DaveMason.com
ComputerTalk with Dave Mason
The official archive of all available ComputerTalk with Dave Mason radio shows. Spend some time with Dave. Listen to a full show or explore clips by topic.
3,475 unique clips. Each clip appears in one section. Historical conversations, not current advice. Full episodes remain available separately by date.
562 clips, strongest first.
Netflix’s move toward streaming prompts Dr. Dave and Evil Steve to discuss creative destruction, changing distribution and why media companies must adapt rather than fight every new format.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave asks what Microsoft and the wider economy had riding on the launch, and the guest answers in terms of helping small businesses and people focus on productive work rather than the computer itself.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Apple’s move to Intel processors brings news that users will be able to install Windows on a Mac. Dr. Dave believes the compatibility puts Apple on more equal footing and returns to a principle that matters more than the platform rivalry: consumers should have a choice.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave describes the Pre as a rare combination of Palm's practical interface with the visual appeal of the iPhone, then laughs at his own excitement and says he feels like a giddy teenager.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave explains why Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition may give Palm the resources and enterprise reach that its promising mobile platform could not achieve alone.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave calls bands selling downloads directly and asking listeners to pay what the music is worth a change whose historic importance may take time to become clear. He and Evil Steve work through the vanished costs of discs, printing, stores and label intermediaries, then ask why established music companies cannot build a flexible model instead of damaging the product to control copying.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Cottrell describes websites recognizing a competitor and returning a different version, from targeted recruiting pages to false travel prices and concealed trademark abuse. The passage documents an early form of personalized deception and why corporate researchers sought anonymous access.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Before the Xbox 360 reached stores, Dr. Dave asks why Microsoft would tolerate enormous losses on the original Xbox. He reasons that the console is a long term attempt to buy a place in the living room and eventually compete with television recorders, Sony and Nintendo rather than merely sell game hardware.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave explains the informal peering relationships that let Internet backbone providers exchange traffic and the fragility revealed when Level 3 disconnected Cogent. A dispute between large companies rippled through layers of providers until ordinary users could no longer reach parts of the Internet and their local support staff did not know why.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
The brothers are astonished to learn that Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is still being sold in 2008 for embedded systems and will finally leave Microsoft's catalog in November. They connect it with Tucson-based Artisoft and Novell, joke that they now sound like a 1991 program and wonder why anyone still needs the aging software.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Before Windows Vista launched, Dr. Dave walks through Microsoft’s internal Beta 2, manufacturing and retail targets and explains why ordinary buyers need not change plans around a distant schedule. He expects the dates to slip and observes that many people adopted Windows XP only when replacing an aging computer, not because a new operating system alone compelled them.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
The viral This Land cartoon becomes Dr. Dave’s example of the Internet’s real reach, where people can spread creative work rapidly even before its creators find a reliable way to earn money from it.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
An interview with John McCarthy takes Dr. Dave and Evil Steve back to the 1956 Dartmouth gathering and the origin of the term artificial intelligence. A headline about getting machines to think like people sends them through The Matrix and Terminator before they conclude that copying human thought may not demand as much intelligence as advertised.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
As Android reportedly moves ahead of iPhone in one market ranking, Dr. Dave emphasizes that both can succeed despite representing opposite models: many adaptable devices versus one tightly controlled system.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave explains the practical heat reason behind Apple’s move from IBM processors to Intel and considers whether Apple might offer its operating system on ordinary PCs. He says he and Evil Steve have admired the system since 1984 and would welcome the flexibility, freedom and choice, while both predict Apple will not take that path.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
In early 2013 Dr. Dave describes Bitcoin as virtual, international and borderless, then refuses to pretend he knows which way it will go. He sees tremendous risk and the potential to become either important or a boondoggle, finally predicting that it will probably be a little of both.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave and Evil Steve describe an early General Motors vehicle to vehicle system that could warn a driver about a blind spot or stop a car automatically. They immediately see a human problem inside the promising technology: if drivers trust the warning too much, they may stop looking for themselves, leading to jokes about horns, crunching fenders and digital feedback from other motorists.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dual-boot Android netbooks lead Dr. Dave to imagine a new operating-system contest, arguing that the browser wars had already improved browsers and that meaningful competition might similarly force desktop platforms to improve.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
As Hurricane Wilma threatens Mexico and Florida, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve send their thoughts and prayers before noticing that the story does relate to computers after all. They marvel at increasingly detailed forecast models and the ability to visualize how a storm may follow coastlines and changing air currents.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave traces how separate phones, music players, Internet devices and organizers were combined into the smartphone, only for users to discover that one device could involve too many compromises. The rise of tablets then begins separating those functions again, leading Dr. Dave and Evil Steve to imagine how a phone, tablet and headset might divide the work more effectively.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Months before Chrome OS was announced, Dr. Dave considers reports of a hidden Google system, argues that a customized Linux base would not be wholly new and says user-friendly drivers and ordinary-user practicality would determine whether it could challenge Windows. He contrasts that with the autonomy lost in server-run thin clients.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Reviewing AMD’s 2005 roadmap, Dr. Dave explains that Intel and AMD were moving away from ever-higher clock speeds toward dual-core processors. He warns listeners not to judge the new chips by gigahertz alone because two slower cores could represent the more important advance.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Previewing quad-core processors, Dr. Dave observes that dramatic hardware gains do not always make an ordinary computer feel dramatically faster. Software creators spend the new capacity on richer games, personalization and real-time detail, changing what the machine does rather than merely shortening every wait.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Symantec guest Craig Lane and Dr. Dave explain how internet threats were shifting from attention-seeking damage toward fraud, identity theft and social engineering aimed at ordinary users.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Browse by year, then month, to find the episodes from that month.
442 proposed broadcast dates, plus 2 undated entries. Dates are based on archive filenames and may be approximate. Some broadcasts survive as separate parts or incomplete recordings.
