Also headlining will be brother Abbey O'Doon of The Last Poets, Juan Jinko Reynos, Sonia
Diaz, Luis Rivera, Zaid Mohamed and others.
Alombe Brath will provide commentary on Marcus Garvey's legacy.
That's Saturday, August 20th, 246 West 137th Street in Harlem.
For further information, please call area code 212-595-9523, that's 212-595-9523.
And it's 10 o'clock Wednesday night, time for Off The Hook.
We interrupt this program with a special bulletin.
America is now under martial law.
All constitutional rights have been suspended.
Stay in your homes.
Do not attempt to contact loved ones, insurance agents or attorneys.
Shut up.
Do not attempt to think or depression may occur.
Stay in your homes.
Curfew is at 7 p.m. sharp after work.
Anyone caught outside the gates of their subdivision sectors after curfew will be shot.
Remain calm.
Do not panic.
Your neighborhood watch officer will be by to collect urine samples in the morning.
Anyone caught interfering with the collection of urine samples will be shot.
Houses will be inspected for trace elements at noon.
Anyone who fails to display the required embossed black velvet Mexican painting of Alexander Haig on their living room wall will be shot.
Cameras and surveillance equipment will be posted on all lampposts and streetlights.
Anyone failing to attend required worship services on Sunday will be promptly arrested and dispatched to a re-education resort.
Stay in your homes.
Remain calm.
The number one enemy of progress is questions.
National security is more important than individual will.
All sports broadcasts will proceed as normal.
No more than two people may gather anywhere without permission.
Use only the drugs prescribed by your boss or supervisor.
Shut up.
Be happy.
Obey all orders without question.
The comfort you've demanded is now mandatory.
Be happy.
At last, everything is done for you.
And for those of you that were there, you'll know that that was the very beginning of the Hope Conference this Saturday at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City.
Hope 1 is certainly enough to do for now.
Let's just rest for a little while and survive.
Okay, we've got four people here that were heavily involved in the whole project, apart from me, that is.
And Bill SF, who was here last week from Holland.
Bill?
Hello.
How you doing?
Here again this week.
He's here again this week.
Still here from the festivities.
We have Chris, who managed the soundboard.
Sort of.
Sort of.
No, you actually managed it completely.
Except for Sunday.
Except for Sunday when you weren't there until later in the evening, but it made a big difference.
Little things, well, they're not little things, but all those details, like who's going to mix the sound, who's going to control the videos, who's going to keep the program running, who's going to keep the network running, who's going to handle registration.
Well, everything had a remarkable way of working itself out.
Well, yeah, except maybe for registration, which had sort of a remarkable way of not working out.
You see, we had this great idea that we'd digitize everybody's pictures, and that would be their main identity, that we wouldn't have to have names.
Just a picture, that way we know the person belongs there, and they can keep their privacy because they're already showing their face.
Well, okay, that's great, except that digitizing pictures and printing them out takes a little bit of time.
And before we knew it, we had a backlog going out of the room and into the elevator area of several hundred people.
And they were very patient, too, extremely patient people.
They really put up with a lot more than I would.
So then we had to do something.
We had to start making temporary badges, and a lot of those temporary badges became permanent badges, and the whole registration process just kind of fell apart at one point.
It was a very Woodstockian thing to have happen, I guess.
I know a lot of people got through our detectors somehow, but it's okay because we all had fun.
At least I think we did.
We all learned something if we didn't have fun or whatever.
In addition to Bill and Chris, we have Walter, who has been working on the Net for many, many weeks, months.
What's it been?
It's been a few months, but I can't take all the credit myself.
There are many people helping out.
That's true.
We had a meeting here a week ago at BAI where, I guess, how many people were at that thing?
No, there was more than 15 people here.
There was something like 50 people here at one point.
No, there was.
There were a lot of people here because we spilled out of one room and went into another room, and that's before the argument started.
We also have Andy from the Chaos Computer Club of Germany.
Welcome, Andy.
Yeah, hi.
First time in the States?
No, second time, but I was very young.
I don't remember.
You probably weren't a member of the Chaos Computer Club then.
No.
Okay.
What did you think of the conference, how it worked out?
It was quite nice, but I think you will make a better Congress next time
because you will have more experience in organizing things like letting people in and building up the technique.
Not only this Saturday where the conference already should have begun, but maybe a few days before.
Our Congress is now for 10 years, and maybe we have a little more experience.
You should join our Congress, and then you'll see a well-organized chaotic Congress.
Now, tell us about that Congress because I know a lot of people from Hope want to go to Chaos Computer Congress now.
When does it take place?
It's always between Christmas and New Year's Day.
So this year it's December 27th to 29th in Hamburg taking place.
To tell the truth, of course, most of the stuff is in German.
We have separately a few things going on.
We always have a discussion room where we have discussions with even politicians, people from companies, and so on.
We have workshops on special themes.
Most of the time there are two different workshops going on.
We always try to do it the way that when you are interested in some kind of interior, you are having the chance to nothing that you don't miss something.
The other thing is we have a big archive.
So we have photocopiers and lots of stuff there.
So people can just walk around.
We have a little own cafe where you can meet and have some kind of chaotic communication.
So our Congress is called the Chaos Communication Congress, and that's what most of it.
People run around like at Hope II and look, and maybe they get interested in something or maybe they want to join a workshop.
But it should all be quiet.
And that was here at Hope II.
I liked it.
It was very relaxing.
It's not like an exhibition where you always seem to get attracted on something or so where you have to buy something or however.
You can just walk around and talk with people and have a look around.
Yeah, that's the atmosphere we wanted to create here because it just hadn't happened before in this country.
We've seen it in Germany.
We've seen it in Holland.
And we certainly should have it here, and hopefully there will be more such things.
But you guys have the Congress every year, right, between Christmas and New Year's.
And what kind of turnout do you get?
What time of what?
What kind of turnout?
How many people show up?
About 500 to 700 people.
Really?
Yes.
Wow.
It hasn't happened in the month before.
I mean this year we had lots of consumer action.
We had lots of CD-ROM stuff.
We had some kind of software CD-ROMs where companies tried to distribute very expensive software by encrypting it on disk,
giving this disk for nothing, for free to the people.
You could buy them by giving some kind of a code and your credit card number on the telephone to the company
and getting another part of the code back, and then the software would be decrypted.
So we just published how easy it is to crack this CD-ROM, and this is an unsecure technology.
And we were not prepared on what happened then because for about four weeks our telephone rang all the time.
You could pick up the receiver, tell the people, okay, send us $10 or whatever to get our magazine where it's printed in,
because we couldn't tell all of them on the telephone, and then you hung up again and it rang just that time.
And that was about four weeks.
We were really not prepared on that.
And so this year there maybe even come more people because it's more another scene, being interested in software prices
and all that kind of stuff, and not our normal themes, which are more communication,
using computers as a communication tool and hacking around and stuff like that.
What kind of reaction do you get over there when you do something like this?
Do you get a lot of press attention? Do people take it the wrong way?
Normally the people like us but don't understand what we are doing.
Same thing here, yes. A lot of that we get.
So I mean, for example, by publishing this CD-ROM cracking, people said, oh, they've cracked a CD-ROM,
and it's wonderful that all this expensive software now gets for free to all those people, which I mean is okay,
but that's not what we wanted to talk about.
We wanted to talk about software prices, about shareware concepts, about a way of getting software to the people,
not only to companies where it's okay when they spend lots of money to software to have as a tool to earn money,
but also to people who use not software to earn money, who may use software to better the world
or just play around and just learn with the machine.
How many people from Chaos Computer Club were here at the conference?
We were four.
You hosted a panel with Rob from Hacktic of Holland.
Was there a lot of interest in what you guys are doing from the audience?
Oh, yeah. The people were quite interested.
I mean, they were all very sorry that they couldn't read our magazine, which is in German.
They bought more of our stickers than of our magazines, which I mean, I can understand.
Maybe we will have to prepare something in English, too.
But there were quite interesting people coming to us and asking what we were doing and what in our congress would take place.
And so, I mean, there's an interest in what we're doing, too.
And we should maybe get more connected all together at 2600, the Hacktic magazine, the Datenschleuder, which is our magazine,
to have more information interchange between this, because I mean it's no way for us to now build up an English magazine
or for the Dutch people to have a German magazine.
We should maybe work more together.
Yes, I agree. And now that we brought the connection back here, I think a lot more people will see that.
And maybe we can do more things in conjunction together in the future.
Now, Walter, you've been a part of the network setup that took place over the past couple of months.
Can you just describe for the people what was there?
What kind of setup was there, the overall scene?
Well, there was one machine where everyone who registered for the conference got an account on.
And there was a separate machine to run a news feed.
And there was one machine which took care of the networking, acted as a router for the whole conference.
And that all came about because people brought their own machines, donated things?
Yes, all of that hardware was donated. None of it was bought. All of it was donated and loaned for the conference.
That's the most incredible thing. People would show up with these machines, with sound systems,
with just the right thing that we need at just that moment.
They would come with it and we'd be able to throw it together and build something out of it.
Now, as far as the HopeNet machine that we had, we were offering a prize for people to crack it.
And I believe some people did actually get root.
Yes, one particular group of people cracked it many times.
They cracked it repeatedly with different methods.
So they got the keys to the Corvette?
Yes, they got the keys and the other prizes you gave them.
Well, those prizes were, we were going to get them a guest pass to Woodstock, but that fell through at the last minute.
We got them a couple of tickets to a Mets game, which I believe took place last night, which hopefully they enjoyed.
And let's see, what else? I gave them a couple of little electronic boxes.
Was there anything else? Oh, yeah, we gave them the chance to destroy a clipper chip, which was quite an occasion.
Went out with a real bang there.
So as far as the network and everything, would you say, I mean, I know things ran smoothly sometimes and ran chaotically the other times,
but for the most part, the people that came seemed to be into it.
Oh, yeah, the network was up and down.
Well, the internal network was up pretty much most of the time.
There were some problems with the slip connection to the Internet, but that's probably just 9X's fault.
When in doubt, blame 9X.
Yeah, no one really complained about it, and everyone there was getting stuff done.
Yeah, it seemed like there were people on about a dozen or so terminals in one part of the room that no matter what was happening,
they were always doing something.
Yeah.
They were always hooked up to something and maybe communicating with each other, even though they were sitting right next to each other.
But they were having fun. That's the important thing.
And I'll tell you, the media people, boy, they ate this stuff up.
I mean, they just were coming in there, filming everything left and right.
I mean, obviously getting permission first at our insistence, but you'd think they'd never seen a computer before.
It's like, these people, they're all together, and they're all on computers.
What's going on? The world's coming to an end.
Incidentally, I should point out, if anybody out there has videotapes of any of the media coverage,
please let us get a copy of it, because all of us were there.
So we didn't get a chance to tape it ourselves.
So any little bits that you might have, plus newspaper clippings of any sort.
I know we saw the New York Times article, and what a joke that was on Monday.
Basically treated us like a bunch of, I don't know, people that just want to make free phone calls and nothing else.
But I'd like to know if there are enough journalists, quote-unquote journalists, and media people there to come up with quite a bit of stuff.
So we'll see what they actually have.
Chris, you were mixing the sounds the whole time, well, most of the time anyway.
What were some of the highlights that you saw?
Because you were right there in the front row, watching the packed auditorium, which really was packed most of the time.
That's what surprised me, is how the auditorium stayed packed from early in the morning until the wee hours.
It was about 3 o'clock in the morning, and Saturday's conferences had just ended.
And people were like, what, that's it?
I'm like, I've been here for over 16 hours, guy. Give me a break.
Although I wasn't really there the whole time.
But you had to sort of sit through it, though.
Because it did go to lulls, but then out of nowhere the conversation would just go completely wild.
A lot of it was way over my head.
There were some really good demonstrations.
I don't think you saw the social engineering panel, but that was really something.
We had one guy there that just explained to everybody how he was going to try and get this phone number of a customer name and address bureau,
which customers aren't supposed to have, it's really for phone companies.
And he explained exactly what he was going to do.
He was going to call a particular long-distance company and schmooze them.
And he did exactly that. He used the right lingo and everything.
And then the person said, okay, hold on a minute, I have to check something.
And as soon as she put him on hold, he disconnected the call saying, well, if they put you on hold,
that means they're going to check with their supervisor and it usually doesn't work out.
So he immediately just tried a different tact and called somebody else.
Did the exact same type of routine.
And this time the person was much friendlier.
They got into a long discussion, and they gave it to him.
And not only did they give it to him, they said, do you need a pin for that, too?
And they started giving him the pin.
And he very wisely stopped them and said, oh, no, I got that, don't worry.
The audience loved that because it's just a clear indication of how social engineering works,
what it's all about.
And it's nothing like seeing it happen live in front of you.
That's the magic.
And then the other great thing is you can see it again.
Well, that's true because somebody was videotaping the whole thing.
We had a guy come in and videotape it, and we're very happy.
He knew what he was doing, too.
He did.
So I think it's going to look excellent.
There were a lot of people there that really knew their stuff, and we're very happy with them.
Bill, now, you were here last week, and we were talking about what was coming up in the conference.
What do you think?
Do you think it all worked out for the most part?
I think it started off a little chaotic.
Oh, yeah.
As time went on, things got more together, and, yeah, there were some rough edges.
A lot of things weren't working technically.
There wasn't nearly as much equipment brought as there was at the HEU in Holland,
which I'm not sure if it's because, as one group said, that people here are just simply poor,
or was it because people are just afraid of New York that you turn around and things get ripped off?
Well, you know, that's another thing that I think we were able to demonstrate with this conference,
that New York really is not such a bad place.
You can have something like this right smack in the middle of the most dangerous city in the world,
and, you know, people will learn the same things.
They won't get attacked.
They'll have fun.
I have to agree with this.
I mean, I was incredibly impressed.
I thought there was going to be all kinds of security problems.
Basically, I just didn't like the attitude of New York Hotel,
and talking to some of the employees in private,
I got the impression that the hotel we chose was one of the better hotels in terms of how you're treated
and the way it's done.
But as far as I can tell, a hotel is just a phony front,
and the people that run a hotel have to hide behind their suit and tie,
and it's just next time we could do better like in a warehouse or just have a better venue.
We could have real phone lines.
A warehouse would be good.
Yeah, the phone lines were a real pain.
The phone lines were terrible.
They were noisy.
Like when we had Mark talking from a prison, we had to turn the volume way up,
and when the volume was turned way up, it was very evident how poor the phone lines were,
and I could immediately see why there was no slip connection possible,
and I think that it's not really 9X's fault.
I just think it's a very crude, lousy PBX that the hotel used,
but maybe this is getting a little too technical,
but I just wasn't too impressed with the facilities, but this can all change.
Well, we're open to suggestions as to how to do it differently,
and of course it's not going to be for a little while.
This isn't an annual event by any means.
I mean, you guys over in Holland, you do this every few years.
You rest in between those few years.
Well, we did four years between the Galactic Hacker Party,
which unfortunately I was very wrapped up in a rather high-paying consulting job in Silly Valley.
That's Silicon Valley if you don't know out there.
And I had to finish this.
The pressure was on, and I knew this was going on, and people were calling me right and left,
but I still had to remain at work, and I was very sorry I couldn't make it.
But once that job ended, I immediately went out to the Chaos Congress in Hamburg,
and then later to Holland, and I liked it so much that I was to figure out any way that I could get there
and be gainfully employed and live there.
It was quite an improvement.
People were a much friendlier, tighter group.
Well, I'll tell you, none of this could have happened if it wasn't for the people over in Holland,
because first of all, they inspired us by what they've done in the past,
and then they came over here and helped us do it here.
So I think it should really shove it to whoever was getting on you about your trip to Holland.
It was your trip to Holland that made this happen,
and had you not taken that trip to Holland, which doesn't cost that much,
this probably would not have happened, or at least...
Anybody can go to Holland, and I suggest they all do.
Not all at once, but...
And come back, too, because Holland doesn't really need a lot of Americanization anymore.
Well, some people think it's a good thing, and...
You still don't have a Pizza Hut, right?
There is Pizza Hut.
Oh, there is?
In Utrecht, there is a Pizza Hut, and my friends always give me a hard time about going to Pizza Hut.
In fact, I had a...
Are we advertising?
In fact, I ate Pizza Hut pizza the other night.
In fact, mentioning Pizza Hut, just so we can make sure we're not advertising Pizza Hut,
there's this big commercial going on some of the radio stations
about how Pizza Hut is really screwing their employees by not giving them health care,
and it's something to hear that on the radio.
That's true.
In Germany and Holland, they are required to give them health care,
and they pay their workers more,
and I found very surprising, even though the propaganda here said the pizza was more expensive,
it was considerably less expensive in Holland, I can't say for sure in Germany,
but in the Utrecht place, the pizza was about 40% less than it is here,
and I never tasted it, but in fact, what I had here was my first Pizza Hut.
Okay, we're definitely digressing here, so let's get back to where we were at the conference.
Bill, I mean, you guys have had two over there, and now this is our first one over here.
How do you rank it?
Well, for something that I really...
In fact, towards the beginning of this, when we were setting up and people just weren't getting on the stick,
I was afraid, well, maybe we're right, this can't happen in the USA,
but then I started saying to people in a very nice way that this is a disgrace for American hackers
if this doesn't come off right, and I think that got people on their stick,
because at first there was the real crybaby American thing happening,
which the rest of the world, if you don't know out there, perceives Americans as crybabies.
That was happening at first, and then...
Why do they perceive us that way?
Let's get off the subject.
Let's get off the subject.
That's horrible.
Because it's some kind of consumer thing going on.
In our Congress, it is the way that when we set up the Congress,
we open the building and we have our three or five kilometers of cables there,
and the Congress starts itself.
It's quite interesting, because it's a game we're playing now for years,
and you see the Congress is organizing itself.
We don't have any people giving orders.
We just have a few people coordinating the others doing things
and knowing where the cables come from, where the cables go to, and so on,
and that's a thing that gets necessary when you do such a thing.
I mean, we don't take $5,000 from the people to have people pay for that.
It's a self-organizing thing,
and hackers are normally people thinking of themselves very much and doing things themselves.
At the beginning of this Congress, there were just about 200 people sitting around
and watching three people taking wires.
That was quite strange.
But by the second day, this self-organizing phenomenon became very apparent,
and once that started happening, I could relax.
I could actually go to some of the forums.
I wasn't a chicken with its head cut off running around the place
making sure this was right and that was right.
So people here aren't bad.
You just have to get the right spirit established.
We had to have the fire lit under us, and that fire is lit now.
And if this happens again and then again,
the next time it happens, the self-organizing phenomenon will come in even earlier.
This is probably the first time, I think,
those of you that saw this on TV and read it in the newspapers,
apart from the New York Times it is,
that there's been publicity about hackers that is not negative.
Hackers did something.
We weren't busted, we weren't raided, we weren't accused of something.
We organized something, and they came to see it.
So hopefully that will change some perceptions.
One thing I was really glad was that Mark was able to call.
On Sunday night it came as kind of a surprise
because we weren't able to work it out in the way that we were expecting to work it out.
And what happened was he was able to call to Echo,
which is the Internet site that he works for,
and they were able to contact us down at the hotel.
We called them and we sort of three-wayed the two phone calls together.
And pretty much during the last session on Sunday night he was able to speak to the crowd
and he got a very warm reception from the crowd.
We have not that particular exchange,
but we do have the speech that he gave beforehand on tape that we played for the audience,
and I'd like to play that tonight too.
It runs about three minutes long.
And then we'll take some phone calls at 212-279-3400
so that people can voice their experiences of Hope 1994.
Distinguished guests of Hope,
it is with much regret that I am unable to attend this most important conference.
I'm currently a federal prisoner being held in Schoolkill, Pennsylvania, a convict.
And while this fact remains difficult for me to grasp,
it was not at all difficult for the church and the prosecution to put me here
to serve as an example and to send a message.
Those are their words, not mine, words that I'll never forget.
You see, a guy can't just run around with a mastery of esoteric technical knowledge,
showing others how things work, where the problems are, and educating.
That would be in direct conflict with truth, justice, and the American way,
or in other words, deception, ignorance, and greed.
Oh, and let's toss in national security for good measure.
In the government's eyes, we should all be silenced.
A passive-submissive public needs to be maintained at all costs
so that technology can be used against us to control us.
I mean, it would be embarrassing if our nation's young adepts, hackers,
were able to accomplish as much as we have.
That would make national security a laughingstock
and cause wonder as to why such a useful and potentially beneficial asset
remains one of the greatest wasted resources in this country and elsewhere.
So the message I get from my sentencing and continued mistreatment
is one of fear and ignorance.
We're the government. We will make you suffer.
In this horrible and spirit-breaking purgatory, one has plenty of time to think.
I think back to my childhood when Saturday morning cartoon blurbs
taught us that knowledge is power.
They never warned us about getting too smart,
that then we'd be considered a threat.
We'd be made to look like criminals or even terrorists.
That most dangerous lesson we would learn when we were older.
Now, all of you in attendance on this most momentous of occasions
are here for a key reason, communication.
Communication is of the utmost importance in avoiding misunderstandings,
furthering education, and in working together to solve the problems we face.
Persecution and imprisonment of hackers is both mindless and pointless
and only leads to anger and resentment.
The former reaction on the part of corporations and governments
is deplorable and detrimental to everybody.
What makes us hackers is that we share a common bond.
We're explorers, all of us,
seeking to understand the mechanisms of technology in the world around us.
Only then can we understand where we've been and where we're headed.
In these difficult times, we must stand united.
There are too many real problems and real enemies to face
to be getting involved in the petty foolishness of inflicting damage
or scheming for monetary gain.
These acts are always at the expense of our fellow man
and a damaging blow to our integrity and esteem.
If your motivations are genuine and your actions are noble,
you can do no wrong.
Those who came before us sought to make the world a better place,
to use their knowledge to serve the greater good.
It is imperative that we maintain this tradition,
and we must never lose hope.
And those words spoken by FiberOptic, otherwise known as Mark Abene,
currently in prison in Pennsylvania, Schoolkill, Pennsylvania,
for basically being a hacker.
And he spoke to the HOPE Conference with that particular speech there
and also was able to call in live and actually take questions from the audience.
It was really kind of neat being able to do that.
I know that made him feel a lot better.
And Mark will be in there until November, it looks like.
So he's still got a long stretch ahead of him.
Okay, that was one of the highlights of the conference.
And we're opening up the phone lines right now for people that want to know
what the other highlights were or maybe can tell us what the highlights for them were.
212-279-3400, we're here with Bill SF from Amsterdam,
Andy from the Chaos Computer Club in Germany,
Chris who handled the sound for us at HOPE,
and Walter who was one of the many people involved in keeping the network up and running.
Good evening, you're on the radio.
Yeah, hello?
How are you doing?
Yeah, hi. I had a couple of questions.
First of all, what type of voice mail system do you use for the 2600 bulletin board?
We use a system known as Big Mouth, which is made by a company called Talking Technologies.
But I'll tell you, it hasn't been everything we hoped it would be,
and we're trying to move on to something better.
The problem is finding a multi-line system that can be a BBS at the same time as a voice mail system.
It's very tricky.
Huh?
It's very tricky finding something like that.
Yeah, well, I was on the phone with them today, and they told me it couldn't be done.
On the phone with who?
Talking Technologies.
Oh, so you knew what kind of bulletin board it was?
No, I was calling a bunch of different...
Yeah, well, the way we did it, we're actually doing a very weird thing.
We have a bunch of... you can run batch files in DOS on this thing.
It's a DOS-based system.
And what we do is every time somebody records a message,
it takes a greeting for a mailbox and renames it 60 times
so that it basically moves all these greetings backwards.
And it appears as if you're going to a message,
but actually what you're doing is you're being transferred to a mailbox
and hearing the greeting for that mailbox.
That sounds pretty good.
It's a hack, all right.
Yeah.
Also, one other thing.
Are there going to be any, like, videotapes of the different seminars that we're at home?
Well, considering that we videotaped them all, I would sure hope so,
but I don't know exactly when.
I don't know how it's going to be arranged.
We're still kind of recovering from all this,
but, yeah, we'll have details on that as soon as we start working it out.
All right.
All right, thanks, everyone.
Thanks for calling.
Thank you.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hi.
Hi, this is Rosa Pheel.
You're not getting feedback, are you?
Well, we're getting slight feedback.
You might want to just turn it down a little bit there.
Hold on.
Okay.
Just run over there and turn it down.
Okay, I got you.
Hi.
Okay, how are you doing?
Hi.
How are you?
I met so many nice people, and I met this really cute guy named Siri.
Uh-huh.
And I saw Phoenix on my IRC, and he was this big, hunky redhead.
Anyway, for all you girl hackers out there,
there were umpteen numbers of really cute, really smart, generous guys.
Yes, there certainly were.
Girl.
Uh-huh.
I felt very privileged.
Uh-huh.
Being an newbie myself.
Two things.
One, two bitches about the conference, and one applause.
Two.
One, the sound.
That thumping, I don't know if it was a heartbeat
or what you were playing all the time.
Heartbeat?
On the big speaker.
We were playing heartbeats?
I don't know.
It was some kind of either disco, but it was like this bass.
Well, there was music being played, but it wasn't always the same kind of music.
Sometimes people would play their own music.
Sometimes we'd mix it up.
The second day, it was like,
you've got to get people who know a little bit more about music.
Uh-huh.
Maybe something more mellifluous like Leon Redbone.
Leon Redbone, there you go.
There was no heartbeats in that music.
Definitely not.
No.
Just heart drops.
Anyway, second thing.
You should have had more zine people come.
Well, we wanted them to come.
We certainly invited them to come.
No, because the ones who did made out like a bandit,
and people were hungry for zines.
The zine scene is hot.
There were a few good ones, but they were like,
and the 2600 table was real busy,
and then there was this lady who was selling grayware.
Gray areas.
Gray something.
Gray areas.
Gray areas, yes.
Iron Feather.
Iron Feather Journal.
Oh, it's wonderful, Iron Feather.
Yeah.
It cross-references where you can get all kinds of other zines.
It's not just the hacker scene.
It's also the zine scene.
There are so many different ways of communicating with people.
It's wonderful.
I got a back issue.
I paid money for it.
I was willing to.
Uh-huh.
Okay, so those are the two things,
the sound and there should have been more zines.
Good thing, well, of course, the cute guys.
But, oh, let's see.
I don't know.
I think it was a good time.
There were good things.
Alt 2600 meeting in New York City because I want to go,
and you promised me that you would get a whole bunch of books.
Oh, I took my medicine, by the way, finally.
Oh.
I don't remember this conversation, but.
When is Alt 2600 going to be?
And can you, like, bring to the next meeting a list of books
and where I can get them at, bookstores where I can get them at,
so I can start learning things, very basic elementary things.
And can you, like, write a primer for us, wannabes and newbies?
Well, I don't think we can do all that by the next meeting,
but we can certainly come up with some pointers.
Okay, so you'll be there.
When and where is the meeting for all of us munchkins who know nothing from nothing?
Okay, for all the munchkins out there,
the meetings take place on the first Friday of every month at City Corps Center
between 5 and 8 p.m.
It's right there in the lobby by the pay phones.
Thanks for calling and thanks for coming.
Glad you had fun.
And let's go to another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi, Manuel.
I just wanted to say that.
Oh, you're slipping.
You're number three this time.
You're always number one.
Now you're number three.
I just want to compliment you on a very good conference.
Well, thank you.
Keep up the good work.
I compliment you on making the New York Times.
Oh, thank you.
I don't know if I should, though.
On the network, I noticed that you could not.
I sent email over the Internet to a friend of mine in another site.
It never got there.
I sent email to my address.
It never got there.
Wait, you sent email to yourself and it never got there?
No, my address in my Internet mail site.
You sent.
Okay, wait a minute.
You sent mail to what?
To my.
I have an Internet address.
Well, where did you send it from then?
From the Hope Conference.
Oh, you sent mail from the Hope Conference to the Internet address.
Right, and it never got there.
Oh, Walter, I think you're the person we should ask about this.
Should that have worked?
Well, I think after the first hack.
The first hack involved using a mail program to get root.
So after that, we disabled mail, I believe.
We disabled mail?
Oh, boy.
There was nowhere to patch it.
So we had to disable it.
So for security purposes, we had to disable mail.
I see.
Right, so nobody sent mail.
Apparently not.
So if any secret messages went out, I guess they came right back.
But, of course, the system doesn't exist anymore, so we wouldn't have a record of that either.
Why don't you read my article?
Well, I don't have that.
You mean the article that quotes you in the Times?
Nope.
I don't have it with me, but I can tell anybody that wants to see it that it's on page B3 of Monday's New York Times.
Section.
What?
Metro section.
Well, it's the B part that connotates that.
Just tell everybody it was a very distorted story.
Well, yeah.
They did talk to you, didn't they?
Yes, they did.
All right, well, I could explain something.
Tape of the Channel 2 or Channel 4 or whatever.
Uh-huh.
You say you have a tape of that?
No, I say if anybody does, I'd like to see it.
Well, yes, we'd all like to see it, so hopefully somebody will send us a copy or let us know how to get one.
All right, thanks for calling.
And thanks.
Keep up the good work.
Okay.
Okay.
Rich the Rebel, one of the many stars of Hope 94.
Shining stars, yeah.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
Um, okay, a delay.
I'll get used to it.
This is Walking Owl.
Hello, Walking Owl.
Yeah, I was also in the article, too.
Oh, yes, I do remember.
I do remember.
Yeah, I think you were just listed, though, right?
Yeah, yeah, I was talking to her.
I think she just put it in because she liked my handle.
Um, yeah, I had a good time.
Things were a little disorganized, I thought.
Well, these are hackers, don't forget.
Oh, yeah, well, sometimes people don't get their stuff together, especially for a first conference.
I wish it was more, um, I guess for a next conference, maybe next year, it should have more technical stuff, you know?
Like lectures on how to do this, not just talk about issues.
Uh-huh.
Well, I think we showed some technical things.
I know the boxing seminar was pretty technical.
Um, maybe if it was spread out over three days or longer, this way there would be more room for stuff.
People are shaking their heads and rolling their eyes heavenward.
I don't know.
We would need more people to do something like that because this really took a lot out of a lot of people.
I'm sorry, we'd need what?
We would need to get paid, basically.
Yeah, we'd need to get paid, and we'd need some serious medical assistance.
Definitely.
And a lot of no-dos.
Um, yeah, but maybe I guess for next conferences have things going on simultaneously and hope that people won't find too many conflicts.
Yeah, well, we did have, you know, we had the network.
We had the video room.
We had the, you know, the actual lectures going on all at the same time.
I don't know if we really want to have more than one lecture going on at once because apart from the organizational nightmare,
the problem with that is that you do miss things that you really shouldn't miss.
And I would say it's probably better to extend it over a longer period of time if that's the case.
Some people, I met somebody who was in Italy and was familiar with all the Italian BBS busts
and didn't get a chance to speak about it because everything went so late.
So that was kind of a bummer.
Yeah, that was.
I know who you're talking about, and I'm really sorry about that.
Things did get lost in the shuffle.
We tried to have an open mic, but, you know, some of the panels just ran so long,
and we weren't able to make a smooth transition between a lot of them
because we wanted to finish before, you know, 2 a.m., and it didn't always work out that way.
So, yeah, there were some things that just didn't get done the way we wanted to do them.
Perhaps the open mic was good that it was canceled because there were a couple of psychobattlers there.
Well, you know, that's part of the whole process, people that really want to talk about their particular issues.
We did have a couple of open mic sessions, but they weren't very long.
All right, thanks for your call.
Wait, one other thing.
My mail did get out to people.
Your what?
Most of my mail did get out to people.
It did, okay.
When did you send it?
I was sending it all day.
I would manage to get on, like, every hour, and, like, I bombarded somebody with, like, 50 messages.
I'm about, oh, this is what's going on, and here it is.
And he got most of them all in opposite order, like ones I sent Sunday would come first.
Okay.
Some came later, but the Internet's like that.
But, yeah, definitely it was a great concert.
I hope to see it next year, even bigger.
Okay, well, thanks for calling.
Okay.
Take care.
Did he say it was a great concert?
Yeah.
He did, didn't he?
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on the radio.
Hello, Emanuel.
Jim, you know, we owe you a lot.
You really helped us with this conference more than most people combined with helping us print things up, just helping us organize and do registration.
It's incredible how, you know, someone that you hadn't talked to two weeks ago ever is able to come through like this.
Well, Flattery will get you help next year.
Why does everybody say next year?
Well, we figure if we say next year, we'll get one done in three or four years.
Yeah.
If we said next month, we should be getting one done next year.
A couple items of interest to the crowd listening, hello to everybody who's there.
About the request from someone earlier about printing up a primer, we have a contact, an editor at John Wiley, who was at the conference who seemed extremely gung-ho.
So if there's anyone interested, either listening or there, who wants to write a primer on just about anything that would be covered by 2600 Magazine or that was covered by the conference, we'll put you in touch with that person.
Okay.
The numbers are not quite in on how many people showed up.
We are sitting on a little over 800 registration forms, and we've done some calculations that go with our initial estimate on the forms that were accidentally, inadvertently, or due to missed connections thrown out.
Our estimates of approximately 1,200 to 1,300 people are probably very accurate.
As far as the paying versus non-paying versus staff breakdown, we're not exactly sure.
We're pretty sure that there were about 25 media people there.
I think there were a lot more than that, because I kept tripping over them.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
This is the 25 that were good enough to show up and identify themselves.
Everything from Money Magazine, a couple people from Wired, a couple of freelance stringers, Details Magazine, of course you know, Channel 11, Channel 4, WNBC in New York, a couple others.
I think Channel 5 was there, too.
That's possible.
Pam, unfortunately, is out of the house, and I can't find her voluminous notes.
Uh-huh.
But was it what you expected it to be?
Was it what I expected it to be?
It was very interesting.
It really was.
Having had some experience with large gatherings in the past, I'm fond of saying crowd control is my life.
For years, I used to be a marshal at the Fivero Bike Tour, which is a 20,000-person event, and I also marshaled Hands Across America and a couple other large events.
It was refreshing to see something so small, but that's only because my experience was with gigantic things.
It was really fascinating.
I attended a number of the—what was the official term for them?
Lectures, forums on the second day?
Forums, seminars.
Yeah, and they were quite fascinating.
I picked up a few good things, and all in all, I think we can do nothing but get better.
I was kind of disappointed that on the second day, the people who were selling the Slackware Linux did not show up, as did not a number of other people who were there either giving out literature or vending a product from the first day.
Well, it was kind of nice to have some floor space, though, that we could actually move in.
That's true, too. That's true, too.
That's about it.
Next year we'll do better. We have plenty of ideas about registration and preregistration and how to do it better without having the computer give a big delay.
I do happen to have the Times article within reach, so if you want me to prove why you have a radio show and I don't, I could read it.
Well, I don't know if I could bear listening to that again, because we read it at the conference.
Yes, it was painful.
Very painful. For those of you who want to see it, though, it's in Monday's Times, page B3.
We may post an ASCII file to Alt 26.
That's fine, yeah. So if you want to read it on the net, that's...
That's what I wanted to mention to you.
I don't know if those other newsgroups' announcements about the HOPE conference, etc., are going to be up for a while, but if they are, I think an online discussion slash post-mortem might be useful.
Uh-huh. Well, those kind of things will just sort of organize themselves. There'll be those discussions going on in very many places.
I'm sure, you know, the Voice Bulletin Board and Alt 2600 and various other places as well.
Well, I suggest that they stay off Alt 2600, because that's a damn long thing to fend through.
Put it on one of the other ones that were dedicated to the HOPE conference.
Okay, listen, thanks again for your help.
Sure.
And stay in touch.
We'll be talking with you shortly.
Okay, take care.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
That was Jim, one of the many, many volunteers that came in and put in an incredible amount of hours towards keeping this conference going.
You know, Cheshire Catalyst came all the way from Florida, and he spent most of his time working in registration.
That was the guy that, if you were there, he would bellow out your names, you know, in a huge, extremely loud voice.
I never knew he could do that. I'll have to keep him in mind for next time.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Good evening, and this is Steve from Brooklyn.
I'm sorry I didn't make the conference this time around.
And hello to Bill SF, whose report I heard on one of the all-news stations here in New York.
I just have to walk away from my radio or I'm going to have a problem.
And I thought I would relate.
This is very apropos after hearing fiber optics recording that you played before.
I thought I would relate a little incident that occurred to me just this past week with regard to being an innovator-slash-educator,
which, of course, we all know is the true meaning of hacker.
I work for one of the multinational financial institutions here in Brooklyn whose commercials you hear on the radio,
and every time you hear the music that comes on before you hear the commercial, you probably go, oh, them again.
If you know who them are, if you listen to New York radio, I won't say who them are, but if you know the music, you know who I'm talking about.
Well, regardless of who them are, what experience happened to you?
Well, they have an Optel Aspen system that they use for their voicemail, and they recently performed an upgrade on the system.
Two days after they performed the upgrade, the system had some sort of malfunction.
And one night, I happened to be on call. I'm a system administrator, and I happened to be on call this week.
And my beeper goes off, and I call in, check my voicemail, see what's up.
And I'm trying to leave people voicemails to instructions as to what to do to solve the problem they reported, and I get this.
Voice comes on, and the voice said,
You have reached the portion of the software that is of interest to the system manager.
Please leave a detailed message describing what you were doing on the system at the time you got this message, and leave it to mailbox XYZ.
And they gave a mailbox number.
Okay, well, it's just a canned message that Optel provides, and you leave it, and it goes to the Optel system administrator box.
Well, I did that.
I followed the directions of the machine.
The machine told me what to do. I did what the machine asked me to do.
And when I did that, I left them a message telling them what I was doing.
In the middle of me leaving them a message, I got that same recording again.
So I hung up, and I tried again.
I said, All right, this is my second attempt. Let's see if I can make it fail again.
Okay, well, needless to say, they got their voicemail problem worked out, and I was away from the office for the next week.
I was away on training in Massachusetts.
When I came back, I found no less than four messages from the human resources department of my employer.
Please come and see us.
It's about a voicemail message you left.
And I thought, Uh-oh, what did I do?
Well, the person who runs the voicemail system, his first, second, and maybe third language is not English,
because he totally misinterpreted the message that I left on his system administrator mailbox.
And he interpreted my trying to help them figure out what was wrong with the system as trying to break into the system,
because his very first question to me was, How did you get this mailbox, and who gave you the password?
I said, Password? What password? I don't have any password, which was true.
They didn't give me the password to the thing.
He just said, Leave a message to this guy's mailbox and be done with it.
I was up there for an hour and a half trying to explain to them how this came to be and why I was there.
Why didn't you just show them what you did?
The mailbox was gone. They had taken it away.
I tried that.
Well, this is a pretty standard reaction when people do things like that.
That's true.
No matter what the language barrier might be.
Usually it's just a logic barrier.
Oh, that's right.
But now I'm sure the eye of this institution is now upon me.
And being that I work in a rather high-security computer area, well, who knows? We may be watching.
Well, we wish you luck.
Well, thank you.
And everybody's talking about having the conference next year.
I think you should have it next year.
Okay, well, we just have to figure out how to double our strength and come up with 48-hour days.
Maybe now that people have seen that you can do it once, the people who didn't help you out this time will be more likely to do it next time.
Yeah, maybe. Maybe so. We'll see about that.
Those people out there that didn't help out, listen up.
Unfortunately, I'm one of them, but my weekends have been booked up all summer.
I've been doing software upgrades of my own.
Okay, we'll start X-ing out some weekends in the future.
I'm going to do just that.
Okay, thanks for calling.
All right.
See if we can squeeze in one more phone call.
Good evening. You're on the radio.
Yeah, hi.
How you doing, Emanuel?
How you doing?
Okay, I wanted to say a few things.
I wanted to say it was too bad that Bernie S.'s phone got stolen and his hard drive, because a lot of people just came for the cellular stuff.
Second, I heard one person got arrested.
I wanted to know if that was true, if you knew.
Well, that was something that I've only heard a couple of rumors about, that somebody was detained for some kind of cellular incident.
But again, it was very, very quiet on both ends, so I don't really know what actually happened.
But as soon as I find out, I will let everybody know.
Okay, also, do you know, do we know if there were any undercovers there?
Oh, I'm sure there were many undercovers there.
I mean, do we know?
I mean, did we see, did anyone actually see?
I heard plenty of rumors, but I didn't see anything substantiated.
But I mean, you know, it's the very nature of an undercover operation to go to a thing like that.
Okay, one last thing.
I tried to telnet out from Hope a number of times, and I never got through to any of the sites.
Were a lot of the terminals not telnetting out?
All right, Walter, this is one of yours.
Well, the network was up and down repeatedly, so you may have just been very unlucky and tried to telnet out when it was down.
Right.
The slip was up and down often.
Right.
And let me just say, it was due to NYNEX.
I get the same thing at home with my slip, so.
Okay, well, I think it turned out really great, and I hope there is one next year.
Okay.
This is Ruben from the Bronx.
Okay, well, thanks very much for coming and for calling.
Okay.
And we'll see you later.
Bye-bye.
And that's going to pretty much do it for our show here tonight.
I want to thank you, Bill, for coming from Amsterdam and helping out, putting on a really good seminar on boxing and all kinds of other things.
It was fun.
Maybe we'll see you in this country again sometime soon.
Sure will.
All right, Chris, thanks go to you for an excellent job mixing the sound, something a lot of us take for granted,
but, you know, making sure certain things happen at the right time is the key to a success.
Yeah, yeah.
I guess you hear it all the time.
Walter, on behalf of all the network people, of which there are too many to name here, but, gosh,
I guess we've got to thank all you guys for making the technical aspects possible.
You're welcome.
Okay.
I assume you're speaking on behalf of all of them.
Yes, on behalf of everyone who worked on the network.
Okay.
You're welcome.
And, Andy, on behalf of all the European hackers that showed up, were there a lot of European hackers?
About 20.
About 20.
That's pretty good.
That's more than any other event in this country has drawn.
I mean, the Congress was not hackers of USA.
It was hackers of planet Earth, so we had to show up.
There were even people from Argentina there.
I was very surprised.
Was anybody from Australia there?
I know some Australians said they were going to show up.
No.
Okay.
I didn't hear myself.
Okay.
We're going to close tonight with the way we close the conference.
And if you were at the conference, you might remember this.
And that's what we're not going to blow up a clipper chip.
No.
That's not what we're going to do.
We're going to play the message from President Clinton that we have
and go out the way the Democratic National Convention went out,
which I think is very apropos for this.
So, again, from all of us here at Off The Hook, thanks for listening,
and thanks for coming to Hope, thanks for being a part of this whole thing,
and we'll do it again sometime.
Now, President Clinton.
My fellow Americans, I end tonight where it all began for me.
I still believe in a place called hope.
God bless you, and God bless America.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Here's the news tonight.
Health care reform could face a death of a thousand cuts
as the gulf between Democrats and Republicans grows wider.
The White House resorts to some old-fashioned arm-twisting on the crime bill.
And in New York, we'll hear some revealing tapes
as anti-abortionists advocate the executions of doctors who perform abortions.
With these and other stories, I'm Jose Santiago in New York
with Verner A.B. Brown in Washington,
This is the news for Wednesday, August 17, 1994.
First to Washington for the Pacifica National News.
A friend of Bill, Roger Altman, has resigned, a casualty of the Whitewater hearings.
The Deputy Treasury Secretary had been criticized for misleading Congress
on the number of contacts made with Clinton officials over Whitewater.
Altman had testified to only one contact when other evidence indicated at least 40.
Treasury Department's counsel, Gene Hanson, who contradicted Altman's testimony,
is expected to resign later this week.
Security forces in the small southern African kingdom of Lesotho have shot and killed four people.
They opened fire on a crowd protesting the ousting of the elected government by the king.
James Lorimer reports from Johannesburg.
In an early morning announcement on state radio,
Lesotho's king, Letsie III, announced he was dissolving the elected government.
The king said he was acting after being petitioned by what he said were thousands of his people.
But thousands of government supporters took to the...