hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0828.txt

Episode: 828
Title: HPR0828: a+g=-b
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0828/hpr0828.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 03:09:04

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Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, this is Mr. Gattitz.
And I've been debating on what should be the next ramble.
And I went and did a little bit of shopping.
And that's what settled my mind on this particular one.
And I was also trying to figure out what to call this.
And I guess I come up with A plus G equals minus B.
And I'll explain what that means here.
I decided to go out and do some shopping at Best Buy.
Those of you international are probably familiar with Best Buy.
You don't live in the United States of America because it's one of those big box stores
that you hear a lot about in the tech news.
And why are they called big box stores?
I don't even know exactly where that comes from.
But it's a big box store.
And I guess I'll have to look that up in Urban Big Stery.
Just to satisfy my curiosity about why Best Buy is a big box store.
I happened to have a little shopping center, which I thought was going to be the beta-mine
for when they first decided to take a large field that had some horses that were kept in it for years
and turning them into a shopping center.
But in terms of even a Christmas time, it's not too bad.
It's kind of along a route that I take to go into the rest of the little suburb that I live in here.
And go out to one of the highways I used to get into town, all those kinds of things.
And even during my Christmas, it's not too bad traffic-wise.
And the advantage of having this little shopping center, of course,
less than two miles from my house, I have a Best Buy store, right?
A big box store for all of my electronics types of deeds.
In 30 years, this is gradually developed over the last decade here in the first thing.
We happened to get as any kind of a technology kind of an outlet here.
And my own little suburb was an office max.
I happened to actually be passing by that right now.
And so that would have some computers and computer software.
This is still back when a lot of computer software,
and it was on public-covering disks, right?
It's so women there to look at the software they had available on windows and all those kinds of things.
And then in this little shopping center, we not only have the Best Buy,
we also have an office depot and a large target,
which is a U.S. kind of department store, the suburban department store,
kind of all here where they're clothing and a little bit of furniture,
a little bit of food, because they have a really big kind of target
that has a grocery store kind of attached to it,
electronics, all kinds of things there at that store.
And it had a borders.
Now borders is something once again, if you live outside the U.S.
You may have heard about this on some tech podcast,
depending on what you listen to.
Borders is shuttering doors.
And in fact, as I went into Best Buy,
and I had some, you know, they have a frequent shopper kind of program,
and I had a certificate for 20 bucks worth of Best Buy, you know,
kind of stuff because I spent way too much money there.
And so they were rewarding me by giving me 20 bucks lost,
and it was about ready to expire.
So I went into finding something that I could spend my $20 on
before it was $20 and Confederate money,
one more thing to think anymore.
And I looked over to the right,
and I was not too surprised to see this because they've been announced to get,
and they've been saying it was going to come sometime during the month of September,
and I noticed that our little border store was closed.
Now the border store, I think,
is kind of a microcosm of a larger kind of thing that I want to talk about here,
but we'll concentrate on books and expand from there, let's say,
into a larger kind of a discussion.
And so for the book side of things,
I mean, way back in the dark ages,
when I went to school,
and I talked about my first computer that I built literally,
you know, soldering together pieces on to a circuit board,
and when I traveled for business in the late, well,
to a certain extent, when I traveled in the late 70s,
but especially in the early 80s,
we're looking for a software company here in Chemp City area,
and I had a job that involved a lot of consulting and training,
and so I was on the road quite a bit,
and I would always find, if there was a university or a college somewhere nearby,
I would always find where that was relative to where I was going,
so that I could drive over there into a car,
and those around the campus of the university.
This would accomplish two things.
One, I could usually work it so that I could get to the university bookstore,
and university bookstores were a great source of the technical books
that I was interested in in various programming languages,
operating systems, et cetera, et cetera.
And I bought many Schringer-Fellag books,
as well as other technical kinds of publications from the university bookstores,
where there were of course textbooks for various types of programming
and IT types of classes.
I also enjoyed very much the bookstores that kind of clustered
around college campuses,
but were not the actual college bookstore itself.
I enjoyed the zines,
the publications that were quite often printed, sometimes even mimeographed,
and stapled together into small books,
and various types of information you would get from those.
And you have to consider, right, this is all pre-internet.
So this was during the communications revolution,
and the computers, and the printers being on desktops,
allowing for everybody to have their own printing press,
and start to say whatever it is they wanted to say.
And so that was a way to get that kind of information out.
I still have one last copy,
which I can't even remember now,
I bought new or found somewhere in a garage sale or someplace,
and bought it used,
but I have one last copy of the whole Earth catalog,
which was also very popular late 70s and early 80s,
which was kind of like the internet-imprinted form.
It was all kinds of interesting items that you could buy
on a wide variety of subjects,
and this was back in the days of actual physical catalogs.
It was a literal catalog of all these interesting things
that you could purchase by a mail order.
I, at one point for that small software manufacturer
that did office kinds of software and things like that
to compete with word-perfect and debase,
and load us those one, two, three.
I mean, load us one, two, three,
before notes have existed.
I had a job after I did the training stance,
where I was the first person who did various incendiary jobs
around R&D, including acquiring a software,
and I did a lot of that acquiring a software
by calling up various types of usually photography mail order places,
which also then got into the business of doing mail order
of software out of the New York City area.
And one of my favorite ones was 47 Street Photo.
There was also that was where I initially
got my first kinds of inklinks of J&R,
you know, that kind of thing out of New York.
There was 47 Street Photo and a couple of other photo places back then.
Cameron with J&R was actually back in that era or not.
And I actually called often enough to some of the guys
that I actually developed a bit of a friendship
with some of the salesmen that I would talk to you
on a semi-regular basis by this matter,
the other piece of software that we would need
for our software development process.
I remember talking to one guy,
and he was a bit reticent to take a PO
of a purchase order from me.
And, you know,
but since he had never really heard of the innovative software,
I could kind of tell in this voice that everything,
well, he wasn't so sure about taking a purchase order.
And so I changed the subject that I said,
hey, I have a question.
Do you guys sell smart software?
This was the software that we produced.
The company that I produced,
produced this software called Smart Software.
It was, as I said, a word processor spreadsheet
and a database all in one,
all designed to work together.
And I said, do you guys sell smart software?
He said, oh, yes, yes we do.
I said, do you have a box set?
Do you have a set of it right there with you?
He says, yeah, it's right here behind me on the shelf.
I said, go over there and look at that box
of smart software,
and tell me what it says right at the bottom
of the three-wing binder.
And he, of course, read Innovating Software there
and said, okay, I'll take your PO.
Right?
So, as I said, I developed a little bit of a report,
at least, and a acquaintance,
not really a friendship, but acquaintance.
You know, we knew each other, we worked on a regular basis,
over the phone, and those kinds of things.
I remember a funny story I heard once,
the man who, well, I was in a production of Fiddler on the roof,
here in Kansas City at the Starlight Theater,
which is a Mount North Theater, very large outdoor theater,
owned by the city in its largest park,
and they've done Broadway shows for years and years and years.
And I was in the cast of Fiddler on the roof once,
and the man who was directing us in that play
was Sheldon Hardick, who is a famous composer that was his brother.
And in the Fiddler on the roof,
there are several iconic kinds of lines.
And if you're not familiar with the story,
it's a very small, close knit Jewish community in Zara, Russia.
And there are programs that are coming in to persecute them
and gift them to move.
Nobody likes them.
And it's this very small knit Jewish community.
And Tavia, the father of three girls,
all three of the three girls,
marry people that they don't ask his permission.
And, you know, only one of them, Mary's a Jew,
it's a very kind of iconical story about discrimination.
And so the man who's the director of the play,
he says, you know, it's really interesting because I have a sale
that at 47 is the photo.
And it's just like, you know, the,
it's literally just like going to a Tavia,
and a Tepka, when I go in, to speak with him.
And he said, for example,
I walked in a couple of weeks before I came here for this trip
because I wanted to make sure that my camera was in good shape
and I needed to pick up a couple of things.
And I walked up to my regular shelves and he said,
you can't congratulate me.
And he said, congratulations, what for?
My daughter is getting married, he said.
And that was exactly the kind of interchange, right?
I mean, that's word for word,
a section of the dialogue from somewhere on the roof.
Anyway, there was a large group of people there
within New York City that were already selling cameras
and then they started selling computers via the mail
as well as software.
And so I was used to dealing with buying these kinds of things
via long distance, if you will,
because that's how I,
that was my only way to get to some of these kinds of things.
There was a store I could just drive to.
You basically, we got CompUSAs that were quite spread across the country here.
And we had a CompUSA here in Kansas City,
as well as other places that I went.
Microcentre started to spring up,
I've already told the story about how I went
and found a Microcentre in Houston, Texas,
and have gradually started to go to every Microcentre I have.
And I'm getting a goal in life.
I want to go to every Microcentre in the US before they all closes down.
Which is kind of the subject of this whole little discussion here,
because things like borders,
and Barnes and Noble, two large bookstores,
also didn't exist back then.
I had to go to the College Bookstore to find the technical books.
Eventually, though, the computer stores started becoming local,
and I could go to the local computer store,
the top UFA, and those kinds of things, large change,
as well as local computer stores.
And there's a very flourishing business, of course, for all that.
And the bookstore started coming in.
And I remember when the first border store ever got built here in Kansas City,
before that there would be little local bookstores
that would be maybe at a mall or something like that,
or in a strip mall.
But their selection was usually rather limited.
And these are very large stores.
And there was one over on the Kansas side of the border,
and we would go over.
We drive over and make a special trip just to go to that border store.
And then Barnes and Noble started to come in.
I had a border store two miles from my house.
And I could go in there and purchase books on a regular basis, obviously.
And we would quite often just go to the bookstore,
since it was so close.
We go out to the bookstore, somebody would have something rather
than they wanted to look for my daughters, my wife, my fellows.
And we'd head out to the bookstore.
I'd go by there, see if a magazine, you know,
the latest issue of a magazine was out.
And it's kind of like Tom Hanks says,
and you've got mail, right?
It was a goddamn piazza.
It was a place that we went to kind of gather with other people.
I had a lot of fond memories of that bookstore,
because I wish a little funny there.
A lot of fond memories of that bookstore,
because as my youngest daughter who was very into Harry Potter
and was very young when those first came out,
well, one of those midnight kind of Harry Potter,
the next book is coming out kinds of things.
I had to go up with her and take her out to those midnight kinds of things,
because she wasn't old enough to drive or anything like that.
And so I remember going up to, you know,
and seeing all the kids, just of his characters,
and there's all kinds of things about that bookstore
that I remember very fondly.
Now, it's shuttered, it's closed.
And I think there's a reason for that.
I think there's a reason why the cop,
you have face stories of clothes.
Now, it's a combination of two things.
Number one, the Amazon in my little equation.
Amazon is now my source for a lot of technology,
as well as books.
And I happen to be a prime member, right,
so I get the two-day shipping.
If I don't have to have it right now,
if I don't need that immediate gratification of buying something,
just because I see it or I don't need it right this second,
I can get it without paying extra costs with two-day shipping.
And there's an Amazon literally on the other side of the border.
There's an Amazon in Kansas and Kansas,
which is just across the border about,
let's say, I'm not sure exactly,
but give or take eight miles in the direction west
that I'm pointing from where I am right now,
is the Kansas border, okay?
And not very far from here,
13 or 14 miles or so,
just across the border from my work,
and my work in downtown Kansas City,
I can literally walk four blocks over
and look down a very steep,
almost like a cliff,
and see the Kansas border there.
It's just blocks away, although it would be a difficult walk,
because there's a 400-foot drop,
but long to wait before you get there.
But there's a warehouse right over there.
So some of the stuff in that warehouse
and the two-day shipping is really one-day shipping.
It goes to UPS or FedEx,
whoever's shipping it,
it goes to their sorting facility,
it gets on the truck,
and it comes through the next day,
even though it's only promised to be two-day shipping.
And if I don't need it right away,
I don't pay as much at Amazon, right?
And that's really eaten away.
It's eaten away.
It's cutting down on that business.
A lot of the books that I would buy,
I actually didn't necessarily buy at the borders.
If I was going to pay full price for the book,
I would order it from a lady who owns
a little local bookstore that we know,
that we've got to know through the years,
and she makes a living mostly on used books.
A lot of robots novels and things like that,
and people come in and trade them,
and use that credit for new books and things like that.
She's got a lot of children's toys
and children's books that are new at the front,
but she can order any books that I have the ISDN number for.
So if I'm going to pay full freight,
I'd usually order for her.
Once again, I didn't need that immediate gratification.
I didn't need to pick up that book that day.
I didn't need to pick up that technology that day.
I could wait a day or two.
The other one is Google.
The G in the equation is Google.
So between Amazon and Google,
showing me all kinds of other places,
besides just Amazon,
where I might buy this cheaper.
Ironically, some of them are those same places
that I remember,
or at least newer versions of those places I remember.
I don't know if there's a 47-street photo anymore
in New York the way they're used to be 30 years ago
when we're talking here,
but there's B&H photo,
and there's J&R,
and there's various other places like that.
There's names of names,
and they don't just sell photography,
they also sell computers,
and they also sell all kinds of technology there.
And if I can just wait two or three days,
I can get a cheaper price,
because they buy stuff in such a huge bulk.
That can always be,
unless I get a credit,
unless I need it right this second,
that's almost always going to beat,
unless it happens to be on sale this week,
what I can purchase up here,
that's best buy.
And yet, I still like going to the best buy,
and looking, and seeing,
and playing with,
and touching these things.
And I do occasionally get into situations
where I want that immediate kind of thing.
Now,
this buy still here,
CompUSA closed down.
I think I know why,
and that's because CompUSA
kind of tried to be still a computer store,
but also,
so TVs there towards the end,
and they were kind of neither fish nor foul,
they still didn't give up their space that they had
for box sets of software,
but they didn't really have room enough
for that plus the TVs
and the computers,
but really, I think,
the reason why,
if somehow,
some way,
I could go to a CompUSA store,
and walk out with nothing in my hand.
And with Mr. Gadget,
go to your technology store,
and it does at least most of the time,
walk out with something in his hands
that he's bought from you,
or at least came about this close,
two millimeters,
three millimeters or so,
between my fingers here,
two buying something in your store,
you're doing something wrong as a technology store,
because I am a target,
and it is part of your target rich environment here, okay?
I'm your prime guy,
you want coming to your technology store,
and if you can't get me to most of the time,
walk out of your store with something,
there is something just odd,
there is something wrong,
there is something that they just didn't do best by,
usually gives me to walk out with a little something here or there, right?
Microsoft are almost always,
gives me to walk out with a little something here or there,
sometimes big, sometimes little.
Borders,
I would still buy things at borders,
but the thing about borders
is the difference between Barnes and Noble,
when they would send me something that said
so much percentage off of something in the store,
and borders,
when they would send me so much percentage off,
because I may quote a quote,
member,
frequent shopper,
whatever,
is when borders would send me 30% off,
anything in the store,
when you read the fine print,
they didn't mean anything,
and basically they did mean,
when they said anything,
everything in the store that I would want to buy from them
was not included in the 30% off.
They were focused on wanting me to buy physical books,
paper within covers the old traditional book.
That's what they were focused on.
Whereas Barnes and Noble might send me in the same week,
maybe on the same day,
an email that says 15% off,
but at least in Barnes and Noble case,
the 15% off didn't exclude some of the things that I would buy
with the 15% off coupon,
like a magazine that I was interested in,
but I'm not interested in it enough to subscribe to the entire year,
or other kinds of things like that.
Now they both excluded their electronic book readers,
and we will get into which one has the better electronic book reader.
I think, you know,
it's pretty much a clear case that,
yeah, that Barnes and Noble people had a clear idea
that electronic books were coming,
and had a better plan with a,
in the look,
and it's off shoots,
the color,
and all those kinds of things.
Head of work compelling product in that regard,
whereas borders never really had their own electronic reader,
they were always using somebody else's electronic readers,
and there was kind of a hodgepodge kind of approach.
Borders never got that they're going to have to get out
of the selling,
physical, goods world so much
and going into the electronic books world.
And who knows,
the next thing to go may be the borders,
because God help me.
I, well,
I'll talk about that in a second.
My brother,
laughed Christmas,
made an answer to everybody,
and I've been kind of living this as a lifestyle,
if you will,
or a life choice year for the last year.
He announced that Christmas,
I don't want anything for Christmas except consumables.
He's over half a century old,
about four years younger than me,
and he has acquired enough stuff in life,
and all he wanted was consumables,
but the line,
it's a piece of cake.
Another book,
not so much,
okay,
another thing in his life he didn't need,
but you know,
something nice and tasty,
liquid,
or solid,
he was more than amittable to.
And I've been kind of working on that.
I have a pile of books at home
that I can't even tell you
how many books I have queued up
that are my favorite kinds of authors.
I've read other books in the series,
but I hardly ever sit down and just read a book anymore,
because I'm so busy doing all these other things in my life.
Not nearly the way I used to voraciously read two books
when I was young,
and especially when I was young and single.
It didn't have the internet as a distraction, okay?
But most of the things that I've done in the last year,
I've tried, I've gone out of my way,
if there's an electronic book version of it,
that's what I've acquired,
rather than the physical book.
I really like audio books,
and some of the things I get audio-wise
and have somebody else read it to me in my ear.
And ironically, I've done more of that in recent years
than sitting down with the novel and reading it.
The reason I said God help me before,
one of my favorite authors,
one of my favorite all-time authors.
You'll see with them,
it's come out with a new book.
It's kind of, okay,
I don't even know how you would pronounce this reinde, I guess.
It's read-read, but the E,
the D at the end of the D read,
and the M at the beginning of the D are reverse,
but R-E-A-M-D-E.
I love you, Stevenson.
I'm going to buy this book and read it,
no matter what.
I mean, what somebody says about it,
I couldn't read it.
But God help me,
and God help Barnes and Noble.
I'm probably going to buy the electronic version of it,
and this will be the first Neil Stevenson book
that I have not bought a physical copy of.
And then I have rather gone for the electronic copy of it.
Now, admittedly, I'm probably going to buy
an eBook version of it,
and an audio book version of it,
and kind of switch back and forth.
You know, read when I can,
and then pick up from there,
and have the unabridged version,
and have somebody else read it to me.
I may combine both of those.
But I doubt, and it's on Amazon,
it's almost exactly the same price right now.
Less than 20 bucks.
Right now,
whether it's the eBook version,
or whether it is the print version.
And this will probably be the first one that I know,
known as a physical sheet of paper.
Now, is this just me,
is this just me,
just me, this is the old man
who's used to doing things the old fashioned way,
and who thinks you young folks
are being crazy to post your whole life on YouTube,
because it's going to come by to buy in the rear end,
and we'll probably have a discussion about that later, too.
Or is this just the way we have created this world?
We have created this world where
the brick and mortar stores,
if they don't get ahead of it quick,
are going to cease to exist.
And you're not going to be able to,
you're not going to have the opportunity anymore,
to stop by any way home,
and pick up that book,
or that hard drive.
But as long as you have ten ahead,
you can hand it at your doorstep in a couple of days.
Three, if you want to live in the boonies,
pick, I could move up to Montana,
and I wouldn't even have to live in Missoula.
Right? I wouldn't even have to live in a town.
I probably would,
because I kind of like Missoula,
and you know, I like having a few people around,
stuff like that.
I like to live on a ranch,
if I was rich enough to own a bunch of land up in Montana,
and it'd only probably take me three days
to get something delivered up there.
And as long as I figured out where to get my high-speed
internet access,
I could get access to media.
I wouldn't have to live in a city anymore,
unless I'm pursuing some artistic craft
that requires other people to be involved,
such as being an actor,
being involved in other kinds of things
that are group kinds of projects,
and things like that.
As long as I'm pursuing a solitary kind of
not needing other musical kinds of things,
I can collaborate with people over the internet.
We have created a world here
that does not require those physical interactions anymore.
Now,
part of my job way back when
was doing work in international
and working with translators.
And I used to go on,
and at least every six months or so,
I'd go on a trip over to Europe,
and work with my translators,
and give or take about,
at least one out of every three trips,
I'd come back with the messages,
fully translated,
on disks to either produce the software in Kansas City,
or we would have worked on it over there
with our tools,
and I would have come back and said a masterpiece.
When I went on a plane flying across the Atlantic,
one night just before,
I tried to get some sleep,
and well, actually it was a day,
because it would be a day
when I was coming back that direction.
Anyway, I'm on the plane coming back,
and I realized, you know,
oh, I know, it was at night,
and it was the other direction.
It doesn't really matter, right?
But I was actually carrying a set of master disks
with me over
two of our German and Swiss software distributors
where the German wrote them in the software.
I actually had the set of master disks with me,
and I was carrying them into them.
I had been working on them just before I came,
and they realized I was going to be doing that
so I was hand-carrying in the master disks,
and they were going to get them duplicated there.
And it's a few cents per disk, right?
And let's say for the sake of, you know, this discussion,
this software required five disks.
Okay, five disks at 50 cents a disk,
when you bought them in bulk or something like that,
so you got $2.50, $3.00 maybe,
in, you know, the actual physical media.
See, information that was on the media that was valuable,
and that's what the value added text theoretically
should be is figuring out what that value add is
for that particular thing.
But we're selling this for hundreds of dollars,
and it's five dollars worth of this.
But if you arrange the bits the right way on the media,
it becomes a program that you can use to get your computer
to do something useful, and people are willing to pay you money to that.
And I was taking that into Germany,
and then in Germany there was going to be the duplication
and packaging. They had all the German packaging there
that we've been working for months, the German version of the manual,
and they were getting printed over there,
and they were going to have a package that duplicated ours,
entirely translated into Germany.
And that was going to sell for a premium over the hundreds of dollars we got
for in the United States to get the German version.
And it occurred to me that the politicians,
who said things like the value added text,
had no idea that this was what was happening.
The technology had outstripped them,
had outrun them in terms of taxing these things.
And now it was a reality,
and they were going to have to credit catch up.
And I'm not just talking about politicians and taxing things,
but I will ask you to think about this.
There's a huge amount of taxes that are paid by businesses that are around you.
How many of those businesses are retail-related,
and how many of those businesses might not exist
in five years, in ten years?
And where the politician is going to go for the money that they need to have
or think that they need to have to provide the services that they're convinced
that they need to do because that's how they get you to vote for them.
Do you want to live in the world where there isn't a way for you to just,
you know, on your way home, pick up a little bit here in the era of technology?
Do you want to still have that bookstore where you can go
and just peruse through the books?
I don't have any answer for this,
but this is the kind of questions I have in my mind here,
and I would be interested in anybody's feedback,
and it doesn't let me feed back just to me, right?
I am Mr. Gadgets on, you know, Twitter,
send me email at MrGadgets.com, just put in your name at MrGadgets.com,
and it'll get to me, okay?
Tell me what you think about this.
Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is it an inevitable thing?
Is it like being a beg-you-wit manufacturer in the early 1900s?
And it's already too late.
Do you think the government should step in and somehow force it?
I don't think that ever works, but, you know,
there's a world coming, and I'm not sure what I think about that.
Now, what I'd really like somebody to do is record their own podcast
about your opinion, about how this has gone,
where this is going, what you think we, as the technologist,
should do when we're developing the technology,
and how we should be thinking about what that technology is doing,
and how the technology and the implementation of that technology
is affecting the world around us.
So, call in an episode, or record an episode,
and send it in to Ken, and you'll be on Hacker Public Radio,
talking about what you care about.
And me, I just said, because I don't have a bookstore,
so I can go up to just sit and, you know,
sun through a magazine, see whether I want to buy it or not,
and all the memories that were associated with that.
I really don't want that best by store to go away,
because, you know, that's just too convenient.
Anyway, philosophical, or just a bunch of ramblings of,
oh well, we won't go into that, will we?
Bye now.
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