I hope that's understood, bundle it up!
And a good evening to one and all.
This is Off the Hook, the program that talks about all kinds of high technology developments
and the telephone and the computers and how they all tie together and sometimes how they
all fall apart.
And we're here with you every Wednesday night from 10 to 11 o'clock, talking about various
aspects of that.
This is the Wednesday before the HOPE conference, and boy, this is turning out to be something.
When we first announced this back in, what was it, May, we thought, you know, there'd
be some interest in it, but I'll tell you, this is turning into a massive project of
something that I hadn't even dreamed of.
We've got dozens of people currently working on all kinds of technical aspects.
We've got people flying in from around the world to participate in various ways.
It's going to be very interesting.
Now keep in mind, we've never done this before, so we don't really know what's going to happen
and we're probably going to foul a few things up ourselves, but I think for the most part
it's going to be fun.
It's going to be an entertaining two days, Saturday and Sunday, and if you want to come
by, please do.
Stop by.
It's a low admission cost.
For more information, you can call 516-751-2600 and get all the details.
It's at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City.
Hackers on Planet Earth, the HOPE conference.
Do you know every single media outlet in the country has contacted us?
I mean, all you have to do is say a bunch of hackers are going to be together at a certain
time and the press comes scurrying out like I don't know what.
And not only in this country.
We've had people from Japan, from Sweden, Italy, Argentina, they're all out there.
It's something.
It really is.
Okay, we have a special guest tonight, a very special guest, and we'll be taking a lot of
phone calls because I know people have questions and I know a lot of people are going to have
questions for our special guest.
So, don't ring those phones yet, but in a couple of minutes we're going to open up the
lines and you can do whatever needs to be done.
All right, there's an article today, either on page 1 of the Times or page D1 of the Times,
depending on which issue you happen to get your hands on, and it had to do with the number
of Internet users in the world.
And you know, they're starting to doubt now how many Internet users there really are.
30 million people was the number that they were saying, but now they think maybe it's
more like 2 million, yeah, because I don't really know why, but they think that they've
overestimated.
So maybe there won't be so much of a push to advertise and gather this group of 30 million
people to get them to buy things.
So yeah, there aren't that many of us.
Very, very few.
We're very insignificant.
Don't bother with us.
We're just a few weird people using the Internet.
Not very many like us at all.
We're not worth pursuing.
We don't have a lot of money.
Really, really.
I think it's to everybody's advantage to make sure that that stays that way because commercialization
of the Internet is something that I think a lot of us fear, a lot of us on the Internet.
There's nothing wrong with bringing masses in on things, but if that means it's going
to be diluted, then it's a very bad thing.
So we have to keep the magic.
Hopefully that will stay with us.
Okay, we have as a special guest Bill SF from Amsterdam.
Say hi, Bill.
Hi.
And you're here for the HOPE Conference.
Yeah, I am.
And what do you hope to learn?
I just kind of want to see what people out here, the American scene, what it's about,
what people are doing, how it differs.
There are certain types of hacks that I hear that happen out here that we don't have at
all in Europe, and I want to...
Like what?
Well, like hacking central offices and programming services or manipulating it.
I'm not saying that I really want to learn how to do it, but it intrigues me.
Well, you're not saying you want to do it, you just want to learn how it's done.
Yeah, of course.
Which is what I think it's all about.
We want to know how the switches work and how the phone companies are doing it, if it
can be done more efficiently, if they're withholding information from us, things like that.
So in Europe they don't have as many services on their phones, is that the deal?
Some countries do.
In Holland they have call forwarding, it's recently been introduced.
It costs you every time you use it, it's one guilder, 95 cents, every time you use it.
But in the north, like in Norway or Finland, they supply all the services and they are
all free.
It just comes, if you happen to be on a moderate exchange like an AXE or a 5E or an exchange
of that sort, it's free.
And almost universally, where TouchTone is available, I know of no place that they charge
for TouchTone.
And we don't have many AXEs in this country, I don't think.
That's the Ericsson switch, it's very similar to the AT&T 5ESS, and it's a very nice switch.
How do you rank the switches?
I would put the 5ESS and the AXE pretty neck and neck, and everything else is, well, rather
second rate.
So you don't think highly of a DMS-100?
Well what I've seen of one recently, they've improved it a lot.
A lot of the bugs have been removed.
I only played with one for like a half hour and I wasn't able to drop in on anyone's conversation.
But four years ago it was very easy to call certain numbers and flap the switch hook and
click from one conversation to another.
Right, the old crosstalk bug.
I guess if you call it crosstalk, I mean you get it at full volume, and if one conversation
was boring you, you could just click the switch hook and get the next one.
I wouldn't want to use a switch that people are doing that.
Yeah, that is kind of a problem, especially on data calls.
I don't know if it would go, if it would actually cause any clicks or disturbance on the line.
Wow, so that's pretty interesting.
I have a 9x story.
In fact, I always have 9x stories on this program because every week there's a new fiasco
that they engage in.
And Bill, I don't know if phone companies out in Europe are as crazy and incompetent
as the phone companies here.
I'm sure if they are, you have a story or two to tell us.
But here, 9x is stumbling over themselves.
I don't really understand it myself.
But it seems every time you ask them to do something, they do the exact opposite at least
several times before they ever get it right, if they ever do.
Here's the latest thing, a very simple request as far as where to send the phone bill.
Now we said don't send the phone bill to this address, which is where this particular line
shows up, because the mail is not dependable and we don't want it to be sent to that particular
address.
Send it to the P.O.
Box instead.
So we sent it to the P.O.
Box in another town and everything was understood, we checked, we made sure that they had the
information correct and everything was fine, everyone was happy.
And then one day, this phone bill shows up at the street address but not with the street
address name and to be honest, I don't know how it ever got to the street address because
it had a P.O.
Box that was not the same as the P.O.
Box that we had given them.
It was a totally different number but it was the same town as the street address.
So it was not the right town as the P.O.
Box, it was the right town of the street address but it was a P.O.
Box but not the same P.O.
Box we had given them.
In other words, they made up an address.
They completely fabricated an address and it was a miracle that it ever got to us in
the first place.
And then, on top of that, they did it again, except this time they sent us a calling card
that we hadn't asked for.
They sent us a calling card complete with PIN and everything.
And they sent that to the wrong address.
Now this time, they weren't so lucky, it didn't get forwarded to us.
What happened was it got sent back to them.
And what do you think they did?
They wrote down the other address on this envelope and enclosed the original envelope
that had been sent to the wrong address and opened!
That's right, the calling card had been opened yet they just simply stuck it back in another
envelope and sent it to us.
We have a calling card that has definitely been seen by somebody else and it doesn't
seem to faze them at all.
I don't know who's running this company.
It's incredible.
And the really sad part is that the people here have no choice and it's high time something
changed because anybody that deals with 9X on a multiple line basis, if there's anyone
out there that has something kind to say about 9X and deals with them on, say, more than
three or four lines, please call us and tell us because maybe you're getting all the attention
and the rest of us aren't.
Are phone companies like that in Europe?
It varies a lot.
Usually it's more of a technical matter where they don't have enough capacity, they don't
have the resources to expand, and they may charge very high deposits and you could sometimes
wait years to get phone service.
In Holland it's pretty good.
It'll take you about a week to get your phone installed and they're usually pretty good
as far as the billing, though there are certain scandals appearing is that people are getting
calls or getting higher bills than they should be getting and it is believed that people
are clipping on, in some cases, people are clipping on to their lines like lower floors
in an apartment building.
I have this here all the time.
We get calls at this particular program from people that say, well, I never made these
phone calls yet, they're showing up on my bill and the phone company says if they're
showing up as direct dial, they have to pay them.
The thing with telephones, I mean, I hear from people all the time that have phone lines
coming into their apartments, not just into their garages or basements or what have you,
but they open up a closet inside their house and they can clip on to other people's wires.
It's that simple and it's very common to have that kind of insecurity as far as phone lines.
They have a good, the PTT in Holland has a good argument, is that in general it's not
that easy there.
The boxes are locked with good locks, all wiring is underground and in general it's
kind of hard to do it unless you know how to do it and usually you'd have to victimize
your neighbors above you and that's not too nice of a thing to do.
Where here, I'm amazed that it isn't a continuous problem because the wires go on poles, they're
very easily accessible, boxes are often not even locked and I'm surprised there's not
more fraud.
I guess part of a saving grace is that most people here don't know people outside of the
United States that they call all the time and that probably keeps it way down because
after all, that's where the real expensive calls are.
True, there could be a lot of local fraud that we wouldn't even detect.
The only way you detect is if you pick up the phone and there's somebody else already
on your line.
Well, doesn't everybody get an itemized phone bill here?
No, unless you ask for it and you have to pay for it to get an itemized local bill.
You get itemized anything outside your local area.
You mean your lot?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right, we're here with Bill SF, phone freak extraordinaire from around the world.
You've been in places like Romania, how's the phone system there?
Oh, it was mostly crossbar 5.
Really?
Yeah.
Actually, we're the real crossbar 5.
It just kind of reminded me of when I was a young kid in California.
I mean, the same type, you dial a number and it goes clunk and it rings.
Whose crossbar 5s do they use?
As far as I know, they were crossbar 5s that were used in the United States.
So when we're finished with our crossbars, we send them to countries like Romania?
Yeah, we don't throw them away.
Wow.
What's the most unusual phone system you've seen in a certain country?
Mostly in India.
Really?
It's nice for a phone hacker, phone freaker, because you can get just about anything.
Even systems that I thought were no longer in existence, you could find there.
Like CCITT4, if anyone out there knows what that is.
Can you explain that in a paragraph, perhaps?
System C4 is a two-tone digital system that digitized each digit and was formed by a series
of four tones, either a high tone or a low tone, 2040 or 2400 hertz.
And the numbers were sent out in binary.
A rather slow system.
But there was a lot of other national systems.
It would take months to fully explore what was there.
And there are also a lot of revelations that if you dialed 00 plus country code and number,
the usual way you'd make a call like any average person would, you would get a connection.
It would not be a very good connection.
But I found that by using, by doing my own signaling, that I could route myself calls
that were very, very clean, which led me to strongly believe that there was a phone system
for the elite, that is government officials and people that had to make an impression
on people abroad.
And the rest, the real lousy lines, were for the people.
In fact, it's very funny that a long-distance call could very often sound much better than
a local call.
I found that within Calcutta, to call across town, you get a very bad connection.
But if I were to make a call out to Bombay and then back into Calcutta, go all the way
across the country and back, it would sound better.
Weird.
Well, you know, there's little ironies, mostly in regard to billing in this country, where
if you call within a state, it's more expensive than calling across the country.
That is unique.
That is unique to the United States.
People find that very strange, and then I can prove to them that that is the case.
Because anywhere else you call, like within Europe, within the country, it's generally
very cheap.
Then once you cross that imaginary line, a national border, the rates go up incredibly.
Like five times, even though you, as the case from Holland to Belgium or from Holland to
Germany, it's the same system.
As far as the system is concerned, the border is only imaginary.
So are most phone companies overseas government-controlled, monopolies?
At this time, they are getting away from that, but historically, yes, they've been government-controlled,
but that is quickly changing.
In fact, in the European Commission, it's going to, by 96, I believe, it's pretty much
going to be a free market.
There will be competition.
Mercury, AT&T, MCI, all the familiar carriers will be able to compete for the market.
And there is planned competition at the dial tone level.
So if you don't like your local phone company, you can choose another one.
That's what we're waiting for here.
Some places got to do it.
Now the United States is unique with its phone system.
We don't follow the rules everybody else follows?
In general, the numbering plan is quite a bit different.
It's heavily dependent on operator assistance, which is something you won't find when you
go out of the country.
All right.
So how, as simply as possible, how is it different?
And how do you not need operators over there?
Well, you have operators available, but you have to dial a certain number.
As in Holland, you dial 060410 for an international operator, or 068008 for information.
You don't just dial 0 to get an operator?
No, 0 says you're making a trunk call.
If you want to call-
Kind of like R1?
Exactly.
If you wanted, like 020 would be for Amsterdam if you were calling, say, from Den Haag or
some place like that.
You dial 020 and then the number.
Right.
Okay, so now the actual numbering scheme, though, differs in most countries from our
country.
Yes, area codes can be of varying lengths.
Like five-digit area codes could be for small communities.
Each city, each town, each village is given its own area code.
And it is possible that certain areas could have two or three-digit numbers.
Two or three-digit numbers?
Are possible.
But I believe now that it is, in Holland at least, four is the minimum phone number.
And you would just have to dial those four numbers when you're in that community?
If you're in that community.
I was in a small town in India that had two-digit phone numbers.
Now how does the switch know when you're dialing it, when you're finished dialing, if the numbers
are different lengths?
Well, it goes into a look-up table.
You dial a certain area code and it says how many digits are to follow and it makes a connection.
So that's totally different where we're uniform ten digits everywhere we go.
Yes, although there are, Denmark and France and other countries are adopting a system
of a uniform length phone number.
Do you see that as a good thing or a bad thing?
Well, if I had a three-digit phone number and all of a sudden I have to dial ten digits
I'd be a little upset about it.
So for some people it's a bad thing.
For most people it probably doesn't make any difference.
Are you following the news of phone day in England next year?
That's going to be fun.
Yes, a little confusing.
Easter Sunday I think it is, 1995, where I believe you have to add zero one before the
area code.
Is that how it's going to work?
I don't remember the exact details.
There's a lot more digits you have to dial.
More digits, and this is an attempt to get uniform length phone numbers.
In England?
In England, yes.
I see.
Is there any country that has the same type of system we have at all?
With a numbering plan here?
Yes, besides Canada.
No, only numbering zone one, which is the country code for the USA, Canada, and some
of the islands in the Caribbean use that type of system.
How about Australia?
They don't use that system?
No.
Australia puts zero in front.
And another aspect that is almost unique, it may be in other places, is this concept
of administrative billing and paying a large amount for the connect and then paying by
the minute afterwards.
How does it work in other places?
Everywhere else you pay for your use.
If you talk ten seconds, you pay for ten seconds, or however many ticks or message units.
What is a tick?
It's a message unit.
Approximately, on the average, about eight to ten dollar cents.
And depending on how far or how expensive the call is, it's billed in those increments.
So the ticks can come very slow, like on a local call, or very fast if the call is halfway
around the world, or to an expensive country, a third world country, or like to Africa would
bring the ticks in at about a second per tick.
Wow.
And of course, if you call Inmarsat, that really...
Well, Inmarsat is kind of a very special case.
That's ten dollars a minute.
But fortunately, if you call Inmarsat and get the wrong number, you can get that thing
on the hook and only pay for a fraction of a minute.
You do that here, you pay your ten dollars.
And the other factor is, by billing by the minute, you always, on the average, pay for
thirty seconds more per call.
So if you look on your phone bill, on the average, you can figure out how much more
you're paying than you should.
Is it really ten dollars for the first...
Yes, it's ten dollars for the first minute, and ten dollars for each additional minute,
how they bill it here.
So on the average, every time you call Inmarsat from the States, you'd be paying five dollars
more than you should.
Okay, what is an Inmarsat...
What's the Inmarsat country code, I guess, is what I'm asking.
871, 872, and 873.
Okay, and how many did the phone numbers after that?
Let's see.
Do they have any codes or anything like that, or is it just basically...
Seven digits to follow.
It's one...
And all of them are like 1300, 1301, and 1302.
Okay, we're going to get an AT&T operator on the phone here.
We're going to ask this AT&T operator how much it costs, and we'll react in the appropriate
way when we hear the numbers.
Let's see if we can, first of all, get an AT&T operator.
102, 880.
That usually works.
871, right?
871.
Okay.
AT&T.
To place a call, please dial the number that you are calling.
We don't get operators right away.
We have to sit through this for a while.
Operator now.
I'm just going to sit here, because we don't have a touch-tone phone.
Sorry, your response was not understood.
It's because I don't have a touch-tone phone.
Please dial the number that you are calling now, or for assistance, say operator now.
Operator now.
Please hold for operator assistance.
I'm not used to this technology.
AT&T, how may I help you?
Yes, hi.
I was wondering if you could give me an international phone rate.
I'm trying to reach country code 871.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
Let's do that fine 9X line.
Yes, where is she really located?
I think that's our local connection.
Anybody there?
This is AT&T you're reaching, sir.
What is the country you want to reach for?
Okay, country code 871.
It's the Maryside service.
Yes.
Okay, hold on.
Thank you.
Ah, here we go.
874, we're reaching.
Okay.
Okay, got you.
Okay, that's the Atlantic you want.
Okay.
The rate at this time from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., are you there?
Yes, I am.
Okay, for the first 5 seconds.
$4.87 for the first 5 seconds.
Wait a minute.
I'm not sure I understand this.
You're telling me for the first 5 seconds it's going to cost $5?
That's what I said.
$4.87 for the first 5 seconds.
Wow.
And how about the next 5 seconds?
And each additional minute.
Oh, well, this actually is a second under a minute.
One second, actually.
And each additional one second is $0.98.
Fun facts.
Each additional one second?
Yes, sir.
That's more expensive than a 900 number.
Oh.
Wow.
Hooray.
And you're sure those are the right rates?
I'm looking at my computer, sir.
Maryside is on the Atlantic.
Those are the highest rates you've ever seen, right?
Not really.
Oh, really?
What's more expensive than that?
Going out of the country, over the Atlantic, into another country.
It's higher than that.
It's higher than $5 for the first 5 seconds?
Well, if you're going by the seconds, yes, it's more.
It's less, but I'm saying just the initial rate itself, yes.
Wow.
Well, I guess I can't really afford to make phone calls like that.
I'll have to find an alternative.
But thanks for your help.
Out there to that boat.
Yeah, yeah.
I'll wait for them to come back.
Thanks.
Boy, you weren't kidding.
That's even more expensive.
I find that very astounding.
Yeah.
You're even surprised by this?
Very much so.
Whew.
$5 for the first 5 seconds.
And then per second after that?
98 cents.
Per second?
Wow.
I mean, talking to Martians maybe would be worth that, but talking to somebody in a boat?
Why?
What exactly are you doing to warrant that kind of cost?
You're using a channel on a satellite, an actual transponder.
Single channel per carrier system.
But I don't know why it's so expensive here.
Because the base rate is $10 a minute.
Well, I think there's room for a little profit there.
I would say so.
I would be surprised if it costs more than 50 cents a minute to maintain that connection.
If that much.
Okay.
We're here with Bill SF, who is here from Amsterdam and here for the HOPE Conference.
And if anybody has any questions about anything having to do with telephones, however obscure,
Bill can probably answer it.
And as far as the HOPE Conference, too, if you have any questions about that, feel free to call us up.
And now our phone number is 212-279-3400.
But keep trying, because people keep getting kicked off by 9X every several minutes or so.
And other phone companies that are coming in as.
So if you have any questions, give us a call.
212-279-3400.
We'll do our best to answer them.
Good evening, you're on the radio.
Hi, I just want to tell you...
How do you always do that?
How do you always wind up being the first caller, even though the phone's been ringing all this time and people get knocked off?
Do you never get knocked off?
Well, I do get knocked off, but you just got to keep trying.
But how do you always wind up in the first position?
That's what I don't understand.
You got to just...
When you get knocked off, just keep trying.
But quickly.
But quickly.
I heard you the first time.
Okay.
Do you have a question for Bill SF?
Yes.
The first...
My favorite switch is the DMS-100, because the DMS-100 doesn't click like the number five EFS does.
That is true.
Yeah, you see, I don't know why the five...
I don't call the five EFS a digital switch, because it clicks.
He's got a point there.
It does click.
But...
Why does that mean it's not digital?
Emmanuel, we're going to have to...
I'm sorry, folks.
We're going to have to postpone our...
What's going on over there?
Oh, I don't know what's going on.
But anyway...
Is there a problem?
Do you need some help or something?
Sounds like some difficulty going on there.
The one EFS and the five EFS, I think, have the same architecture, don't you think?
You know, on top of all this, I'm getting beat by somebody I've been trying to reach now for weeks.
I have a special guest here.
I have a special...
Emmanuel?
Yes.
Come to my special guest.
Who is your special guest?
Do you know you're talking to a mentally disturbed person?
Well, I don't know.
It's not for me to decide.
But perhaps you can tell us more.
Hello?
Yes.
Can you tell us more about this disturbance here?
Disturbance?
What do you want to talk about?
Disturbance?
Does he call you all the time?
Yeah, all the time.
Constantly.
Without failure.
He does call you?
You're talking to all of New York City right now.
This is a very popular call-in show, so...
Do you have anything to say to the people of New York City who might meet this person?
About what?
What special things do we need to know about this person who calls us?
Without...
I think we better move on to another call.
Thanks so much for all of you for calling and making our evening so interesting.
Sure.
Okay.
I'm sure we'll be hearing more from that front any day now.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah.
I don't know if you've announced this or not,
but have you discussed anything on the air about the 1-800-CNN-TALK number?
Why don't you tell us what that's all about?
Well, this is some email I got.
I didn't see this in any paper anywhere,
but apparently CNN set up a 800 number for people to call in and talk.
I don't know if it was some sort of a wide area thing where everyone would call in and talk at once or what,
but they listed the number, and I want to get this right, as 1-800-CNN-TALK.
Okay, and what happens when you call it?
But they printed the number backwards,
and you get a very interesting connection when you dial 1-800-CNN-TALK.
Wait a minute.
What do you mean they printed the number backwards?
As you might understand, it's not TALK.
The real number they wanted was TALK-CNN.
Oh, okay.
They printed was CNN-TALK,
and everyone called up, and apparently...
I haven't seen anything about this in the major media, but...
Are you inviting us to call this number?
I think you'd find it amusing.
Okay, so we should call the CNN-TALK number.
That's right.
And see what happens when we do that.
That's right.
All right, we're going to try that,
and hopefully it's a good suggestion, not something that gets us into a lot of trouble.
All right, thanks for calling.
All right.
All right, let's see what we're getting ourselves into here.
Got to dial tone, okay?
1-800
CNN
TALK
This is the kind of information we need.
Let's see what happens.
We cannot accept this call for wild kinky sex with horny girls.
All right.
So that's what happens when you call CNN-TALK.
Okay.
So don't call that.
Call TALK-CNN instead,
and presumably you'll get something a bit more intellectual.
All right, let's go on.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, good evening.
Allow me to ask a question, please.
Were you formerly in USB?
I'm sorry?
Were you formerly in WUSB?
I was at one point.
On the Saturday night shows, trying to reach Albania?
We did try to reach Albania many times,
and today reaching Albania is not difficult at all.
All right.
No, I just, I was curious, and I want to commend you,
and that's pretty much it.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, thanks for calling.
Take care.
When you try to call Albania,
no matter where you try to call from,
it does stick in people's minds.
You ever called Albania, Bill?
Yes, I have.
You have.
Have you spoken to anybody there?
Not really.
Just made phone calls and hung up, huh?
Just made phone calls.
Okay.
Not hung up.
Have you called places, called the City Hall in Tyrania?
Tirana.
Tirana.
Yeah.
Was going through Greece.
I went to Canada once,
because you could not call at all from this country,
as much as you cannot call North Korea.
Can you call North Korea from Amsterdam?
Of course.
With an operator.
They cost you eight guilders for the first two.
Okay.
Well, I had to go to Canada to call Albania,
because I could not call it from here.
They may ask, why call Albania in the first place?
Well, I just wanted to hear what their phone sounded like.
I wanted to hear what the ring sounded like,
so I wound up speaking to an Albanian who worked at Radio Tirana,
and it was probably one of the most roundabout conversations I ever had.
It took about ten minutes to say that I wanted a QSL card
and I wanted to get information about Radio Tirana,
and I really didn't expect to get anything,
but a few months later something did arrive in the mail
with an Albanian postmark and all that,
and it was worth the many months I had to spend paying for that phone call.
So I don't have to travel to Canada to make those kind of phone calls anymore,
I don't think.
Maybe to North Korea I have to.
How about Vietnam?
Vietnam?
I don't think you can call Vietnam yet from here.
I don't think, but I could be wrong.
You can?
All right, maybe you can.
I'm not sure.
I do know from Canada, though,
you can call information in either Canada or the United States
up to 300 calls per month for free,
and here we can't call anyone for free.
So you can pay for your trip to Canada
if you make 300 calls to Directory Assistance,
which are now something like 85 cents each.
I see.
Yeah, so think about that.
Gather a list of names from people that you know,
loved ones, friends, that kind of thing,
and simply bring that list up to you,
charge all those people a dollar or something.
No, you have to charge them less because why would they use you anyway?
And you simply go to Canada, make 300 phone calls,
and come back and you pay for your trip,
and probably made a profit.
All right, let's go back to the phones.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Go ahead.
Hello?
Yes, you're on the air.
Oh, I was wondering if you're familiar with the C Phone?
The C Phone?
Yeah, what the C Phone is,
it's a system that works over a PC network
and provides a full motion color video with synchronized audio.
It's a 30 frames per second display,
which beats the current crop of digital PC-based solutions.
I was wondering if you're familiar with that?
Are you familiar with that, Bill?
Not really, but I've heard that there are quite a few out there,
but 30 frames per second sounds pretty good.
Yeah.
Over a normal analog line or is this an ISDN?
I think it's ITN,
but you can connect the C Phone to a standard TV tuner
so that you can view normal television signals throughout the network.
I think you can also hook it up to an SIB hookup.
The real thing that's really great about it
is that it once gave Opie a hummer.
I was wondering if you're familiar with that?
No, I'm not.
It's a really interesting phone line.
What does it cost?
Huh?
What does it cost to get one of these devices?
Oh, I thought you meant what does it cost to give Opie a hummer.
I wouldn't know.
You'd have to ask him.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, take it easy, dickhead.
Thanks a lot.
Well, a lot of interesting information in there.
Okay.
212-279-3400.
Let's go to another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, good evening.
Two things.
The first thing is that I'm sitting here.
I was listening to the show,
and I decided to look at my box.
I have a box in my basement.
I only have two lines in my house.
But I have a box in my basement,
and it has wires in it,
and it's six screws deep and six screws across.
I have a box that has an HL-HL on it.
Could you tell me anything about it?
It sounds like it could be one of those old-fashioned connection blocks,
possibly with a lightning protector built in.
Is it fairly large screws that wires are connected to them?
Yes.
Yes, it's a very old-fashioned type of connection block.
So you think that would probably not be connected?
Maybe your two lines are connected to it.
Well, I am using rotary.
But there's a bunch of lines connected to it at the time.
Well, you'd have to get a test set to see which ones are live.
I see.
Probably just your two lines, but who knows?
There may be some surprises there,
maybe lines that are left turned on,
and there's no billing for it.
You might have a free service there.
Or just other people's lines that show up there.
Happens all the time.
How would I know if it's somebody else's?
I'd have to listen to see if it was somebody else's line.
Well, what you do is, where are you located?
What state?
I'm located in New York.
New York?
Okay, dial 958, get their phone number.
I see.
Okay, second thing is that I don't know what that gentleman was talking about,
the previous caller,
but there is a program on the Internet called C-U-C-Me.
Uh-huh.
Are you familiar with that?
Tell us about it.
Well, what it is is they make it for the IBM and the Mac,
and what you can do is you can do video conferencing with it.
You can also get audio on it.
Well, on the Mac you can get audio.
I'm not sure about the IBM, but you can do a video conferencing.
In other words, you can see if you have a video camera
with the video board and the whole thing.
You can see through the reflector program,
if your Internet service has a reflector program,
or you can use one of the other reflector programs.
You can enjoy the video conferences that happens on the Internet.
So, well, basically that's it.
Uh-huh.
The program is at Cornell University, by the way.
So if you FTP to Cornell, you can have them send you the file.
And what's it called again?
It's C-U-C-Me.
It's spelled C.
Well, I'm sure we can explore it.
Yeah.
I have it right here.
Okay.
It's C-U-C-Me.
C-U, as in the letter C-U, and then dash S-E-E-M-E.
I see.
Okay, and what's the Internet address?
It's at gate.cornell.edu.
Okay, great.
And what I wanted to say is that if you're a ham operator,
for those ham operators out there that are on the Internet,
that's free conferencing.
That's where I eventually want to get to.
Uh-huh.
By the way, I'm going to take a picture of this box
and bring it to the hackers on planet Earth.
Right.
Okay, yeah, show it to us there.
Okay.
And we'll definitely be able to give more information, hopefully,
or somebody there will have one themselves probably.
All right.
All right, thanks for calling.
All right, bye-bye.
Take care.
212-279-3400, we're speaking with Bill SF,
who really knows everything there is to know about telephones
and switches and things like that.
Well, that's what most people think anyway.
You don't think so?
Well, that's what most people think.
Yeah.
I mean, I know nobody – it's too complicated of a system for –
One person to know everything.
One person to even begin to know everything.
Uh-huh.
What's your weak point?
What don't you know a lot about?
I don't usually ask people that, but –
What don't I know a lot about?
I'm a little bit confused.
I think everybody is on the ISDN and the new digital interface,
how the interface works, how the various layers work.
Uh-huh.
But in time that will come, but I think everybody's confused.
I'm confused.
Absolutely.
We're all confused.
All right, 212-279-3400, good evening.
You're on the radio.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't have you up.
You're on the radio.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Last week one of your callers gave information about where to buy
At the auction?
At the police auction, yes.
Went to the police auction and bought a phone,
and when I went to go get it cut on, they told me it was reported stolen.
And you bought it from the police?
I bought it from the police auction.
Well, I don't think the police really want to sell stolen phones now.
That's not a good thing to get into.
Maybe you should contact them?
You think wherever they got the phones and stuff from,
like most of it is from drug dealers and stuff,
maybe the drug dealer stole it?
It probably is contraband of some sort,
but you would think that the police department would take care of the legalities
before they start selling it to the general public.
That's really something.
I mean, you have a receipt, right?
You bought it from the auction?
Yeah, the papers they give you, yeah.
I would call the place where you bought it,
and just explain as you would with any place you buy something
that you can't use just because it's reported stolen.
Okay, I'll call you next week and let you know why.
Yeah, call us next week because imagine what a scandal that would be
if word got out.
Of course, word is getting out now.
If word really got out in newspapers and things like that
that the police were selling stolen property, that's kind of strange.
All right, thanks for letting us know, though.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
Nothing surprises me these days, but it's interesting.
Good evening, Yaron.
Yeah, I'd like to know what the T1 access
and the high-speed access lines are like in Holland.
Are they available, and what's the pricing of it?
Is it any different from America?
Yes, they are available, and the pricing is extremely high.
I'm not sure how it compares with America,
but any phone administration has the right to price their services
wherever they want to price them,
and it has no basis in reality what any service is priced at.
And also, what's the Internet connections like?
I mean, is it all public?
Are there free nets, or are there commercial providers,
or do the universities have free dialogues?
To access Internet?
Yeah.
At one time, it was just if you knew somebody at a university,
you could get an Internet, but now there is a public Unix.
It's the one that we run.
It's hacktic.nl.
Hacktic actually has become the nation's leading Internet provider.
How did that happen?
Well, we were the first, but now there's competitions,
but still a strong foothold.
Is it cheaper than in this country?
No.
It's not.
The access cost to the Internet provider, I understand,
is four to five times higher priced,
though the actual cost of what the customer pays through us
is not out of line.
It's probably about the same.
Unless you happen to get your Internet through a university,
then it's free for you.
Same as here?
Yeah.
Any other questions?
No.
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
I just wanted to make sure that sometime before the end of the show
you give a kind of a rundown on the HOPE conference,
how to get there, what trains, what times.
Yeah, I can actually tell you that right now.
That way you can ask me questions,
and if there's anything I didn't answer, let me know right away.
You should actually get down there a couple of hours before 12 on Saturday,
if you want to see the whole thing.
The reason I say that, the conference begins at 12,
but there's going to be registration.
We don't really know how that's going to work yet
because we've never done anything like this,
so it could be kind of crazy.
But also it gives you the chance to kind of wander around,
see who's there and talk to people and read literature
and things like that before we actually kick off at noon.
It's at the Hotel Pennsylvania,
which is across the street from Penn Station,
and that's accessible by all kinds of subway lines,
the N, the R, the 1, 2, 3, and A, C, and E,
and all those kind of lines.
Anything else you need to know?
How much does it cost?
Well, I don't know if we're able to give price information over the air,
but I don't think we are.
But you can call a number,
and they can give you all that information on a tape recording.
Is that all right?
Sure.
Okay, it's area code 516-751-2600.
But I can tell you this,
that it's not like other conferences where you pay hundreds of bucks to get in.
Okay.
It's not like that at all.
We made it as cheap as we possibly could without losing our shirts over this
because it's extremely expensive to rent out that kind of space in a midtown hotel.
Sure it is.
The reason we did it was because everybody said we couldn't.
Everybody said it was impossible.
After going to Hackers at the End of the Universe last year,
I remember I came back and I said it right here on BAI,
it could never work in this country because there's too many things that could go wrong.
And we decided early this, or actually late this spring,
why not give it a try?
Why not show people that it is possible?
And not only is it possible,
it's possible right here in the middle of New York City
where everybody thinks things can't work.
Well, they can if you get a lot of intelligent people in on it.
And we have a lot of intelligent people helping us out.
So I think it's going to surprise a lot of people,
both about New York City, about hackers in general,
the fact that we are doing something positive,
not just getting arrested or hauled off to prison.
A lot of people's eyes will be open this weekend.
I wish you a lot of luck.
I hope it comes off perfectly.
Okay.
We hope you get to do it for years to come.
Okay.
And hopefully we'll see you there.
Okay.
Okay.
212-279-3400.
You really want to tell that story?
Okay.
We have somebody that just stumbled into the studio
that has a story about telephones.
All right.
And I want Bill SF to comment on this.
All right.
Identify yourself.
Yeah.
My name's Razor.
That's your name, Razor.
Okay.
Well, actually, my name's Nick Chereke.
Okay.
Razor and Nick Chereke.
Go ahead.
I was just told this story today, actually.
It was in Washington, D.C., in the offices of the Senate.
And I was in a particular senator's office.
I can't give the name.
Were you hauled in front of a committee for some reason?
Oh, no.
Not personally.
It was a social visit.
But...
Hold on.
A senator invited you into his chambers for a social visit.
I was with someone else.
Okay.
A good friend of the senator.
It would be for me to probe.
All right.
Continue.
Of course.
I appreciate the comments.
No problem.
That's what I'm here for.
Right.
Anyway...
So here you are with the senator.
Here we are with the senator.
We're getting all cozy, drinking some club soda.
And he begins to tell us a story of when President Clinton came to the White House.
And two things to keep in mind during this story is, number one, in D.C.
You mean when he first arrived at the White House, right?
Right.
Right.
When he first arrived at the White House.
Probably goes there all the time now.
But do you mean at the very beginning?
Yes, yes.
When he came into office.
Okay.
Two things to keep in mind.
Number one, of course, President Clinton is one of the most powerful men in the country.
And number two, C&P Telephone is the telephone company in D.C.
Actually, now it's called Bell Atlantic.
They've changed.
Okay.
The vans still say C&P, much like ours still say New York Telephone.
Some of them do, yes.
Some of them do.
Some of them say other things, too.
And if you want to know what that means, come to Hope.
Never mind that.
Okay.
Continue with the story.
Okay.
So when he first came to the White House, he came in and he saw the phone system.
And in the White House, they had a manual switchboard with the snake wires,
so commonly referred to by operators as the snake pit,
where you have to plug in little coils into the little holes and connect your calls.
So it was manual switching.
Like the rest of us stopped doing in the 20s and 30s.
Oh, yes.
About that time.
And there was actually no way to make a direct dial telephone call from within the White House.
And so Clinton couldn't pick up the phone and dial some numbers.
He had to talk to an operator to get his call connected
and give his secret codes and all those kind of things.
Was that because of security or just incompetence?
No, I think just because of incompetence and lack of advancement.
I think the government's always been 20 years behind the trends personally.
But anyway, moving right along, Clinton was appalled at this.
And so he called over the person in charge of telephones for the White House
and said that he wanted a modern phone system like any other average ordinary American,
even rotary dial, as long as it was something where he could direct dial his own phone calls.
And at the time, the senator who I had lunch with this afternoon was there.
And Clinton was told it would take several months to get a new telephone system installed.
And so the person in charge of telephones went out of the room,
and the senator and President Clinton began talking,
and the senator said to Bill Clinton,
Well, Bill, here's what I would do if I were you.
I would go call that person back into the room and tell him that
if we didn't have a suitable phone system in here for a couple months,
that you'd be forced to call a C&P telephone
and put down your $150 deposit like anyone else
and start paying your monthly bill for a phone.
And so apparently Clinton called the person back into the room
and repeated exactly that and said he was going to call C&P Telephone,
who, of course, I'm sure would be delighted to do business with him.
And sure enough, within a much smaller amount of time,
they had a modern phone system in the White House.
And do you know what kind of phone system they have?
Well, I know it's a direct dial.
Well, that's great. That set the hours down, doesn't it?
But I'm not familiar with the actual switching,
but just in many ways the decoration of the White House has changed
and the styles of art and furniture,
and so now there's the story behind how the phone system changed.
All right. Well, Bill, what do you think of that?
Does that make sense to you?
Well, I always get the impression that government offices
seem to like their old phone systems.
I mean, I've seen step-by-step systems.
When everyone else has gone to the electronic or digital systems,
government offices like San Francisco,
they're the last ones to get rid of their step-by-step
because they just get attached to it.
But I find it really hard to believe that the White House was on a cord board
and not even the president could direct dial.
That does seem a bit odd.
I'm going to have to check into the validity of the story here
if the president had to make phone calls on a cord board.
I do believe for security reasons
the president of the United States cannot pick up a phone call cold.
Surprisingly, this is not true in all countries.
There are several countries where you can, if you know his number,
you can actually call him up.
Yeah, or you're in the office, things get busy,
people are short-staffed,
you might have to pick up a ringing phone occasionally.
I know we do it around here, so why not in busy executive offices?
One more thing to note.
One more thing is, I believe this is in the press,
but I think the dollar figure to convert the White House
onto a real phone system was several million dollars.
I'm not saying it's not well spent.
I was told another story of how the switching system was so inadequate
they couldn't patch certain conference calls from other countries.
So in one case a senator needed to talk to the president
who was elsewhere in the country,
and someone at the White House had to pick up two phones,
one to each ear, and relay back and forth
what the president and the senator were saying to each other.
So I'm not saying that this might not be a $9 million figure well spent,
but I'm saying it's something to definitely consider
where your tax dollars are going.
Well, we're certainly going to consider a lot of things there.
That's interesting.
Thanks for coming in with that story.
Sure, no problem.
I'm going to stumble on out.
Stumble on out and go back to Washington
and see what other filth you can dredge up from the inner halls.
212-279-3400, we have time for a couple more calls.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening, you're on.
Hi, Emanuel.
How are you?
Can you run down the schedule of events for the weekend?
Well, let's see, do I have a schedule?
We don't have the actual times yet,
but we've been running through the various panels.
I don't have one on me,
but basically they have to do with everything from cellular phones to pagers,
the history of 2600, the history of TAP magazine.
We'll be open microphone sessions where people can spout various rhetoric of their own
if they feel like it.
We'll be talking about social engineering and how that's done
and what's been done in the past.
And we'll have people from the Chaos Computer Club and Hacktic,
which Bill is associated with as well,
and various technical things that you would never really see addressed any place
but a hacker convention.
The difference between this hacker convention and the many others that take place around the country
is that this one is kind of more wide open,
and what we hope to accomplish by that is just to show a lot of people what hackers are up to
and not give away secrets or really elite information that no one wants to have leak out,
although it's really not that amazing information in the first place,
but basically to show the methodology that's at work here
and to show that hackers are not evil people, that we're curious about lots of things.
One of the major things, obviously, is the MetroCard.
We've been talking about that for many weeks now,
and we have quite a lot of information on it now.
I have to tell you that it's piling up,
and I think we'll have some hackers working in that MetroCard system throughout the weekend,
and who knows?
We may crack the whole thing before it's all over.
Would you know offhand what day you'd be, say, covering pagers?
I believe pagers is going to be on Saturday.
Cellular phones will be on Sunday.
What you can do is email to info at hope.net when the schedule is finalized,
which should be in the next day.
We will be able to email you back from that account.
That's if you have access to the Internet, obviously.
Otherwise, there will be a schedule at the door when help begins.
Okay.
Do you know if anybody's going to be covering surveillance equipment?
Yes.
In fact, we are going to be having somebody there from a company called Sherwood Communications,
which specializes in all kinds of surveillance,
pinhole cameras, microphones of various sorts, amazing technology,
things you just would not believe.
Do you know which day that is?
That's both days.
That'll be on display.
Okay.
So you can ask all kinds of questions, see demonstrations of these things.
Right.
And we'll have videotapes going, too, and, of course, the whole network will be up,
and you'll have an Internet address for two days.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
Will there be dealers set up, like with balloons?
Well, it's not a trade show, so we're not going to have a lot of commercial entities.
There will be people there showing you things,
and you'll have the opportunity to make inquiries
and to eventually obtain something if that's what you want to do.
There'll be a lot of people,
but it won't be the standard traditional trade show type of atmosphere.
It's going to be a lot of hackers trading information and giving presentations of various sorts.
And do you know how late it runs each night?
It runs from noon to midnight both days.
However, the network will be up 24 hours.
So if you're involved in the network, that's something that you probably stick around for.
And a word on that, too, if you're helping to set up the network,
that is if you are a technical person and you're lending your expertise
and you're willing to work through the overnight,
we're setting up Friday night, and we could use help as far as that goes.
If you're just bringing your computer, though, to hook into the Ethernet,
it's not necessary to show up until Saturday.
And again, you should show up around I'd say any time after 10 o'clock Saturday morning,
and the actual conference begins at noon.
And that's going to be interesting.
We're going to have a kickoff speech by Robert Steele,
who we've had on this program from the Central Intelligence Agency.
That's going to be kind of an interesting way to start a conference for hackers.
So I think it will be a lot of fun.
Do you know which day you'll be covering ham radio?
I'm not exactly sure what we're doing with ham radio, if anything, to be honest,
because there's so many ham conventions.
There will be people there that know a lot about ham radio.
I'm just not sure if there's going to be a panel on it.
And do you know what day the open mic is?
It's both days.
Both days.
I believe it's 6 o'clock.
Okay.
Is it basically going to be like one event after the other,
or is there going to be a lot of free time?
Well, as far as the panels and seminars go,
they're going to be running one after the other in the auditorium,
but at the same time there are going to be videos going in another room
and audio tapes playing as well,
and the network and various other things will be happening in another room.
What we're telling people is if you sleep or if you go out to eat, you will miss something.
You will miss something if you do anything other than be in that area,
but that's just the nature of it.
Do you know if there's still rooms left at the hotel?
I believe so, yeah.
It's the Hotel Pennsylvania, and you can reach them at 212-736-5000.
Okay.
I just mentioned the HOPE Conference.
You get a discount that way.
Oh, great.
Okay.
Hey, thanks a lot.
All right.
Take care.
I guess we can squeeze in one more really quick call, so let's go for it.
Good evening.
You're on.
Yeah, at the beginning of your show you were complaining about 9X.
Yeah.
I have the Suffolk.
Hello?
Yeah, go ahead.
I have the Suffolk County complete line for 9X if you're interested in calling that.
Well, why don't you give it out for the benefit of the listeners.
Okay.
516-587-1100.
Oops.
You hung up.
That doesn't help us.
You're going to disconnect.
Actually, I don't think that's the right number anyway because I think it would be an 800 number.
I don't think you have to complain to a local number.
That might not have even been.
That might have been 9X cutting him off, giving out the secret number.
Who knows?
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, Emmanuel.
Yeah, go ahead.
I wonder if you can explain to me or is there an explanation?
It's going to have to be very quick.
We only have about 20 seconds.
914 area up here in Rockland County.
Yeah.
And every night between 7 and 7.30 the phone rings.
I let it ring at least twice and I lift it up and there's absolutely no sound.
Nobody's breathing at the other end or anything.
What that could be is a machine of some sort, maybe a fax machine that's programmed to send a fax at that time,
a voicemail system that's programmed to let you know you have a message.
Well, and what can it do?
Okay, it's every night?
Almost every night.
Okay, and it's usually about the same time and the same thing happens.
This is what you do.
You call the Annoyance Call Bureau.
Their number is in the front of your phone book.
And you explain the situation to them and you tell them you want a trap placed on the line.
It will take a couple of weeks, but they will do it, especially if you call them several times
and you tell them this is very annoying.
And they will tell you where the call is coming from and they will put an end to it.
They'll contact those people and they'll say stop doing that.
Okay, thank you.
All right, good luck.
Let us know what happens.
We're out of time.
Bill, I want to thank you for stopping by and wish you luck in your future endeavors.
Hope you have fun here in New York City.
Well, I hope.
Okay.
And hope everybody else comes to Hackers on Planet Earth this weekend.
First time we've ever done anything like this in New York City.
It's happened in Amsterdam a couple of times.
Let's see what happens in New York.
I think we're going to make history.
See you next week.
We'll let you know what happens.
Take care.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
For Billy Bond, for the best, it's best, or worse.
I hope I can make a call.
But if they could, they would.
For Billy Bond, for the best, it's best, or worse.
I hope I've understood.
For Billy Bond.
For Billy Bond.