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John C. Morley
Hello, everyone. It's that time for the JMOR Tech Talk show where we answer questions about technology, explain the way they should work, and why they toned sometimes. And now here's your host, John C. Morley. Well, hey, everybody, it is John C. Morley, serial entrepreneur, and welcome to another episode of the JJMOR Tech Talk show. It's great to see you, Marcus, how are you doing this fine Friday? And now, only one more Friday left in the month after today.
Marcus Hart
The months are already gone, John.
John C. Morley
I don't know what's going on Marcus. But we're moving and shaking here at the show, and lots of great things happening. And listen, ladies and gentlemen, if you have anybody that is in the New York, New Jersey metro area, or you'd like to give a donation, John and my team we're trying to break a national world record. Can't share to you, tell you what it's about. But I can tell you that it's about science. And if you love science, want to break a record and you want to be part of history, you're going to want to reach out to me. Alright, let's get into the show. So, lots of things are happening. Marcus, this was really interesting. Bacteria that can recover precious metals from electric vehicle batteries.
Marcus Hart
With like, 1.4 billion cars in the world, this is going to be something that's going to be needed, they're going to need a way to clean these batteries up and clean them up fast.
John C. Morley
And they say it's going to double by 2036. I mean, just wow. If these cars burn petrol or diesel, there's going to be some consequences with the climate. And I hate to even speculate about that.
Marcus Hart
It is. Hopefully they took that into consideration. But it's like, like they say, sometimes you put the cart before the horse.
John C. Morley
Exactly. And electric cars are speculated, I don't want to state they're speculated to emit fewer air pollutants if they're powered by renewable energy.
Marcus Hart
Yeah. And not to mention that if we just talking about the batteries alone, these battery shell flies aren't that long?
John C. Morley
No, they're not. And that one country we talked about. And also, China while back there, they're locking in on a technology to manufacture facilities where they can change these batteries like in Tesla's and other cars very, very quickly. And I think they're trying to license this technology. And I don't want to say the word rip off, but let's just say get an awful lot of money. How do I say that politely?
Marcus Hart
I don't think there's no way to say that politely, unfortunately.
John C. Morley
Manufacturers of these EVs, they're trying to keep the import costs low and find reliable sources for new raw materials. But it's becoming tough with deep sea now being an option and other damage to habitats that are endangering wildlife. I mean, it's a challenge in landfills. And some of the poorest regions with over two and a half million tons are added to the total each year. I mean, that's just hard to even fathom, Marcus.
Marcus Hart
You can't digest it at all even if it was something delicious to look at. But when we talk about the question of like, why not just for us, what's coming at us anyways? We don't get smart people that can answer that.
John C. Morley
I think you're right. And the shelf life now of eight to 10 years. That's if you buy the good batteries, not the cheap ones. So, the lithium-ion batteries are currently recycled at a meager rate of less than 5%. Ouch.
Marcus Hart
Yeah. You don't want to tell that to the person that pulls the blue garbage cans.
John C. Morley
Why aren't we reusing them? I mean, this is crazy. I mean, EV batteries could become a significant portion of the global waste pandemic.
Marcus Hart
Oh, that's terrible.
John C. Morley
Another pandemic. One that's not going to require a booster or a shot to combat but it's going to need something called intelligence and the largest lithium-ion battery, you know where they're located, those recyclers guess where they are?
Marcus Hart
Oh, you know what? I got to be honest with you, I don't know.
John C. Morley
They're in China.
Marcus Hart
Oh, that's great place to have.
John C. Morley
And recycling is often treated as an obligation and companies. You don't have to pay. Now they do it in North America and Europe and competition becoming so intense for dead batteries in China that these recycling Companies are willing to pay to get their hands on the matter what they have to do even fly them in across the country. Look at all the waste and jet fuel and extra pollutants in the air just from that.
Marcus Hart
That is scary, John, that is very scary. And what is increasingly interesting is just the amount of money that's going to be made in someone's pocket.
John C. Morley
Exactly, I think everything's about money. They don't really care about the economy, they don't care about people, it's sad to say this. And a lot of these batteries that actually make it to the recycling area. They're melted and their metals are extracted. And they do this in large commercial facilities. And guess what happens, Marcus? It uses an absorbent amount of energy. So, guess what happens when we take energy, we admit carbon, very bad for our planet, not to mention the ozone layer.
Marcus Hart
Very bad. And as you mentioned alluded to it earlier, we have a pandemic that is right around the corner and we don't even know it.
John C. Morley
Exactly. And plants like this. They're not cheap to build, they're extremely expensive to engineer, to build, to operate. And the equipment that is, let's say, a necessity was treating very harmful emissions generating by a smelting process. And in case you didn't know what a smelting processes, ladies, gentlemen, that's when you take metal and other byproducts and you melt them. You always have to separate the different areas because you don't want to have certain things mixed. And also, the reason they want to separate them is because they won't get their money if their mixed. Not dimension, there'll be some fines if you burn things beside the pure metal. So, you don't want to burn plastics and metals that can be bad. You want to separate them because we know when we burn metal and plastics together, well, that's a very bad, yes.
Marcus Hart
Very toxic, very toxic, more toxic than someone used to date.
John C. Morley
And you know the thing, Marcus, that really gets my [07:03]? Is that despite all the resources and money to put these together, they have a very low probability of having the resource to recover precious, valuable battery materials.
Marcus Hart
Oh, wow.
John C. Morley
Did you know that the global market for metal recycling is expected to grow from 52 billion in 2020 all the way up to 76 billion by 2025?
Marcus Hart
Yeah, like I said, someone's getting rich.
John C. Morley
But bioleaching also called biomin, it employs micros which can oxidize metals as part of their metabolism. So that's the whole thing I wanted to share with you. Yes, we got a problem. But now that we have bio leaching being implemented, it's a chemical way to supposedly safely quote unquote, use microorganisms to extract valuable metal from orbs.
Marcus Hart
And that's pretty interesting. And I really like to see what the study says about that and how effective it is.
John C. Morley
Well, they say that, the mining industry is using it and they're getting valuable metals out, including circuit boards, contain a water and uranium. I mean, it seems interesting. But I'm not sold yet, Marcus. I mean, I think this may be pie in the sky until I see some numbers.
Marcus Hart
Yeah, and that's the thing about when you roll out something that supposedly supposed to counter, what's going to be driving everybody crazy at some point, you don't really get them the concrete till there's years of research.
John C. Morley
Exactly. And then our friend, Uncle Sam, and the rest of the government team will start imposing fines so they can just-- they're desperate to make money any which way. So, they'll come up with some really ridiculous requirements that will just make people pay through the nose which will force people to have to recycle it. And EV batteries, they're fairly new as we know, and reusing of their components should be part of design, but it's not as remaining an afterthought. And like I said, going to become a pandemic and recycling from the beginning. I always say that when you build something, you have to think about cradle to grave. Whether it's a computer, whether it's a hard drive, you have to think about that absolute essence. And think about the fact that a computer has a life about five years after that it really doesn't pay to do much to it. Okay, if they're working in their good shape, I'm not talking about industry machines. I'm talking about commercial laptops, home laptops. And it's going to be a problem, so we'll have to just monitor that and see what happens. Our friends, Marcus, at zoom they're to acquire 5'9 9 for 14.7 billion
Marcus Hart
I remember you saying something once before, John, about the importance of cloud space. And this seems like it's a race for zone to get bigger and to ensure that the future--
John C. Morley
Well, you think about this. So, 5'9 in case you're wondering, so they have a huge cloud system. But they actually have a cloud contact center software. And I think the reason why Zoom is going after them may not just be for the cloud, but maybe for the extra enterprise features that can help people use this and more of a call center a management solution. See, I think zoom is starting to lose its traction. Because we know a lot of people are starting to stop using it, more and more each day, because they're not having as many virtual means. I mean, there's still going to be some, but that's the whole thing about 5'9, is making agents 300%, not 50%, not 10%, not 100, 300%. more effective per hour.
Marcus Hart
And that's pretty impressive. And as you said, people are pretty Zoomed out. This This could in fact be a plus for Zoom.
John C. Morley
It could and I think the other reason that it's doing it is because of the huge teleconferencing that Zoom has with the household name. And they're figuring that if they can leverage this. We talked about Google meet and Ms. teams are the fierce rivals of Zoom. But now that they bought this company with a huge cloud backing, these two kids might have to start running home. Because now they're going to have customer engagement tools. Zoom never had that before. So, watch out, Ms. teams and watch out Google meet because you got a very fierce competitor coming up behind you in a rearview mirror. I'm not sure if you're aware of that.
Marcus Hart
Yeah, they certainly do. So, it's going to be a pretty interesting. I'm pretty much looking forward to what they come up with at this little mirage.
John C. Morley
It'll definitely be an interesting thing, won't it?
Marcus Hart
Yeah, it will.
John C. Morley
And the whole thing is, is it going to shape and change the life of how people use Zoom and how people use interaction? But I still believe no matter what kind of automation you have; you still have to have a good person behind that. I mean you've talked to these internet companies and we joke about it, but it's really the serious truth. You get on the line, they I had to do a reset, because I want to change my password. And they sent me a code, the code was wrong that they sent me. I asked for another one, didn't work, asked for third one, it says, oh, you've been locked out? I'm like, What? So, then I go into a chat. Now it's not two minutes, it's 20 minutes to verify my account. Well, do you have the mac number? No, I don't have the Mac number. What do you think I do? Write on my forehead? Well, do you have your account number? If I had my account number, I wouldn't be calling you, would I? What's your name? I already gave that to you. Okay, what's your phone number? Did you not get it from the automated bot? Oh, sorry, we don't have access to that system. You don't have access to the system? No, I just route you to our queue. That's real intelligent, love to know who designed that, they should be fired. And the real best one we're going to be covering very soon is FTTH? Have you heard about FTTH yet?
Marcus Hart
No, that's a brand new one for me.
John C. Morley
It's very brand new. And so, in our area, we have LTS and optimum, which is the same company, the French took them over. And it's not been the same, but they're trying to get back some credibility. They're building out FTTH, which is fiber to the home. Now BIOS does just about a gig, just about not quite, they're going to be able to do, Marcus, sit down for this, 10 gigabytes per second.
Marcus Hart
Oh, geez, that's great.
John C. Morley
They're estimating a street price of over two to $300 for this. It'll be ready sometime next year. And the last couple of weeks, they've been ripping our town up to put all these wires. So, I have to ask myself, is this French company going to keep it or are they going to sell it? I don't think they should be allowed to be able to operate this company, when they're not even the US. You should have to have so much stake in the United States to be able to control something that is in a major part of the US. And so, they're ripping streets up, they're paying cops from multiple towns left and right to be their babysitters, so they can stop traffic. And let me tell you, they're doing a real job here and they're putting in this huge infrastructure from the new fiber to the home. They're putting in the new gateway. This thing's in the streets and you're going to have to get a new modem too. So, this is going to be a little pricey. And they claim it's going to raise the cost of home. I don't know about this, 3.1%.
Marcus Hart
Yeah, that's far-fetched, and I can't really see it happening, someone's probably dreaming and never woke up.
John C. Morley
I think you're right. And the other question I have is, if they're putting modems out now, like these new UV modems, they got to be so carefully tipped over, they could catch on fire. They have a software throttling them that actually cuts back at 90% of the modem so it doesn't catch on fire. And now they're putting in a 10-gig service. Can we really trust them with that? Do they really know what they're doing? They're investing in technology but who's actually engineering this? I don't really have a lot of faith in these cable companies.
Marcus Hart
No, and no one allows you to sit down and vet them properly. And like you said, if you are not from the US, you need to be more invested in just landing your company here to gouge everybody.
John C. Morley
Exactly. Speaking about communication and tools, checking your phone for spyware is becoming more and more of a question for people. And there is a new tool for, actually, it's an amnesty tool. Amnesty International, a part of a group that helped break the news of journalists and heads of state, this new tool that's going to allow you to check your phone for spyware. So, I've never really seen that to be a big problem. But you're going to want to make sure your iPhone is backed up and encrypted with a password, you want to use two factor authentication. It's not even a luxury anymore. You have to use it. And if you don't, well, you're just like leaving your credit card number on the side of your truck or car and just saying, hey, come and take my number. Do you want me to blow it up so you can read it better? I still remember that guy, forget his name, from one of those companies. He does a credit watch and monitoring. He puts his social security number. But he said it was as real social security number on a truck at a car and he said that it's his real number. And he trusts it because the service is backing it and watching it. I don't really think that was his real social security number. He says it was.
Marcus Hart
He could have been bluffing there.
John C. Morley
There's no real way to know that. And our friends at Twitter are testing upvote and downvote buttons on tweets now. They're working on the new upvote and downvote reaction to basically try to get engagement up. So, this is different than normal retweets, I should say, and replies. It's testing this feature for a small group of users on iOS only. And it's already been spotted according to multiple tweets from users that are part of the test group. So not everyone has access to it. And Twitter writes that iOS users may see upvote and downvote in several different styles coming up in the future. And some of these new features are going to hopefully, they think, inspire more people to be interactive on their platform. We're going to have to say, Marcus, we're just going to have to wait and see.
Marcus Hart
They're trying just about everything.
John C. Morley
And I can't fault them, I can't fault them. But I do feel that, just like we learned the other day, and I don't really have data to back it up. But we've just heard rumor that even our friends at TikTok, their algorithm may not be as sound as we think, it may not be as fair as we think.
Marcus Hart
Yeah, I have heard many reports about that. It is a sound and like there's some foul play going on in the algorithms.
John C. Morley
Yeah, that's happening. Speaking about unfair, for years, Apple would never let you get into their products like their computers, unless you had this special tool. And you could never buy that tool or get that tool even if you're in the technology industry, unless you did so much money per quarter in business with Apple. Well, the Federal Trade Commission is going to start going after people like this and they're pledging to fight unlawful right to repair restrictions. Watch out apple.
Marcus Hart
Yeah, is definitely aimed them/
John C. Morley
They're really the ones. I mean, there might be some others, but you know those are the ones that are causing a biggest problem. And so, in the order signed by President Joe Biden on July 9, the White House explicitly calls out smartphone makers that impose restrictions on self and third-party repairs, making repairs more costly and time consuming, such as by restricting the distribution of parts and diagnostic repair tools. This could also play a hand in some laptop manufacturers too that do this.
Marcus Hart
Yeah, there's a lot of them that do that as well. But for whatever reason, there's this huge fear of someone creating hybrids of their products.
John C. Morley
Well, I don't know if it's that. I think the real reason they do it, Marcus is because it's money. Because when you go to Apple, it's never by the hour. It's like 165 to open the case. And then while it's open, we'll put whatever you want in there. But that's our fee to open it. That's about a minute or so for three hours, that's the fee to open it. If we close it, we have to reopen against another 165.
Marcus Hart
Oh, wow.
John C. Morley
So, this can be trouble for Apple who strictly inhibits users to repair their own devices. It's going to be interesting what happens, but I know that Apple's not going to be very happy about this. And the Federal Trade Commission doesn't get involved too often. But when they do decide to pursue something, they're not going to stop.
Marcus Hart
Yeah, very aggressive actions coming their way.
John C. Morley
And we never really talked about whether it's male or female when we talk about Alexa. Okay. We know she's female. But I'd like to say that she's getting a brother. Thats the way I want to term it. The way technical people say, well, we can just change the voice. Okay, so does that mean they just get a sex change and make use of it? No, no. So, Alexis getting a brother but the way they define it, you can just make the option to convert it from male from female to male. And just like one option.
Marcus Hart
Well, you know what they say, there's nothing like the sound your annoying brother.
John C. Morley
So, you're going to be able to do that. And the Ziggy wake word, it's going to join the existing Alexa computer Echo, and Amazon and wake words that have already been available to us with Alexa for years. Amazon is not specifically associate Alexa with the feminine sounding voice and Ziggy with the new masculine sounding option. So that's the new one. It's called Ziggy. so, users can either use one of the two voices Alexa or Ziggy, you'll see, I'll be honest with you, I don't like that concept. I like the idea that if you get the product, you should be able to buy it as a male product or as a female prep, you shouldn't be able to just change it.
Marcus Hart
Yeah, there's something kind of behind that's really kind of cheap in the whole process.
John C. Morley
Yeah, exactly. And I don't know, I was talking to a customer just before and he was ordering cartridges for his printer. But something interesting, he told me, he told Alexa to go when the printer was low to order the cartridge, it says it was low, and he said to order it. And he didn't get the manufacturers cartridge. He got a knockoff. I said, Well, that's a setting in Amazon. You have to just go and change there-- I think they just figure that if you don't change it-- they're going to make more money on the knockoffs. We all know that. So, it's going to be interesting and Amazon is going to do something else. This is going to be pretty interesting, Marcus, they're going to let developers compete for the echo show screen.
Marcus Hart
Oh, yeah, that's going to be pretty cool.
John C. Morley
I don't know if I like it too much. Like things that you could say if the dogs walk, okay, I'm okay with that. But then make suggestions on where we could go for dinner. I don't know if I like that idea.
Marcus Hart
You got a point there.
John C. Morley
Like oh, by the way, they show one pizza place here. Click here to view a meal, or Hi, John, are you hungry? I've got a great offer from-- Shall I order that pizza for you? No, thanks. Well, what are you in the mood for? Alexa, I'm not really hungry. Really? You haven't eaten anything all day? Actually. I went out. Well, where did you go? I don't show you went anywhere. Well, I didn't log into the system. You didn't tell me where you went? Well, how can I keep track of your calories? Okay, never mind. Alexa. You know I'm only trying to help you. I know. Go to sleep Alexa. So, they're going to start having things like event-based triggers. And just like I told you, I knew this was coming, proactive suggestions. So, if a customer is going to work, customers might opt to have a skill proactively suggest that they lock their home. Hey, Mike, I see your living for the office. The house isn't locked yet. Did you want to do that? I get that. I get that. Okay. By the way, I see your by XYZ, did you want to order something and then just wait here by the curb, but I'll have somebody bring it out to you? Now that's okay. And our friends at later this year a whole food will be launching, yes. They're one of the very first, a proactive curbside pickup experience.
Marcus Hart
Just wait till you get a load of that. Shouldn't be that much difference, what we'll be getting at a local Walmart, I would I would imagine?
John C. Morley
Well, the difference is going to be this. And I've talked about this before Marcus, that all these people that get things for free are I won't ever have one of these things in my house or my office. It's not because I don't like technologies, because I don't trust what they're doing with the information they're learning about me. And not that I'm trying to hide something. But I don't know what they're going to try to do with that information. I'll give an example. I was giving a seminar the other day to our seniors here in Franklin lakes, we are like 60 plus seniors. And we did lunch and I did this title of a presentation called staying safe on the information superhighway. And many of them love the presentation, it was like an hour. And I got to tell you Markus, you know people like a presentation when they're glued to the presentation screen.
Marcus Hart
Absolutely.
John C. Morley
And I started off by saying hi everyone such and such did my little introduction, and build my credibility. And once I did that, I said, so now what I'm talking about is an important topic. And I really asked a question, anybody ever have their identity taken or know somebody? Okay, great. So, you know, it's important? Well, before I tell you other people that say it's important beside me, and you've already seen it's important, what I want you to know about this, I want you to take this so seriously, that I brought 10 gift cards from local gift stores. And I'm going to be handing out poker chips to people that answer questions correctly during the afternoon. The 10 people that have the most poker chips can come up here and pick out a gift card randomly one of the white envelopes. So, make sure you stay tuned because you just might win a $5 gift card to one of the local stores in the Franklin lakes or Wycoff area. So, I know that helped, Marcus but they were very interested in what I had to say. What you know, when you talk to seniors you have a program like that, it's hard to have them be on top with everything and know what's going on. And we discovered something from one of the people there. And she says, you know, John, she says, there was a guy that called me last week and her husband was there. There was a guy that called me last week, and he wanted to come out to the house. And she says, what do you think-- he says, I don't know, she says I didn't know what to do. And I said we know we want to come out to your house, he wanted to come out with somebody else, one person was going to talk to you about looking at your house to possibly list it, put on the market, and the other person was going to come around and try to case your house so you can later come in break into it. You think so, I'm like I know so. He seemed like such a nice person on the phone. So, I asked questions like, so what do you do if somebody calls and says they're from Microsoft tech support and they need to get in your computer because it's vital, or your security might be affected? You hang up on. The other guy tells you they want to refund you money that your husband's been paying for years because we can't offer the service anymore. So, we need to get on your computer so we can pay you back. This is what a guy says, you hang up on him. So, you do more than you hang up on them. You call the police department, you file a report with the online crime bureau, with the FBI. And then you file a report with the police department. And you give them a copy of that report. And you send all that also to the consumer affairs. And you also go to the district attorney general's office. And I remember doing one a while back, there was a guy on the computer. And I spent like an hour at the client's place just having the guy just play around the computer. And when was all done, I said, you're all done? He says, Yeah, I'm all done. But I may have to come back because this has got a lot of viruses. Oh, okay. Meanwhile, he's running the directory command and see all those files. They're all bad. Oh, okay. I don't know much about computers. And he goes, Yeah, we have to take Share them. Normally it's 899 but I'm just charging you 199 Lifetime support. So oh, thank you so much. But don't worry, we'll take your credit card at the end of the call. Okay. So, we're finished with this whole thing, and I'm playing stupid. I said, we're all done, he says, you have the credit card? So let me go get my credit card. But listen, do you know what a virtual machine is? A virtual machine? You have a credit card. Yeah, I give him my credit card. So, a virtual machine, It's a MasterCard. The virtual machine is something that I create and you play with and think it's a real computer. And then, when you're all done, I click one button, it reformats and the machine you think you connected to wasn't really a machine, it was a piece of software. Okay, you have the credit card? I have the credit card; I'm going to give it to you in a minute. So, I'm just going to go ahead and click on format reboot.
John C. Morley
And you'll see that everything you just did went away. Oh, wow. Okay, we call you another time. Bye. Bye. So, they play games, Marcus. Yeah, they do. And I just love having them for breakfast. I know or lunch or dinner. I remember. My friends when I was in high school, we would go to one of the stores the big S store. And we'd go out there. And we would go to buy computers either before or after lunch. And we'd have fun we'd go out there was like, so we're looking to get a computer with such as, we gave them some really wacky requirements. So how do we do that? So, I want a computer with this. And I want this and we gave them some large amount of memory. Like the computers really come with, Let's say, maybe 150 meg hard drive or 250. Okay, so we're looking for something like at least 1000 megs. Oh, yeah, we can get that for you. Okay, and I want something that has a quad speed processor. And I want them as an energy efficient board. Now, I wasn't even made yet. Okay, hold on, let me check with my-- So he's going through-- I said, you get that for me. I'm going to buy four of them here right now. I didn't care what it costs. Oh, I got to get a few. But he goes, I find something for you. I said, That's not a computer. I said, that's actually a typewriter. And it's not nice. But the thing is, they didn't know what they were doing, Marcus and they're and they're trying to like be a [32:24]. I love when you go to the appliance store. And you ask them questions, and you're buying a high-end appliance and you ask, oh, you don't need that. I don't. In fact, you said I need that. Oh, yeah, but you don't. So how many decibels Is that? Well, I want to how much noise it makes? I don't know. Well could turn off me as I have a decibel meter reading on my phone. Can we measure it? All? It's really quiet. Was it like 40? Is it like 20, 38? Yeah, it's really low. Probably like 20. So, let's just measure it. I turn I was like, 68. Oh, we'll try this one over here. Well, that was even louder. That's 74. Oh, okay. We have some new ones coming in next week. Maybe those will be quieter. And I'm like, is this the top of the line? I say, how new is this dishwasher? Oh, it's new, four or five months? You don't have the brand-new ones? No, maybe you come back after Christmas and maybe we have those? You have to laugh at this. Right? You just have to laugh.
Marcus Hart
It's all you can really do.
John C. Morley
And I know when I was helping those seniors the other day and explain this to them. They were so on the edge of their chairs, which was great to see them getting into this stuff. So why don't use computers? I said, Well, you're just as vulnerable. What do you mean? I don't use a computer. You get mail? Yeah. Has your name and your address on it. Somebody get your identity from that? No? Yeah, you should put that in a shredder. We bought one of those shredders. You know what the at the price club? How much should you pay for like $11? That's not going to shred much. You need a cross cut shredder with these a four or five security? One of those runs around two to $300. Oh, that's too much. I'll just take a scissor. I said, well, you could do that all you want, but somebody is going to be able to put that back. And how about the hardware? Hey, throw it Oh, we just take a hammer and smash it. We could still get the data back. I can and so can a bad actor. Okay, well, maybe we'll smash it out, run the car over it still going to be able to get the data back. Okay, well, I'll get my gun. What's that going to do? Well, I'll shoot the drive. I said that's not going to do anything. It's not going to help. Well, I'll shoot it and I mean, what else can I do with it? I say, I don't know. One guy says. He says Well, maybe I'll just blow it up. So how you going to do that? Well, I don't know, but I could probably figure it out. And you just have to laugh at this but It's not funny because people are getting taken advantage of markets. And what I explained to them was a story that happened to me many, many years ago. last story I'm going to share with you, when I was probably in grammar school, and not even an eighth grade yet, I get a phone call. I was at home. And I was staying home alone, and was probably my early teens. And so, when I got this phone call, the guy tells me, oh, your parents in the hospital. It's really serious. You know, you got to call them right now. I don't know if they're going to live, but they want to talk to you.
John C. Morley
And he's given me the phone number and you're not asking questions. Let me get a pen. I write it down. And I hang up, and you probably don't even think when you dial the number you don't even care, right?
Marcus Hart
Right, exactly.
John C. Morley
So, I pick up the phone and I dial the number one 906 4278 whatever it was, I started in one 900 number. Nobody was at the number. When they answered I called my parents and I said, you okay? Oh, we're fine. Because you're not in the hospital. You're not in any kind of trauma. No, there's a guy that called me. We're just starting to get something to eat. We'll be home a little while. Oh, okay. You guys are feeling okay. You're fine. How's your car? Car's Fine. Okay, two months later, my parents said, John, did you make a call to such as I said, well, I call this number I'll tell you what happens. The number I told you. It's$3800. Well, I called the number because they said that you were like on a dire strait is going to die. And you needed to talk to me. That's great. So, we spent like a day or so with the phone company. And we got that reversed. But you see how we don't hear about 900 numbers too much anymore? They're around. But the liability on them is very, very high.
Marcus Hart
Oh, yeah. They're pretty expensive.
John C. Morley
I remember because we had one for the tech company. All many years ago, the number was one 900 JCM Tech. And Marcus, that phone number. Just the line without the equipment was $1,000 a month.
Marcus Hart
Jesus Christ.
John C. Morley
Now what that meant is that I had to spend $1,000 minimum billing, it was $20 had a line. So, it was 1020. I don't mind the 20 bucks. If I didn't Bill $1,000 or more, they charged me 2000 with a minimum credit card fee.
Marcus Hart
That's crazy.
John C. Morley
That took me three months to get set up. It was like a 12-hour application. I had built my own voicemail system to do all the cool preamble. Hi, you've reached such and such. And when the call comes in, you have to decide how much time you're going to pay for before you do the preamble. So, you have to make it quick. But you're actually paying that pre time, whatever the call rates, whatever the rate is before you bill. So, let's say cost me 20 cents or $1, whatever it was. So, you have that prior, hi, thanks for calling the JCM. Tech line. In just a few moments you were speaking with a tech representative. Be sure to have your question handy. And be sure to hang up before the bell starts, the tone will start and billing will charge at 399 after you hear the tone within five seconds, hang up now if you do not want to be billed. So, you get deep. And the people are sitting there with Hi, I have a question. You know you're being billed right. Oh, yeah, but answer my question first, and you can bill me, you're being billed now. Okay, so like I having a problem with the computer. Yeah. It's not turning on. Okay. What should I do? Was it plugged in? It's plugged in Okay. Is there power? Yeah, it has power, the plug has power there. There's a light in there that has power. Okay. So, he comes in he goes, did you and he check, Is there a switch by chips on the wall? He goes, Yeah, he says, but it's not for the computer. I said turn the switch on the wall. He's a bit soft, it turns it on, works. The switch power the top outlet. And so, he was on the call with me for about five minutes at 3.99 per minute. He tried to come in and dispute half of the calls that came in Marcus. They were trying to dispute them. Well, we didn't get value out of the call. He didn't help us. So now I don't know about you, but you got to go through that whole nonsense, pay all that stuff, it really worth it. And then you could do a flat rate charge like $50 whatever. And then or you could do a per minute charge or you could go something called variable billing. I remember calling Microsoft when I was only, I'm going to say entering High School, freshman year. I would call them so much because they had problems in their software. I was using access and FoxPro. And I wrote software, and their system had so many bugs. I would call them at least once a week or so. But I never paid for anything. It always reversed my billing, because they never knew what the heck they were doing. This is a Kevin, Microsoft support. Hi, Kevin. So, I'm using Fox Pro. Okay. The standard professional. Okay, what version are you using? Okay, good. How can I help you? I have a question on reporting. Okay, I don't handle reporting, I just handled setup and configuration and compiling. We're going to get you over to that. But don't worry, I'm going to stop the billing for two minutes while we transfer the call. Gets me over to that department. And they had like four or five different billing rates. When they put the call on hold usually and you talk to somebody and they're waiting. It went from 4.99 or 590 minute down to 99 cents a minute. They call it the holding billing rate.
Marcus Hart
It has a good name to it.
John C. Morley
I shouldn't be paying 5.9. No, no, no, no, we don't want you to pay 4.99. But we have to charge you something. So, we're just going to lower it to 99 cents. Then I get a guy on the line. He's like, Can I help you? I said, Yeah, I said, do you know the answers? You're telling me because I feel bad. He says I'm going to lower the rate on this cool, because we're not really helping you. So let me just change the billing rate. One second. He had just a few codes, and we're back down. So, let's say we spent, I don't know, a couple $1,000 a month. I got that back on my bill. Their software had a bug in it. Something crashed. And finally, I said you know what, enough of FoxPro, enough of access, this software is very fluid. And nobody uses access anymore.
Marcus Hart
No, you don't hear about it at all.
John C. Morley
It comes with the pro version but who wants it? And Fox pro was good. But it had a lot of issues that I was writing function calls and he goes, what are you doing? I said, I'm writing a parameter. I'm writing a VAR parameter a lot. I'm writing a VAR parameter, which means that when I do the calculation, the result that I get is going to be passed out. So, when I pass the numbers in, the number that it calculates is going to return. Okay, return function just let me-- so you're passing the numbers? I said the global, the global variables. Okay, we don't support them. I guess you do. Can you hold on a minute? Let me get a supervisor. Hi, Cassie Elio something. Cassie, Ella. Okay. Your programmer? No, no, no, I'm customer service. Well, what happened? Okay, well, we don't have anybody can help you. So, we're going to do is we're going to take the information you've asked, and we're going to put it to our research team. Five days later, come back to us. We're still working on that one, another version is going to come up and we're going to give it to you free. And I actually knew what I was talking about. But think about all the people that didn't know what they were talking about.
Marcus Hart
Boy, they got screwed. I mean, that's the nicest way you can put it.
John C. Morley
Yeah, exactly. I remember there was a game called King's Quest seven. I'm not sure if you remember, the game was amazing game. And I bought it from a distributor. When I was in, I'm going to say, high school, probably junior year, had a friend that was in eighth grade in grammar school. Oh John, you got to get this game. So, I made a deal with the manufacturer. And the date was coming out like next month, but they gave it to me, but I couldn't give it to anybody. Until that date, I said we have it. So, I'm taking pre orders, cash only. Okay, how much? Well, if you want it from me, it's $400 or we could go to A-cat and get it for $300. And I said, I know that. But if you get it with me, you're going to get a guaranteed copy. It's 10 bucks more, John. Yeah, but you're guaranteed to get King's Quest seven. If you go there, you may not get it for the first month. You might have to wait two or three months. Exactly. Well, how about I just get it from you later? Well, I'm going to be out. Am I going to have that much of it? I only have one copy or two copies left. Oh, well, what if I don't like it, it was no refunds. They had a 900 number. No joke on the box. You call in for King's Quest, the Siara company and you could get tips on what to do in the game. And it was like it was a charge per tip. So, to call in, I think it was like 7.99 to get a tip for the day.
Marcus Hart
And that will make a lot of sense Being that like you know they don't want to give out too many tips
John C. Morley
7.99 a day, and you could only call the tip line, you could call it once. And when you called it, it was like, then they changed it from a 900 number to a credit card billing line. Those are always a little safer, because you have to enter in your credit card. And most of you don't have that. So, a lot of games go on with phones, unfortunately. And billing and things like that. But now you don't pay for those kinds of calls and 900 numbers are basically like extinct. They're still around. Yeah, some of the adult world uses them, but they're really not around for most of the public. Tech support. I thought that was going to be a great moneymaker having a 900 number. And when I say we have 900 bucks, oh, you have one of those numbers, well, it's not for what you think. It's actually a billable service for tech support. Oh, that's not the 900 I thought. You're thinking about what they originally came out for. We have it for legitimate purposes. Oh, okay. So, you just charge people then. How much is it? And I tell the price like, and I had different rates. If you're calling for installation help. It was like 3.99. If you're calling for printer setup, it was this. If you're calling for virus support, it was like 4.99. If you're calling for development help, I think it was 7.9. Nobody ever went there. But why just people would come into the configuration help and they really should be in somewhere other help or they come in for like understanding windows, and like you're in the 99-cent queue. Yo, I have a question about say, my printer. Okay, you're going to need to hang up, call back and go into the printer setup queue. Yeah, but that's 4.99. I know, you're just in general Windows Information line. Okay, well, listen, I have a quick question, like a goodbye. And then they call and they dispute it. And the credit card always wins. So, it was just very interesting. But listen, we have a lot of great stuff happening. So next week, we have another great show coming up. And listen, ladies, gentlemen, if you have an idea for a show here on the JMOR Tech Talk show, there's a jmor.com, click on the reach out button. And let us know if you'd like to be a guest, let us know Remember, it must be educational content only. We have some great guests coming up in September. We kind of took a little hiatus with guests on the summer because people were traveling but we have some guests coming up in September that I think you're going to really like. And also, be sure to check out many of my other channels which you know, I have lots I have Envision Networking on YouTube. I also have John C. Morley, serial entrepreneur, where we have lots of great things. And as I said, if you're a student, or if you're a kid at heart, and you like science, you don't mind being on your feet for two days in a row when you live in the Bergen, Passaic, Maurice or Essex County areas reach out to us and you can help us make history breaking a Guinness World Book record. But even if you are in a different state, and you'd like to help us out, we can use financial contributions to help us buy the supplies we need. All this we're doing as a community project. And so, there's no profit being made on this. But the exposure to this is going to really change the world because the last person that did this was in almost in another country. So, we're going to make history and you could be part of that. Where we break history, it's going to be two days, and the official Guinness World Book records will be coming Sunday afternoon to officiate the actual results. And then we can say that not only did the JMOR Tech Talk show air, but we actually had a segment where we made history in the Guinness World Book records. How many people can say they made history?
Marcus Hart
Not many.
John C. Morley
So, you know, we have a lot of firsts here. By the way, we're coming up on our first what is it, August something? We're going to have a little mini birthday party too. I know we have a cake we're getting. And we're going to have a little mini birthday party, because we're going to be one year old. What's the day, Marcus? What's our date? What's our birthday? Remember?
Marcus Hart
Well, you quiz me there. I wasn't even ready.
John C. Morley
I know it's August something.
Marcus Hart
It is August.
John C. Morley
Okay. Well, let us know what the birthday is we'll sing happy birthday. We'll get some cake and have a nice little thing. We'll have a candle with the number with a one on it and it'll be really fun. And so, we'll celebrate that and you guys can come and be part of us and I think it'll be a great, great experience. So definitely like our content, share it, tag friends, subscribe, smash that bell notification icon so that YouTube knows to show you content that we publish on the channel. And incidentally, if you have a product, you like stun box, visit our website. Let us know what the product is. You'll have to donate to us, send it to us prepaid freight and we'll unbox it or review it and we may even invite you on the show. We actually just did a review on a stapler that we bought at a local office supply, comparing the difference to why the stapler is actually worth more money, and how it has a claim, and we'll see if it lives up to it. It claims it'll never jam. Now we know what sticks but we don't know the jams yet.
Marcus Hart
It's sounds impressive.
John C. Morley
It's very impressive. So, keep watching us, ladies and gentlemen, we've got lots of great things coming. I guess we got to say goodbye, Marcus. I really don't want to but we have to. Bye, everyone. Have yourself a great weekend. Enjoy this wonderful weather. And be nice to everyone, be smart, practice social distancing, but don't drive your neighbor's nuts. You don't have to ask every person if they get vaccinated. Just stay away. We're all adults, right? So, let's be adults, and let's live a great life. Let's be happy and let's enjoy nature. Get out there and spread some great positive energy and good vibes. And Marcus and I will be back here next Friday, which is going to be the last Friday of the month, which will be July 30th, we hope to see you then. See you then, everyone, have a good one.
John C. Morley
Thank you for tuning in to the JMOR weekly technology show where we answer your questions about how technology is supposed to work and sometimes why you have challenges getting it to work that way. For more IT support and tips, just text IT support to 888-111, that's IT support to 888-111 and you'll get tips on technology. I'll see you next week right here on the JMOR Tech Talk show. Remember, jmor.com
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