doing that. Shall I go ahead and give you my take?

Leo: Yes please.

Denise: So, first of all I would like to know is exactly what it is that we are talking about here. So far we haven’t seen these proposed new rules unless they were published in full text in the Wall Street Journal I have not read the Wall Street Journal.

Leo: They weren’t. The Wall Street Journal released this the day before saying here they come.

Denise: Right. But they haven’t come. We haven’t seen them yet. So there has been this whole tornado of news coverage around something that no one has yet seen.

Leo: Wheeler did say in his blog here is what the notice will propose.

Denise: Right. And I think we have a pretty good idea that it is going to contain some provision for…

Leo: So you are saying they never released these proposals as they were supposed to on Friday?

Denise: I kept refreshing before eight this week in Law on Friday to see if we could find them.

John: Then why are you so worked up Leo?

Denise: Nobody has seen them, as far as I know, please correct me if I am wrong. I still don’t think anybody has seen them.

John: You are right. The Wall Street Journal, I think got some special copies because I don’t know why that was. Just to screw everybody else.

Leo: It is also possible the FCC, as often happens, loaded a trial balloon. They said, let’s see what the reaction is if we were to propose this. And obviously, I hope, the reaction was strong enough that maybe they have thought better of it. Tom Wheeler, in his blog post at FCC.gov says, “To be clear, this is what the notice will propose. All ISPs must transparently disclose to their subscribers and users all relevant information as the policies that cover the networks.” They must say we are demanding you to pay us extra.

John: Where does it say that? Demanding?

Leo: No legal content may be blocked. And that ISPs may not act in a commercial, this is where you get in trouble, in a commercially unreasonable manner to harm the Internet.

John: You don’t think that second thing is a little sketchy?

Leo: The no legal content can be blocked? Why is that sketchy?

John: Don't you realize the United nation is creating these rules and regulations.

Leo: Who declares it illegal?

John: That is a very nasty thing to sneak in. I would be more concerned about that, that is SOPA.

Denise: Exactly. Civil legality versus criminal legality should be taken into consideration there. Again, we haven’t seen this thing so we are going by Chairman Wheeler’s statements and the Wall Street Journal summary. We need to actually see this thing to be able to talk intelligently about it. Even though no one has seen that the FCC has opened up a new inbox for comments about its new open Internet proposal, which no one has seen yet. If people have comments they can email the FCC at openinternet@fcc.gov. I’m sure the FCC is getting an earful.

Leo: He says, it should be noted that title to regulation, this is the communications act regulation, only bands on just and and reasonable discrimination.

Denise: So you realize his point there.

Leo: Yes, it has to be reasonable.

Denise: Well now. Here is what he is saying there. He is addressing. Let's back up to 2010 when the first open Internet law rules from the FCC were enacted. Under Chairman Genachowski.

 Leo: And we liked those.

Denise: Well, actually nobody really liked those. Because the people who were in favor of net neutrality and strong prophylactic net neutrality did not think that they went far enough. And the people who are not in favor of big government regulating business and having a lot of monkeying around in what sort of private arrangement businesses can make with each other, did not like them either. Because they began to go down that road. So they really didn’t make anybody too happy.

Leo: Which is the test of a good rule. In my opinion.

Denise: Remember, Tom Wheeler was not there then. But one of the reasons that the original open Internet rules, which were taken out by the second circuit Court of Appeals recently, one of the reasons people didn’t like it is what you have alluded to. This going under section 706 as opposed to regulating internet as a common carrier. They didn’t do that. So what he is saying here is that it should be noted that even Title 2 regulation only bans unjust and unreasonable discrimination. He is saying even if we reclassify, which we still could do, but we’re not doing now but if we do it we are still under the same standard. Only unjust and unreasonable discrimination will be forbidden. So he is saying it six to one and a 1/2 dozen the other. If you don't like where we are now…

Leo: I think what the District Court was pretty clear that if you are, if you don’t do that, you are very limited in what you can do as the FCC.

Denise: Right. You are very limited.

Leo: That is why they overturned these open Internet rules. They said they are not legal.

Denise: Right. You have to go under Title II instead of Title I, and you have to call it a common carrier, a communications service as opposed to an information service. And then you have more leeway.

Leo: It struck me that the court was saying to them, if you wish to pursue these open Internet rules, and we think that is a good thing. It was very clear language in the opinion, we understand why it is important to have an open Internet. Then you need to pursue title to, you need to declare the ISPs as common carriers. Right? It seems the court was pushing them that way.

Denise: I wouldn’t say the court went so far as to try and tell the FCC what to do. They gave the FCC some options. You are either going to have to reword the rules under your existing framework, or you are going to have to jump to the other framework.

Leo: Were what you wanted to do was illegal. So they overturned the open Internet rules. And we have been waiting to hear back from the FCC. What is your response to this? But their response is, okay fine then we won’t have an open Internet.

Denise: Well, what their response is I think here is if you read Chairman Wheeler, the open Internet will, under the FCC rules, prevent commercially unreasonable steps. And require transparency. But we are going to allow private deals for preferential treatment.

Leo: I want to be clear that this is the kind of deal that Netflix made with Comcast earlier. We are talking about the deals with edge networks. Direct deals with somebody like twit or Netflix saying, if you would like fast lane access to our customers we would like to be paid for that. Now the reason I have a very big stake in this, and I think everybody in the country has a big stake in it, is to quit wouldn’t exist if our live stream stuttered and was buffered a lot and didn’t have fast lane access. I don’t care that it is commercially reasonable for AT&T and YouTube envy me out to pay a buck a customer. That might be commercially reasonable. But it is not viable for me. I think this excellent article from the Stanford Law school pointed out, eBay, Yahoo, Facebook, even Google itself wouldn't exist in a world where they had to pay. YouTube would not have existed in the early days if they had to pay. Now they can afford it. That isn’t the question. Do you get the same kind of innovation? More than that, do you get the same kind of free speech?

John: Don't you think you are exaggerating this issue?

Leo: Because Comcast is so trustworthy?

John: I don't really think that they are out to do evil. Overtly. The whole thing is a scam to get you to cough up more money. The real basis for this whole thing is the public itself. All they want is Netflix. Netflix is hogging all the bandwidth. Netflix should have a deal to pay extra to get on the faster lane, I hate to use that analogy, because they are the ones that are chewing up all the bandwidth, they are the ones who everybody wants to see at night after 6 o’clock. Everybody goes on Netflix, it is a known fact that the whole Internet is clogged by Netflix. That is what it is about. It is about video. You may be affected in some way, sure. But I don’t think it is going to deteriorate by any means. These are private networks. We are not talking about the public Internet. We are talking about the private backbones.

Leo: I’m talking about the edge access fees.

Natalie: I think we are pretending that the Internet is a democratizing type thing. But it really isn’t. Because the barrier to me, just making an network out of my house that competes with twit is higher than just access to viewers. By and large, a pretty unfriendly place to do business is the United States. So not that I don’t agree that the Internet should be net neutral, but I also think that we are being a little bit, what is the word I’m looking for, we are romanticizing this.

Leo: I disagree. I am going to quote Barbara von Schewick on this again.

John: Let me ask a question before you make that quote.

Natalie: Utopian is the word. I think that we pretend that the web is a bit Utopic and it’s not. There is a great book on this topic. Called the Myth of the Digital Democracy. They talk about how it is not just as easy to start a blog, or compete with Facebook, it is not just a matter of access to speed and viewers. There is a lot more that goes into that. I will put the link in the chat room.

Leo: She writes, “Finally access fees may impose serious collateral damages on values like free speech or more participatory culture by making it more difficult for individuals or nonprofits to be heard or find an audience for their creative works. Today individuals and nonprofits can put their content online, at low cost, and when it travels across the network that content receives the same service from the network as commercial content. By contrast access fees would create two classes of speakers. Those who can pay to receive better treatment, and those who cannot afford to do so. Often individuals and groups with unpopular or new viewpoints like activists are artists…”

John: And who has proposed access fees that she is complaining about? Where are these access fee?

Natalie: How do you even get traffic to those people. It is not like your voice is the same as my voice. They are different. There is so much more that goes into getting an audience besides just access.

Leo: All right. That is fine. You can talk about marketing that the fundamental right to be heard on the Internet at an equal is what has made the Internet so powerful. And I pointed again to startups like eBay and Facebook that would not exist if they had had to pay for access to customers. They would not be on an equal Internet. We are talking about a two-tiered Internet.

John: Who is proposing this two-tiered access?

Leo: I’ll give you an example. AT&T is saying…

 John: Let’s go with Comcast. Comcast has the business thing, and they have the regular one.

Leo: AT&T said, “If you pay us money we will not count your bandwidth against our customers usage caps”. That is the same thing by the way, this is equivalent to an access fee. So they go to YouTube and say, “If you want our customers to watch all they want of YouTube just give us some money, wheel while affect their Internet access.” That is exactly an access fee. And it disadvantages any company that is not willing to pay that fee because then, as a customer, I know it is counting against my bandwidth if I go CV meal instead of YouTube. So it totally makes a difference. That is already happening. If the FCC does not get involved, you can absolutely bet Comcast goes to each and every one of these Internet edge companies and says, “okay, you want to have nice high-speed access to our customers? You are going to give us a buck a customer”.

John: How about having a little more competition?

Leo: Thank you, FCC for no competition by the way.

John: That is a good argument.

Leo: But it is all the part of the same argument. Which is, that if you do not take steps today to protect open Internet access you will not have the same Internet we have today. In just a few years. Denise go ahead.

Denise: It is okay. I totally agree with you that it is part of the same argument because how you feel about market forces has everything to do with how you feel about net neutrality. If you feel like the market is capable of dictating that unfair things won’t happen because if the ISPs make deals that favor certain people and don’t favor others and it winds up damaging the consumer experience, if you believe that the market is going to cry loudly and bring pressure about that kind of thing then you are not so concerned about the Internet fast Lane. Because the ISPs are going to have to respond to the market. You also have in your camp, if you are one of these people that believes the market can fix things, the fact that we have antitrust laws and consumer protection laws that are already on the books, that are there to fill the gaps in this too, if you are someone who is very much on the side that net neutrality, even the original open internet rules went too far, it is called prophylactic regulation that we, as John is suggesting, or perhaps regulating something that is not happening yet. Because we are afraid we don’t want it to happen.

Leo: I believe in a free market. And I believe if there were a free market, if there was competition this would not be a problem. But it is also apparent that there isn’t competition. And John this is great from Doug Ross.

John: I have three possible ISPs to my neighborhood. I use sonic.net and Comcast but I also get AT&T. Now there is competition there and the sonic guy up here, wherever he is, says…

Leo: He is absolutely going to be a competitor. The problem is, A) it is DSL that is coming in over AT&T’s coffer…

John: He is taking his profits and he is digging ditches and putting fiber and everywhere he can.

Leo: Good luck getting those right of ways.

Natalie: You live in the San Francisco bay area, where of course you have great choices for great broadband. And how much of the country does not? I think, to Denise’s point, for those of you who think that this otherwise would shake itself out, we don’t live in that kind of government. Think about all of our quantitative ease. We don’t let things shake itself out. We’d legislate before it is a problem. And it could be a perversion.

Leo: I think this cartoon is great from Doug Ross. This illustrates what Comcast wants to do which is the same exact tiering they do now with your cable. For $39.99 a month you get ESPN, CNN, Fox and ABC. $49.99 a month you get Digg, Flikr, Facebook. This kind of tiering is exactly what Comcast wants to do. You can’t deny that.

John: I do deny that. I don’t think they want to do this. This is an exaggeration. Why would they want to do that? It is crazy. Everybody will have to pay extra to get Facebook? You think their customers aren’t going to go shoot the guys and string him up!

Leo: I actually don’t believe that you will be prevented access from any site. I think it is going to be much more subtle than that. I think that you’ll does get much better access for the people that pay, that’s all. I agree with you. And in fact I think that is what Chairman Wheeler is saying, no legal content will be blocked, means that you can’t say you have to buy a package to get Facebook. I think that is probably what he is saying.

Denise: Dan Gilmore has a very good Guardian piece on this on the other end of the spectrum, on the side that says yes we actually need to regulate because it is not something that the market and an existing regulation is going to be able to take care of. His headline is the FCC is about to ax murder net neutrality. And he winds up calling Tom Wheeler former cable and wireless industry lobbyist, I think six or seven times in the article.

Leo: Let’s make it really, really clear that Tom Wheeler is the fox in charge of the hen house. He is the guy who is representing the industry in the interests of the industry, over and above the interests of us as users.

John: Here is what I find amusing. We have gone years and years and years trying to keep the government out of the Internet. And now we are just letting them get involved. This is another foot in the door, and another camel head in the tent and this is where it is going to head.

Denise: When he was appointed, this was exactly what we were afraid of. We can play back the tape. We were afraid this would happen.

Leo: Yes. Yes.

Denise: Dan is concerned, and I’m concerned too, about this point. It goes to the graphic that you just showed, Leo that with an Internet fast lane permitted, what that means is that ISPs double dip. They charge their customers on the one end, poor customers they’ve been getting the raw end of the deal for so long. You are promised up to certain speeds that you really don’t get and you are not, nobody is happy with the level of Internet service that they are receiving. But they are paying for it anyway. The customers are already not in a great situation. But, their lot is not going to improve when the ISPs are also getting paid by edge providers who want to reach those customers. What is going to happen at the customer level? You are paying for premium, premium Internet access for example but even that is not going to get you the fastest access to people. If you are not paying for premium access, what is your Internet service going to be like? Not great.

Leo: It is going to look like your DSL. I think in many cases that is what you are getting, is sub premium service.

John: And this is new. Because when we first started off, if you recall, you could buy a T-1 line and nobody was getting T-1. They took the T-1 line and divvied it up amongst a bunch of users and said you are getting a T-1. That was bull crap.

Leo: Let me ask you. I would like to know what the legal story is here. Why is Tom Wheeler reluctant to declare ISPs as common carriers? He says because there is no difference between being title II and title III.

Denise: Well, I don’t think he says there is no difference. He just says bear in mind that we have a similar sort of standard under title II That is going to govern the kinds of behavior.

Leo: Those are just his weasel words. You pay no attention to this. This is not a problem. But seriously why won’t the FCC won’t just declare ISPs as common carriers?

Denise: I think it is a political hot potato. I don’t think the ISPs want to be common carriers, as there are a whole lot of other regulatory concerns that come into play that they do not want to be under. So reclassification is going to be a tough sell in Washington.

Leo: ATT is a common carrier. It strikes me that ISP is also telecommunications. Is Comcast, as cable company considered a common carrier? Do we know?

Denise: A television cable company. I don’t believe so.

Leo: It strikes me this is all telecommunications. Basically these are utilities. ISPs are utilities now. They are the electric company, the water company, and they should be required to treat all bits as equal. I think they should be able to recoup their costs. I’m not saying that. They should be able to make a flying profit. But they cannot be allowed to, in effect, decide which is good and which is bad content. All content needs to be equal on the internet.

Natalie: And I think it is funny that they fight against being a utility. Because if you look at the stock market, utilities are the things that outperform all the fancy stuff. They don’t bubble and burst. A utility is where the money is, in terms of long-term investing. So why fight that?

Leo: Dr. Mom points out that if Verizon provides her with phone’s surface over copper they are a common carrier, if it provides her with phone service over fiber they are not regulated. This is a little disjointed here. I think it could be done better. Look, as hard as this is to explain this to you guys. You guys are enthusiasts you are geeks, your and you understand this better. Imagine how normal people this is completely beyond them.

John: They don’t care.

Leo: You are right John. They don’t care. They want faster Netflix. And they don’t care. And we care because we, as geeks, understand how important free and open Internet is. So the burden is absolutely on us, much more so to contact your member of Congress and say, you need to declare ISPs a common carrier. That is the way out of this, that is the way to true open Internet rules. We need to enforce that. It is the will of the people and ultimately the will of the people matters more to members of Congress more than what Comcast or AT&T does. Denise what is the email address to write to the FCC about this?

Denise: openinternet@FCC.gov.  I have a question that I haven’t really heard it discussed in these terms before. It has to do with the way that Internet services have changed over the years. And the way that now there is so much a video content being delivered over the Internet whereas back in the day we were just doing our AltaVista searches and thrilled to be online. How that should all factor into this equation. It does seem to be like the way you price Internet should change in light of all that. Doesn’t it seem that way to you Leo?

John: Well there is an interesting question. How are you going to answer that without the net neutrality argument? And let me chime in before you do that. I think people who want to watch Netflix all the time should have a different fee.

Leo: I agree with that. I’ve heard you about Netflix. There is a tiering for speed.

John: A virtually access path if you are watching videos all the time.

Leo: That’s fine. That is not illegal and it is not against the rules. It is a perfectly good way to run your business. I do it right now. I could pay for higher speed Internet are slower speed Internet. What I don’t want, isn’t Internet where the high-speed Internet has access only to certain edge providers. All edge providers must be equal across all those tears, then that is an open Internet. It is not wrong or illegal or in any way immoral to say if you want a 50 Mb per second you pay more. That is not what we are saying. What we are saying is that I don't want to have to pay more so that I get good Netflix. I want to be able to choose the provider I want. Does that make sense? Otherwise you are not going to get a new Netflix. Netflix is going to be the incumbent that is going to on the market.

John: Well there is about 40 of these guys.

Leo: Right. And they are all going to drop off because only the guys who can afford to pay commercially reasonable fees will be usable. I’m sorry go ahead, Natalie. Or was it Denise?

Denise: You know I may be comparing apples and oranges but it does remind me a little bit of what we went through with Carp. Way back and the early days of regulating Internet radio and Internet radio stations were being priced and have to pay additional fees that were driving radio stations out of business. Again it may be apples and oranges but, I do think that we need to be paying attention to that issue of the little guy getting hit with fees that a little guy shouldn’t be expected to bear. And that in those kinds of situations it is not so much a consumer issue it is more a consumer protection issue and we do have consumer protection laws out there to look after the consumers. It is more a small business protection.

John: Let me ask a question of you about that. I am in total agreement about the rip-off that took place during the Internet radio era.

Leo: How much Internet Radio is there these days?

John: There’s very little.

Leo: They killed it.

John: But at the same time I have to say, and of course she may have accused me about this earlier being too much of a free market type, if the guys who own the content in the case of Internet radio decide that you just can’t have it cheaply whose business is it to tell them no? I mean it just seems to me that is just the way it is. I’m not a big content nut case. but in fact, it is.

Leo: It is. It hasn’t worked out too well for the music industry. That kind of…

John: There are more bans than ever.

Leo: Thanks to the Internet. It failed.

John: But it did work out.

Leo: Unless you rent Soma FM.

John: Or less sure a big label sometimes it doesn’t work for you either. But we have always admitted that the Internet has changed things. I see all these books come out about how to Internet has changed everything but advertising. But it has exactly change advertising radically.

Leo: Has changed everything. I agree with you. I am not anti-market. I think the free market, if it is truly a free market, works quite well. There are a few areas that you have to regulate, like antitrust. There are a few businesses like healthcare were free market solution, in fact, doesn’t give you the proper outcome. We all know that. But, in most cases a free market would solve this. But we just don’t have real competition. So maybe the solution is to force the cable companies to allow other Internet service providers to ride on their wires. That is illegal right? They are not forced to do that.

John: The Telacodes are. That is why you have sonic.net.

Leo: That is why you have sonic. Now wouldn’t it be great if somebody went to the cable company and said, you know you have made enough money on that ditch you dug we are going to require you to allow other providers in on your cable.

John: It would be an interesting thing to see.

Leo: If everybody had 10 Internet service providers that wouldn't worry about this.

John: In the old days we had plenty. There were all kinds of service providers. Then they all got bought up and nobody seemed to care.

Leo: The rulers of the world took over, let me tell you. That is what happened. As soon as they saw money in the internet.

John: Well we should be fighting against this anti-competitive nature of these operations.

Leo: I will accept that solution. That is a good solution.

Denise: Let me run down what Dan Gilmore says. He says do not get mad get even. His first wish is for reclassification that he had knowledge is that doing that would not be simple or without unintended consequences. Then he goes on to say, create genuine competition, that ISPs should have to share their lines at a fair price with competing ISPs. He said other countries do this, we should give it a try.

Leo: Bob Frankston is a big proponent of community broadband. That is a great solution and we have Malek on from time to time and he raves about his community broadband Internet access. I don’t think that Internet service provider is going to go to the edge networks and say, would you like to be in our apartment building? You better give me some more money.

Denise: What does John think about this one. The best solution, says Dan, taxpayers should pay for a fiber everywhere system and then let competing ISPs use it to compete in a genuine free market. But John, don’t hold your breath on that one. When I mentioned that on my show, Evan Brown said, though so the government than is going to be in charge of a fiber everywhere system. Now I am not sure if taxpayers paying that necessarily means the government should own it.

John: The taxpayers did pay for rural electrification back in the 30s.

Leo: The highway interstate system, there is good precedent for this. Actually Frankston says local governments should assert the right of eminent domain and say, thank you for putting in all that infrastructure. It is now the utility and we are going to let you ride on it, you will maintain that, we will charge you a reasonable fee, and if Comcast and AT&T and Verizon and everybody else want to ride on it, that is great. Because more competition is good. Frankston has a very direct roadmap for how this could all work. That it does require something that is never going to happen which is local governments develop it.

John: The local governments are as corrupt as anybody. They have been bought off largely. I’m not even sure with the contracts he can do that anymore.

Leo: Eminent domain, you can do anything you want.

John: Seems to me that some of these cable companies and local areas should have been taken over. These guys are crazy.

Leo: I have direct experience in Petaluma. I was on the technology committee until I quit in dismay. Because local politics are very frustrating. But, as with every town in the country, we made a deal in this case with Comcast for a monopoly in this region. That is how it is technically done. You get a regional monopoly. Comcast is a monopoly here. Comcast promised all sorts of things. Internets to schools. Never delivered any of it. And the local government, not only doesn’t have the clout or the lawyers or the willpower to fight it, they just said what are we to do? If you get the City Council saying we are going to get Comcast out of here you are going to hear from every voter in town.

John: You would have to have a very high end person within the city.

Leo: I tried very hard. And there are some smart people on that committee but ultimately the lack of will just really frustrated me.

John: But that is kind of what happened to me in Port Angeles. The public utilities, the local government public utilities, they are the ones who own the cable. They had the fiber. And so we had a fiber going down the street where we actually had it strung and we bought directly from them and then the next thing you know, Verizon got their foot in the door and they are now providing some aspect of this. The next thing you know they sell the whole thing to a local company that has been hogging the Internet, old-fashioned Internet, and now this great deal that we had is all screwed up because of these local governments are incompetent.

Natalie: Have you guys read Flash Boys?

Leo: We were just talking about that. Man is that good. I’m reading that right now.

Natalie: The first chapter is all about this. Period about how people who lay the fiber then act in a nefarious way. It is specifically about spread networks that work to covertly laid down a fiber line between the Chicago exchange and the servers in New Jersey to most of the bigger exchanges in New York. The speed at which you can get information between those trades is like 14.5 ms or something crazy like that? But what did they do with that information, what did they do with that cable line? Did they do something good with that? No, they sell it to a big bank for something like $140 million a year or something like that. And most of the banks signed on right away. No questions asked. And only one bank said, we need to change the contract. it is crazy! So you can get people to do really great things with this communication technology that they been owned and put a lot of money in to.

Leo: BY the way the big fund run was Jim Barksdale of Netscape that put up all the money to lay this stratus fiber line they could possibly lay between Chicago and New Jersey.

Natalie: It is crazy because they wouldn’t even go around a shopping center. They would badger the owner of that shopping center until they could lay the line right through. And when the construction crew was asking why are we doing this again? Why do we have to go straight to this mountain? They wouldn’t tell them why.

Leo: There is one drill in the whole world that can drill under the river. And it is in Brazil. Okay. And not. We've set our peace. Denise would you like to stick around?

Denise: I would love to stick around. I would love to encourage people, too, in addition to the articles we’ve already talked about. You put one in the run down that I thought was really good Leo in the Atlantic co-authored by a couple of people.

Leo: Credit to Chad Johnson and…

Denise: Adrian LeFrance. And it concludes really well and I think that is a nice conclusion for our discussion here. It says, it turns out the fight about net neutrality isn’t necessarily even about neutrality, at least not in the way sometimes seems. Instead we are slopping out where innovation began somewhat government should do to encourage it. And I think that is exactly correct.

Leo: Alexis Mandrigal is incredible and Chad, we have been trying for months to get him on. He is in the bay area, we are trying to get him on twit. He is one of the most insightful writers on technology right now. And Alexis, if you are listening I have $100 bill waiting for you. All you have to do is show up. So cheer up everybody, is snack time. That was hard work.

Leo: But Nature Box is here to the rescue. You know that happens after you get to a point where you’ve been working hard all day and you just want something. Maybe you go to that snack machine in the office and then you eat something that is full of HFC’s and trans fats and you feel terrible the rest of the day? I’ve got a better solution for you. In fact that is what we order for the office is Nature Box. Go to naturebox.com/twit. I don’t think you’ve been here for it.

John: No I saw it the first day you had it. It was when I took a bag of something.

Leo: With you like a pistachio power cluster? It has almonds, cashews and pistachios.

John: No, but there is something good in there though.

Leo: This is good. Sour cream and onion and garlic flavored almonds?

John: No, no, no.

Natalie: I got one of those yesterday.

John: It was a blueberry thing.

Natalie: It had some of these dehydrated sweet potato chip price.

Leo: Aren’t incredible?

Natalie: Yeah, they were good.

Leo: So here’s the deal. No high fructose corn syrup ever. No trans fats ever. Everything is a natural, no artificial flavors no artificial sweeteners, no artificial colors. In fact, you can get an assortment. These are delivered to you monthly. I guess you can get them more than monthly. We may have to start getting these weekly because people just quiz through these things.

John: I saw you and that will show you do with Lisa.

Leo: Yeah, we were eating nature box.

 John: You are plowing through this stuff.

Leo: I get a hungry when we do inside twit. I get hungry. So did you like that cherry berry?

John: Yet it’s a good one.

Leo: Take it home. It’s yours to do whatever you choose. I want to try these pistachio. So here’s the deal. You can go to naturebox.com, and get half off your first box because we know when you try it you are going to love it. This is the pistachio power cluster. You just see if you like it. You may not like it.

John: They are like the peanut brittle.

Leo: A healthy peanut brittle. So these are healthy snacks. They are energy. They are power. They are good.

Natalie: If you say they are not that bad your dentist might have something different to say about that.

Leo: These are not dentist approved. But they are nutrition approved. Okay? Brush your teeth afterwards.

Natalie: No! Those are. I’m talking about regular peanut brittle. I tried that too and I thought it was good. I am kind of picky about the things I feed my kids and everything in there was Natalie approved.

Leo: And if you have dietary restrictions you can get gluten-free, you can get Vegan. You can narrow it down to spicy, sweet, you can narrow it all down. I would suggest getting the biggest box you can, they come in three sizes, and get 50% off. Can they get any size for 50% off? Any size box. Get the biggest box. Then you get the widest Friday.

Denise: I may have to get the box, it is all chile lime pistachios because those are the bomb.

Leo: Did we send you a box Denise?

Denise: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is completely all gone.

Leo: That is the problem they don’t last long enough. Did you get a box John?

John: No. I did not.

Leo: Can we get a box sent to Mr. Dvorak? Oh here, just take this one.

John: No, I want a special box not a used one.

Leo: You want one in the mail. Hey look! Look what I found in Alamogordo New Mexico?

John: When we announce the New Mexico?

Leo: I wasn’t. But you know, this is the landfill. Remember this story? At Atari, this ET game was so bad for the 2600 console, and it really was bad. They had to make it in like six weeks because they made the deal and in the movie was coming out. This was so bad that they ended up plowing them under in the landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. But everybody thought this might be in fact apocryphal. So a documentary crew got permission to dig up this landfill, they did it yesterday, what do you think they found?

John: A bunch of those things.

Leo: A bunch. Is there a story about how many they found? They did find them. By the way they found other crap from Atari that they needed to Get rid of.

John: Those would be very collectible now. What does that go for on eBay?

Leo: I don’t know but it’s sealed in the box. It has the Atari holographic seal. This is the real deal. ET, the extraterrestrial. We played it a little bit and it is really awful. You can play it online if you want. Because there are emulators. Will just show you a little bit of it.

John: That is technology that is as old as the hills.

Leo: They only found hundreds of cartridges. But I guess they probably didn’t dig up the whole landfill. There will be a documentary about the whole thing. It is a little bit like out Capone’s vault except they found something.

John: Is going to be a documentary? Really?

Leo: Wasn’t it a kick starter? An indigo? I think they raised money.

John: Who cares? Even Natalie is yawning.

Leo: Armando Ortega was a city official who, in 1983, got a tip from the landfill employee about the massive dump of games. He says, it was pitch dark here that night but we came with our flashlights and we found dozens of games. They took the crashed cartridges, they actually rolled over it with a bulldozer, so that people couldn’t dig up the cartridges and play the games.

Natalie: Is there anything in there that maybe shouldn’t be in our landfills? These don't lead to any chemicals or anything right?

Leo: These are modern landfills. They seal them up.

Natalie: Even so.

Leo: According to the New York Times article from September 1983, 14 truckloads of discarded game cartridges and computer equipment words dumped on the site. The plant in El Paso Texas, about 80 miles south of Alamogordo…

Natalie: Why does this have to be so secretive? In my community we have open electronics day once a month.

Leo: Yeah, they could have just gone to the electronics recycling and said hey, take 500,000 cartridges. See they are flattened? Because they rolled over them. The company produced of millions of these cartridges, and all those sales initially were pretty good, almost all of the cartridges they sold were returned. Because the game was so freaking bad.

 John: How bad was it Leo?

Leo: Do you want to play it?

John: No.

Leo: We played it. Wait a minute is that a DeLorean? They dug up a DeLorean?

John: Yeah, there was one buried in there.

Leo: People came from all around. I don’t know. I just thought…

John: Will tell us what it was like. You said you played it.

Leo: It’s incomprehensible. It is very primitive. But this is my first experience of computers. We had them in school, but they were big computers and it was hard to play. And then…

Natalie: Did you play the Oregon Trail? Before that?

Leo: Apple came out a little bit before the 2600.

John: Leo got his first computer and had a hand crank.

Leo: I bought the Atari 400, first I got the 2600, and I played battle zone.

John: And then you bought the 400? Which was a computer?

Leo: This is a YouTube video of the game. See that dot? That is important. Go to the dot. This screen is on a 4 x 4 grid. You can see how boring this is. It was in comprehensible. It was a terrible game. Now battle zone. That was a game. I like the eight bit sound.

John: Go in that hole and see what happens

Leo: Oh. You need all three pieces to when the level. Adventure. Now that was a good game.

John: Now there is a game I wish I could play.

Leo: That had an Easter egg in it.

John: The noise is great.

Leo: It was eight bits. Listen to that.

Denise: No plants versus Zombie: Garden Warfare.

Leo: Isn’t that awesome? Are you playing that or is your kid?

Denise: I am not, my kid it. And he is so excited because it is rated E10 plus and yet it is like modern warfare and everything else. He is just stoked.

Leo: You are a plant and you are shooting peas at the bad guys and it is so much fun?

John: Yep. Grand Theft Auto is coming up.

Leo: You won’t let him play First Person Shooters? How old is he?

Denise: He’s 10. For me it is like being in Iraq. It is too dang real.

Leo: It is. You are at war.

Denise: Between the blood and the language it was a bit much.

Leo: And online. My God, the language.

Denise: It is a bit much for 10. Give him a few years.

Leo: When he is 11. All right, Google plus. It is over. What did Alexia Tsosis on Tech Crunch tell us? I tried to get here on the show because I wanted her to explain this. She claims that sources have told her that Google plus is the walking dead. Google has transferred most of the Google plus engineers to the android division.

John: Why? What has android got to do with it?

Leo: Because the apps.

Natalie: That is how they break it into pieces. They kill something off and they send it out as a piece of android.

Leo: Vic Gundotra, who is running Google Plus, He came to Google as a product manager. He managed all the iPhone apps, then they gave him Google plus. He has been there for eight years. Not clear. He announced he was leaving the company and it’s not clear whether he was fired. I love Google Plus.

John: Yet you do. Why is this?

Leo: Because it is a social network that real people don’t use.

Natalie: Yeah, because you don’t get idiots.

Leo: And my mom’s not on there. The best way to stay in touch.

John: Your mom is a big fan of me right?

Leo: What?

John: Isn’t that true?

Leo: She does. I love that Dvorak boy. She does love you. She thinks you are a whippersnapper.

John: That’s the idea.

Leo: So, what do you think? Is this BS? Is it true? A Google representative has vehemently denied these claims. By the way, great article by Jessica Lessin in The Information. She talks about the culture of the vehement denial. Which by the way, Chairman Wheeler has…

John: What does Elgin have to say about this? He’s a Google Plus net case, he’s the one who exploits if the best.

Leo: Has Mike said anything?

Natalie: He is. Anything he puts on Google Plus gets like 400 comments. But they are good comments. It isn’t just like…

Leo: That's why I love it.

Natalie: Insightful comments.

John: Somebody in the chat room put this, JC Dvorak predicted the end of Google Plus.

Leo: You predict the end to everything.

John: That’s true. Because most of these things are crap.

Leo: And you're mostly right.

John: I’m 90% right.

Leo: So Mike wrote a very interesting post on Computerworld. I don’t know if it is related, I think it is. Let me go to his Google Plus page and I can get the link. Here is his post. He says social networks are falling apart. He says this is an example of what is actually happening. And I totally agree with him. It is an opinion piece but I think Mike nailed it. He says the new business model for social media was actually invented by Google and Facebook and others are now following it. Harvest personal data anywhere you can then sell ads anywhere you can. So you ask why did Facebook buy WhatsApp and Instagram and then not fold them into the product but keep them intact. That’s the strategy, that’s going forward that’s what you're going to see. Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg even said this “The website, the desktop is no longer important”, what they really want to do is be an ad platform across a variety of apps, share data from app to app and that makes them much more valuable and you get to use what you want. If you don’t like Facebook, use WhatsApp, if you like Instagram, use Instagram. Google really invented this if you really think about it. Google has Gmail, Google Apps, Google Plus, Youtube. Just a few months ago they changed their privacy policy so all of these products could share data with each other. They're sharing advertising across it. You use any one of these, you're in the Google network they sell ads across it. It actually makes perfect sense. I think Mike nailed it. And I think he’s right that Facebook looked at Google and said “Oh, that’s what we should be doing”.

John: You don’t think it’s just a fluke because they can’t integrate anything.

Leo: Well, that was my initial thought as like “Oh they just don’t know what to do with WhatsApp”.

John: And what’s the point of integrating if you're going to – it seems lazy though.

Leo: Why integrate it? But why integrate it? I think people – I think the move and I think Zuckerberg even said this, he’s kind of influenced by Unix. The move is to have simple, straightforward tools that do one thing. Make sure that there is a pipeline of data shared across them so that we could sell ads across them. But there’s no reason to make Instagram part of Facebook. In fact that would obviously hurt Instagram. Kids use Instagram because it’s not Facebook. They don’t need to know that Facebook owns it.

John: Those kids, those kids today.

Denise: Well you hit on something there Leo, kids use Instagram because it’s not Facebook. They use Snapchat because it’s not permanent. And that was one of the cool things about Google Plus when it first launched, was this whole being able to fine tune who sees your posts through circles.

Leo: That’s too much work though isn’t it.

John: It is a lot of work.

Denise: Yeah it turns out to be a lot of work and Facebook replicated it, I don't know that either of them are doing it perfectly but I like the attempt.

Leo: Zuckerberg even said nobody want to make lists.

Denise: Um-hmm.

Leo: It’s too much work. Actually Facebook tried to buy Snapchat, I mean I think that that was fits perfectly into their model. Facebook doesn’t care if your posts persist. They care about getting the data about you because what persists is you and what they know about you and that’s what they're selling ads against.

John: Yeah, ineffectively I might add. This whole model sucks, it’s stupid.

Leo: Well they got to get better at it. You know well look at Facebook’s quarterly results, you might disagree.

John: Well considering the size of their audience I think quarterlies aren't that interesting. And this whole ad thing, I’ll just bring it up again, I always bring it up which is if this whole model of targeted advertising worked so well why do after I buy a product on amazon do I continually get ads to tell me to buy the product? I already bought the product. And they know this.

Leo: All right, I agree they need to fix that. Well they need to fix that, maybe they think you want to buy it again.

John: Oh yeah, I always want to buy a camera over and over.

Leo: Facebook posted record quarterly results. Profit for 2013 of One and a half billion dollars but more importantly, the mobile has taken off. Their strategy has absolutely worked. And you may say there’s nothing interesting going on in Facebook, I think they know exactly what they're doing and I think Google – so back to the question that is on the table, I Google going to kill Google Plus? What’s going to happen to Google Plus?

John: If they kill Google Plus they're never going to be able to roll out anything.

Leo: I agree, nobody will want to join anything they ever do.

John: Yahoo has this problem. They’ve had so many social networks they’ve gone through then they pretty much gave up on it. I mean even—

Natalie: But Yahoo buys social networks they don’t brand or make their own.

John: They – no that’s not true, they’ve branded and made a couple of them. I don’t know off the top of my head but I'm sure of that.

Natalie: Which ones?

Leo: Actually Yahoo might be the counter argument to this, which is they’ve been doing this all along and they—

John: Yeah but they’ve always been—

Leo: And they’ve failed.

John: That’s because—

Leo: Flickr, they bought Flickr, they didn’t integrate it—

John: Well they do this commonly.

Leo: They let it die. So maybe you do have to keep it vital somehow.

Natalie: You know it’s funny that Jeff Jarvis’ book “What would Google do” is five years old now, it’s an old book and he said Google does a lot of things great but what they don’t do well is social and they need to be able to do that. No matter how many iterations they come across they can’t get sort of the masses and like your point he said the people on Google Plus now are still very vocal, there’s a lot of activity there but it’s not the kind of people that Google Britney Spears or you know it’s just like a different level and are those people not marketable?

Leo: Google Plus is the best place to communicate with people who work for Google.

Denise: Well there’s that whole tech layer of Google users in Google Plus.

Leo: And that’s why I like it.

Denise: Right and that’s, I mean that’s why I like it too. It’s fun and you're right there's a very high level of discourse but then, close to 2 million people have me in circles on Google Plus and that’s not the tech layer. That’s more the Orkut layer, there is a big international user base.

John: Yeah we forget about Orkut.

Natalie: Yeah.

Denise: Yeah, there are a lot of people using this product internationally.

Natalie: Yeah you're right about that.

Leo: So Alexia—

Denise: They are the masses I think in Orkut.

Leo: Alexia says that basically once you cut the head off, bye bye Vic and then take away all the resources, even if you're not killing a product you're making it the walking dead.

John: Are they putting anybody else in charge after the guy left?

Leo: Yeah.

Natalie: Yeah and his post is very cryptic about that, he’s saying like I just want to move on to next thing because everything we do in life will become something we look back upon. So does that mean that Google Plus is something he’ll look back upon?

Leo: It was kind of a very philosophical—

John: That was kind of weird to say.

Leo: …and beautiful post as I would expect of Vic.

John: Surprised he didn’t do it in haiku.

Leo: He did say “I’ll see y’all in Coachella”.

John: Did he?

Leo: Yeah.

John: I was hoping you weren’t going to bring that up.

Leo: What do you mean?

John: I saw part of the last show was all about Coachella the whole show.

Leo: Yeah I love Coachella.

John: When’s the last time—

Leo: I've never been, I've never been that’s why I love it. So – I'm trying to get the name of the guy who’s replacing. He a long time Google manager. Let me see if I can find the name. It was a little abrupt and Vic is by the way pretty much beloved, not only by Google Plus user but by developers, he was a developer relations guy. David Bespriss who currently Google’s vice president of engineering. If you put the VP of engineering in charge it’s kind of like a holding pad.

John: It’s kind of weird.

Leo: It’s like “Yeah, yeah I'm nominally in charge of these zero employees who work on Google Plus”. I don’t think Alexia would say this, by the way Alexia who doesn’t like Google Plus, Alexia and Michael Panzorino, neither of whom are very active at Google Plus anyway. I think what’s going to happen and this is kind of what they say. It’s not going to go away, it’d still be the connector, just as Facebook connect is the connector.

John: What about the hangouts? Somebody in the chat room brought this up.

Leo: Hangouts got moved to Android.

John: Completely? So it’s completely off?

Leo: The Google Hangouts team will be moving to the Android team. The photos team, it’s likely they will follow because this is the appification right. Hangouts is an app. It’s a separate product that shares data. Photos is a – in fact they even did this, they made photos an app and it’s a separate app that share data.

John: Mmm.

Leo: I think this makes sense from Google point of view. It is a sad thing for those of us who uses Google Plus. But I think you can continue to use it.

John: I think it’s done. I think you're right, the thing is toast.

Natalie: No I like the idea of having them all together—

John: Everything that you said is correct.

Natalie: I would like to have the Picasa photos and then your chat in another place. To have them all together was a great idea and to break them apart is Picasa – what did I say?

Leo: Don’t listen to – no you said it right—

John: No she said it right.

Leo: John misheard you and said Fakatka.

John: No I did not, she said Fakatka.

Natalie: John, you go to your room right now, no dinner for you.

John: I did not say that this is a lie. Rewind the tape, she’s just been in New York too long.

Leo: Last time that didn’t work out so well for you by the way.

John: Once.

Natalie: Will you quit foolin’ around, we’re trying to do real news here.

Leo: [laughter].

Denise: Give him more snacks, he was thinking of Fakatcha.

Leo: In 1997 John C. Dvorak said Google Plus is a scam.

Natalie: 1997?

Leo: No that’s joke, that’s straight out of the chat room.

John: No I wouldn't have been in 1997. It was a couple of years ago. I never said it was a scam I just said it was born to fail. Let’s get back to something you said, you said that they can’t do social because if the company itself is not a social company. Zuckerberg and these guys are a bunch of social maniacs and this is why they can do that, they kind of have a second sense of it. But if you're like, worst case scenario is Microsoft, they're not even close to being a social company and every time that they try everything, it’s a total failure.

Leo: I think that it’s possible that that’s exactly what it is, is it’s acknowledgement – because you remember last year Larry Paige said to the company “Every one of you, every person in the company, your bonus is based on how well we do on social.” It is based on social, they made a full concerted full court press on this and it didn’t work, it probably did not work despite the numbers. I don’t think it’s really a vital social network but that doesn’t matter, you know what Google’s good at? Products. Google is brilliant at software. And that’s all they're going to do, they said “Look we don’t need Google Plus. That can be a connecting layer, but we’ve got photos, we’ve got Hangouts, we’ve got Gmail, we’ve got Apps, we’ve got plenty of stuff for people to use. All we care is that they continue to use as much Google Stuff as possible. Social – I think the whole thing on social was people thought for a while that was the future of seach.

Natalie: Right and—

John: Well Google was scared into that because it was Facebook that kept talking about this future of search is going to be social search. And so they freaked and did kind of a defensive maneuver which—

Leo: And Mark Zuckerberg is gone.

John: It’s like the time Ford announced they were these bigger and bigger SUVs, they actually showed a 6 door just to screw with GM. But they had it, they had a prototype 6 door. Can you imagine driving one of those things around.

Leo: Natalie do you use – I love the photos, I love Auto Awesome, do you use it?

Natalie: Yeah, yeah I use all of the services, maybe not as – I always—

Leo: Who do you like?

Natalie: You know what I even used recently Google Helpouts.

Leo: What?

Natalie: Google Helpouts.

Leo: I know but I mean.

Natalie: It’s like a Hangout but it’s a private Hangout that you pay someone, I think it’s ten dollars an hour.

Leo: Wait a minute Natalie, is this you? Oh this is your old one Natalie Del Conte-Morris or is this your current Google Plus?

Natalie: No I'm just Morris, just Natalie Morris.

Leo: You have 251 followers.

Natalie: Oh no, no, no, no it’s just Natalie Morris, all one word.

Leo: Ah this is an old one. Okay.

John: Why isn’t it expunged?

Leo: You can't expunge.

John: Well that’s no good.

Natalie: You can but let’s see am I Natalie Morris or Natalie?

Leo: Yeah you're Natalie Morris, I found you. I found you.

Natalie: Yeah.

Leo: As well see how I know it’s you, it’s got cute picture of your son and your husband and 148,000 followers, 1.3 million views.

Natalie: Oh yeah, for the Justice family.

Leo: And see I love the size of the images on here. I love the photos, I just think that that’s a – the Auto Awesome stuff, I just really like what they do.

John: Auto Awesome.

Leo: It’s awesome.

Denise: Auto Awesome for me it’s like my blog Leo, it’s something I have good intentions to do using and putting to work in my life but it’s been a year and a half and I don’t think I've used it yet.

Leo: Well it does it automatically, that's the beauty part of it.

John: Now it looks like they're at a brewery.

Leo: We were, we were at the Coors Plant in Boulder, Colorado.

John: This is yours?

Leo: Yeah, yesterday.

John: I thought you were looking at Natalie’s then you go right back to your own?

Leo: Yeah because that's the best.

John: Unbelievable.

Leo: Here’s the brew kettle.

Natalie: It’s great for narcissism—

Leo: It is great for narcissism. There’s the mash kettle. You know what it smells like in there?

John: It smells like beer.

Leo: No it smells like malted milk.

John: Oh it was just probably the yeast you know.

Leo: Yeah it’s malt, no they're making malt. That's what they do with the barley. They make malt. So in fact that's what happened during prohibition. He stopped making beer, Adolph Coors started making malted milk. I learned that on the tour.

John: I bet you did, probably a few other things you picked up.

Natalie: …much less like look at my cute kids on Google Plus and much more thought pieces type stuff but the Helpouts are really fun too I took a sewing class.

Leo: Oh the Helpout, that's what you were – that's right. So is that still alive?

John: A sewing class huh?

Natalie: Yeah it’s pretty new though like they haven't completely finished even letting people in who want to be, I guess they call them educators or helpers or whatever.

Leo: I love this.

Natalie: I had a code even to become an educator but I was like “I don’t really have anything to teach other people.”

Leo: So wait a minute, let’s see if John could do vinegar. Is there anybody see—

Natalie: I'm sure we’ll get some people who are going to get busted for unlicensed practice of law in the Google Helpouts.

Leo: See, nope.

John: Your search for vinegar did not match any Helpouts.

Leo: Nobody helping with vinegar, how about win, I bet there’s wine Helpouts.

John: Yeah, there’s got to be.

Leo: Here you go.

John: You pay a 149.99 for a Q and A.

Leo: No it depends that because top master chef Doug Keane is expensive.

John: What does he know.

Leo: But if you want to go to Eating Well Magazine, that’s a buck a minute.

John: This is – I didn’t even know about this.

Leo: Here’s calligraphy, $25 an hour. Julie will teach you the art of calligraphy. So you've done this, so how does this work Natalie? Is it a Hangout.

Natalie: It’s a Hangout but it’s time so I can’t take advantage of this woman. It gives you a countdown and so—

John: Three, two, one stop sewing.

Leo: Wow.

Natalie: Right, well because I'm pretty lame about the whole thing. You can see my sewing machine actually sitting down there behind me. So it gives you a countdown of how long you have and you can set it and then it goes in your Google Calendar and you get a reminder when it’s time to start. And since I had a specific thing I wanted to learn I’d center the patterns and all that stuff so she would like “Okay, be ready with this” and yeah it was pretty helpful.

John: Do yourself a favor and get a slant needle.

Natalie: What’s a slant needle? Don’t confuse me.

Leo: John knows a little bit about everything.

Natalie: I know.

Leo: So he knows two words.

John: You can do all the research you want.

Leo: Slant needle, because he knows nothing more.

John: No I know a lot about it.

Leo: That's the depth of – why would you know about the slant needle?

John: I got a lecture about it, the slant needle is, the Signer slant needle is the greatest sewing machine ever made. And people collect them, you can actually buy and sell them and make money on them on the things if you find somebody who would sell them to you enough.

Leo: I was learning this in the dog fight book. The Singer sewing machine patent battles were the original patent wars. And he points out in dog fight that what we think of now as a broken patent system because of software patents has always been, do you agree Denise, has always been this broken. And the most famous one is the Singer sewing machine lawsuits because a lot of people complained to have patented sewing machines. And do in the 1850s this was a massive battle between Elias Howe, remember him from the cotton gin.

John: No I don’t remember him.

Leo: Sure you do.

John: I’d met him once.

Leo: Yeah.

John: I’ll play along.

Leo: Who claimed he had invented the sewing machine and Singer who said he invented the sewing machine. And it’s just a – but the problem is how the sewing machine was vertical. The fabric started at the top and then went to the bottom and—

John: Seems like a different operation to me.

Leo: Well that's what Singer said. The first American patent for the sewing machine was Elias Howe. It had a needle with an eye at the point. The needle wash pushed through the cloth, created a looped on the other side. Sound like a sewing machine. A shuttle in a track then slipped the second thread through the looped creating a lock stitch.

John: There you go.

Leo: Yup, but Isaac Singer comes along and he built the first commercially successful sewing machine.

John: All right.

Natalie: Hmm, well maybe my Helpout wasn’t that great because I didn’t understand that.

Leo: [laughter]. It wasn’t a patent Helpout.

Denise: It won’t be too long before somebody patent trolls Google for some sort of patent on technological delivery of tutoring services.

Leo: Yeah, we invented that.

Denise: Let’s just hope they don’t settle. Yeah.

Natalie: Yeah.

Leo: There’s apparently a book about the famous sewing machine wars, which I will try to find for you because obviously you're all so fascinated.

John: So let’s – you're going to go into a commercial I think.

Leo: Yes, how did you know?

John: Because you keep that same piece of paper going back and forth.

Leo: You could feel it trembling in my hand.

John: Because I have something to talk about, I know it’s not on your list.

Leo: Please bring it up right after this word from gazelle.com. Do you have any old gadgets lying about.

John: Me?

Leo: I always use you as an example. You rented that room above a garage, do you still have that?

John: No.

Leo: Oh, that was awesome, I needed a modem. This was how long ago this was. And John says “Wah”.

Natalie: I have a few hundred thousand ET games.

Leo: Yeah, there you go. ET cartridges, no they won’t buy them. But I needed a modem and John says “Come over the house, I got some some modems”. And he takes me over to this room above a Chevron station.

John: Yeah, it was actually an independent, it’s not a Chevron.

Leo: Okay fine. And you open the door, and it’s like Fibber McGee’s closet, you practically, you can’t open the door because stuff’s—

John: This is an exaggeration.

Leo: It was just like that, and we go in and this rack after rack of all – this is all crap people send you to review.

John: In the olden days.

Leo: They don’t do this anymore?

John: Of course no, they this stuff to bloggers now.

Leo: Pfff, fools.

John: No the whole thing was upside-down.

Leo: There was actually, now that I think of it, a Slant Needle Sewing Machine in there.

John: No there wasn’t. You don’t even know what they looked like.

Leo: I'm pretty sure. It was either that or a 56k modem. So don’t be a Johnny D. Go to Gazelle and get cash for your—

John: JCD’s house of modems.

Leo: House of modems. They won’t buy modems, there’s not much of a market but they will buy broken iPhones and iPads by the way. They will buy cellphones from a variety of manufacturers. Do you still have a Blackberry? They’ll buy Blackberries. The Q10 are the Z10. Okay, they will buy Nokia phones, I wonder what I – can I sell my old Nokia. You choose your carrier, choose your phone, sure you can. Wonder what my 1520 is worth, I just bought it. It’s flawless, I just took it out of the box, 182 buck. Hey that’s money, you got an old iPhone, how about that maybe you want to upgrade to the new iPhone. Take your iPhone 5 ATT, get an offer. Unlocked, in good condition, 230 bucks. Now here’s the beauty part, go through all that stuff, I know you got a drawer, a cabinet somewhere with all your old phones and tablets, they’ll buy Surface tablets, Samsung, Google tablets, Asus tablets, Amazons, Kindle fire. Get it all, put it together, get quotes. Now these quotes are good for thirty days, you do not have to do anything for thirty days. The reason you want to get a quote as soon as possible is because every single one of these things are dropping in value like a rock. You know I can guarantee you. So get the best price you can get, guaranteed for thirty – yeah see the Kindle fire is worth 51 bucks, it’s not a good seller. And I can guarantee you in a week it’ll be worth less so get those quotes now. When you're ready to sell, maybe your new phone or the new tablet, you got a new computer you're ready to get rid of the old one, just check out, they’ll send you a box big enough for all the stuff prepaid postage. Their experts will turn it around quickly. One of the things they’ll do if you forget to wipe your data or you can’t because it’s broken or whatever, they will wipe the data for you. And then they’ll send you a check, if you want it faster, you can get a Paypal credit. You can also get, I you buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, an Amazon gift card and they will bump the value of the Amazon gift card by five percent. That is pretty sweet, little pro tip for you. G-A-Z-E-L-L-E dot com, if you think “Oh I don't know, I don’t want to be the first on my block”, you won’t be. Seven hundred thousand people have sold their stuff at Gazelle, paying more than a hundred million dollars. This is a really great thing to know about. How much is your Apple or Android device worth, visit gazelle.com, it’ll just take you a minute. You lock in that price for thirty days and who knows, you know you say “I think I'm going to pull the trigger on that”, gazelle.com. Oh John just left, he said he had to see a man about a dog so, he’ll come back and do his story in a second. Wait—

Natalie: Well we got earnings—

Leo: Somebody just—

Natalie: We got Netflix as a cable channel.

Leo: There’s a ton of stuff to talk about but let’s first – before we do that let’s see what happened this week because this was a great week. All the shows in one sixty second package, This Week on Twit.

Previously on Twit. Tech New Today.

Mike Elgan: Google’s Vice President for social Vic Gundotra is leaving the company. The departure of Gundotra raises serious questions about the future of Google Plus.

This Week in Enterprise Tech.

Rapahel Mudge: I'm going to demonstrate the heartbleed attack against a server I set up. So I'm going to go ahead and just run this, but there we go—

Father Robert Ballecer: Oh now we see it, it’s right there, wow.

Rapahel: But there we go, user padre and the password cranky hippo.

Fr. Robert: That's clear text because it’s pulling it straight out of memory.

Rapahel: This is the heartbeat bug in action.

Leo: That's cool.

The Social Hour.

Amber McArthur: It turns out they're giving Ronald McDonald a makeover and now you'll be seeing the clown more often through different social media channels for McDonalds and they’ll be more happening with Ronald McDonald. Maybe taking some selfies, doing some fun stuff.

Leo: Jesus.

Sarah Lane: This is a very frightening mascot, I mean look at that—Just hope they don’t call him OMG McDonald.

Leo: I hope they don’t to selfies.

The happiest place on earth.

Fr. Robert: Now we’re going to go into our next segment.

Shannon Morse: Sorry padre, wait, we can’t do it. There’s no time.

Fr. Robert: Oh no.

Shannon: We ran out of time, we can’t do it.

Leo: [laughter] is that Know How?

[laughter]

Leo: That was this week on This Week in Tech. What’s coming up next week Mike Elgan.

Mike: Coming up this week, Ebay and Twitter report earnings on Tuesday, the 29^th. Facebook’s F8 conference happens on Wednesday the 30^th. We’re expecting them to launch a new mobile ad network and we’ll cover it live here on Twit. And LinkedIn reports earnings on Thursday May 1^st, back to you Leo.

Leo: At 10 AM pacific, 1 PM eastern time, 700 UTC on Wednesday, we’ll cover F8. That's Facebook’s developer conference. And I think this is going to be a big one. I think there’s going to be some big announcements. How’s the yogurt?

John: Not bad.

Leo: It’s that Greek style yogurt.

John: Yeah, the Greek’s the best.

Leo: You like the heavier Greek style?

John: Actually I do and I think also people should check out the Icelandic stuff.

Leo: Smari, he’s local.

John: Oh really?

Leo: Yeah. I just saw him the other day. He’s got a big beard.

[laughter]

Leo: He does, he’s an Icelandic fella. It’s the best isn’t it?

John: Yeah, it’s drained so it’s like 3 times as much yogurt.

Leo: I asked him “What do you do with your acidic whey?”, because that's a big problem.

John: What does he do?

Leo: Don’t know.

John: A lot of people drink it. A lot of body builders. And it’s actually tasty.

Leo: That's what they sell it to. They take the protein out and they make—

John: If you've ever drunk it, it’s delicious.

Leo: It’s not acidic?

John: Yeah it’s very acidic, it’s delicious acidic. Okay so I guess I missed the last two or three shows so you probably already talked about this.

Leo: No, no bring it up again that's fine.

John: Code Babes.

Leo: Code Babes.

John: You don’t know – you didn’t talk about this?

Leo: No what is Code Babes?

John: You're kidding me. This is the hot coding thing that's going on, it’s like a boot camp. Only at Code Babes, they essentially – as you learn how to code, they take off more and more of their clothes.

Leo: Oh please.

John: No and this is the hottest thing in the world of coding.

Leo: Oh that's so—

Natalie: Like strip poker.

Leo: It’s so depressing.

John: This is the way it works.

Leo: Do you know about this Natalie?

Natalie: No.

Leo: Denise?

Denise: Not a bit.

Leo: Horrible.

John: Unbelievable that nobody know these things. There was a hot ticket.

Leo: Remember naked news?

John: It’s still around.

Leo: It’s still around?

John: Oh yeah.

Leo: I though thought that was long gone.

Denise: He’s like “I watch it all the time”.

Leo: Yeah it’s still around, yeah.

Denise: That's how I get my news.

Leo: It was the same idea. You would watch and it would be a normal newscast, just like a normal newscast—

John: This is incentivizing coding.

Leo: …but they would take off their clothes during the newscast.

John: Yeah, that's hilarious. Come on.

Leo: It wasn’t sexist because they had guys and gals, although I doubt very much the guys made any money.

John: So here’s the – this is the hot thing. It’s an incentivizing coding thing.

Natalie: I doubt very much the girls made any money.

Leo: I think the whole thing – you know it was in Canada, it was in Toronto, the naked news headquarters. And they invited me to go visit I said “No I think not”

[laughter]

John: What? You said no?

Leo: I said no.

John: Wow.

Leo: I did not want to touch that. Well I learned my lesson because remember when the Adultdex was next to CES for a while.

John: Oh yeah that was a kick.

Leo: Or was it next to Comdex?

John: Com.

Leo: It was Comdex?

John: No it was CES.

Leo: It was CES.

John: I don't know.

Leo: And we went with the camera crew, we went over.

John: Hey-yo.

Leo: This was when I was working at Tech TV. So it was like 2002 or something.

John: Yeah we went over too.

Leo: And we went over with the camera crew because you know you're in TV, you got to do that.

John: You don’t have to.

Leo: I wish we hadn’t, because I walked in the door and this woman says “Leo” and then they gave me free lap dances in and the whole time the cameras are going and going and I'm going you can’t use any – and I'm trying to push them, I'm going “Go away, don’t touch me”

John: This I like see. Just go away don’t touch me.

Natalie: You knew them or they knew you?

Leo: They knew me.

Natalie: But you didn’t know them?

John: He was very famous then.

Leo: Of course I didn’t know them.

John: He was very famous.

Leo: See this is the presumption that I knew. No it wasn’t that , it was that some of these who did webcamming, and this was early in the early days were big Tech TV fans because that's how they learned about technology.

John: How to do it, yeah.

Natalie: Ah.

John: And you also have to remember in Las Vegas where a lot of these girls live, it was one of the few outlets where Tech TV actually showed up.

Leo: She was – that's right. So this looks surprisingly like Sandra Bullock. I doubt she’s on Code Babes but it does look.

Natalie: This looks surprisingly like French Maid TV.

Leo: Another internet winner.

Natalie: Tim streets videos.

John: Yeah Tim.

Leo: You know I like Tim and I never really understood why he did that but I guess—

Natalie: Yup.

Leo: You know Tim.

Natalie: I think because it sold.

Leo: Because it made a lot of money, probably.

John: Who was this?

Leo: French Maids TV.

John: I don't know anything about it.

Leo: So they were young women dressed as French Maids but kind of sexy French Maids teaching you stuff. Same ideas exactly as Code Babes. In fact I wonder if Tim Street is behind this.

John: I doubt it. Well anyway Code Babes is hot.

Natalie: I don't know, you know most of the women who go into coding are trying to level the playing field.

Leo: Exactly.

John: That's what these girls are doing.

Leo: No.

Natalie: Instead of pointing out that they are women in order to get ahead. They're trying to bridge the gender gap and also the pay gap.

John: That's exactly what these women are doing.

Natalie: This is –yes it’s funny but it’s also kind of damaging.

Leo: I completely agree.

John: Oh, ha, well I didn’t know. All I know this is the hot ticket.

Leo: So you can learn—

Natalie: No John because you've never been a victim of the gender or the pay gap.

Leo: Thank you, he’s a white man.

John: I'm a victim of ageism, don’t kid yourself.

Leo: That's true, welcome.

Natalie: Now you are but you haven't always been. And we all would be a victim of ageism at some point.

Leo: That's true.

Natalie: We all won’t be a victim of sexism.

Leo: If we’re lucky, if we’re lucky.

Natalie: And so please do not ask for your sympathy, my sympathy over ageism.

Leo: Thank you.

John: I'm sorry but I—

Leo: Why would you bring this up John, you knew you would become flame bait.

John: I just thought – it just seemed to me that this is something that you would've discussed in my absence. And now I'm stunned, literally stunned that you've never heard of this.

Leo: And not only that, it’s really expensive as I remember. No I have never tried this.

John: If i remember.

Leo: I have not tried this.

Denise: It look imminently ignorable.

Natalie: I just really wanted to code and also keep my clothes on.

John: Okay anyway, that's my contribution.

Leo: I’ll be honest, I don't know think frankly nudity and coding go together.

John: Do you ever see some of these guys?

Leo: No.

Natalie: Have you ever seen those keyboard pants. Pants that are keyboards.

[laughter]

Leo: What? What?

John: This is another good topic. Let’s go to keyboard pants. Under door number 2.

Denise: They could only be sewn on a Slant Needle Sewing Machine.

Leo: What the hell are keyboard pants?

Natalie: Here, okay I'm putting in the chat room.

Leo: These pants have a built in keyboard.

John: Oh that’s very, very unique.

Natalie: That would help you code and keep your clothes on.

Leo: They don’t look comfortable.

John: No it’s got a keyboard built into the crotch.

Leo: This is a joke right?

Natalie: Yeah and aren't you, in order to keep your sperm count up supposed to keep your key board off your junk?

John: I think that has to do – I think the space key is the problem with that operation.

Denise: Um-hmm.

Leo: Wow.

John: Guy hits the space key a lot.

Denise: That's got to be the onion right?

Leo: No this guy’s kind of a joker. This guy who made these, he’s kind of a joker. He does all sorts – here’s an urban security suit.

John: There you go.

Leo: That has a built-in gas mask. Probably a bullet proof vest. He’s a joker.

John: Well you know.

Leo: He’s a little bit of a—

John: It could catch on.

Leo: It could, urban security seems a little – let’s see what else he has here.

John: Let me show you my tab key honey.

Leo: He’s like a designer. Here’s a meeting chair. This is—

John: A meeting chair?

Leo: A chair designed for meeting and lectures. It’s got a little – this is good, I'm going to get this for our conference room.

John: Where you can fall asleep?

Leo: No, look it’s got a little curve thing around your head that helps the acoustics. I don't know if this is real, if you can actually buy this.

John: Come on, top this stuff.

Leo: I could top it, there’s better stories. NEST, which Google acquired some – not so long ago.

John: NNNNNEST.

Leo: Is now available on the Play Store. You want to buy the NEST.

John: My wife bought a bunch of the nest, the fire alarms and the thing you couldn't turn them off.

Leo: Yeah, in fact they’ve taken them off the market.

John: For good reason, they’re horrible garbage.

Leo: Actually the reason they took them off the market was it was too easy to turn them off. Because if you wave your – so the idea is you have—

John: Not when they all set off. She couldn't get them off.

Leo: See that's – I wish you should call them and say they’ll put them back on the market because that was the whole problem is inadvertent—

John: There was no fire.

Leo: …disabling of the smoke alarms because it turns out when there’s a fire, you might jump up and wave your arms and then the smoke alarms will all, stop.

John: You'd be panicking.

Leo: You'd be panicking and the smoke alarms go oh never mind.

John: But you already know there’s a fire, I don’t see that being a problem.

Natalie: So now they need to choreograph a dance, if there is no fire you do the dance, it there is feel free to wave about.

John: Okay, next story.

Natalie: Will you tell, or maybe we can tell PadreSJ right now to do a Know How on NEST?

Leo: I have Nests, the thermostats. I bought them for my old place and I didn’t put them in the new place. It’s like do you really want the heat to come on at random interval without your say so. The whole idea is it learns whether you're home and it knows what the temperature is outside and it decides on its own, this little thing on the wall decides on its own when you need heat or cool. And it never was right. It’s like it’s turning on the heat at 3 in the morning, I don’t want it.

John: Well there you have it.

Natalie: Our is by and large right but sometimes I get falsely accused of turning the heat up to 69 or 78 and I did not touch it.

Leo: Wait a minute, up to 69?

Natalie: So it’s like the both of us—

Leo: Where do you keep it at?

John: Where do you keep the temperature at?

Natalie: 69 is hot in here, in this house because the heat blows straight on. Why? Do you think that's not good?

Leo: That's low, that's chilly.

Natalie: No.

John: Where do you keep it at, 40?

Natalie: No, well it has been lately but 60 – what are you guys?

John: It has been.

Leo: So Robert, Robert actually here.

Natalie: You keep your heat above 70 degrees?

Leo: Weren't you supposed to be at the Vatican today? Don't you have things to do in the – didn't they bring like bring in like 600 priests to do mass?

Robert: I called in sick.

Leo: You called in sick, okay that's all right. PadreSJ who does the fabulous Know How show, we would like you to do a learning thermostat How To.

Denise: Please.

Fr. Robert: Can I do a naked Know How?

Leo: He’s going to do naked Know How. It’s our new show.

[laughter]

Leo: So know you know how.

John: I'm not touching any of it.

Leo: Please don’t touch it.

John: Say the least.

Leo: All right quarterly reports. Apple, okay now this is interesting, god I hope it is. Apple, 45.6 billion dollars in the last quarter. This is their bad quarter. Their fiscal year is not the same as the same as the calendar year.

John: They're rolling in dough.

Leo: Q1 for them is the holiday buying season, so this is January and March.

John: They're selling iPods.

Leo: Only 2.7 million.

John: Yeah.

Leo: That's like a rounding error compared to what they used to—

John: So this really is a two product company. How long does this last.

Leo: It’s barely two products, so they sold – quarter to quarter, year to year right? Is that what you call it in the stock market?

John: Y2Y.

Leo: Y2Y, 37.4 million iPhones this time, last year 43.7 million iPhones and it wasn't even a new iPhone. So big growth in the iPones – iPone—

John: iPone.

Leo: Big growth on the iPone. On the other hand, Macs were up a little bit, 4 million to 4.1 million. It’s the iPads that took a big drop, 19.5 million last year, 16.3 million.

John: How is that new Mac doing? The one that's the – the bunch of—

Leo: The Mac Pro.

John: That thing.

Leo: They don't break it down by model.

John: That's a shame.

Leo: I don't know they can make very many of them. I think is the problem.

John: You like it.

Leo: I have one.

John: Yes.

Leo: The first one I had was a lemon.

John: Okay that happens.

Leo: I was using it to store my acidic whey, that might have been part of the problem.

John: So you ditched it for a new one?

Leo: I called Apple and they said “Yes it is a lemon.”

John: Okay.

Leo: We know about it, in fact capturing they were that Pros – not in my serial number range but close to it.

John: Okay.

Leo: So it would like – it just would reboot spontaneously and—

John: That's not good, you don't want that.

Leo: …and apparently this was an old problem. Well it was funny it didn’t do it enough so that it was – like you could work with it but every day it would reboot once. It would just go black and go bong then start up again. Once a day, and I didn't realize how much – how bad it was until I got the new one and it didn't. And it was like I had PTSD, it was like I could finally trust my computer again.

John: Okay.

Leo: So I do like the Mac Pro a lot. Once it got a new one I just love it. It hasn't rebooted in days.

John: You use it?

Leo: Yeah.

John: Where is it?

Leo: I just surf the web, a little bit of email you know that kind of stuff.

John: Huh, this is like overkill.

Leo: Way overkill. But I have two, not one but two GPUs working all the time. They didn't break it down. They did sell more iPhones, and more – and less iPads.

John: Oh really? Maybe it’s peaked, it’s over.

Leo: Yeah the iPads dropped. Okay that is our question of the day. Has the iPad peaked? Natalie Morris.

Natalie: Has the iPad peaked, I mean we’re expecting a new round, it’s still selling like hot cakes.

Leo: No it’s not.

John: It’s not selling like hot cakes anymore.

Leo: It’s dropping, it’s dropping like a rock.

Natalie: And we’re expecting a new round out. I don't know if it’s peaked. And don’t you think it’s still a proper noun or do you think people are still—

Leo: Well let me compare it to the iPhone. The iPhone came out before the new iPhone, the iPhone 5s came out before the iPad and it’s selling, it’s still up. The new iPad came out in October, it’s down. So yes it had a good first quarter but the second quarter not so good.

Natalie: Yeah.

John: I think it’s over.

Leo: It’s a little cheesy to report this because Apple had quarterly, record quarterly profits—

John: No they're making money hand over fist.

Leo: …10.2 billion dollars. They beat Wall Street’s estimates, blah, blah, blah. But if they—

Natalie: Yeah I think they to have a strong showing of products over the course of the summer. I think that's clear.

Leo: What are we looking at?

John: I like it.

Chad: This is sort of related. This is a – how much does a company make in a second. It’s the bottom of the miscellaneous.

Leo: Samsung is actually beating Apple on this.

Chad: Yeah.

John: In terms of per second.

Chad: Yeah, in terms of revenue but not per profit.

Leo: Oh the middle thing is the profit.

Chad: Right, so here let’s zoom in to--

Leo: HP seems to be doing quite well.

Chad: HP’s doing pretty good down there.

Leo: Good revenue. That's because they sell crap for a lot of money.

Chad: Twitter is losing as just about losing as much money as it’s revenue.

Leo: Oh look at that dot, that little dot.

Chad: But it’s that's the revenue, the outline is revenue.

John: Yeah because the profit is negative.

Chad: And there is not profit dot.

John: So their revenue equals their losses so literally so every buck they lose.

Chad: Right.

Leo: Wow.

John: They should put—

Leo: That's a good business huh. At least they're not losing more than they make.

John: Well look at it, it’s pretty close.

Leo: Apple meanwhile, hooh. Where is that – that is a good—

Chad: It’s at the bottom of the Doc, there two links right next to each other because the second link is to—

John: Look at it and waste your time.

Chad: Anthony or who – Jeff, Jeff who talks about it, he said that he had it up for about twenty hours and Twitter had lost a $100,000 in that twenty hours.

Leo: Meanwhile Apple stock is going through the roof and I was the one – I’ll admit last week said that I would short Apple stock.

John: I think you could short it if a war breaks out in Europe, I would short Apple strock. But the short of I think it’s not—

Natalie: Not with the split coming.

Leo: 7 to 1 split they announced. Big buy back as well.

John: That's not a good, they should've done it two for one.

Leo: Why 7 – have you ever heard of a 7 for one?

John: I've seen 10, 10 and 20 for one.

Leo: Weird number.

John: But it – according to Horowitz, I do the show DHM plug you should check it out.

Leo: He’s a finance guy.

John: There's a lot of evidence that show when you do the splits beyond two or three to one, it actually hurts the stock after the split.

Leo: Google did quite well didn’t it? With its stock’s split, or did it?

John: I don't know.

Natalie: But that was a three to one wasn't it?

Leo: Two to one.

John: When was this? When was this? When did they do this split.

Leo: I don't know, either that or the stock dropped $500.

John: So what’s the price now?

Leo: Overnight. You want me to look up Google for you?

John: Yeah when did they do their split?

Natalie: It’s still around—

John: I stopped following Google.

Leo: It’s 516 now but that is split, that's split so equivalent whatever one thousand—

John: Yeah it was at about one thousand. So it’s two to one.

Leo: Yeah, meanwhile Apple’s stock is doing quite well so if you did listen to me and you shorted it, I hope you don’t have it.

Natalie: Sorry.

Leo: Sorry, I know nothing, I'm an idiot. But I'm in it for the long haul. I think it’s going to drop—

John: Eventually.

Leo: [laughter], eventually and this is why I can't buy stock.

John: Don't buy stock, buy real estate, that's your best bet.

Natalie: Invest, don't trade, it’s not time in the market or it’s time in the market not timing the market.

Leo: I am using Warren Buffet’s wife investment strategy. Not Warren Buffett’s, I can't afford him.

John: Just buy real estate, you can't go wrong.

Leo: Mrs. Buffett, Warren said don't do what I do, do what I say. Because Warren by the way over the last five years has not got a good track record. The wizard of Omaha is not doing that well.

John: He’s not starving to death.

Leo: He’s not starving, he still live in the same—

Denise: What does his wife do Leo?

Leo: He told his wife “Buy no load index funds.” Big, big market baskets, 5 – you know S&P 500 are those whole stock market.

John: Yeah, a lot of people do that.

Leo: Low cost, you beat almost everybody else, all these people trying to beat the market. You can't beat the market, especially thanks to high frequency traders. It’s rigged with front runnings.

John: It’s rigged anyways .

Leo: Have you finished that book yet Natalie?

Natalie: Wait the difference between—

John: Front running’s not legal and they're not doing it.

Natalie: Yeah I finished it two weeks ago.

Leo: It’s really good.

Natalie: Yeah it’s good but what’s the difference between that and an ETF? It’s just a smaller fund? Because ETFs have small—

John: ETFs are usually targeting segments—

Leo: They're smaller baskets.

John: …like they're targeting metal or they're targeting computer companies or—

Leo: So I buy the market as a whole. I buy like, like – what is it, the 5000, the Rusell 5000.

John: The Russell 5000?

Leo: Yeah.

John: Or the Russell 2000?

Leo: I buy the 5000, I figure five is better than two. But again I was the guy who said short Apple last week.

Natalie: Well if – yeah if that's the case then just short the Dow.

John: I would just get – yeah that's not a good investment.

Natalie: You're really going to get crazy.

Leo: I'm not going to short—

John: I would just get the S&P if you're just going to do that the S&P is probably your best bet.

Leo: Here is Apple’s stock price over the last five days.

John: Wow.

Leo: This is where I said short them, right here.

John: Yeah and that when they said they were going to do a split.

[laughter]

John: Yeah that's a pretty funny chart.

Leo: At least I admit my mistakes.

John: I think shorting Apple’s not a bad idea, eventually.

Leo: How long can you run a short? Is it – do you get a margin at some point or can you do it indefinitely?

John: Well it depends, if it keeps going up, then you get a call for sure.

Leo: Yeah.

John: But if it starts plummeting, you can hang on to it until it hits rock bottom.

Leo: Well the problem is it’s going up right now.

John: You didn’t go out and short it?

Leo: I didn't know, I don't buy tech stock. I don't know anything about it. I buy the Russell 5000.

John: By the way shorting is not buying tech stocks.

Leo: No but Apple is a tech stock.

John: Yeah but you're not buying it, you're selling it.

Leo: But it’s just as bad if I was shorting it. In fact it’d be worse because I’d come on the show and say—

Natalie: I want to hear from someone who did it because—

Leo: Apple sucks, everybody get out of Apple.

John: You'd do this anyway because Apple has – if you don't remember this, i do. Apple has blackballed you.

Leo: Why do you bring this up every single time? He takes great pleasure in this. And I'm not even going to call it a fact because I don’t think it is. I think you're making that up.

John: What? So what changed?

Leo: They don't invite me to their events but Natalie do you get invited to Apple Key Notes?

Natalie: Ouch that hurts a little bit, when I was working more regularly, yes I did.

Leo: But not anymore. John do you get invited to Apple Key Notes?

John: I haven't been invited to anything from Apple since 1990.

Leo: Denise how often do you get invited to Apple Key Notes? In fact, does anybody in this room?

John: But I was blackballed, I was blackballed.

Denise: Nope.

John: They're not journalists that should be going to these things.

Leo: Are you all blackballed?

John: They're not writers.

Natalie: No I can get in I want to.

Leo: See she can get in if she wants to.

Natalie: I don't get my own invitations anymore.

John: Well she’s pretty.

Leo: She says I know Clayton Morris.

Natalie: No – okay.

John: I got Fox News behind me.

Natalie: I have my identity. Let me assert that once again.

Leo: Clayton by the way is not blackballed, he can go to anything he wants, right?

Natalie: That's true.

Leo: Yup. He just calls up says “I'm Clayton Morris”, they go roll out the red carpet for him.

John: I that right?

Natalie: Thanks for putting lemon in my cut.

Leo: I'm just teasing you. You know what, I'm paying it forward. John screwed me, now I'm going to screw you.

Natalie: No I don't have career envy in my house. I'm happy that my husband’s career is still doing well and work for my kids.

Leo: Your career is great. Your career – you're doing great.

John: What is this off topic? We’re talking about Apple.

Leo: Natalie you're doing great. No, we’re going to cheer up Natalie.

John: Oh she doesn't need cheering up, look at her.

Leo: NBC contributor.

John: CNBC I believe.

Leo: No it said NBC.

John: All of NBC?

Leo: All of NBC.

Natalie: I do The Today’s Show on CNBC.

John: Okay, well that's—

Leo: The Today’s Show, do you ever hear of it?

John: No. Is that on today?

Leo: Every day.

Denise: No, not on Sundays.

Leo: Never on a Sunday.

John: Why is it called The Today’s Show if it’s not on every day?

Natalie: No they have a weekend Today’ Show.

Leo: Yeah, yeah see.

Denise: Yeah they do, there we go.

Leo: Are you on the one with Kathy Lee Gifford?

Natalie: Actually I've never done the 10 o’clock hour. I usually do the 9 o’clock hour.

Leo: I watch that one.

John: That's pretty snarky that show.

Leo: Yeah that's why I watch it, I like it. Apple reports 45 – oh I already said that story. So anybody else have a though about the iPad. What is going on, are we just waiting for the next one? That's what you think Natalie. I think it’s saturated and Android is starting to come on strong.

John: There's that element and I also that the whole market may be smaller than they imagined.

Leo: They did it, it’s done. Everybody wants one, got one. Denise you love the iPad right?

Denise: I don't know, I think there's like – I love the iPad, I think I love tablets. You know I think that Android tablets are coming on strong even Amazon’s Kindle Fire is a competitor.

John: I think Leo’s got the right idea.

Leo: This is what's killing iPads.

John: It’s a giant phone.

Leo: Even the small phone is killing because what I think people realized here is, I mean aren't you using your phone for everything now. You don't need a tablet.

John: Look at the size of this thing.

Denise: I use my tablet.

Leo: You use your tablet.

Natalie: I do too.

Leo: So you get home, you put the phone on the dresser, you let it charge and you pull out the iPad.

John: Let’s see.

Leo: That's your home computer.

John: Look at the size of—

Denise: Yeah, it’s my lay back device. When I'm working, I'm working on a keyboard, you know external keyboard. When I'm reading, hanging out, consuming entertainment it’s the tablet.

Leo: I think maybe it’s because I'm badly nearsighted, because when I take off my glasses, and I hold the phone like right here, right up to my face, it’s like a giant screen TV.

John: This thing does nothing.

Leo: You don't know how to use a Windows phone.

John: I used a Windows phone once.

Leo: This is the Nokia 1520, it’s a 6 inch—

John: How did you get the thing to come up like that?

Leo: There's a button on the side you press.

John: …pushing buttons.

Leo: Look at that, isn’t that beautiful? I think it’s gorgeous. And that's not even customized. I put Windows .81. I do think Windows phones—

John: So why does it say me and there's a little picture of you on here and it’s flat—

Leo: In case I forget.

[laughter]

Leo: It’s a phone for your age.

John: Look at this.

Leo: Who am I? Oh I know who I am.

John: I don't think so.

Leo: I'm me.

John: I don't have one of these phones, you do. So let’s get that straight. And what's this photos, what is this? It’s showing different photos constantly. Why would I want that.

Natalie: Whoa, ask permission before you do that, don't do that. That's rude.

Leo: Natalie you have a problem with selfies and belfies?

Natalie: I do not like it when people open – my sister does this to me, just like flip through my—

Leo: Starts scrolling through it.

Natalie: …my photos. It’s just not good gadget etiquette.

John: He’s only go two photos in here. I already checked.

Leo: It’s bad gadget etiquette, my son did that to me. I was visiting my son at school in Colorado and he starts flippin through my pictures and I said stop.

John: Well then don't carry them on a phone it’s kind of nutty.

Leo: Well you can't help it, if you take the pictures—

Natalie: A phone is a personal device, like you don't just get to go through my wallet?

Leo: Thank you.

John: Why not?

Leo: So belfies are butt selfies.

John: Who takes such a thing?

[laughter]

Natalie: It’s the evolution of when we used to do that on a copy machine.

John: That's disgusting.

Leo: And it’s huge, I saw—

John: especially if you got a big butt.

Leo: I saw Kelly do it on Live with Kelly and Michael. She did a belfie.

Natalie: Do you ever do that on a copy machine? I mean I didn't do that.

John: Did you Natalie?

[laughter].

Natalie: Yeah I've done that before.

Leo: You have?

Natalie: Yes, on a copy machine with my sister, yeah.

Leo: Unfortunately unlike belfies, there was no Instagram for belfies. What are you doing? You're making noise.

John: Yeah, keep talking I’ll just do background.

Leo: You're hearing the Tim Cook explains by the way.

[laughter]

John: Go on.

Leo: So when I started out doing this in 1991 I did a radio show with John C. Dvorak. And he would – it’s a three hour radio show, remember that, Dvorak on computers.

John: Oh yeah.

Leo: And he would get bored.

John: I was easily bored.

Leo: So I gave him a bunch of sound effects.

John: It was my idea.

Leo: You demanded though.

John: You digged up all the classics.

Leo: Thousands of sound effects. And he would interrupt the show constantly just like this.

[Sound effects play]

Leo: So what does Tim Cook say about iPad sales, he says there are two factors behind this, the same quarter a year prior Apple had increased, this is by the way a bogus explanation, can you stop with this.

John: Don't you think this makes the show better?

Leo: This is cheesy music. In the same quarter a year prior Apple increased iPad channel invertory, where as in this quarter it was reduced.

John: Huh.

Leo: This sounds a little bit exposed facto. He’s saying “Oh yeah we didn’t sell because we don't make as many.”

John: Yeah.

Leo: I think that might be the other way around. We don't make as many because we weren’t selling as many but okay. Secondly, Apple ended the first quarter, the holiday season with a backlog of iPad minis which was subsequently shipped during the second quarter. They couldn't make those fast enough.

John: Which is about the size of this thing.

Leo: Yeah, neither of these are very compelling arguments. It’s—

John: It sounds like bull crap.

Leo: It sounds like he’s – like—

John: Bull crap.

Leo: It’s been the fastest growing product in Apple history. It was an instant hit in business, education and consumer. In just 4 years after we launched the first iPad, we've sold over 201 million, more than anyone thought possible. That's twice as much as during a comparable time frame in other words he has no reason at all why Apple didn't sell as many last quarter.

John: Apparently not.

Denise: Well let me ask you guys this. What is the single most common thing for you to use in iPad or a tablet for?

Leo: Simpsons Tap Tap.

John: I use Angry Birds. You get a lot more control. Fine control you Angry Birds you don’t—

Leo: Gaming I guess.

John: This should be a good Angry Birds phone.

Leo: Do you use read stuff or what? What do you use it?

Denise: I use it for email but I've more—

Leo: Email?

Denise: Yeah I use it for email.

Leo: Do you use it for keyboard or like—

Denise: Yeah.

John: That horrible keyboard?

Denise: That horrible keyboard, yeah I use and I don’t use it throughout the day for email and use it in the evening before I go to bed. I use it in the morning when I get up. It’s sort of like that email filler before but I use it for entertainment and I – far and away the most common thing that we as a family use the iPad for is when we’re on the road, not at home, we use Amazon Instant Video on the iPad.

Leo: It’s a babysitter, it’s babysitting. It’s cheap babysitting.

Denise: Well of it’s you know, you're not home, you don't have access to entertainment.

Leo: But you – so you're watching as well as your son?

Denise: Yeah exactly. We’ll put on a good movie for us all to enjoy for if we’re somewhere, elsewhere.

John: Hold on a second, you're telling me you're watching movies on this thing?

Denise: Uh-huh.

John: Wow.

Denise: Yeah.

John: I watch movies on a 60 and a 100 inch screens.

Leo: It’s better that way, with surround sound.

John: Yeah and lots of volume and boom, boo-boom.

Leo: Natalie do you – is the iPad hot in your family?

Natalie: Yeah, oh yeah, I mean not only for the baby apps but also – you know we—

Leo: So you have little ones?

Natalie: Yeah I have small kids, they're—

Leo: How old is Miles, he’s three.

Natalie: …one and three.

Leo: So Miles able to use and iPad, so three is actually the cutoff.

John: Aren't there studies starting to show that kids and these things is ruining them. It’s making them idiots.

Natalie: Oh yeah I mean I have rules, a lot of rules like if they have them in the morning and they say “Can I use the pad pad”, it’s what they call it, and I say okay but no movies only games so they can play puzzles—

Leo: Good, good for you. Studies show that the iPad is making kids idiots.

John: That's what I heard.

Leo: That is so—

Denise: Yeah you read an article by a woman who’s not a doctor, she’s an occupational therapist and she—

John: Well she’s got more knowledge than Leo does on the topic.

Leo: I have a study that shows that children are idiots today thanks to the iPad.

Natalie: Well I think that there's a lot that could be said about that, I think it’s important to—

John: I'm sticking to that, that's a good thesis.

Natalie: …I think you know screen time does have an effect on your brain so I'm careful about that but I think that you know it’s up to me to decide when—

Leo: Exactly.

Natalie: …that can and can't happen. My husband was in a bagel shop and this guy, he set the kids up with some breakfast and an episode of Curious George and this guy was like “This is why kids today are going to be idiots because of lazy parents like this” and my husband was so furious that he went over and he said “Excuse me, are you judging me for letting them watch some Curious George with their iPad”. So I know there a lot of like high emotion judgement that goes along with that but anyone who has to say something like that can take it up with me.

John: Did a fight break out?

Natalie: He actually was very diplomatic about it, I would've strangle him but he just said “You need to manage your own business”.

Leo: Just tell Clayton the guy had a high gluten diet, it’s not his fault, it was the gluten talking.

Natalie: He called him one of those bagel shop loafers, the guy who like brings the physical paper and sits there for a long time.

Leo: Bagel shop loafer.

Natalie: So I mean it’s not like we had anything to prove or answer to this guy but I was really pissed that he would dare to judge my husband who is an amazing father. But beyond that just using the iPad, we don’t use it as a babysitter but we both do a lot of consumption of media on it. I mean we have an app for that. Read Quick, it’s the speed reading app.

Leo: Yes.

John: Whoa.

Leo: Let us not forget.

John: That's a phrase we could probably use.

Leo: Read quick, Read Quick baby. Is that doing well?

Natalie: Yes, actually it has been doing really well and we just launched a brand new version of it. It was redesigned for the new IOS and launched over the weekend.

Leo: So you are IOS only? You do not have an android version?

Natalie: Not yet, it’s just been kind of arduous to hire a developer but we’re still working on that.

Leo: Would you feel that the – you don't see a drop in people buying Read Quick because the iPad’s dropping? Do you?

Natalie: No, no not at all. And I think as people use the iPad more they would go deeper and deeper into the ecosystem of the apps.

Leo: I think you're right.

Natalie: But I do think that the Android marketplace is a completely different economy, which we’re really excited to explore. But you know this was all funded in our house so it’s just, it’s slow going and – but you know we’re good.

Leo: I think that Read Quick is making children idiots.

Natalie: Actually someone in the chat room just linked me to something that said that speed reading was bad for reading comprehension and we haven't seen that at all. In fact we've had people with dyslexia write us and say that they have found this app to be so useful because dyslexics normally mix up the order of the words or the direction of the words and this forces you to read one word at time. So what you do is you mark articles that you would like to read later and then you open them up in Read Quick and they display them to you one word at time. That's actually the old version there but we need a new video. And so your brain instead of sounding out the words, processes the words as an image so that you can read quicker without getting in the way.

Leo: It’s like jpegs.

Natalie: Yeah, yeah.

Leo: It really works, you do actually read faster and I think your comprehension goes up. But it’s a weird feeling while you're using Read Quick because it’s kind of going by and you – at first you try to keep up and ten you just relax. And then you read.

Natalie: Yeah you set the tone. I don't go fast. I think there are a lot of people who write us and they're like “How many hundred words a minute?” and I'm like “What, How? I mean it’s possible with the settings but I can't imagine it or comprehend it rather”. I'm still pretty low at like 350 and I don't feel the need to go much higher than that. Whereas my husband Clayton, he can go almost close to 500. I don’t do it for speed but especially for a show like this where I have a lot to read. I’ll mark up all my articles in either pocket of instapaper and then open it in Read Quick and I can get through them pretty fast.

Leo: Right.

Natalie: So yeah I don't think it the iPad’s dead and if it is I'm in trouble.

John: Okay, fascinating.

Leo: Stop playing with my phone. This is a Nokia 1520 by the way. This is the perfect combination of tablet and phone.

John: It’s too big.

Leo: I love it. Hello.

Denise: Another anecdotal thing I’ll just throw in on the iPad front is that we have three in the house, two are the original iPads.

Leo: Wow.

Denise: Version one and mine is the two. So I mean we find them—

Leo: You know that's why the sales have tailed off, you feel no need.

Denise: Yeah they're good enough you don't have to upgrade too much. I mean once, once or twice.

Leo: And I’ll tell you, I don’t see a lot of Android tablets, I don't think Android tablets are cutting the business. I think just everybody who has one, wanted one has one and they don't care if they have the five or the four or the.

John: Yeah.

Leo: Whatever they got that's fine.

John: They work well.

Leo: They work.

John: You don't need to get another one.

Denise: They do, they work.

Natalie: They're shelf life is too long.

John: That's why computer sales are down too because most of the computers sold today last for five or six years. I remember when we had to buy one every eighteen months.

Leo: I agree, I completely agree. And frankly I think a lot of people who bought computers didn't need computers once they could get an iPad, that's it they're done and they're happy. By the way expect Apple to get much more fashionable, maybe plaid in the next iPad. Angela Ahrends, actually Dame Angela Ahrends commander of the British Empire, former Burberry CEO is starting work this week.

John: Yeah she’s going where? I forgot.

Leo: She’s retail, she going retail for Apple. What’s interesting she was the CEO of Burberry and is wildly credited with revitalizing what was kind of – it’s the Mentos effect.

John: Yes.

Leo: Your grandma’s fashion and then she made Burberry hot again. She will try to do this same thing although Apple retail’s doing fine. They don't need anything.

John: They don't need her. What’s the point?

Leo: Well I think Apple has done what a lot of companies – it makes sense for companies to do—

John: They're fixing something not broken.

Leo: No I disagree, what – this is a response to the iPad issue, you don't need another iPad right? Detroit had the same problem, you didn't need another car. How do you make—

John: Detroit cars you did but go on.

Leo: Well, but how do you make somebody buy cars more often, you put fins on them. How do you make people buy new iPhones, you put a new look on it and then their old one starts to look dated. Fashion knows all about this right? Every year, everything looks dated, you’ve got to buy all new clothes, your clothes don't wear out every year, but you have to buy all new clothes. Well obviously you don't.

John: You don't have to and I don’t do it.

Leo: You're wearing a shirt from like 1927.

John: I got this since 1928.

Leo: Okay right after—

John: I decided to go flannel, you know I looked that you old guy, you know what was that, I can't remember that.

Leo: Yeah eat tree bark, it’s like grape nuts.

John: You know can I stop you for a second.

Denise: There goes Denise again, you've chase her off again.

John: I want you to look at this shot.

Leo: Bye Denise, she just walked out the door on you John.

John: Hey Chad Get back to this shot. That's fine, so this Buzz Out Loud look has got to go.

Leo: What Buzz Out Loud look? How dare you?

John: I started watching the show. I'm telling you.

Leo: Buzz Out Loud?

John: This is something you have to discuss with Lisa.

Leo: You don't like this where we’re sitting in a semi-circle facing the audience.

John: I am going to make—

Leo: You want me to get arm chairs?

John: I'm going to say this once only, I'm only going to do it now and I want you—

Leo: Just listen.

John: She’s not, she’s left.

Natalie: I'm, no I was.

John: Not you, no Lise.

Leo: Natalie is in charge of the design and look of Twit now.

John: So I'm on my—

Natalie: You said something about Buzz Out Loud, I'm like “Wait a minute, what?”

Leo: Yeah what? Exactly.

John: So I'm watching—

Natalie: That was my show.

Leo: That's right.

John: I'm on Netflix – what’s she—

Leo: I know what’s next, I know, no you don't have to hold up a sign I know.

John: I'm on the ro – it’s getting late. I'm on the Roku box and-

Leo: Oh my god, what time is it? Oh my god. Go ahead keep talking.

John: It’s apparent I'm never going to get to this point. Next time I'm on the show, not now, next time because I want you to get to this, I am going to bring up something that needs to be discussed and that little show you do Lisa and—

Leo: Inside Twit.

John: …whoever seems to be hanging out.

Leo: That's what the show is.

John: You bring them on and you yak at them. And you eat a whole box of food on that show.

Leo: You want to a new look is what you're saying.

John: I want to discuss it next time I'm on.

Leo: Our show today brought to you by stamp.com. Have you been to the post office lately John?

John: Yes I go to the post office often because we get checks in the mail.

Leo: Aw see, the post office this new thing where a person comes to your house and then put the checks in the slot.

John: I have a box because I don’t need a bunch of mail that can be stolen out of a big box.

Leo: You know what's convenient about the post office box? They have the recycling bin right there.

John: Yeah I know, that's right.

Leo: So the mail, you just take it out of the box, you put it in the recycling bin.

John: Yeah I know.

Leo: It’s so easy.

John: It’s fantastic.

Leo: But don't go there to buy stamps. That's nuts because you can print stamps.

Natalie: You guys could use Paper Karma for your junk mail.

Leo: I do, Paper Karma’s an awesome app.

Natalie: It works.

Leo: You take a picture of your junk mail and then they go and they cancel it.

John: [laughter].

Leo: What are you laughing at? It works.

Natalie: It totally works.

Leo: I don't get any more catalogs, it’s great. Except Victoria’s secret. For some reason I just can’t seem to cancel that.

John: Code Babes, it’s for you.

Leo: Stamps.com will print legal postage from your computer, your printer. You do not need a postage meter. You'll even get a digital scale so you'll always have exactly the right postage. It’s a USP, literally USP scale that interface with stamps.com to automatically give you the right postage. The other day I got a PR from, sent me a product, postage due.

John: What?

Leo: I got to pay 85 cents to see their stupid product.

John: Huh, is it any good?

Leo: I don't even know because I wouldn't pay the money, they took it back. That's why they should've been using stamps.com, always have the right postage. Do not do postage, do not – see the audience is leaving.

John: I don't blame them.

Leo: I don't either. Look at – stamps.com—

John: It’s late.

Leo: It’s late.

John: Yeah.

Leo: Stamps.com will print out all the labels, in fact they’ll put in right on an envelope if you want. They will fill out the international postage or the return receipt. The customers – they do that all automatically. You get discounts you can't even get at the post office. I just love it, all I want you to do is go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page before you do anything else and then enter in TWIT as the offer code. You are going to get a $110 bonus offer that'll include the USP scale, $55 in free postage and of course a month of stamps.com. Give it a try to day, you'll going to love it. I think that's a great deal.

John: I get free postage.

Leo: I still get stuff for people, postage due—

John: I don't understand why anybody doesn't take advantage of this.

Leo: …or with stamps all the way across. This is it. This is the product we actually did take it.

John: You did take it, you did pay the 85 cents.

Leo: I'm going to give them a plug right now.

John: Look at this.

Leo: These are bunzees they're called.

John: This is just nothing.

Leo: I paid 85 cents.

John: These are for your wires and stuff.

Leo: Yeah it’s like bungee cords for your wiring.

John: Yeah.

Leo: Denise, you keep running out, are you – like do you have a child?

Denise: No I'm good, I had the dog in the other room and she needed to come and see us.

Leo: Awww.

Denise: She was not having—

Leo: Is she a puppy?

Denise: She is, she’s nine months old.

Leo: You didn't tell me you got a puppy.

Denise: We did, yes her name’s Carmel.

Leo: Carmel.

John: Carmel.

Leo: Yeah she looks good enough to lick.

Denise: Yes.

Leo: Facebook had a very good quarter too as I mentioned, two and a half billion in revenue. 59% of their ad revenue for mobile. That's a big success but the best number is user number. What do think John C. Dvorak, what do you think Facebook, don't look, what do you think Facebook’s current user base it?

John: Five billion.

Leo: Very good, it’s 1.28 billion users.

John: I'm not even close.

Leo: That's people who use it every month. Well there's only six and a half billion in the world and I don't know how many people. I think they're close to the number of people who are internet connected now right?

John: Oh this is interesting. This thing, they got a little thing in here.

Leo: Just like a small child.

John: I am yeah I—

Leo: And he kiddie pockets it.

John: I'm going to take, I'm going to pocket it. I pocketed it yeah, yes I did.

Leo: [laughter], well at least I got something for my 85 cents in postage.

John: Yeah, bunzees.

Leo: 802 million daily users of Facebook and of those, 609 are in mobile, 609 million daily mobile users. A huge success, that was the big question mark on Facebook. Can they go mobile? Am I boring you?

John: No I'm listening, this is great.

Leo: Amazon, they showed a little bit of profit. Earnings in line with expectations of 23 cents a share.19.7 billion in revenue though. That's up almost 23% from their revenue last quarter, huge growth in revenue. In fact that's where they beat the analysts. Amazon is just – and you know the profit they can dial in and out.

John: The company’s on fire.

Leo: [whispering], how would you change the show?

John: I’ll talk about it next time I'm on.

Leo: No—

John: There’s a number of things going on. The problem is, here’s what happened to me, I go to my Roku box and there's Twit.

Leo: Yes.

John: And so I click around and it turns out that they actually have this show as a special thing. So you and is shows the thing in HD, it’s glamorous.

Leo: It’s gorgeous.

John: But then all I see is – and I’ll talk about this in more detail, it looks like Buzz Out Loud. These stupid computers and this giant microphones.

Natalie: Okay, with the discouraging talk about Buzz Out Loud. I've had quite enough of that.

Leo: You know that was her show right?

John: No I thought she had a different show. I'm talking about the show that used to have Molly Wood and Tom Merit.

Natalie: I was a co-host of Buzz Out Loud.

John: Okay, well whatever. Beside the point, it was a show where they got this – I remember the day when it was Merit and Molly.

Leo: Well what do you want, do you want us to take off our clothes slowly during the show.

John: No I want, I want, no. I want the show to be watchable. I want to get rid of these stupid screens and put some lavs on people instead of these dum mics. You at least got rid of the cans, which was really bad. You see all these guys doing podcasting, they have two big cans on their head and then they got a big giant mic—

Denise: Hello.

John: …it’s horrible looking.

Leo: Hi Denise.

John: We don't want to see any of this. And then there's the screen. You're more TV, you don't need the big microphone the bid dick microphone.

Leo: You know this, oh thank you. I didn't know you cared. This is a great idea for a show and I want you to do—

John: Have you seen The Tom Hardman Show, he’s got this huge mic in front of him. It’s like he’s on TV, what are you doing with a radio mic?

Leo: Yeah that's kind of silly. You're making Lisa uncomfortable.

John: She didn't design the show.

Leo: No it’s been this way forever.

John: I'm just saying it should be upgraded to something a little—

Leo: Hey here’s some good news, Amazon is going to pay HBO three—

John: I said my piece.

Leo: [laughter], we should all wear more flannel shirts. I think that would help.

John: This flannel shirt is what it is but I'm just telling you this is an old look. Buzz Out Loud.

Leo: It’s a timeless look.

John: Okay.

Leo: It started with Jack Par.

Natalie: Excuse me, Buzz Out Loud was hip.

Leo: Buzz Out Loud was hot. Buzz Out Loud was happening.

Natalie: It still would be.

John: Yeah they were throwing money at it left and right.

Natalie: [Gasps] ouch.

Leo: Oh my god.

John: What, I do what I say, you guys are—

Natalie: ...my feelings.

Leo: You know what how did Cranky Geeks look?

John: Cranky Geeks we had labs on, there wasn't a big computer in front of everybody.

Leo: Is that show still on?

John: A big giant mic.

Leo: Is that show still on, you're still doing that right? Every week?

John: So this is your argument?

Leo: Yes.

John: Huh.

Leo: There is a reason why this is the number – I don't know what it is but there is a reason why this is number one, most listened to technology show in the world.

John: Yeah listened to.

Leo: Or watched.

John: You watch it on the—

Leo: What percentage watches this show Lisa? Fifteen – never mind. Jeff Bezos will pay – [laughter], most people are listening.

John: Yes obviously, this is designed for a listening show.

Leo: You would watch if you knew that Denise Howell had a puppy with her right now.

Denise: Puppy!

Leo: Puppies.

John: Keeping the puppy on screen.

Leo: See you're missing the puppy. You need to watch more.

Denise: And the computers are not a prop, you guys are using those.

Leo: Yes!

Denise: Actually read what's going on which is kind of unique in a news show.

Leo: So are the mics, we’re talking into them. It’s not like The Tonight Show where they have a prop mic.

John: Yeah.

Leo: While everybody’s wearing lavaliers.

John: Yeah, yeah I know, I'm just saying you don't have to listen to anything I’ve got to say. It’s fine with me, I'm just—

Natalie: …says that Cranky Geeks look like Charlie Rose show where you're like – you don't need the computer, you're just pretending to – it’s all up here.

Leo: Yeah, it did.

John: So what?

Leo: Yeah we’re just pretending. It’s all in here.

John: I'm doing my email on this computer.

Leo: John read everything off a prompter. We all know.

Natalie: He’s tweeting.

Leo: Jeff Bezos will pay HBO—

John: You jump on me, it’s no big deal.

Leo: …more than $300 million dollars—

Natalie: You started it.

Leo: …over the next three years.

John: That's fine, I made my piece. I think you're going to take it or leave it.

Leo: You want to play with my phone some more?

John: No I'm good.

Leo: Okay. I don't even care about this story anymore.

John: And well you should, who care about what Bezos is making.

Denise: You know what I care about it because as I said I watch programming on a tablet.

Leo: This is good for you, Amazon Prime.

Denise: Yeah the more programming the better the tablet gets—

Leo: Historically HBO has been very reluctant, in fact they didn't even sell stuff on iTunes for a long time, then they said “All right, we’ll sell you Game of Thrones, but a year after the show airs”. This is huge, they're finally entering the twenty-first century. Amazon Prime, which is free—

John: Which is kind of what I'm talking about.

Leo: …will have access to HBO shows but not all of them. In fact mostly just old stuff.

John: Old crap.

Leo: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under.

John: Oh Fantastic.

Leo: We've all watched these. The Wire, East Bound And Down, there's a show, have you seen that?

John: No. I think I saw one episode and didn’t care much for it.

Leo: Family Tree, Treme, Band of Brothers.

Natalie: Ooh that's good.

Leo: Which?

Natalie: Family Tree’s funny.

Leo: I haven't seen Family Tree, that's good?

Natalie: That's good and so it Veep.

Leo: Love Veep!

John: Love it!

Leo: In fact this is a very bad night for me because I literally have six hours of television every Sunday Night now.

John: You know if Chad’s going to tag me with the camera, it’s got to be on for more than one second.

Leo: He’s fast. He’s trying to make it more—

Chad: You don't talk long enough—

John: Boom I on there for one second.

Chad: You do this “Love it!” and then bam you're gone.

Leo: He’s trying to move it around.

John: Boom.

Leo: We’re hipper.

John: Maybe I'm in a bad mood.

Leo: They didn't switch this fast in Buzz Out Loud.

Natalie: You think?

John: They didn't switch at all. I think it was a one camera shoot.

Natalie: Yes we did! I'm going to wake my kids. I didn't need to scream that loud. Yes we did.

Leo: [laughter], this show’s going till 9 o’clock tonight. I'm not watching any TV.

Natalie: Where is Nathan Howell, get him in here because that was his job.

Leo: So Mad Men, Game of Thrones tonight. Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Veep. Am I missing anything?

John: Silicon Valley is going down the tubes anyway.

Leo: And Cosmos.

John: Can we talk about Silicon Valley for a quick second?

Leo: I love that show.

John: It’s a dog and I’ll tell you why. I do not – and it’s not going to work, is because my—

Leo: Sorry, by the way John, before you go on, it’s already been renewed for a second season.

John: Fine.

Leo: Okay.

John: What not there's seven episodes? Mike Judge cannot make fun of a clown. If you watch this crazy stuff that goes on in Silicon Valley it’s so silly and outrageous. Like that long haired guy with the British accent that's been the rage recently. He spoke at the, at some – for AOL, that guy.

Leo: Shingy or whatever.

John: Shingy, that guy. And these other guys that are out. The people that are singing, it’s like it’s so silly and idiotic.

Leo: It’s already too comedic you can't make fun of it.

John: Somebody said you cannot ridicule a clown. Oh look he’s got big feet, and a red nose.

Leo: Don't you love though the fake Peter Teal character?

John: I love the show but I know it’s not going to work because he’s not going far enough and I think every episode’s deteriorated. I thought the first episode was the best.

Leo: I've only seen three so we’ll see. Amazon is going to offer True Blood, Boardwalk Empire but I don't think they're going to – see I think HBO’s so reluctant to put their stuff on too quickly. They really want to get those subscribers. But 1700 titles of HBO – oh no that's HBO Go. They are going to bring that to the fire TV and Amazon Prime subscribers for 99 buck will get HBO, some HBO stuff for free. I think that's good. Amazon is said to be testing its own shipping network. I've been waiting to just buy UPS outright.

John: Huh.

Leo: Which wouldn't – wouldn't that make sense?

John: That's not going to happen.

Leo: Did you see the post office is doing staples.

John: The post office has got all kinds of crazy things going on.

Leo: They're just using staples to deliver mail and to do – you know the post office box can be in Staples. And Amazon is apparently going to look at – by the way they've added a new, have you seen the new Amazon box service? The dry goods service they're doing?

John: No.

Leo: So they have Amazon Fresh in certain cities. They have Amazon Subscribe and Save. Now they have Prime Pantry. These guys, they basically want to—

John: Why would I want to buy pickles from Amazon?

Leo: I’ll tell you why. Six bucks—

Natalie: You can buy them in a recurring manner so you don't have to go back to the store.

Leo: That's that Subscribe and Save and I love that but they keep taking things off Subscribe and Save so it’s a bad experience because you'll sign up for Pampers, I know you only use cloth diapers but you'll sign up for Pampers—

Natalie: I wasn't going to lecture.

Leo: No I'm with you, I'm a hundred percent with you. But then they'll take it off and then all of a sudden you don't get anymore and you do back and you look in the sale. They – you know Proctor and Gamble no longer puts those on Subscribe and Save. This is a six dollar box, forty-five pounds. Fill it up.

John: With what?

Leo: Hard stuff.

John: Hard stuff?

Leo: Pick anything you want. Chips, pickles, toilet paper, Tide. This is them going right up against the grocery store.

John: I like to go to the grocery store and look and see what's fresh and what they got going so I can—

Leo: You're so old.

John: It’s like don't you want the freshest looking stuff you can find. You know some good looking piece of meat or some chicken that looks like it’s rotten you know. Who knows what they put in this boxes. It’s definitely not the top drawer stuff.

Denise: You know what I subscribe to Prime Fresh and I've been really impressed with the meat and the produce. Someone is picking this stuff.

Leo: Yes, see.

Denise: They're doing a good job of picking out what you would pick.

John: Yeah now. Yeah now.

Leo: See that's awesome. By the way Netflix is doing a deal with cable operators. They're going to launch on three cable operators through an app on Tivos.

John: On Tivos?

Leo: RCN, Atlantic Broadband and Grand Communications. They are actually cable opreators. I'm not making this up. Not exactly Comcast size but they're going to put Netflix on Tivos. I'm not sure I really understand even what this deal is.

John: Netflix on Tivo.

Natalie: Yeah because Tivos already have Netflix.

John: Yeah, don't they?

Natalie: Mine does.

Leo: Mine does too. I don't even understand this.

John: Almost everything has Netflix on it.

Natalie: Yeah at first it sounded like it was a cable channel on the cable operators—

Leo: It is.

Natalie: …that you but it’s an app.

Leo: It’ll be in the cable guide.

Natalie: Because, okay.

Leo: This is why cable is nuts. This is the quote “Watching Netflix will be as easy as picking up the remote and changing the channel.”

John: Ha!

Natalie: But it is! Stop saying that.

John: Those guys are nuts.

Leo: These people are idiots. That's the quote. Have you got the new Twitter profile? I did.

John: You know I haven't done it yet. They offered you know oh they're—

Leo: You can do it. It’s like Facebook.

John: This is like.

Leo: It’s pretty. And then you get to pin one tweet to the top so that's the one I pinned to the top. And then you see the size of the text? Tweets that get favorite or retweeted get big, big sized fonts and then the little – so you can quickly see—

John: That part I don’t like.

Leo: …it’s awfully big isn’t it?

John: Yeah I mean you—

Leo: Maybe I've got the – oh see I've got the—

John: Now you can't read it. It’s six point.

Leo: But I think that that's kind of cool. No but who uses Twitter on the desktop? Nobody.

John: I do.

Leo: You do?

John: Oh yeah.

Leo: On like a computer with the browser?

John: Yeah.

Leo: How’s Internet Explorer 6 treating you these days?

John: I don't use that.

Leo: Oh.

John: I know you're trying to insult me in some odd way but it’s not working.

Leo: [laughter], you know I just don't what happened on this show.

John: The show’s gone too long that's the problem.

Leo: All right let’s get out of here but first a word Citrix and the folks who do GoToMeeting because if you are in a business you've gots to have meetings. Meetings are critical especially when people don't work together in the same office. You got to get them together. I know a lot of teams that actually keep GoToMeeting running all day, which is nice because you don't pay by the minute or by the call, you pay a flat rate and you got it. Millions of small business professionals rely on GoToMeeting, why? Because you get on the same page, you see each other’s screens, you can see each other face to face with their built-in HD video conferencing. You can present, you can demonstrate, you can meet on any Mac, any tablet, any PC, any smartphone, anywhere. GoToMeeting is a life saver, we use it all the time. Even if it’s just going to be a teleconference, we just do the GoToMeeting just in case because you want to – you can turn on the camera, you can share the screens. See why millions choose GoToMeeting. Start hosting your own face to face online meetings today. It couldn't easier, visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use the promo code TWIT. You got it free for thirty days, GoToMeeting. What would you pick, of all the tweets that you had as your pinned tweet, the top of your – like the tweet that says who you are.

John: I would—

Leo: I like this one, this I what I picked. I should be clear to everyone right now that Twit live is a reality show, not fake reality, real reality.

John: Really you believe that?

Leo: And that's how we like it.

John: Okay.

Leo: I believe it.

John: That's fine.

Leo: Even if there's microphones and—

John: Big giant microphones.

Leo: I'm just going to say—

John: At least the cans are gone. That's a plus.

Leo: I have in-ear headphones now. Any thoughts on Aereo, the Supreme Court heard oral—

John: Yeah I have some thoughts.

Leo: …arguments they should—

John: I wrote a column on this.

Leo: Go ahead.

John: I think the whole thing is a scam from the get go.

Leo: Yeah Barry Diller planned it this way.

John: Well it’s fine, I think it’s—

Leo: Nothing wrong with that.

John: But the idea is just purely a trick, these little antennas are bogus. You don't need them. You can just consolidate the signal. You don't have to have – everyone have their own antennas because it’s a technicality that you have your own antenna. And you know this guy showing them. I think the whole thing was a setup to be a scam but I may turn out that they win this case when the Supreme Court decides on whether or not it’s legal what they're doing. And then once they do that they can get rid of these stupid antennas and just consolidate the signal because John Roberts said that this little part of this antenna’s not the point, which is good for the little company.

Leo: Denise what do you think of the – did you read any of the – I'm waiting for the oral arguments to be published. I don't know if they've done that.

Denise: They have been, the transcript has been out there since the argument and then the actual audio of the argument was just published I put it in my Twitter streamers link there.

Leo: What do you think?

Denise: I disagree with John, I think that just because somebody has figured out a way to make technology that even if it’s not the most efficient way to do it it complies with the law and follows the law.

John: A gimmick.

Denise: That there's maybe a gimmick but it’s a legal gimmick and I don't think you know – what I'm hoping the court will do is decide “Look, we didn't create the situation, congress did, and if congress doesn't like people using gimmicks to comply with copyright law then congress can change it but the law as it’s written now, if we’re going to follow past Supreme Court precedents and the way that we have treated VCRs and fair use then we have to let Aereo stand.” I'm not sure that's what the court’s going to do but that's what I hope it does.

Leo: Is Cable Vision the relevant precedent?

Denise: Cable Vision and Betamax. Going all the way back to—

Leo: So Cable Vision was an online DVR?

Denise: Um-hmm.

Leo: And the court ruled that they didn't violate copyright because the user had to actively press a button and it was the user doing it whether the DVR was in your house or in the Cable Vision centers, it didn't matter. Aereo’s argument is “Well it’s exactly the same, Aereo does nothing until the user pushes a button then it records a show or turns a show on. The user’s renting a antennas, we do not provide copyrighted material, we merely provide an antenna.”

Denise: Right.

Leo: That seems like a good argument to me.

John: It seems to me to be—

Leo: And I don’t think – here’s the thing, I think that's the trick John. It’s Barry Diller, and Barry Diller said this, he said “When we set up this company, we thought how can we do this legally. And we did what we believed”—

John: They found a loophole.

Leo: That's not a loophole. They followed the law.

John: It’s still a loophole in some funny way and here’s what I'm—

Leo: But that's a judgment, that's a subjective judgment.

John: Let me just say—

Leo: They followed the law.

John: Here’s what I'm going to say, people bitch and moan and complain forever about “Oh he got off on a technicality, these technicalities, it’s like they're exploiting the law.” On that side of the argument 90% of the time but when this technicality benefits them, everybody all in. I mean I just find it to be a cheap trick and that's all I feel about it. I think I would love to have a subscription.

[laughter]

John: But I'm not fooling myself.

Denise: If you go through oral argument the justices are kind of with John, I mean I always like look at if you can discern who the court think is wearing the white hat in the case. Who are the good guys? And I don't think the court thinks Aereo are the good guys, unfortunately because of this whole perception of “Oh you just designed this to be able to do this thing that's slamming the cable industry and the satellite industry.” Well—

Leo: It is after all Barry Diller who has been on the other side for a long time and it does feel a little bit like a revenge play, does it not? But the judges aren't supposed to look at that right? They're supposed to look at the law.

Denise: Right and we won’t know, I mean they sort of telegraph how they're thinking about things through their questions. And we won’t know until we their decision before the end of the term. They clearly are concerned about not shutting down the cloud. They are concerned about—

Leo: That I think is interesting, tell me why that's a concern. They want to make sure that Dropbox for example wasn't adversely impacted by a judgment against Aereo.

Denise: Right because if you're remotely storing something on Dropbox, if what Cable Vision is doing – I'm sorry Cable Vision, if what Aereo is wrong then it’s a public performance perhaps when you are using your Dropbox account to store something that's infringing copyright.

Leo: Justice Roberts referred to this, Chief Justice Roberts referred to this and I got the impression that he was asking the lawyers for ABC “How can we write a decision that won’t adversely impact Dropbox but fines in your favor?”

Denise: Right.

Leo: Although, is it not the case – and this has been my experience listening to oral arguments which I love to, it’s really fun. Oyez.org, O-Y-E-Z dot org and the Supreme Court now published them as well, I you can’t always tell what they're thinking from their questions. Sometimes they're almost the opposite of what they're thinking.

Denise: Yeah sometimes they're playing devil’s advocate for some other people on the bench that they want to convince. So it’s – you know we can’t really read a whole lot into their questions. It’s fascinating.

Leo: Although it’s seems pretty clear that Justice Kalia didn't really know that HBO wasn't free.

Denise: Um-hmm.

Leo: He thought it was broadcast. But the rest of them – okay, especially Justice Sotomayor—

John: You didn't know about Code Babes so that's you know.

Leo: Well maybe, he’s been watching that regularly. Justice Sotomayor I thought showed a really good grasp of this. And in fact apparently has a Roku box.

Denise: Um-hmm.

Leo: So she was—

John: Whoo!

Leo: [laughter], look at – I'm taking anything I can get from these guys. Traditionally the courts have not been the most technical.

John: True.

Leo: But I'm surprised to the savvy actually in this case of the Supreme Court. They seem to somewhat understand the issues here, whether they rule correctly I don't know. Do you think there's a correct ruling?

Denise: Yeah I think the correct ruling is that Aereo is not infringing.

Leo: Because they're —

Denise: And that this is not a public performance.

Leo: Right.

Denise: Because of the way they designed they're technology and if the cable industry has a real problem with this and if congress agrees then they can rewrite the law so that this sort of thing is not legal. But I think that carefully examined how they could go about pulling down over to your broadcast and that they came up with the solution and that I think they're right.

Leo: Or the networks could do what they've promised they'll do and pull their free over the over the year broadcast.

Denise: Right.

John: That's all talk, they're not going to do that.

Leo: They can’t do that.

Denise: It’s all talk, imagine that will be freed up if that happens. Derek Cona has a great article on that point.

Leo: Let’s take it, we’ll take it.

Denise: Yeah.

Leo: Aereo right now is in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit. They're really widespread. Houston, Miami. They started in Manhattan and San Antonio. Do you have Aereo Natalie? You could.

Natalie: No I don't.

Leo: Would you like to? I could arrange it.

John: He can get it free.

Natalie: Sure. We’ll give it a try.

Leo: Do you think it is – I mean you can see all this stuff over the ear now.

Natalie: Um-hmm.

Leo: This just makes it possible to see it over the ear on your iPad.

Natalie: Yeah.

Leo: How is that – you know it’s – all the commercials are—

John: How much TV do you want to watch?

Natalie: It’s nice but it’s on demand too you know it’s time shifted.

Leo: That's the sneaky one.

Natalie: Right.

Leo: If they left the DVR portion out would there be an issue? I think there still would be.

John: Yeah well on of the—

Natalie: Yeah.

Leo: Because I think the cable companies, the networks want retransmission fees from the cable companies. They want them from Aereo. Aereo said if we lose, that’s it we’re closing the doors and in fact they did that in Denver when the lost the case in circuit court. Very interesting, we live in interesting times.

Denise: We do.

Leo: Denise Howell it’s so great to have you. Thank you for staying the whole show. You weren't required to, you have a puppy, you could be right now playing on the grass with your puppy.

Denise: I'm going to in fact go play on the grass with the puppy.

Leo: That's wonderful. So nice to see you. This Week In Law is a much watch show in fact last two shows especially. Of course we’re talking about the FCC rules and then previously, teacher your robots well.

Denise: Yes. Our robot overlords, do you know who we have next week?

Leo: Who?

Denise: We have Kyle Courtney who’s the copyright advisor for Harvard University and as though he weren’t enough we have Bruce Schneier.

Leo: [gasps] Bruce is great.

Denise: I know.

Leo: Oh that's going to be a great show. Friday 11 AM pacific, 3 PM eastern time, 1800 UTC. I want more people to watch this show. I think a lot of people see This Week In Law and they go “Oh that's not for me”. You know what it is, it’s for everybody, this is a fascinating area and you get really good people. Bruce Schneier next week should be really good.

Denise: Yeah the chat room’s always very nice to us, they make us feel really good about what we do.

John: That's weird.

Leo: You know what, they are. Not only that, they come to me and they say “Did you listen to Twil?” People do this all the time “Did you listen to Twil yet? It was really good this week”. They say that all the time.

Denise: Well we love it.

Natalie: Chat rooms like Google Plus, it’s a higher form of discourse.

Leo: It – well.

John: As opposed to this show.

Leo: Well I don't know about that.

Denise: They teach me a lot without—

Natalie: Usually.

Leo: Usually.

Natalie: I think.

Leo: Natalie Morris, always great to have you. We can see on NBC on the Today’s Show. Do you do that like every month, is there a schedule or?

Natalie: There's no – there's no schedule.

Leo: Whenever there's something to talk about.

Natalie: Yeah.

Leo: I love seeing you there thought. Not over. @Nataliemorris N-A-T-A-L-I Morris on Twitter.

Natalie: And you could go to readquickapp.net if you'd like.

Leo: Everybody should buy the Morris’ app. They're just a little couple working out of a garage in—

Natalie: That's right.

Leo: …Lake tinky-wink and they're—

Natalie: I'm sorry it’s readquickapp.com, I do that every show.

Leo: Readquickapp.com

Natalie: Readquickapp.com

Leo: Readquickapp.com

Leo: That's right.

Leo: That's because you read too fast and your comprehension is going downhill. You know our kids are stupid.

Natalie: I get stupider by the minute.

John: Your kids are?

Leo: John C. Dvorak, noagendashow.com. What would you like to plug?

John: Noagendashow.com is worth plugging. Also dvorak.org/blog.

Leo: Could you bring me vinegar?

John: You know I was thinking about that because today I actually remembered and then—

Leo: And then you thought better of it.

John: No, what I thought was okay if you were going to give him the vinegar he’s going to – because I know it’s going to happen because you're going to taste and go Holy Can’t I can't believe that this vinegar even exists in this universe. But I don't have the book to sell. So I've got to finish the book and then I’ll bring the vinegar.

Leo: It’s going to be a Kindle single?

John: I don't know yet.

Leo: 99 cents, you should make it a Kindle single.

John: I might, I might.

Leo: Everybody wants to make vinegar but there's never been the definitive guide to vinegar making.

John: No and I have to take one. I finished the manuscript, I'm going to send it to a couple microbiologists so they can give their seal of approval. Because people are making vinegar from this crazy [zilonex?] bacteria.

Leo: Don't make it from [zylonex?].

John: No it’s the stuff that in the big vinegar thing, it’s like a floppy disk.

Leo: You get the mother and it’s horrible.

John: Anyway.

Leo: What should we be making with John?

John: You should be making with real vinegar culture, [?].

Leo: Where do we get [?]?

John: It’s in the wine, most wine from Europe.

Leo: So you don't add anything.

John: European wine has it in there. You can let it bloom inside.

Leo: We just wrote the book for you. Go transcribe that.

John: There's more to it.

Leo: I got it. Thank you everybody for joining us. We do Twit – god this is the longest Twit ever.

Natalie: It’s pretty long.

Leo: I am so sorry. I apologize to all of you. It was good though, wasn't it? I think we had fun and I just went whizzing by.

Denise: Yeah.

John: We actually had to go get food during the show and like—

Natalie: I went potty during the Aereo discussion.

Leo: Go to the bathroom during the Aereo discussion. We didn't leave though, do have a catheter? What are you—

John: Yeah she’s using a bucket.

Natalie: No I got up and walked away. I'm glad you really missed my insight.

John: No I saw her leave.

Leo: Do you have anything to say about Aereo?

Natalie: No that's why when you came back and said what do you think I was like “Uh-huh”.

Leo: Uh-huh, I'm zipping up my pants right now I don't know.

Denise: Reality TV indeed.

John: I don't know. I’ll let that one slide.

Leo: Ladies and gentlemen we do this show 3 PM pacific every Sunday afternoon, you really have to be here for this. You don't want to miss it. That's 6PM eastern time, 2200 UTC. If you want to be in studio you could do that as well. We have a nice crowd from Denmark, from New Zealand, from all over the world. Guy drove here from Winnipeg, 34 hours in a Mercedes Benz SLK.

John: What? That's a long drive.

Leo: He said the shocks were shot. G Scott is on his way to Minnesota and he studied stop off on the way from Tahoe from Minnesota, we’re in the middle.

[laughter]

Leo: Half-way.

John: He’s going to end up in Hawaii the way he’s going.

Leo: Halfway to Minnesota. I don't really understand but his geography, it all makes sense. So if you want to be here, tickets at twit.tv and sometimes John will be here too. Well if you want—

John: Just show up.

Leo: …when you ask for tickets, we’ll warn you ahead of the time. If we keep going we could actually overlap with Game of Thrones. Wouldn't that be cool.

John: I don't watch Game of Thrones.

Leo: Get the—

Natalie: Not for me.

Leo: You don't watch Game of Thrones?

Denise: It wouldn't be cool if we overlap.

Natalie: No because I'm on the east coast so—

Leo: That's what I'm saying, twenty minutes its starts.

Denise: So it’ll be sad.

Natalie: Yeah – my heart out you guys.

Leo: I know, are you really into it?

John: There's a dragon involved.

Leo: Red wedding, purple wedding, what's next?

John: The Game of Groans.

Leo: Lisa says it’s just hardcore porno.

John: I think that's true.

Natalie: It I – well, she’s right about that. I watch it like this.

Leo: Hey they were only two breasts in the first episode. I was very disappointed.

Denise: There was an incestuous rape.

John: Just learned to code, you'd be fine.

Leo: Oh yeah that, that was a good one. Okay your right that's right never mind.

John: Okay here we go.

Leo: But they kept the clothes on I mean I. Incestuous rape though that is going a little too far isn’t it?

Natalie: Oh yeah chat room if just gave something away I'm going to be mad.

Denise: Sorry, sorry, sorry that was last week.

John: Just the story.

Natalie: I'm logging out right now.

Leo: [laughter], don't watch the chat room.

Natalie: You're punished chat room. I'm leaving without saying goodbye.

Leo: They don't know what happened. They have no idea what happened. Anyway we’re so glad you watched please if you don’t get the audio or video download after the fact I call it Video On Demand, others call it a podcast.

John: Hmm, I don't know.

Leo: What is a podcast anyway? But you can always get that wherever you get your shows.

John: It’s only 2.7 million.

Leo: You know what you should really do? You should get the Twit app on Android, on iPhone, we have a Windows phone app on Roku.

John: Or you can watch it on Roku exactly.

Leo: And that way you won’t miss a minute. What?

John: Roku.

Leo: Roku, we are live in Roku.

John: That's what's bringing me to this point.

Leo: Big screen TV and that's why we look like Buzz Out Loud.

John: Exactly.

Leo: Thanks for joining us; we’ll see you next time! Another Twit is in the can.