 There was a time before the verge, a time of infinite space, of infinite time, and then in another moment the verge appeared, pulsating, growing, waiting for you, like a chud in a sewer, waiting to attack you, waiting to assault your senses with sound and light and vision, waiting to make you physically uncomfortable and yet physically comfortable. That's why the verge is an enigma, a paradox, a riddle which solves itself. Of course, on the verge, things aren't always as they seem. Do you like senators? Do you like journalists? Do you like musicians? Do you like the Samsung Series 9 laptop? If you said yes to any of those questions, you might like our show. Or you might not. That's excellent, that's the good stuff. Hi, hi and welcome to On the Verge. You guys know Paul Miller and Nilay Patel. Here they are. Let's give them a round of applause. They call that a cold open in the industry. We have a great show. First off, thank you guys for coming. We have an awesome show. Mary Jo Foley is here. We have, Nilay went to DC and talked to Senator Al Franken, which is a very interesting interview. We have giveaways. We're giving away the Samsung Series 9 laptop, three of them. We have a musical guest, Chip Acrit. It's going to be good. We have a big show. A lot of stuff planned. Some enigmas? Some enigmas are going to happen. We've got some surprises. But first we're going to talk about news. Mountain Lion just came out for Apple computers. People still call them computers? I've got to laugh on that. What is a computer? I know we're living in the post-PC era, but they're still updating software for PCs. Mountain Lion, Nilay, you reviewed it. I did. What do you think? I really hated Lion. I was expecting to really dislike Mountain Lion. But I really like it. It's kind of great. I love Lion. I played around with Mountain Lion in the early versions. They had messages and notifications. It seemed they just weren't that well executed. Did they fix that? They didn't fix that stuff. So why do you like... All of the rest of it's great. But the new features is great. The messages are just broken. It won't be fixed until you can... It wants you to always use iMessage for everything. And that won't work until you can iMessage a phone with a phone number from your thing. And that's coming to iOS 6. So that'll be fixed later. I'll tell you, you're talking about little meaningless stuff here. I'll tell you what the big problem is with Mountain Lion is it has Facebook integration that... Well, it's coming. By the way, has anybody... In the fall, it's coming. Well, the Facebook integration is coming. So nobody here knows then. I was going to ask. Facebook integration is it dumps all of your Facebook contacts into your address book and puts all of their birthdays into your calendar. That's those are your options. You can either do it or not do it. You can't like filter. So I... And by the way, I'm not boasting, but I have 2,900 friends on Facebook. Real friends of mine who I hang out with all the time who I love and who love me. But when you have a lot of really good close friends and all of their birthdays appear in your calendar, it's a little troubling. Well the thing is I just had a birthday and you didn't, you didn't say anything. I didn't... And you're saying it was definitely in your calendar. I, I, but I did send you an e-card with, with a group, with a Groupon gift in it, which it has now expired. Also the e-card expired. Well... And also it's the kind of e-card where it will delete itself from your inbox. So when you check it, if you don't see it, it shouldn't come as a surprise because it was self-deleted by the e-card itself. But I did try to wish you happy birthday. Well, well your slice of ice cream cake melted. Did you have ice cream cake? No, I didn't. How was it? It was great. And that's our show. Thanks, everyone. All right. There's other news. We should move on to it. Today was actually a big, had, there was big news today. Crazy news. Google, what? Why are you looking at me like that? You don't think there was crazy news today? It was... Google Fiber. It's sort of. Have you guys heard about this? Google, oh God, it's so nerdy. Google Fiber. They're starting their own fiber service in Kansas City, Kansas, and Missouri. Missouri, not a word. Not a name of a place. They had both mayors on the stage. They had both mayors, 1,000 MBPS up and down. 1,000. I have 50 down on Time Warner Cable. A can of a map. And that's high. Yeah, you pay like a lot of money for that. I pay $100 a month for it. And five up. This is $70 a month. This is $1,000, $1,000, not $1,000. It's actually 120, sorry, it's 120 bucks. They have TV service, 120 bucks. If you just want the internet. With the 1,000 up and down, and then with just the internet, it is... $70. $70 a month. Insane. 1,000 up and down. I mean, 1,000 is great, but what is Google-y about this? It's open. It's for everybody. It sounds like Comcast. It sounds like a really good Comcast. It's audacious. It's what rich people do because they have too much time. It's an audacious move. They're like, oh my God, so much money. No, no, no, no, but they're also doing... So, your TV show is recorded into your Google Drive? Yes, no, hold on, wait a second. So, they have TV... Apps, and then it's like the little sphere. Well, they don't have... There's not a lot of Google integration. But they have... There are some really Google-y things about it. They're giving you a box with two terabytes of storage, and you can record... Eight shows at once. You can record eight things at once on the TV service to the box. To the box. But how are you... It's local. What are you gonna... Everything of the Google is... Everything else... Everything of the Google. But the guy who has no internet... You are awfully picky about what Google is doing with the internet. Maybe you ought to just shut up about the internet. Well, you know what? There is like a... That's really mean. I feel bad. It's rude. Classic... It's almost like something Microsoft should do. They launch this product that isn't integrated with any of their other products. So, you have a cable box in your house that isn't a Google TV. They're gonna give you a Nexus 7 tablet that's running an app that's totally apart from the Google Play Store. I mean, it's just... Yeah, the Nexus 7 is remote. It's bundled. Yeah, but it's running... Can I just talk about the bundle for a second? I just wanna go back to this. Go to the bundle. So, they're actually like doing this thing where you have to have a rally and you get everybody in your area to say you want this service. It's like they can't build it until enough people say they want it and it costs $300 to install in your house. But they waive that, right? If you get it for two years? I think so. You think I'd know more about this since we write about technology for a living. But so, you get TV service with hundreds of channels, no HBO, no ESPN, and no CNN, though, which is a little bit shocking. Not yet. Maybe they'll get it. Not yet. Somebody was exclaimed. Yeah. What the F up there? They're very angry. How dare you? It's in Kansas. What does it matter? That guy looks... You're like, I won't pay for this because I can't possibly pay for it because I live in New York. But, so, it's like they give you a TV box, a storage box, a network box. I'm not making this up. Three different boxes. And then the remote, which they bundle, is the Nexus 7 tablet. But then there's also a little Bluetooth. There's a little Bluetooth remote, yeah. I just think it's crazy. It's crazy. No, it's like a very audacious... But like, what's the plan? But if they did it here? Is the plan for like Comcast executives to like sit in a boardroom and be like, guys, this sucks. If they did it here, it would be game over. But they can't, right? I mean, there's like a huge monopoly. That's right. Because there's a monopoly. You're gonna dig up all the streets in New York. Anyhow, so Dieter Bohn was there, one of our editors, the Bohn's own, as I like to refer to him, in an unfunny manner, which nobody ever laughs at, and you know, I feel like, if I just keep saying it, it'll get funny, but it really doesn't. Dieter Bohn was in Kansas City today, and he filed a little report. So take a look. Hi, this is Dieter Bohn for The Verge, and we are here in Kansas City for the Google Fiber launch at the beautiful Google Fiber Experience. And the service is gonna come in several different tiers, most of which are gonna be a full gigabit broadband, which is a thousand megabits up and down. Google is going to decide where they build out the fiber based on a thing called, they're calling it a rally, so different neighborhoods need to pick. But if you choose to pay the $300 and your neighborhood gets to be wired up, then you have a couple of options. Your first option is $120 for Google Fiber plus TV, and the only problem with that is it looks like there's some limitations on the TV channels. We're not seeing CNN, HBO, or even ESPN in their current lineup. If you pay $70 a month, you can get just the gigabit broadband, which is still pretty good. And then if your neighborhood is getting fiber but you don't wanna pay $70 a month, you can actually get standard regular broadband five megabits down for free for seven years if you pay for the construction cost for them to wire your house up. The hardware that powers all this is pretty interesting. There is of course a router that will have some ethernet ports and provide Wi-Fi. On top of that, there is a storage box with two terabytes of storage that is used to store all your DVR material for all of your TVs. And then every single TV needs to have a relatively small box in order to be wired up and accessed with the TV. In addition, that TV box is also a Wi-Fi router so it can extend your Wi-Fi network. The remote for Google TV is a Nexus 7. If you sign up for the TV package, you will get a free Nexus 7 tablet. There will also be a small Bluetooth remote if you prefer to use it that way. The rollout should happen sometime soon. They are having people register right now by September 9th in order to sign up. After that, we will see gigabit broadband in Kansas City. As for when it will hit the rest of the country, Google is not saying yet. So I'm excited. Yeah. I don't care what you say. I'm moving to Kansas. I don't care what Paul says. Now I was born in Missouri, I can move back. How do you go from head to heel? Maybe you should. Yeah. I don't know. Get out. The theme of the show is that we kick Paul out the show. Moving on. Yeah. I don't know if you guys know this, but the first season of Star Trek The Next Generation is available on Blu-ray now. Do you know this? Very exciting. You probably read about it on your favorite Star Trek fan fiction site. It's not fictional. This is fan fact. It's fan fact. This is real. This is happening. I met Jordan, one of our video guys, got it day one, in the morning. We've been watching it, and it looks great. It looks amazing. It's not widescreen because, what is the reason? I don't know. Because they didn't shoot it on widescreen. Because they didn't shoot it widescreen, and because they want to hurt my feelings. It's got the black bars on the side, but the picture quality looks really amazing. I have to say, we were watching it, and it really, you start to know, it's almost like watching it for the first time. You start to notice details that you never really picked up on before. In fact, we have a clip of it. Check this out. Now entering quadrant 907 mark three. Shields and deflectors up. Go to yellow alert. I've located a vessel, sir. It is drifting. Put it on main viewer. I'll check. Magnify. I'll be in engineering. You really, there's a level of detail to that show, just an artistry to it. It's really progressive. It's a very progressive style of editing. Television is much more thoughtful. It just HD brings it out. Okay, so that is not an actual exact clip. That was a funny joke. I got to tell you, that wasn't really an exact scene from Star Trek The Next Generation. But they did actually have to re-edit all of these episodes, because they were edited to tape. So they had to do the edits again. Even the effects were, most of the effects were done in standard definition. So they had to redo the, I mean you can see here an example of one of the effects. You can tell they really, they're digital effects, clearly now, as opposed to models. Digital for the part of the future. Yes. Alright. Finally, our final piece of news, I don't know if you guys know, but Marissa Meyer, how is her name? CNN. Let's just say it's Meyer for the sake of the argument. She left Google, has become CEO of Yahoo, and is also pregnant, which everybody loves to talk about. Not me of course. I don't care about it at all. It's not a big deal. No. I'm not upset. And she also has blonde hair, not a big deal. She's a woman too. Anyhow, she's the CEO of Yahoo, and we've been talking about Yahoo a lot. It's kind of a shocking amount. Yeah, we've done some posts, some really good in-depth posts on it. And we were talking about the things that Yahoo still has that are really valuable. Not search. Search is not one of them. No. You don't go to Yahoo to find something. No. I mean, you might, but you shouldn't. Maybe to find another search engine. To find another... I don't even know how that would work. But we think, I think Yahoo Answers is actually a really valuable piece of Yahoo that has not been fully... has not been fully exploited. And we were thinking, how do you maximize the value of it? And the obvious answer was you turn it into some kind of trivia game show. Yeah. It's a trivia gold mine. A trivia gold mine, really. And it's a game show that you might play like Jeopardy. You know, the Yahoo Jeopardy or something. So we were thinking, maybe we'll do, we'll do, we'll try it out. And then we thought, should we call it Yahoo Jeopardy? We didn't know if legally that would be a problem. So we went to some experts to see if we should call it Yahoo Jeopardy. Here is it okay to use the name Jeopardy for your own game show? We got some varied responses. We weren't really sure what to do. For instance, Lil Stunna said... Lil Stunna said no. That obviously put us on guard. And then I believe, is it Angus? Yeah, it said YOLO. Which to me was like, that was like go for it. Yeah. Because you do only live once. You show up in a trademark lawsuit, you go YOLO, the judge is like cool. And then finally, but then finally I think we got the real answer from an anonymous source, which is, I don't know why you'd want to do that. The name is already famous for another show. People who see the title on their schedule will be disappointed when it is something else. Yeah. When they see it on their... Like TVI. Program guide. Yeah, the TV guide. On Direct TV. That grandma game. Where we will be airing Yahoo Jeopardy. Anyhow, so we decided we had to, we had to rename it and we renamed it Yeopardy. But I think we should just play around right now. What do you say? What do you think? Yeah? This is Yeopardy. We've got our three contestants here. Hand chosen by yours truly. We've got Andrew Cybolska. Is that right? Yeah. You're from Staten Island. Born in the U.S. And I am from Brooklyn. Good abroad. And your last name is Vinat wonderful. So we give you some more age so I wanted to know and back to naught. Vinat? Canvas. Oh, Vinat. No, decided what to do was try to draw 9-10, and I've seen it only up to 10-11, or even caught it. Dumb balls. Is that right? You know what? I've got some more of a." Really? Interesting. Next up is Hannah Alexander from Brooklyn. Uh, it says you're physically incapable of driving 55. Is that true? Really? Correct. Andrew, I believe during a serious game of D&D backstage, you took control of the board to start with. Choose your category and your dollar amount and we'll get going. Well, I don't see bubblegum on there, so I guess I'll just go for food for 500. Food for 500. And the answer is, it would just rot away. Is your air horn broken? I think so. I saw something. I saw something. I saw something. I saw something. I saw something. I saw something. I saw something. I saw smoke come out of it. All right. Not good. Ryan, what is your answer for, it would just rot away? And remember, it has to be posed as a question. What is pumpkins in November? That's close. That is really close. But the actual question was, what would happen if you planted an entire strawberry? Not quite. Hannah, you've got control of the board. You've got control of the board. Where do you want to take us next? Pop culture for 500. Pop culture for 500. And the answer is, um, shift key? Ah, yes. Andrew. How do you yell very loudly? That is interesting. How do you make one word on MySpace all caps was the correct question. Ryan, you have control of the board now. All right, I'll take potent potables for 500. Great choice. Potent potables for 500. And the answer is, go for it. You'll never know unless you try. A life with no regrets is a life unlived. Yes. Yes. Yes, Ryan. Yolo? That's very close. But I'm afraid the correct question was, could I get drunk if I bought a pack of alcohol swabs and sucked on them? Andrew, back to you for control. Where do you want to go? Let me go, uh, the human body for 200. The human body for 200. And the answer is, it's all completely random. Andrew. What is sex like? Well, I mean, it's a little related, but I'm afraid that's wrong. The question was, what causes the difference between an innie or outie belly button? Moving on, Hannah, you've got the board. The human body for 500. Oh, really? The human body for 500. And the answer is, no. Have you ever cried snot? Wasn't that the answer? That's the answer. And you need to tell me what the question is. You know, like a normal game of yeopardy. Really, no one's going to buzz in. Ryan. What is having swine flu like? I'm afraid the question was actually, if you drink milk through your nose, will it come out of your eye, and how? Yes, you were so close. Oh, it looks like we're out of time. We've got to go right into final yeopardy. So here is the final yeopardy answer. The song, Little Known Fact, is about Dumbledore from Harry Potter. If you look at the lyrics further, there are more context clues that the song is about the headmaster of Hogwarts. ["LITTLE KNOWN FACT"] Pens down. Pens down. I'm afraid time is up. I'm going to have to see your answers now, starting with Andrew. Can we see what you put down? What is Nine Inch Nails' song Closer about? Well, that is actually shockingly close. But I'm afraid you're incorrect. Hannah? Oh, what is dum de dum dum dum? That is also incorrect. Ryan. What is Call Me Maybe about? Help. Wow. Wow. Very close, but wrong, ultimately. I'm afraid that the question was, why does Kesha say, I like your beard and your love is my drug? And that's our, that's yeopardy for the night. Give these guys a round of applause. Now, I know that none of them got a single thing right. But they're not leaving empty-handed. They're all going to go home with these professional signed yeopardy shirts, which certainly were not ironed on a few hours ago and will be fine in the wash. So you guys all get one of these. And thank you so much for playing. Let's have another round of applause for our contestants. Good sports. And now something very special. Nilay went down to DC to talk to Senator Al Franken. And we have video to prove it. Take a look at this, and we will be right back. We're here. We're in Washington, DC, the Capitol building, a building full of hundreds of people who have literally no idea how the internet works. But there are a couple people who get it. Senator Al Franken is one of them. He let us into his office to hang out and talk about the future of the internet. So Senator Franken, thank you for joining us today. It's kind of an honor to be here. Very welcome. Pleasure to be on your, what do you call this? It's not airwaves. Not airwaves. Our pipes, our tubes. Your tubes. Our tubes. Is that? Well, that's what the internet is. It's a series of tubes. You have an interesting story, first of all. I think that people kind of, they know an old Al Franken. And now there's a modern, reborn Al Franken, a beautiful political butterfly. How do you go from one to the other? Oh, it's really odd. It made perfect sense to me. A lot of the comedy I did starting in high school was satire, political satire. And on SNL wrote a lot of the political. I did a lot of stupid, silly, comedy, comedy, comedy stuff. But I always was very, very interested in politics. So one thing I think is really interesting about your political trajectory over the past few years is that you've been very focused on technology. You're obviously very focused on privacy. You lead the subcommittee on privacy and technology and law. Why have you chosen to kind of lead in that area as opposed to all the myriad other things that you could choose in the Senate? Well, it's just an interesting area. I mean, we have, I'm on the Judiciary Committee, which I didn't ask for. I mean, I thought, you know, 90 of these people are lawyers. Why should I be on the committee? It's probably for the best, actually. Yeah, it actually was for the best. And I've actually been interested in constitutional issues for a long time. But I also came out of the communications industry, telecommunications industry. So what was kind of interesting is when Comcast NBC came up, I sort of felt like the one who understood it the most on the Antitrust Subcommittee. So I felt like this was an area that I kind of understood better than most of my colleagues on Judiciary. So I thought I'd jump in. And we kind of invented it. I mean, the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the law, and also just constitutionally, Goodwin Liu, who was turned down, who was this brilliant law professor, who was turned down because he was so brilliant, and Asian American. And they didn't want him. So they didn't confirm him? Well, yes. Republicans didn't want him confirmed because he was so brilliant and young that they knew, well, okay, he'll be on the Supreme Court someday if we don't stop him now. And so they did. But he was criticized by the Republicans for believing in a living constitution. And he kind of said, well, of course the Constitution is living because not everything that existed has existed then. For example, they used the telephone. The founding fathers did not anticipate the telephone. And at a certain point, the Supreme Court had to decide what were people's expectations of privacy with the... Is wiretapping a telephone a violation of the Fourth Amendment? And they decided it was. So you need a warrant to tap someone's phone. And in the same way, just every technology has to be sort of seen through that lens. Right. Well, so the lens of both... It enables all this inner communication, enables new innovation, but then it also enables the government to spy on you? Or the lens of... Well, it's not the government spying on you necessarily. Very often now, this is actually... Its corporations are able to get all this information. So it's actually a little different than what most people thought of privacy law. Most people always thought of privacy law as the government finding out what you're reading or the government finding out... Big brother. Big brother. This is now corporate... It's a brother. And people don't... I think people have a fundamental right to privacy and they have a fundamental right to know at least what's being taken and being stored and control over it when it goes to third parties and they don't. So you've proposed... I mean, you've held a few hearings on it. You did the location tracking one a few months ago. There's a hearing on that. You just held a hearing on facial recognition technology and how they've been used. And what I thought was interesting about that is you had Facebook's head of privacy in there and then you had the FBI in there. Right. Do their interests align? Can you regulate both of them with the same kind of law or do you have to split them apart? Well, that's a really good question. I think we're going to have to split them apart. I think it might be easier to regulate the FBI. Frankly, it's just that... I mean, Facebook literally has, I guess, what? 900 million... Yeah. They're popular. It's popular. And that means in this regard they have these face prints of maybe one out of every seven people on earth or something. I think people are more comfortable making rules to contain government than they are to private enterprise or corporations or private entities. So I think that actually leads me into a whole set of issues around net neutrality, right? Because you were a very firm supporter of net neutrality. I have always been, yeah. Yeah. I mean, at that moment you were a particular vocal supporter... Yes....when the FCC was debating it. Now it's... Well, when the FCC was debating it and then when the House tried to overturn it. Yeah. And so... I was very disappointed that day. Our readers know that I do a lot of swearing when we talk about net neutrality because I passionately believe it's important. Well, according to a lot of House members, the Internet did just fine without net neutrality. Yeah. Which is just hilarious. That's my favorite thing. I saw it. I mean, House members would get on the floor and go, like, you've seen all this expansion of the Internet without net neutrality. Why have it now? Yeah. What's your answer? You... I would calmly say that's... We don't want to change anything. Yeah. That's the architecture. Net neutrality is the architecture of the Internet and has been the architecture of the Internet and we want to preserve that. That's my answer. So... That would be my calm answer. Calm answer. Well, I mostly do a lot of, like, fist pounding. So I mean, have you heard, for example, there's rumors that, you know, the iPhone has FaceTime video calling and they're going to enable it over the carriers, right? They're going to enable it so you can do it over AT&T and Verizon's, like, mobile networks. And there's rumors that AT&T is going to, like, charge you for it as an additional feature, but it's just the same data view. Yes. That's wrong. So that's, in your opinion, just completely wrong. Yeah. Is there any room? I mean, I agree with you. I'm asking, is there any room... I think that you have a thing called network management, as we call it. You have a right to do that and if you're overloading and crashing because people are using something that is making that happen, you have a right to say you can't do that. We're going to have to charge you for that to incentivize not using it or to de-incentivize. But so... I'm a disincentive. Disincentive. We're going to punish you. AT&T should slap you on the wrist and say... Well, for doing something that would make our network crash if everybody did it. I could see that. That's network management. That I can understand that. But that's not what this is. This is like tiers of service. Yes. And that is not... That's wrong. Because that's not the architecture we've had. And to me, that protects innovation. Internet freedom has been what has created the innovation. That's net neutrality. So you and I are having, even at this level, which is pretty high level, let's talk about the basic concepts, a pretty nerdy conversation about net neutrality and the architecture of the Internet. Not as nerdy as I imagine most of your viewers have all the time. I will nerd you out. I will freak you out. It doesn't take much to nerd me out. So I think that's really important. Don't be too impressed with my chairmanship. I'm convinced that you can nerd me. Isn't that the problem? We're trying to explain this concept that my readers kind of instinctively get. That you've, even at the level we're talking about it, you seem to understand, you're staunchly supportive of. But one level out of it, you've got an entire Congress of people who don't seem to understand what's going on. And they don't have any technical expertise. Yeah. I mean, you have to sort through everything that's going on in Congress. Sometimes people, there's people who do understand things but pretend not to. There are people who... That was a very knowing... There is self-delusion. There is not wanting to know. I mean, there's all kinds of levels here. And there's voting with your leadership, etc. And there are corporate interests that tend to... I don't know if you've heard of this thing called Citizens United. Anyway... So you don't think a corporation is a person? I don't. Shocking information. I don't. And I, you know, corporations can live a lot longer. Or shorter, I suppose. But no, they're not close to people. You can't break a corporation's heart. It's really disappointing, actually. I try every day. I should read some of my editorials about AT&T. So we've been talking about this balance between the public interest, the private interest. You've been talking about corporate interests. One of the things that our readers always talk about when they talk about corporate interests... Of course. You have to... Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Oh, it's coming right through our mics. Yeah, that's okay, people. That's one of the parts of the sound that's real. It's real. You'd pay for that. Yeah. You'd pay for that sound effect to make it seem like you're at the Senate. Okay. So one of the things our readers always talk about when they worry about corporate interests and with the Internet is SOPA and PIPA. Sure. You are a co-sponsor of PIPA. Of Protect IP, sure. What the hell happened there, man? Well, you know, again, no bigger champion than an open Internet. I also care about intellectual property rights. So in the end... Did the corporate interests win? Is that what happened there? No, actually... Because the Internet guys were screaming from get-go, right? Don't do this. And it went through the Senate, and it was only in the House that like there was real traction when Google and Wikipedia blacked out. So what happened in the Senate? No, it didn't get traction. Believe me, PIPA and Wikipedia did get traction in the Senate too. And we heard those concerns and very legitimate concerns. My concerns were both the openness of the Internet and they're also about... You know, I had someone in my office from a shoe company in Minnesota. It's a very well-known shoe company, and they get ripped off all the time. So what we were trying to target was overseas, you know, other country rogue websites that pirate intellectual property. Again, the concerns of folks that are, I'm sure, watching today were heard loud and clear. And people are pirating fake pharmaceuticals that are dangerous. They're pirating a lot of stuff that people's jobs depend on. And so it's trying to find the right spot there. But for now, I don't see us revisiting that any time soon. You think it's dead for a while? It's certainly dead for now. And I don't... You know, we will have to figure out how to... Because I think probably most of your viewers believe that people have a right to their intellectual property. In other words, have a right to... Our founders were... Many of them were authors and inventors. And so they believed in... We wouldn't have a 747 these days if... We wouldn't have a lot of this stuff if you couldn't patent things, for example. And so that has to be... We have to find a way to protect that and at the same time protect everyone's rights to have an open Internet. So what I'm hearing is like there's a balance, right, between... In that case, a balance between kind of media rights, intellectual property rights and like what's happening on the Internet now, the rights of almost consumers to do stuff with the media as they wish. But how do you balance at a legislative level a place that has historically been pretty unregulated in terms of behavior and also enables so many new kinds of behavior that you might block with additional regulation? How do you balance sort of making sure... You know, I guess it was how narrowly what behavior we're talking about. And the behavior is what I think we were trying to achieve. It was trying to stop foreign websites from pirating clothes and pharmaceuticals and software and movies and all those kind of things. So that's the kind of behavior which is an illegal behavior. In this country, it's illegal. And this was an attempt to get at the foreign... But can you do that with a technical solution of like let's monkey with DNS or can you do that with another way? Because a technical solution is what bothered people, right? Yeah, but the problem is that you had no legal solution because they're foreign entities. And we don't know where they are. I think a technical solution is probably... I actually do have to run. All right. Senator Franken, it was really nice. Very well done. Very nicely done. We wanted to show you the whole thing because it really is a great conversation and it's interesting you pressed him on SOPA. But he sent you back with a gift. Well, so what's really crazy, that buzzer that went off, he literally was running. He was late to preside over the Senate. Like his staffers were like, come on, you got to bang the gavel and put the Senate... He seemed unhurried the first time when it went off. Yeah, because he doesn't like to do it because they make the freshman senators do it. It's like a punishment. This is why our government isn't working. They don't respond to the buzzers. Which is an insane wave. Anyway, so the day before, he gave us a gift. The day before, he held a hearing on all this Facebook privacy stuff and he had this insane prop, which is right here. You have a picture of it? Yeah. You can bring it out. By the way, I saw this on the internet and I was like, why is there that dialogue box over top of the photo? I didn't notice the person's hand there. He didn't think the other members of the Senate would know what a Facebook dialogue box looked like? I like he had an assistant holding it. This does not look real. He had to print one out to show the Senate what Facebook looked like, which is crazy. And he gave it to us because he wasn't sure if some of our viewers knew what a Facebook... Yeah. Have you guys seen this? We all cracked up. So we asked for it and he signed it for us. It says, to Neelai and my friends at The Verge, learn more. Which I don't know if it's like a positive expectation or if a Senator just called me stupid. You know what? Learn more, Neelai. Neelai, you did really good on the interview. Anyhow, we got to move on. But this is very cool. And we're going to put this in our Batcave with our giant penny and that's going to go in there. Okay. We're going to move on. I'm very excited about our next guest. She's been covering technology for 25 years, 10 years on Microsoft. She's the author of Microsoft 2.0, How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era. And she writes for CNET, ZDNet, has written for E-Week Baseline. Let's just get her out here. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mary Jo Foley. Careful. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. We're doing... Be careful with the sofa. Oh, boy. Neelai, during the interview, Neelai pushed the sofa off. I extremely dropped it. It's fine. Just let me get these... I won't. Mary Jo, thank you for being here. Really, really appreciate it. So we wanted to have you on because we want to talk about Microsoft. I don't know if you've heard, you've been in the news a lot lately. I have. What was that? Is everything okay? Are you all right, sir? Okay, good. Microsoft has been in the news a lot lately. You've been covering Microsoft. You cover Microsoft. You get some fantastic scoops. When I see them, I don't get angry or sad. I just think, what a great scoop. I wish I had that scoop. Anyhow, but you do. You've been covering Microsoft for a long time, and you really know them and all the people there. Yes. They've just announced some pretty major stuff. I mean, Windows 8 we knew was coming. Right. We knew there was going to be another version of Windows Phone. The Surface is not something that was necessarily like a slam dunk. Like, oh, yeah, of course, they're going to do this. What is your take on that? I mean, what do you think? Is this the right strategy for Microsoft in 2012 to make their own tablet, their own PC essentially? What do you think? All I can tell you is, until I saw that Surface, I kind of thought Windows 8 was going to be a disaster. Really? But once I saw it, I was like, okay, now there's hope. There's a hardware form factor that has got me really excited. So up until the Surface, I just want to be clear. Yes. You were like, Windows 8, total mistake. You didn't see any partner hardware? No Asus? No HP? It all kind of felt the same to me. And I really wanted something really exciting. Because I have an iPad. I shouldn't say that. Wait, what? No, I know you actually wrote... It's like, a bomber going to arrest you? Actually, if I can digress for one quick second, you wrote a post years ago when you got your iPad. I did. And it was like, I got an iPad. And we had this big debate when we were at Engadget. We were like, should we cover this? I was like, well, Mary Jo buying an iPad doesn't seem like news. We had this big debate, and we actually ended up creating... Was it Engadget Alt? Yeah. We ended up creating Engadget Alt because we were like, we want to be able to hit the stuff that is interesting to us, but not news necessarily. So anyhow, we actually brought a lot of that thinking to the verge. Nice. So you basically are the reason we exist, when you think about your purchase of an iPad. So you bought an iPad. I bought an iPad. In fact, there was a headline somewhere that said, blood rains down on the holy land the day I bought my iPad. Who wears that? Business-side? I think it was TechCrunch. TechCrunch. I just like those kinds of really explosive headlines. Exactly. Yeah. But the reason I bought an iPad was because I couldn't find a Windows tablet that I loved. Because they're all terrible. They were all terrible. Just terrible. Horrible. I mean, if that was the Gates vision, he needs glasses. Right. Agreed. Well, he wears glasses. He needs stronger glasses. He needs X-ray vision. I don't know what he needs, but anyhow, go on. Yeah. But when I saw the Surface, and I haven't even gotten to see one in person yet, like I've just seen pictures. I've seen one in person. You have. I've seen it, and I was allowed to touch it briefly. For a moment? Yeah. For a moment. You couldn't really use it. It's a nice piece of hardware. Yeah. It is really nice. I felt, maybe this is how you felt, but they'd been telling this story. I spoke to people, Microsoft reps. I'm sure you talk to the same people, and they're like, you'll see. You'll see. We've got a plan. I was like, I don't get it. This thing's not good to use on a laptop, and your tablet offerings are garbage at the moment. Nobody's really making a great Windows. It's not just that the software doesn't really work that well, but it's like, the hardware just isn't that good. Right. So it was like, how is this going to work? What is this transitional device where I'm going back and forth? When I saw the service, and I saw the... What do they call them? Smart covers. No, smart cover is- Wrong vendor. Smart cover is Apple. Touch cover. They're type cover and touch cover. Right. Type and touch. Oh. Smart. Touch. I could see how this would work. I could really see this working. But why Microsoft? Why didn't they go to partners and say, we want five of you guys to make these things? I wonder if they did. You think they couldn't get them to make them? You can get Asus and Samsung to do almost anything. They'll do anything. Yeah. At all. At all. It doesn't have to be making stuff either. You take them out. Anyhow, I'm sorry. I don't know where I'm going with this. But yeah, why Microsoft? I'm not totally sure why they decided to take the plunge because it's not a really popular move with their partners, as you might imagine. They've been very quiet about it though. At least on the record, they've been quiet about it. Who said it was like Asus or Acer or something? I always get confused. It was Acer, right? Yeah. Johnny Shee? Yeah, they poopooed the idea. He's like, oh, it's just a gimmick. Don't worry. This is just a fake thing. They're not going to go through with it. Well, they don't have a choice. What are you going to do if you're Dell? Right. You're going to leave Windows? Dell's basically, but they said they're not really doing consumer stuff. Right. But any of the, if you make laptops and you're not Apple, what are you going to sell if you go away from Windows? And that's kind of like, I think Microsoft just woke up- Android tablets and phones. Linux. Linux desktop? Yeah, Linux desktop. That's real. Mary Jo, that's real funny. You keep cracking jokes. They're going to sell Linux. Dell tried that. Dell was doing that, right? They're still kind of trying. Lenovo was doing that. This kind of feels like Microsoft woke up and was like, oh, they're all screwed. We can do whatever we want. And they're just kind of doing whatever they want. I mean, they're going to make a phone eventually. I guarantee it. So Mary Jo, do you think Windows 8 will be a success? And do you think that, what is success for Windows 8? And then what is success for the Surface? Yeah. All interesting questions. Small questions. Yeah, just small, you know, whatever. I think Windows 8 is going to be successful on tablets and not just on Surfaces. I think on a touch tablet, it's a really interesting and good user interface. I think on PCs, especially for business customers, maybe. Not as sold on that one. But business customers are really important to Microsoft. They are. I mean, they're really important to Microsoft. Yes, they are. And you tell me, because you're the expert. I'm just nothing. I don't know anything. If Microsoft were to lose, I'm just saying, suddenly it lost its enterprise customers, would it be in business? No. OK, so they kind of have to make those people happy. They do. Although, you know, if you look at what they did with Windows Phone, OK, not a gigantic seller, but I'm one of the 3% who has one. That's a very positive spin. Mary Jo has, we talked backstage, she has a Windows Phone. Which one do you have? I do. I have the HTC Trophy, which is the only one right now on Verizon. Yeah, because Verizon was like, why? Wait, was there one clap? I heard one. I heard literally a single set of hands come together one time. It was like. No, come on. We have our own shirts. We are the 3%. You do. We're like the Occupy. We are the 3%. That's us. But you know, like, I don't, where, how should I feel about the 3%? Because the 1%, they're bad, right? They're bad, they're evil. They've got to be stopped. The 3% is just, they're just downtrodden. We are. But the 3% are still super rich, right? I just want to be clear. No. They're like the masters of the universe. We think different. They can afford a Windows phone and then the iPhone that they actually use. No, we think different. I don't have an iPhone. Wait, what? You think different? Have you heard that somewhere before? We got some mixed, some real mixed messages going on here. I'm still curious about the first answer of Surface saving Windows 8. Just from a consumer perspective, is it, that was all they were lacking? I feel like they have a ton to prove consumer wise, not just in hardware. They have a ton in software to prove. Again, I think with a tablet, your hardware experience is so tied to the software experience. When people see an iPad, what draws them to it? It's not the software. People don't go, wow, I want that operating system. They want the hardware. They don't say those words. But do they even think that? Okay, but hardware will only get you so far. Hardware is like, when you turn it on, if it's a terrible experience, you're like, ah, god. It doesn't matter how sexy the hardware. Let me put it this way. I think the N, is it N900? I always get the Lumia. Is it N900? No, the- Lumia 900. The Lumia 900. Sorry, I'm thinking the N9. Yeah. Can they just figure out a better naming scheme? There's the N9, the 800, and the 900. It's confusing. But I think the 900 is the most beautiful looking piece of hardware in phones, on the market. But because of the software and because of some hardware limitations just in terms of what they put in it, I mean, I wouldn't buy it. I think a lot of people feel that way. It will only get you so far. But it helps. It helps a lot. It does. What would be great is if you pick it up and it's also an amazing software experience, which is where they haven't gotten on phone. The HP Touchpad was a nice piece of hardware. It was all right. Are you saying one person? There's this guy, and then there's the Woot guy. It's a couple of cents away. You've got a Windows 2 Touchpad. That's a very sad... All right, so let me shift gears a little bit here. Well, not completely. So Microsoft posted its earnings recently, $492 million loss, but they had this equine of write down of $6.2 billion, which is no laughing matter. They paid... How much did they pay for Skype? $8.5 billion, which is insane, by the way. That number makes no sense to me. But how are they as a company? Where do you rank their health right now? Are they in critical condition? But they had a loss, but in other areas, their performance is actually quite good. So they've had big growth in the entertainment device division. So I'm just curious to know, what does that mean? Does it all even out? When I looked at their numbers this time, because I look at them every quarter when they come out, obviously, what struck me is what's still powering Microsoft is their enterprise software. So products that some people in this audience might know, SharePoint, woo, come on. Are you rocking SharePoint on your touchpad? SharePoint, go on. SharePoint, Office, System Center, all these enterprise products, right? This is what is powering Microsoft. And so as long as these products continue to be healthy, they can keep taking losses on things that they're kind of thrown at the wall and seeing what's going to happen. So are they just going to sell Windows 7 for a decade like they did with XPE and like see... Maybe. That's super sad. I guess the question is like, is that as other people move into their spaces, you've got Google coming on strong, Apple's not... Believe me, I'm sure if they can get their hands on an enterprise customer, they're working hard to do that. As their products become less and less, they become less and less desirable, certainly to consumers, doesn't that have a kind of echo effect? And by the way, I just want to... I need to preface, I know everybody thinks I'm like the worst guy in the world because I gave the Lumia 900 a 7 out of 10, but I am excited about 8 and I'm excited about the Surface. From what I saw, I really like it. So I have this hope that this is going to be the thing that kind of changes their placement in the market, in the minds of consumers. But if they keep losing consumers, if it isn't, and if they have on this little bit of a downward movement in the consumer side, doesn't that eventually pull away from the enterprise with all these other forces competing? Yeah, I'd say that's the thing they're trying to hedge against in what they're doing, right? So they're kind of still very rooted in the enterprise, but the ultimate plan, I think, is to start turning things around, starting with Windows 8. It's going to be a long process, I think they know. It's not going to be an instant overnight success, I don't think. I think even in the most optimistic Microsoft projections, nobody is going to say Windows 8 is going to just come out of the gate, boom, and knock Windows 7 off. Right. It's not. What's going on with the desktop? I mean, I think that's the thing, right? Because Windows 7 has, people know it. It looks like every other version of Windows. Right. And what if this version doesn't stick? That's too weird. And do they just try something else? You know, what I'm guessing is going to happen, and this is just a pure guess. No one from Microsoft has told me this. Pure, 100% guess. Do we have people at the ready to hit this statement, if it sounds really juicy? Go on. Maybe. Go on. I think you're going to see, after Windows 8 comes out this October, I think you're going to start seeing Microsoft change how often they do Windows releases. To go to yearly or whatever. Right. To go closer to yearly, if not yearly. Right now, it's every three years. That's too long. And it's a lot of pressure every three years. It is. It's like, you've got to come with a big... It's almost like when you look at what Apple's doing, the change from Lion to Mountain Lion is really iterative stuff. It's like a service pack. Exactly. And if they called service packs up, like actual, they gave them names or something, because that's service pack, whatever, it might change the picture. What does Windows 9 look like? Can you tell us? If I knew, I would be writing a blog post right now. I asked a Microsoft rep, who shall remain nameless, but he knows who he is. I said, at the Surface event, I said, so if this is the transition, then Windows 9 won't have any Windows desktop in it, will it? He's like, you don't really expect me to answer that question, do you? So... And then he winked at you and he threw a mouse in the garbage. Exactly. Is it really? First I was like, why a mouse? Like a live mouse? There's a lot of deep symbolism. What you just described would make a tremendous comic, and I would like to see somebody pen that. Okay, a couple of things. I wish we had more time. We went, if only I hadn't done that stupid intro. Couple of quotes, and then I have a big question for you. Ballmer said that the coming months, it's the most exciting launch season in Microsoft history. Do you agree or disagree? Agree, 100%. This is like the highest pitch launch. It is. Like every single product at the company is about to be revved in the next 12 months. And then on the flip side, well, I mean, he's obviously excited, but Valves Gabe Newell said this recently, like a day ago. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top tier PC OEMs who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality. I'm smirking because you know what his alternative was. Linux. Well, that is insane. Can you throw some more burns at Linux? I don't understand. I don't do like a half hour of Linux burns with Mary Jo. We know he doesn't like Apple because they're too controlling. And now he's mad that Microsoft's going to be more controlling. He just hates control. Which is why he runs Steam. You don't agree. But you don't agree at this point, having seen the service, you wouldn't describe it as a catastrophe. Though you did say prior to the surface you thought it was a disaster. I don't know what's on your mind. Did you say disaster? I think you did. Maybe I did. I don't know. I think catastrophe, disaster. Disastrophe. Disastrophe. It's waiting for you. I'm going to tag like Windows 8, disaster. I think, like I said, I think Windows 8 is going to be very interesting on touch tablets and possibly on touch laptops. I think people who install it on existing non-touch laptops are going to be surprised, if they haven't tried it already, about what that experience is like. Surprised? In a negative way. That makes me feel very sad. Those are the people who are going to be installing it though. It's not everybody's going to be a new PC purchaser. The way most people get Windows anymore is getting it on a new PC. Most people aren't techies. They don't go put a new operating system on. They're kind of like, we're going to take our chances. But if you get it on a traditional laptop, the experience is your start menu is suddenly- No more start button. Right. There's no start button. It's a completely different experience. It is. People will be shocked and confused. People who only know that, who are using like, just our XP right now or something. There's going to be a learning curve. How's that? What was the learning curve for you? It was really weird for me. It's really weird. Yeah. I'll tell you, I don't use Windows 8 on my laptop that I use for work. I don't. Well, that's not a ringing endorsement. Sorry. I use Linux. I use Linux. I shouldn't have told you that. You just let me do. She loves Linux. All right. Final question. I wish we had more time. I do. We've got to have you come back. Maybe as we get closer to the launch around October or something, we could do like a round real. Get rid of these guys. Get Tom Warren here. Get Paul Thrott here. Get Paul Thrott here. Do a real Microsoft round. I won't be here either. Is Balmer destroying the company? A light question to end. Yeah. Just a little light. Because there was this Vanity Fair article. There was like, Balmer's just spent the last 10 years dismantling Microsoft. But then I will say this. The counterpoint to that is this whole write down of the quantity of analysis. There he is. It's the end of the Gates era. And now we're truly in the Balmer era. I agree with you. Which is kind of like revisionist history. No. It's been the Balmer era for a while. Yes. Like has he just been like... And Steve Balmer is not the sort of man who lies in wait. No. Right? He's there. Oh, you don't know. Boy, would it be scary if he was. You know that's your... You like get in your car and Balmer's in the backseat and he's like, just drive. Just drive and don't say anything. Turn the radio to the sports station. Or else. Or else. No, I don't think he's just been laying around waiting. But I think he also was cleaning up some messes that were left to him when he took over as a CEO. What were the messes that Bill Gates left to Steve Balmer? A number of projects that weren't making money. That they've kind of gotten rid of. Down plates, some things, closed divisions, gotten rid of things like a Quan. A Quan was not a great... Anyhow, we have to wrap up. Mary Jo, thank you so much. You got to come back. I will. Mary Jo Foley, everyone. We got to... Stick around. Stick around. Don't go anywhere. We have a quick break. Just drive. Just drive. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with Chipacrit. So stick around. Why should other laptops bow down to the new Samsung Series 9 with the Intel Core i5 processor? Maybe it's because CNET claims the new Series 9 is one of the most impressively made laptops we've ever seen. New York Times says, just touching it is good for the soul. How does that make us feel? Well, we're walking on air. I'm told that our musical guest name has some kind of dual meaning, but I don't understand either one of them. Maybe you could figure it out while he's playing. Ladies and gentlemen, Chipacrit. Yay. Wow, that was amazing. That's incredible. So that's it. I want to thank Senator Al Franken, Mary Jo Foley, Paul and Neelai, of course, Chipacrit and Samsung, our sponsor for helping us put this on, and you guys. Thank you so much for coming. Stick around. We've got some giveaways, and we're going to hear one more song. Thanks again. playing another R Independence