Gadgetory

all right I've welcomed through the four horse show on this Friday July 6 I'm Jeff Bakalar and I'm Justin you this is the show where we go the extra mile yes we're going the extra mile it's the end of a good week we didn't have a full show until the last day today it's been scattered I wasn't here for the first part of the week or yell was in here yesterday you guys are doing something that's getting each other sick yeah just want you to know that I don't know what the hell is going on here nothing wrong were you sleeping with an air-conditioning unit that's got a pretty interesting email about that which will read where sort of justifies my argument Oh we'll get to that you'll see on the second half of the show not a lot not a whole lot going on today very weird week when you put a holiday in the in hump day like that you know what I mean who makes your whole week turn to crap as far as I'm concerned kind of like it No well you weren't here Tuesday all right so I was in here what do you left Monday that's Monday or Tuesday is your first full day yeah so what you're feeling better Arielle's feeling better yeah sound crap you still sound a little weird that's fine so that means the second I'd land in San Diego is when I'm gonna start feeling into the web yeah for sure yes thank you Justin look at your microphone before we see the classic pre-show microphone lady damn it damn it always do that no he does that no that's part of my room yeah look at these microphones could you imagine it's can't hear because your make out with my cat clearly you gotta stop doing that dry lips oh let's hop into the story let's do it we got some good ones today what do you want to talk about first the AOL thing okay let's talk about go ahead so there was this when I went down and they monopolized all of these compact discs for a very long time they really did yeah tell me about it okay so this is cool like what was the last history lesson we did it was on a win amp right right I think it was last Friday it was so every Friday we're do every Friday just coincidentally history we're doing history lessons and today we're gonna be talking about the history of a wall chat rooms mmm and it's told by a world's longest-running employee wow this is really cool because I mean before well yeah go start talking okay I have a lot of reminiscing to do yeah yeah let's do that uh so quick history lesson this is on tech land she's really awesome site this comes from Joe Schobert like I said he's the longest-running employee at a wall he's currently their chief architect okay and so a really quick rundown um the able chat rooms started as a product in 1992 when it was initially called people connection you know yeah and they only had a handful of chat rooms maybe like under 10 okay I says with topics ranging from like genealogy to history and strategy games like tips on how to beat video games what video games do they have back in 1982 what are you talking about war know in 92 was it Super Nintendo then oh really yeah they might have been yeah oh yeah and if it wasn't then they were around the corner right yeah okay see I need a console history lesson you need a lot more than that so yeah participation in these chat rooms began to snowball in 1996 and that was pretty largely attributed to like 56k modems getting really popular right and that was when AOL also introduced their monthly flat rate for subscriptions and before that you had to pay by the hour which is ridiculous like that preceded our internet no it did really you pay for no way just because the internet didn't filter out west until you were about twenty I didn't have the internet and before a wall how did you dial in like what is P did you use so okay when I first got connected I did not use AOL yeah the first thing I used was an ISP in the New Jersey area that we paid a monthly fee to and you dialed in and then you just had your just connected to the Internet but what web browser did you use connect school Netscape okay so now this is crazy so the way we signed up man you know when you're young you're like I'll never have crazy old stories that sound old yeah here's one of them you we went to this video rental store and that is where you somehow what is that I know and and and someone had told me this is how you did it so I just followed his directions verbatim I went to this place it was called easy video okay easy right like to mellow is the word easy and we went in and I was like I just like I had like a twenty dollar bill I was like I would like the Internet gonna give me this box with like you know Yahoo in it or something and I'm like okay I'd like to sign up for Internet and I had to buy a copy and net of Netscape Wow for like 30 bucks or whatever it was so the whole thing he gives me this this freaking floppy disc in return I get home and when you put in the floppy disk it installed Netscape and then got you through the process to dial into one of their many telephone numbers that you would connect to in order to access the Internet Wow I didn't sign I didn't get on AOL until many years later when I brought and then you could bring your own connection to hey well it was like bring BYOB but it's BYOC and then you just hooked right in first you had a dial into your ISP and then you click the the TCP / I right I remember the well and then you're in and it was like an instant welcome it wasn't like you had to do that design into your internet mhm but once you reconnected you could say oh wow did you guys have that dude no I remember they had those free diss yeah yeah it's like whatever ours or whatever well those were the passwords it was like pineapple feet yeah so that's what you do that's what I did yeah same here yeah remember prodigy of course yeah well you're old-school it's kind of the same thing yeah well though you're sure it's like a portal and had access to different like content silos and and chat rooms and stuff like that right those disks were really really popular it was back in like 98 mm-hm and according to this article this is around a wall 4.0 when it came out they started introducing the three boxes for the sign-in if the login screen remember that like one handshake would be the first box yes okay right and this is a pretty interesting stat I guess back in a while when back in 1998 when AOL 4.0 was introducing AOL the company actually used all of the worldwide CD production companies in the world was using every worldwide CD production for several weeks just to produce those free CDs you know not a single music CD or software CD or anything else was created in those weeks in those factors for AOL that makes sense though they're everywhere I remember in college people made decorations yep you know they they were like oh where'd you get that cool mirrors like nope 40 a LCD right yeah you know they were like hanging them above like baby carriages in space Moloch yeah mobile that's how pervasive the right they were it was just so funny they were I remember getting those little like tin boxes everywhere I remember one uh when I you would buy a CD at Sam Goody right like they would already have them in the bags like a shopping bag jam you just open it up you're like what the hell are do you have a whoa and like getting home was such a big deal and correct me if I'm wrong but for a very long time you could get away with just signing up over and over again right yeah you know yeah how did that work I didn't usually have to give them your credit card that's what I thought and then usually when it cancelled you had to call or when the month was up you had to call and cancel and then they would usually give you another free month so it was like this never-ending spiral right it's pretty awesome crazy yeah um so after that back in 1998 it really snowball from there up to 17 million AOL subscribers in 1999 and that's where the history lessons and because uh you know after that it all kind of went downhill for AOL as we know now of course like you know they own like HuffPo and all that stuff but yeah anyone's become more of almost like an ad agency right you know I feel like they got into a different side of the business right you know don't write them off though they continue to make money right you know I feel like there was a big there was a big sort of school of thought that they were just going to go out of business but they switch gears and you know they own and gadget and all those sites too they have a huge blog network right they're doing ok but man talking with strangers in enable chat rooms is like a very fun yeah yeah that's what I thought the internet was I had no concept of really what the internet really was I thought chat rooms was the inner right and that was all there uh yeah man I remember getting to the point where maybe I was thirteen fourteen and people would be like man you know the Internet's just AOL I always got a monopoly on it just wasn't the case there was this whole other side all right guys we've come to the portion of this conversation where we all reveal what our first AOL screen names were I think we did this a long time ago with Wilson but I forgot and Arielle and Richard weren't here at the time so I want to go around do this can I be totally on please do I never the one I use now the one I'm not giving away cuz I use that for a lot of stuff to this day okay the one on you know that one was pretty much my first one because up until I guess you Halim one well no I started that one in in like maybe was a freshman in high school right and up until then I was always using fake ones I was always changing it no easy you ready mean yeah so that's when I was I'm serious do you remember any of the other ones you had they were all offensive a lot of like exes oh right like lower case and upper case yeah what about you Richard um mine always had something to do with the Beatles like I think one of them was Sergeant Pepper okay I think I had numbers after I think was just Sergeant Pepper Wow and you got the first there's no way you'd be able to get I think I had the walrus one time oh my first one was had something to do with Emmitt Smith because he was like my favorite football player at the time but I was always in the sports right and and you with the letters a CNN yeah my first and I think I probably this before it was uh street Dreams but with a Z at the end that's not the words I was really - nods like really really into that songs I listened to that so much and that was my first one of the one of the earliest earliest ones how to be like rancid triple exes I better like Punk's kid 59 writing like that right something super lame the days of girls doing the uppercase lowercase uppercase lowercase alternating thing are over right then no one does that anymore no there's way too much others still see it every now on Twitter really that letters become that that sort of AOL chat room to point out sure ya know what I mean don't forget when I I was never a big al chat room guy I was into IRC back then yeah and you know IRC had much more to offer yeah yeah literally you know what I mean right so uh that's where I was hangin out that's where I was I would troll chat rooms like all day long like I would just like make fun of people I would go in and post like giant ASCII drawing yeah like copy from other websites I'm like Homer Simpson's face or something you know like right I would love doing that just pissing people off in shy rooms pretty much occupied all my time yeah troll from the start huh yeah born a troll and now we can't talk about AOL chat rooms without talking about a oh hell oh yes the the punk the punters all those things they used to be able to use a hat get you access that you know you weren't really allowed to have what else was there there were wasn't there a thing where you could open someone's CD drive just by sending them a message on chat I forget what that command was but you could open their siege it was like coaster I think was part of them it was called coaster yeah there's a lot of AOL I wish someone could come bring them up in the chat room right there's just a lot of AOL mods but Juarez Prague's right it swears really yeah that's a very distinct that's just beautiful no I think is it where's the Juarez Juarez for the for the noobs because Juarez it's not like some town in Mexico comes from like software so it's not well it's hard because the are in Juarez is always capitalized so you think that's that's word that's how you have to rationalize to yourself you know noodle salad exactly no but that's the situation I remember that there was a lot of dispute over that yeah yeah it was big all right anyway enough reminiscing we got to get back into the present I don't want to stay in AOL then you can get AOL again if you want they don't offer it as a paid service what is it up to now it's like a well fourteen or something yeah but no don't forget AOL turned free what's that a well before it left relevancy right it was free right when they realized people didn't want to pay for a browser act after everyone had cable internet access it turned into just another web site basically right they were due there you're just being presented the AOL experience in its own sort of entity as a piece of software right well there's at least still one person that has downloaded the software and uses it to this day and that would be my neighbor oh I'm sure there's still people who use it I've told you this before like my neighbor that I share a wall with in my apartment building still has a well and can't figure out how to turn off those notification sounds every five minutes I'll hear you got mail you know my mom's AOL Mail oh really yeah which is crazy at aol.com yeah but I think about the name but remember the best was hour when you were in college in a dorm and you know people just blast their speakers all day long and everybody that door open you would hear the door the damn could you move yeah or like when it opened up like creak like yeah it was crazy just yeah when someone signed off you were friends with you know when you signed up you were gonna hear that door slam oh look at these reminiscent days we're having yeah an old feeling old that's what we do here okay let's talk about sports cuz you bring up Emmitt Smith I don't know who that is but I mean he's an athlete what kind of what sport football okay he said would you known yeah I would have known and it's MIT he helped Marty McFly go back in time yeah let's talk about soccer adapting new gold line technology yes I've heard about this yeah so you want to talk about it no I want you to talk about it I will comment on it okay because I feel like you know I I happen to really like soccer do you yeah I'm gonna do it's like the it's like the distant cousin of hockey in a weird way right okay but more running less blade less ice yeah that's a little bit warmer a little warmer less ice yeah yeah I didn't know this this shows how much how little I know about soccer but the ball must completely crossed the goal line in order for that to count as a point same with hockey right yeah I can't just like fall on the line right whatever anyway so I guess in the past you know there's been problems with just you know the ref seeing if whether or not the ball is crossed and in order to do that they have to you know bring up the replay on the television or like really do like a vision like a line vision you know next to it to determine whether or not it's on or off right anyway the International Football Association Board apparently just approved two new systems that will really help those reps determine whether or not the ball has crossed the line two thing is once called Hawkeye the others called goalRef cool all right and Hawkeye is mostly used in cricket and tennis tournaments but they're adapting it to use with soccer now and that uses a series of six cameras at each goal set up on the post to track the flight of the ball and in court in conjunction with that they also use software to triangulate the location of the ball and then a radio signal is sent back to the ref to a device that he carries on his belt and that'll tell him whether or not the ball has crossed a line what's crazy though is that it doesn't in a second yeah so you know like that radio signal transmits it immediately so that they can make the call I am I'm surprised this is as big of an issue as it makes this sound why I don't know I feel like soccer goals are pretty definitive mm-hmm the ones at least I've seen yeah recently ending on the line or where it's like a goalies you know pushed up against the post and he sort of has to you know make a play I was oh I mean I I had seen something recently maybe from the Eurocup where there was a play where they were really you know they couldn't tell whether or not it was in or not but kind of big yeah you know it's not like a hockey puck where you know many times many many times the season this happens in hockey were there right there's just inconclusive evidence you know I think the technology and I've been asking for this for a while and I'm hockey for hockey man that to me like hooks go in and out of the net sometimes and no one sees it yeah right and the game goes on and it's on until the next whistle where they look back and they're like that I actually went in and out really quick and no one saw it so I feel like that technology would really be useful in hockey also because there's a lot more scoring in hockey than there is football right football the European football it's gonna be harder with soccer though because the ball itself is a circle you know with the puck it's flat so you can tell where it's standing whereas with a ball you know like the contact point to the ground is kind of hard to see because it's convex right does that make sense like you're on tie point is going he's not right but you what you're saying about soccer is true you know it's tough to tell right you know the puck actually has been known to go on its side before it has happened before yeah it's not like NHL 94 where just stays right but but no yeah I'm I don't know it's a really good idea yeah and you know it's gonna cost $200,000 per stadium to install so hey soccers the most popular sport in the world though is that in cricket so they can afford it yeah yeah the other option the gold ref option puts a chip in the ball itself and then when it crosses the the goalpost it'll you know emit doesn't that but isn't that imperfect because if the chip is inside the ball I imagine it's either on the perimeter or the instant you know anymore right so you're saying like unless it's the size of the ball yeah you know to me or maybe it's on either side of it you know right I'm thinking that when it crosses the line it should explode and that way even if the goalies holding it right yeah ball should still explode so sick that be sick but yeah that's cool I I'm always happy to talk about God you know sports technology let me find that fascinating yes all right I want to talk about British Airways the reason we named our show title that we go the extra mile is because British Airways is actually going to start googling passengers before boarding yeah now I think I'm going to England in December oh really yeah I'll let you guys know that for the first time right yeah well it's my it's our ten-year anniversary of being together not of being married just being together so we figured we might as well leave the country and celebrate so I think we're gonna go but but we might be googled before we get on this British Airways flight yeah this is kind of crazy so last year I remember we talked about British Airways when they started allowing passengers to text message each other right then they were the first ones to do that before JetBlue but now British Airways is providing their flight attendants and staff at the check-in desks with iPads mm-hmm and they're spending a lot of money to do this and it's called the know me system right and they're gonna give them to flight attendants and the staff in order for them to look up passenger names on Google Images so that they'll recognize them prior to them arriving at the gate like see this guy look after this guy yeah yeah is that what it is to greet you well okay so it's twofold one they want to make it a more personal experience by saying like hey Jeff you know like we value your customers you know like your experience or whatever and so they'll know you write more personal thing and the other side of it is that you know if you've made complaints in the past they'll basically have like a dossier on you you know online where they can like take notes and send them to all the other iPads and let them know like they say that you know they're gonna go the extra mile and if passengers have encountered problems in the past they can help but I really think it's just more of a red flag thing like oh this guy's trouble you know like don't like don't let this like Alec Baldwin type guy on the plane yeah Google's not always right either no and is everyone on is everyone gonna have their pictures show up when they're googled right you know and believe it or not other people show up when you google your own name like there are more people named Justin you than just this guy you know apparently yeah and what if your name is like Steve Williams yeah or Bob Smith there's 700,000 Bob Smiths in the world right I don't get it that's been it's just I don't know I think it's a huge invasion of privacy too well I don't know if it's an invasion of privacy that informations there yeah we obtained but it just seems like a silly way to sort of do reconnaissance on people you know especially how inaccurate and potentially unreliable that is right right slow down like boarding time - that's what I was gonna say is I don't want to be waiting there while this guy learns how to like hunt and peck through his virtual keyboard my name because it'll be the first time they've seen an iPad knowing you for sure you know like I could see iPads being implemented well through you know like the guys on the plane like I wanted to like serve up drink orders or efficient way or whatever but this isn't the right way to go no it's not and it's a stupid story - it's bad publicity yeah in my opinion you know if I'm hearing this I don't want to now okay great I don't want to fly British Airways now right you know who knows what this agenda is right here but that's the story all right you want to take a break sure we'll take a break when we come back maybe a story or two but we also have emails to get to and you're just going to Google - and see what turns up all right welcome back to the 404 show hmm I do that all the time super moonwalking just watch the guy looking like he was just skating backwards imagine a moonwalk but running backwards yeah he was running backwards doing the moonwalk moonwalk extreme I feel like he wouldn't been able to do it if the street wasn't wet right now yeah he had like lunar shoes on to their right yellow I need special shoes for that probably go to the for bored-out sina.com watch this video tell us what you think it's crazy can you moonwalk anyone know I used to really kid yeah I was a big Michael Jackson fan of course I don't know if I could do it anymore I should try man what was the secret you would push off of your toe yeah and then like you make it look like your back heel is floating right now so you push off one foot and you make it look like your other foot is floating right so it was it was trickery kind of yeah I think most people make the mistake of dragging their toe back but you actually dragged the foot that's down back and yeah right when you pop it up the other one goes down yeah I like to get the timing right I don't think anyone's come up with a better dance move since the moment no like even David Blaine hasn't touched yeah I mean like he levitates and people are like but can you moonwalk there if your foot off the ground right there are no other good dance moves they come and go yes fans they come and go but the dougie crap is but the moonwalk is here to stay you know yeah I like the Bernie have you seen people Bernie do it like Bernie Bernie yeah look up burning in YouTube to be Bernie Lomax for holidays so and I couldn't get the costume together right why not you know you'd be surprised some of that 80's garbed is not that easy to acquire you need like those parachute pants I mean couldn't do it man Bernie the oh there it is watch all these people coming back bernie is making a comeback i call it low maxing alright before we get to we have a video we want to share with everybody but first i want to talk about there's a couple stories i feel like we should get to okay the first one and these are more just headlines i read something on Boeing Boeing that said people from Alabama we're celebrating 4th of July by firing guns into the air oh okay what did you do you guys know that this like happens in America yeah every year just like hillbilly South's firing guns for 4th of July this actually happened in the Bronx well that said but it's it's ridiculous in Birmingham Alabama yeah there were 1098 incidents of gunfire celebratory gunfire so there's not these people celebrate for they're like bang bang like Yosemite Sam's sort of crap right but what's weird and kind of interesting in 20 in 2011 there were only 75 gun shots recorded in 2010 495 and then it shot up to almost 1,100 in 2012 but the really sort of interesting thing is that the police department down there has built in a detection system that's able to distinguish between gunshots and fire works oh isn't that crazy so with all their like ass backwards hillbilly population that's just like firing guns into the air huh haphazardly they've devised technology that will actually tell the difference between gunshots and and and fireworks my am I wrong in asking like where do these bullets finally fall they fall somewhere yeah I mean and it's happened before where people have died for sure it's for sure yeah right yeah eleven hundred freaking incidence of gunfire going into the air I mean I know nobody lives in Alabama so there's less hitting anybody but still what the hell is that yeah that's crazy and then as it gained speed going back down just lie someone right in half like dropping a penny of which is the biggest wrong thing like that is such a myth did you know that's the number-one entry looked up in snopes.com Oh penny dropping and slicing someone in half of the Empire State Building it wouldn't even hurt it doesn't it's not heavy enough mm-hmm you know just floats but if you dropped a bowling ball and a penny off the Empire's differently the same time you know the answer which would hit first that's pretty scary I'm surprised there's not more deaths of bullets falling from the sky very talented recreate everybody crazy no no I think it's it's crazy I don't understand I understand it yeah um you when you said the penny and the bowling ball thing yeah you in a vacuum it's one thing it would be the same it would in a vacuum it's nothing in the real world it'll the penny would lose because beat it would lose like velocity right yeah but theoretically they would impose well great events okay okay okay then finally before we get to the video I want to talk about Best Buy and that they're laying off 650 members of the Geek Squad good good is right I guess they're not geeky enough you know what it makes sense I don't know why it just does I didn't make sense because they've gotten so much bad PR lately well that's what you're right about all these stories of people finding out like oh they were in my porn folder they like sent all my friends emails of me doing terrible things they left a cupcake in my computer credibility you know and you definitely know somebody everybody knows somebody that could fix their computers everywhere right the geek squads everywhere it's in your home it's in your backyard it's in your offices in your in your house oh you're the Geek Squad were you if you don't know anyone that how do you get you everything you are the cool guys though where are they gonna work I think you think they're just gonna get filtered over into Best Buy and like the employees know that Geek Squad sure put on the other pole I don't know I mean you know the whole Geek Squad connotation thing was pissing me off to begin with anyway I don't know what's gonna happen with these people maybe I'll get real like an IT yeah you know just like setting up some grandmother's email account that we did not bring this up and we should have a long time ago go to the link over there the fingers web thing oh I don't want to why is that because it's embarrassing but we got to talk about it somebody put this in our reddit and we sort of let it fall through the cracks I don't know who did this it's done by a site called fingers web I guess someone I guess they're like little custom internet websites for a specific topic well anyway somebody made a little page for us about our comic-con 2012 trucker hat giveaway yeah and we were talking about how we both wanted to dress up as Robin right so let's just go scroll through all of these ridiculous photoshop job look at all those trucker has what is going on here every day of the month I don't understand who did this we right didn't we not find out how come you get to be the buff and look at me like my belt is falling off even my real body shop into some skinny dude although my robbing is a bolus robbing which is upsetting but I keep throwing the fun never ends I mean yeah that's pretty see what I know I have a supermodel I have a very curvaceous and busty supermodel right you have some kid who got lost in the mall I don't understand where who did this did we find out about this I think is this guy Steven I don't Steven yeah next one is that JFK Airport if you look closely in this one there's a bacon sundae right here you go this is kind of cool hmm there's a bacon sundae I'm trying to look everywhere for more Easter eggs I don't know here's 50 shades of gray in the corner here yeah there you go Oh oh wow and then a fire hydrant real weird all right let's keep going through that cool now we're like in the Lincoln Tunnel I suppose right I don't know what that's about the next one is a photo of some Batgirl and where's the background checking around at Comic Con what a babe the next one the base stations where we're at I guess this is the restaurant blue and Mickey's or Mickey's and Moo whatever let's go all out with this and do the best the next one is our border run the border of Mexico and you and I have seeming seemingly been taken into custody I like that man I think you finished oh no we're not done illegally after you because Lego lands in Mexico and there's the kid in the back there and here we are at what is this SeaWorld look at the kid on the top of Shamu pretty cool what is so weird very oh here we go awesome here's that Los Angeles couch in commercial right yes we were talking about well whoever did this you think it's Steven well according to says this might be the webmaster forefingers web I don't know no one did it either way go on the reddit page it's funny go to read and check it out we'll link to it in the show notes today as well yeah thank you whoever you are at fingers web that crap is hilarious um let's talk about our own beer they were having be late for us the the gentleman is doing is Professor says hey guys I thought I'd share with you the progress of the four oh four beer it's a double IPA with Australian galaxy hops it should be ready soon and then he's gonna send it out to us yeah let's check out this video of its progress okay so here we are seeing the beer making process I don't think Justin can open it there it is the beer making process so what you do is you take an old Poland spring bottle - and you feel did you fill it up with fermented I don't know what I'm how you make beer but he's uh this is what Professor Jeff is doing that's a lot of beer it's a lot of beer don't send us all that beer no no you're gonna have to drink it all maybe just like a six-pack of it yeah but anyway I guess it's gonna be called for or for beer so thank you Jeff it's gonna be sweet and that's about it shower makes a good point this video does suffer from vertical video syndrome turn that thing over landscape that just gonna go ahead and cut your right yeah all right you lived you learn right yeah that's right that's gonna do it for us today guys eight six six four oh four seen it that is our number if you want to email us over the weekend the four oh four at cnn.com is how you do it check out the Facebook page follow us on Twitter at the 404 and make sure you head on over to our reddit page the 404 dot reddit.com I think that's it again next week we'll probably only have a Monday show and then Justin I get ready to go out to San Diego for Comic Con 2012 you can follow us out there while we're out there follow us on Twitter and then we're having the meetup a week from tomorrow Saturday the 14th yeah at Lou and Mickey's across from the San Diego Convention Center I'm having all kinds of fun free booze free food we got a couple records yes right we got a couple emails about some of the younger listeners that were attending comic-con that wanted to meet up with us can I do that it cannot because it's at a bar so you can't be official Meetup I'm not 100% sure but I mean Lou and Mickey's is a bar so right but they might mean it might be like an all ages 21 to drink anything yeah okay we'll check on that maybe there's a wristband system yeah stay tuned last year they checked IDs will be prowling the floor together there's so many places to hang out yeah it'll be a good time yeah and we'll get you beer free not for free at least right so everyone have a great weekend and we'll be back on Monday probably if that changes we'll let you know until then I'm Jeff Bakalar and I'm Justin you it's the 404 high tech lowbrow we'll see you guys on Monday later