I can't really stand to listen to it, because it simply is... but it's very
enjoyable, very well written, people love it. What does it mean that they like
music that really was part of the official propaganda of regimes? They
would be horrified. Leon Botstein, conductor and musical director of the
American Symphony Orchestra, talks about music and politics, Bruckner, the Nazis,
and conducting, on January 1st at 6 p.m. on WBAI 99.5 FM.
Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the U.S., will be our special guest on
the December 29th edition of Building Bridges, your community labor report. With
so many threatening changes in the new year, we'll look to the past for guidance
in the future. We'll also be taking your phone calls on your hopes, fears, and
concerns for the new year. So join Building Bridges for A People's History
for the New Year, with Howard Zinn, on Thursday, December 29th, from 8 to 9 p.m.
over listener-sponsored WBAI 99.5 FM, produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg.
For more information, contact Ken Nash at 212-815-1699, that's 212-815-1699.
It's just after 10 o'clock, and you're listening to Radio Station WBAI in New York.
It's time for Off the Hook.
Off they would, for Billy Bone, for the best expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, for Billy Bone.
And a good evening, everybody.
This is Emmanuel Goldstein with another edition of Off the Hook,
where we talk about high technology and what's going on in the 90s.
This is our last show of 1995.
No, I'm sorry, it's our last show of 1994.
Next week will be our first show of 1995.
I'll get it straight.
And today, today is a most historic occasion.
Today is the day that I actually read my calling card number out over the air.
Isn't that something?
My entire calling card number I just read out so that millions of people could listen to it.
Now, you may ask, why did I do something so completely, insanely stupid?
I'll tell you why.
I was told to.
I had no choice.
I was forced into stupidity.
There was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
You ever feel like you're living your life that way, where you have no options, no choices,
no way around doing something that you know is wrong?
Well, this is the story.
And I'd like to know if people out there can feel some compassion for my stupidity
and why I had to do what I had to do.
I was on my way here, of all places, to meet up with somebody.
This was a while ago.
This was a couple hours ago.
And you know how traffic can be.
You know, traffic can be kind of, you know, bad at times.
And, well, to make a long story short, I wound up stuck on the Queensborough Bridge for an hour
just trying to get over here.
But all was not lost because there was a cellular phone in the car.
That's right.
We had a cellular phone with us.
So when you have a cellular phone, you can do anything.
You can call anybody in the world, except here's the problem.
The problem was there was no actual service to this telephone,
so there was no way to bill it directly.
You had to bill to other numbers.
You know, you could make third-party billing.
You could call collect.
You could bill to a calling card or to a credit card, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay, no big deal there.
So I figure I might as well make the call to the radio station and say that I'm running late, you know,
because I was running horrendously late.
And I didn't want this person I was meeting over here to – it was a reporter, by the way.
And you know how reporters can be if you slight them in any way.
They can come out with these horrible documentaries that make you look bad.
So I wanted to make sure that that didn't happen, so I wanted to call the person to say, you know,
I'm going to be late.
I'm going to be horrendously late, so please wait for me or do something else in the meantime.
Okay, so I figure I'll call my 9-5-0 service, you know, and bill the call that way.
But no, I mean, on a cellular phone, you can't make a 9-5-0 call because even though 9-5-0s don't cost anything,
when you're on a cellular phone, they cost something.
Don't ask me why.
They just do.
Something to do with airtime.
You know, you got to pay for airtime, right?
Anyway, we gave up the 9-5-0 idea and decided, okay, we'll try an 800 number.
800 numbers are free, right?
Wrong.
800 numbers are not free on cellular phones, so we could not call an 800 number either.
Okay, beginning to see how this works.
Let's simply bill it to a calling card.
You know, I've got an AT&T calling card.
I might as well just bill it to that.
So we dial 0 plus the number, you know, here in BAI, and figure we'll get that little bong tone,
and we'll be able to place our call that way.
You know, be able to bill the call to my calling card number,
and everybody will be happy, although it'll probably cost me more than I would like it to cost,
but beggars can't be choosers, right?
So we dial 0 plus the number, and we get a Metro Express, no, a Cellular Express operator.
I don't quite know what Cellular Express is, some sort of a service that they offer.
And I speak to the operator, and I say, yeah, I want to bill this to my calling card.
And she says to me, well, what's your calling card, sir?
And I say, well, wait a minute.
We're on a cellular phone here.
If I say my calling card number, it's going out over the airwaves, unencrypted.
Anybody with a scanner can hear that.
Surely you know about these kind of things.
The high-seas operator doesn't even take calling card numbers anymore because it's so insecure.
Everybody knows this.
And she's like, well, sir, if you want me to place the call, I need to know your calling card number.
And I'm like, well, look, how am I supposed to give out my calling card number
and expect a million people not to start using it immediately when I give it out?
Can't I just simply call one of these automated things, you know,
and enter my calling card number through the magic of touch tones, you know, those things?
No, no, they don't have that.
Well, actually, they said they might have it.
I should try calling again.
Sometimes I'll get the automated system.
So I called about four or five different times,
and every time I kept getting an operator more dense than the next.
It was a horrible scenario.
And I tried a couple of other things.
I tried a couple of other things.
I said, okay, look, I can do a third-number billing on this.
That way I don't have to use a calling card, and I can actually bill it to another phone number.
And, yes, there are certain numbers that you can bill to still.
I've taken all the numbers that I know of out of third-number billing possibilities
because it's just so easy for people to bill things to you.
And I suggest everybody does that too.
There's really no occurrence ever where you would want to bill something
without any kind of verification to your phone number,
without a calling card number or anything like that.
But 9x has a certain kind of bug, which we've discussed on this program before.
If you disconnect the phone number and you still maintain that phone number for a little while,
in other words, if you put your recording on there saying that your number has been changed,
well, guess what?
You can third-number bill to that particular phone number, and you'll even get the bill.
Somehow you'll get a bill for calls made to a disconnected number,
or made from a disconnected number.
It's pretty incredible.
So I figured, okay, I'll do that.
And so I called the operator again, and I say,
okay, I want to bill to a third number.
I want to bill to someone to a different phone number.
No calling card numbers, nothing like that.
Nothing sensitive going out over the airwaves.
And she says, well, sir, I'm afraid you can't do that.
You're in Manhattan, and we don't accept third-number billing anywhere in Manhattan.
And I'm like, well, I'm on the Queensborough Bridge.
I'm not in Manhattan yet.
I'm still on the East River.
I mean, surely you can see that.
I'm not there yet.
I'm not guilty of being a Manhattanite.
She said, sorry, sir.
If you turn around and go back to Queens, maybe you can do it then.
I say, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Next option.
Okay, they take Visa.
They take MasterCard.
They take American Express.
Or they take credit cards is what they said.
So I call back again.
I say, okay, here's my Visa card.
I have this Visa card.
And I suggest everybody does this.
They should have a credit card that they have absolutely no respect for.
It's what I call a backup credit card, one that you can take chances on and do things that you don't care about.
And if it means reading out your credit card number over the airwaves, then so be it.
If you lose that credit card, it's no biggie there.
So I had this particular credit card from some bank in some other state someplace.
And I said, okay, here's my credit card number.
And as I started to read it, they said, sir, that's a Visa number.
We don't take Visa.
We take MasterCard.
We take American Express.
But we don't take Visa.
And I said, why not?
Did you know I had a Visa card and not another kind of card?
Why don't you take Visa?
Well, we just can't seem to work out billing arrangements with them.
Pretty much like with your customers.
You have trouble working out billing arrangements with them too.
I could sort of understand Visa's point of view.
Well, didn't have a MasterCard I could use.
Didn't have an American Express I could use.
So I said, thank you very much again, hung up.
And that's when I had a moral dilemma.
What to do?
Do I stay parked on the Queensborough Bridge while the person waiting for me here at WBAI waits and waits and waits
and figures that I'm just standing them up?
And goes back and writes the worst possible slanderous piece about me that they could ever write?
Which might be fun in itself, but didn't seem like the right thing to do.
Or do I give up everything I believe in?
Sacrifice all my ideals?
And read out my calling card number over the air?
That was a long, agonizing decision, my friends, but one that had to be made.
And I made it.
I called up.
I said, Metro Express, you win.
And they said, yeah, we knew you'd come around.
What's the number?
And I did it.
I read my credit card, my calling card number out over the airwaves.
Read the whole thing out just like that.
And I prefixed it.
Okay, I'm about to read my AT&T calling card number out over the airwaves.
Just to maybe make it clear to her that I was about to do something which really is not a good idea.
I mean, yeah, sure, they've made it illegal to listen.
I feel so protected.
All these people that listened to my calling card number earlier today, you were breaking the law.
So that ought to keep you from using it.
The fact that I already have something on you.
But anyway, I read the whole thing out to her.
And as I read off the last digit, she said to me,
Sir, I'm afraid we don't take those kind of calling card numbers.
And I said, those kind of calling card numbers?
I'll have you know my AT&T calling card is equal to all other AT&T calling cards.
It's not inferior, it's not a second class calling card.
What do you mean you don't take this kind of calling card number?
And she said, Sir, your calling card number has to sound like a phone number.
It has to have a ten digit phone number plus four digits for us to be able to take it.
And I told her, you know, AT&T has not been giving out calling card numbers like that for quite some time
because they're rather insecure.
It seems that you're only interested in having insecure calling card numbers here.
They generate 14 digit random numbers so that people can't figure them out.
And she said, well, we don't take those kind of calling card numbers.
We don't take the secure kind, we only take the insecure kind.
We also take some, you know, Bell Operating Company calling cards.
I said, well, okay, would you take a 9X calling card then?
I figure I might as well keep going. I'm on a roll here.
I've compromised my AT&T calling card. Maybe I should go for the 9X one too.
That one has a ten digit phone number followed by four digits of a PIN.
But she said, no, we don't take 9X.
No particular reason, we just don't take it.
So I said, okay, thank you very much. That will be all.
I hung up the phone. For the next 15 minutes I waited to get off the Queensborough Bridge.
I found the pay phone and I made my call from there.
The lesson here is that cellular phones suck.
Don't use them. They're insecure, they're terrible, they cost a lot of money,
and they don't get you anything that a piece of wire and a couple of tin cans won't get you.
So that's my tale of woe.
Of course, now I have to call AT&T and cancel my calling card
because I just am convinced that it went out to so many people.
I mean, they don't have an automated system.
Even though punching in your calling card using touch tones would not be a good idea,
it still would be better than having to speak it out loud.
But that is their policy.
That's the only way you can make a phone call on this system is to speak it out loud.
Unbelievable.
Well, that's my tale of woe as far as cellular service.
And I don't have very many cellular horror stories to tell because I don't have a cellular phone,
and this is why I will not get a cellular phone.
Even when you don't have service, you feel like you're being ripped off.
Incredible.
I did have a fun tale with 9x, though.
Last week, I called 9x to have something taken care of.
And I called kind of late, you know.
Sometimes I call late.
There's no way around it.
And what's the worst thing that can happen?
Well, if you call really late, all right, like we're going to call now,
you waste a lot of time to find out they're closed.
Thank you for calling 9x.
If you are calling from a touch-tone phone, press 1 now.
If calling from a rotary phone, please wait for a 9x service representative.
Well, we have a touch-tone phone, so we'll hit 1.
To help us direct your call, listen to the instructions
and respond by pressing the buttons on your telephone.
If you are calling about your bill, press 1.
If you are calling about your long-distance calls, press 2.
If you are calling about a repair problem, press 3.
If you are calling to place an order, press 4.
If you are calling for any other reason,
you can reach a 9x service representative by pressing 0.
If you want to hear these choices again, press the star button.
Okay, I'm going to hit 0 to get a 9x representative.
Please stay on the line. A 9x service representative will help you.
Great, thank you. Thank you so much.
9x resident service center is closed.
Oh, they're closed.
Well, how long did that take?
That took about two minutes to find out they were closed?
That should be the first thing they tell you is that they're closed.
Okay, well, that didn't happen this time.
I called them, and they were open.
They were open, and they put me on hold.
It was about 7.50, and they close at 8 o'clock,
so I knew that it was cutting it kind of close,
but I figured, you know, if I got in before the final bell rang, I'd make it okay.
So 8 o'clock comes around.
I'm still on musical hold.
They're playing those nice little tunes, and I'm beginning to wonder, you know,
what happens to those calls that are on hold at 8 o'clock?
I mean, do they just throw off their headsets and walk out the door
and not bother to check to see if anyone is on hold?
Is that a possibility here?
Around 8.10 or so, I was saying, yeah, I think that is a possibility,
and at a quarter after, I decided to try a little experiment,
and I went out, you know, because some people wanted me to go out
and, you know, make merry and have food and that kind of thing.
So we went out and had a fine old time, and a couple of hours later,
actually about three hours later, I came back, you know,
stumbled into the house and picked up the phone,
and the same musical hold was still there.
They had left me on hold for the night, and I only wonder, you know,
if I didn't need the phone, I would have left it off the hook all night long
into the morning.
In fact, I would have even stayed up just to see
who picked up the phone in the morning.
I'm not sure if they will actually do that
or if they'll just disconnect everything when they walk in,
but you might want to try that sometime.
Call them up at around 7.55, you know,
if it's safe that you don't actually get somebody,
although, to be honest, you won't get anybody for, you know,
at least 10 or 15 minutes before closing, I'm sure.
And keep the phone off the hook all night long.
Stay up to around whatever time they open, 8 o'clock or whatever,
and see if someone picks up,
and just having to mention to them when they pick up,
you know, I've been on hold now for 12 hours.
Maybe you'll get better service. Who knows?
Count on it, though.
That's something that I would not necessarily have any faith in.
Uh-oh, what is this?
Sounds familiar. Where have I heard this before?
Oh, God.
Is there a way we can stop this, please?
All right, all right, all right. I can't stand it anymore.
That's the first time anything like that has ever, ever aired on this radio station.
That's a song that I think is used for the old New York Telephone commercials.
Yeah, we have a tape of New York Telephone commercials.
Don't ask how we got it, but we got it,
and we're going to have some fun with it in future weeks.
Did anybody ever look over this thing?
You've got to make the choice to use your heart and voice.
Is that what they say?
What are they drinking down there?
FiberOptic, welcome.
Thank you.
How are you?
Okay.
We have some interesting things going on this New Year's Eve involving the system you work on,
which is called Echo.
Right.
Want to tell us about that?
Sure. Echo is taking part with a lot of other companies for something called First Night,
and First Night, being the first night of the year,
is a celebration that happens in a lot of major cities all over the country,
and in fact, various cities all over the world.
Echo will be set up on...
I know it's going to be on the balcony.
Do you remember if it was the east or the west balcony?
It's in Grand Central Station.
Oh, yeah. It's in Grand Central Station.
That's an important fact there.
I should mention which balconies, since there's quite a few.
But it's a balcony in Grand Central Station,
and there's going to be all kinds of merriment and stuff going on on New Year's Eve at Grand Central.
What is this, Grand Central Station?
Yeah.
Okay, I've always wanted to say that.
So you're actually going to be setting up in Grand Central Station.
Yes.
What exactly is going to be there?
Well, there's going to be lots of dancing and music and fun stuff.
But we're not taking part in that.
No, no, not at all.
Okay, all right.
I'm much too serious for that.
Where's the date?
Yeah.
We're going to have some computers set up.
I believe in both Macs and PCs.
And we're going to have connections to the World Wide Web.
People wandering by will be able to check out Mosaic and Netscape and so on and so forth.
How do people wander by in a balcony?
Well, as I understand, it's a rather large balcony.
So I guess there's plenty of room for wandering.
Well, let's hope they wander in an orderly fashion.
Now, what's the date on this?
New Year's Eve.
New Year's Eve.
But it's called First Night.
Wouldn't that be last night?
It's the last night of the year, not the first night of the year.
The first night of the year would be January 1st.
Yeah, but it lasts after midnight.
I don't mean to be picky here, but that's the morning, then, if it lasts after midnight.
Yeah, well, I mean, we certainly didn't make the name up.
Oh, it's not your name.
It's what the city came up with.
It's what the world came up with.
I'll take it up with them, then.
It's just a tradition.
Okay, I'll make a phone call tomorrow about that.
That's not right, though.
Call NATO.
Call the U.N.
Call somebody.
It's not the first night.
It's the last night.
Yeah.
And we're also going to have a connection to Echo, and we'll be running a chat system.
Well, we always run a chat system on Echo, but we have a special account set up,
and no doubt people from all over the net will be connecting in,
and you'll be able to wander by and chat with people, as well.
Now, we were going to give out the account on the air,
but we figured that since it's still sometime before Saturday night,
we figured that would probably be a bad idea.
So what we'll do is we invite you to call Echo on Friday or Saturday,
obviously sometime a lot closer to New Year's Eve,
to find out what the account is, if you're in the local area
or going to be near a computer that you could get on the net with,
and you'd like to check out the first night chat on Echo.
Okay.
Just give us a call around Friday or Saturday at 212-255-3839.
That's our office number, and we'll give you the account for first night.
And if you're using a cellular phone, God help you.
What do you think of that?
That's pretty outrageous.
Does that jive with your experiences with cellular phones?
It makes me wonder if they're doing the same kind of business
that a lot of alternative long-distance services were doing a few years ago,
which was they'll only accept calling cards of the format of an area code
and telephone number with a pin at the end.
And, in fact, they were so liberal that they didn't care if they were valid or not.
They would just bill the first ten digits.
They didn't care what the pin was.
Oh, so it would have been third number billing no matter what.
Yeah.
Amazing.
So I'd be curious to see if they were pulling some kind of finagling just like that.
They don't have the technical know-how to have an automated calling card system.
They probably don't have the technical know-how to actually verify the calling cards in the first place.
It's highly likely.
Yeah.
That's something to think about there.
But here we were with a phone.
We had the answer.
Answered all the problems in the world, and we couldn't make a phone call.
Nothing is more frustrating to a phone freak.
I probably would have used some other credit cards.
I probably would have done something even more stupid than reading off my calling card number,
except by the time this had all gone through, this had taken like 40 minutes of discussion on the bridge.
It would have made a great Seinfeld episode or something.
Yeah.
We were on the other side of the bridge in Manhattan.
We were there.
So I just had to get out of the car and go to a pay phone, make a normal phone call like a human being.
But, yeah, that's the current state of cellular phones and things like that.
All right.
We're taking phone calls.
212-279-3400.
Tell us what's on your mind.
Anything new on the net this week?
Anything new on the net?
Well, gee, there's always new stuff going on on the net.
Let's see.
Unfortunately, nothing really reaches out and grabs at me as I think.
I think it's been a rather ordinary net week.
Net week.
Okay.
That's a great name for a magazine there.
Let's take a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, I'm just recently becoming interested in the net and basically through your show and reading about it in magazines.
And I wanted to get on from my home computer, but it seems to be very expensive.
I tried Echo because of all the great things I've heard about it, but it's very expensive.
Is there any way you can get on at a reasonable price?
Well, what do you consider reasonable?
I don't know, $10 a month?
What does Echo charge?
$20 a month roughly, $19.95.
Plus, don't you have to pay another $10 to use the net?
If you want to be able to telnet around and use all the facilities of the net directly, yeah, it would be $29.95.
Oh, so it's actually more like $30 a month.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, there are other services around.
I mean, we've gone over them before in the past.
Pretty much the cheapest you'll find, I think, is about $17 a month.
That's about the cheapest you can get.
I mean, if you just want internet access and you don't want access to Echo's bulletin board service, it's going to be $19.95.
There you go.
So that's pretty close to that.
All right.
Well, maybe I'll give it a try then.
Thanks a lot.
Okay.
Good luck.
Bye.
Yeah, I think cheap internet access is what a lot of people are after, and hopefully there'll be more of it around.
Well, provided that the net service providers start dropping their prices.
I mean, you obviously have to cover the cost somehow.
Yeah.
Good evening.
You're on.
Hello?
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Okay.
I was just wondering about the clipper chip.
Is that going to go into effect next year or this year?
It's not going to go into effect at all.
It hasn't been passed or anything.
Oh, not that it's just dead right now, right?
Right now it's pretty dead.
It doesn't mean it's going to stay dead.
They could always come up with something similar to it if they don't revive it, you know, as the clipper chip itself.
Right.
Okay.
Thanks a lot.
Okay.
Digital telephony, on the other hand, that's very much alive and in effect.
In a lot of ways, I think that that serves them a lot better.
Digital telephony?
Yeah, they don't have to make you buy anything.
That's true, but it doesn't serve us very well, I don't think.
No, not at all.
No.
I mean, basically, just to review this for people, digital telephony is the law that was just recently passed.
What bothers me, it was passed without any kind of accountability on the part of the people that passed it.
We don't know who voted for it.
I mean, are you familiar with that?
They can vote for something and they just vote as a unit.
There's no recorded vote.
They voted as a majority.
It makes you wonder if the whole thing wasn't just one big chess game where they had two ideas, one digital telephony and the other clipper,
and they figure, let's try clipper first and see how it's accepted.
And since it blew up and there was so much complaints and controversy,
they kind of slipped in digital telephony as soon as clipper began to die.
It's almost like they planned it that way.
They were pretty much both around for a while.
Digital telephony, though, is scary because it mandates that every phone company install within their phone systems the ability to listen in on phone calls.
I'm not quite sure how simple it has to be.
Do you have any idea what the technological thing is?
I don't know if they actually have drawn up any kind of specs about what's necessary.
I think the general idea is just easy remote access.
Right. Remote access is the key.
No more crawling around in basements with phones attaching to wires and things like that.
No, you just, what, touch tone phone?
Yeah, as far as I know.
I mean, it could be something as easy as dialing a special phone number and entering in a special code.
Now, you know that hackers are going to figure this out.
And, of course, we'll take the full blame for it when we do.
But this is something we're telling you right here and now.
It's a bad idea to have something like that.
It's going to be abused.
It's going to be abused by a lot of people.
Unfortunately, it's now law.
And we sort of have the Electronic Frontier Foundation to thank for that, too, because they sort of rolled over and said, OK, you guys can do it.
By the way, there's rumors of all kinds of changes going on over there, too.
Really?
Yes. Jerry Berman has been fired, I heard.
Oh, really? I haven't heard anything from him.
He's the leader of Electronic Frontier. He just came in today.
He's been booted.
Wow.
And supposedly they're going to try to get back to their grassroots.
Oh, that's nice.
It's kind of hard to tear down the skyscrapers and go back to the grassroots, but we'll see what happens.
Well, we didn't like Jerry anyway.
Jerry is an interesting person, I'll just say that.
I've said that about a few other people in history.
There have been three people in history I've said that about.
You figure it out.
212-279-3400.
Good evening, you're on.
Hello?
Hello, yes.
Go ahead.
WBI?
Yes, you're on.
I have a question about prepaid calling cards.
OK, prepaid calling cards.
I use this card to call to South America, and I found out when I call to...
I mean, there is a beep that tells you that you have only one minute remaining on the card.
Correct.
If you hang up at that moment, the card doesn't charge you anything.
I mean, the balance remains the same.
Now, my question is, will that call be sent to South America?
Now, wait, let me see if I understand this.
When you hang up, when you hear the beep, you're saying it doesn't charge you at all?
No, because I call again using that card, and the balance is the same.
The same as when you started?
Yep, exactly the same.
It didn't count the minutes.
Let's say you had a $5 card.
Is that the right kind of amount?
Right.
And then you make your call, and then it cuts down to one minute.
You get a beep.
You hang up at that moment.
When you call again, you'll have $5 on the card.
Right.
I call back, and I still have the $5.
Have you tried this more than once?
Yeah, a lot of times.
You know, I'm concerned that the company that I'm using might send the charges to South America.
Which company is this?
I don't know.
It's one of those prepaid cards that they sell in the houses where you can make long-distance calls.
They sell them in the houses where you can make long-distance calls?
No, it's like Claudio Telecommunications, something like that.
Uh-huh.
Are you familiar with that?
Sounds like it.
Yeah.
Hmm.
These aren't the equivalent of, like, 7-Eleven cards?
Yeah, something like that, yeah.
Okay.
But what you do basically is you call an 800 number.
Yeah, I call a long-distance number.
But you have to call an 800 number first, don't you?
Yeah, I have to dial, like, a code number, like nine numbers.
Right.
First of all, I have to dial an 800 number.
Okay.
Then I have to dial these nine digits.
Okay.
And then the operator, automated operator, tells me that I have $10 balance on that card.
So she tells me to place a call.
I place a call, and then I talk.
And when it comes to a better minute, I hear a beep, and I hang up.
And I call again, and it's still $10.
Well, you have nothing to worry about because, first of all, how would they even know where to bill you?
I mean, on the numbers that I've called in South America?
Yeah, I mean, how would they know who you were?
The whole point of these cards is that you can be anonymous.
He's worried about them reversing the charges.
I don't think they have authority to bill people in South America.
I don't think you have to worry about that either.
Right.
But what I'm curious about, though, is this something that's just one company,
or is this something that's all the phone cards are like this?
Well, I don't know.
I want that minute remaining to place another phone call.
You know, I was expecting that beep to hang up.
And then I placed the other call, and I found that my balance was in charge.
I found that by mistake.
Have you done this with more than one card?
No, only with the same company card.
With more than one card, yes, but same company.
The question is, then, how did you manage to lose the money on the first card
to maybe try on a second card?
Did you just let it run out?
No.
When I have one minute remaining, I hang up.
Right.
And then I call back to, let's say, another long-distance phone number in another country,
and my balance is the same.
Right.
But I'm saying if you had that kind of a card where you can just keep doing that,
you would never have to get a second card.
Yeah, that's correct.
Okay, but you did get a second card anyway.
No, I haven't got it.
I've had that card for, like, about two or three weeks.
Okay, so you only have one card.
Yep.
Okay, so what it could be, you could just have a broken code or something, I don't know,
a magical code that never disappears, and it might not have anything to do with the fact that you hang up.
Oh, no, no, no.
I know what you are going to, but, you know, I told some friends about this.
Yeah.
And they are doing the same thing.
And it works for their cards too.
Yep.
Okay, are they using the same company?
Yeah, the same company.
Yeah, I haven't tried another company.
It probably is that company.
I would doubt it's every single card that does that.
But are you sure that it's dependent on hanging up at that moment?
Excuse me?
Are you sure that you have to hang up right at that moment?
Yes, exactly.
When I hear the beep, I have to hang up.
Okay, and if you wait too long?
The balance is lost.
I see.
So how quickly after the beep do you have to hang up?
You know, it's like a Georgetown beep.
At that moment, you have like three seconds to hang up.
With my watch, I figure out when it's going to come out.
Right.
And I'm ready to hang up.
That's fascinating.
I don't really have an answer as far as why it's happening.
I don't know.
I feel like I can…
I also don't know why your phone is ringing.
Yeah, it's probably the phone.
I'm working.
I don't know if I can give you the…
Excuse this guy here.
Okay, well, it already has been interrupted.
Thank you.
I don't know if I can give you this phone number off the air.
Well, yeah, you probably better give it to us off the air
because we could be accused of all kinds of conspiracy if we give it on the air.
Yeah, right.
But let's just say that…
Well, what neighborhood are you in?
Right now, I'm working.
I'm in Manhattan.
Well, I mean, where do you get the cards?
You don't have to say specifically.
Queens.
Well, somewhere in Queens you can buy cards that have this feature,
and maybe it is a feature.
I don't know, but it might actually make the things worthwhile
because ordinarily they're kind of expensive, aren't they?
Huh?
I mean, how much do they charge per minute to call South America?
Seventy-nine cents.
That's more than it costs, isn't it?
Seventy-nine cents a minute, any place in the world.
Uh-huh.
That's a bit much, I think.
It could be worse, actually, but it still is a bit much.
Any place in the world?
Yeah.
Well, okay, maybe Inmarsat is a bargain for it, but…
Is that the going rate?
It just seems 79 cents a minute.
I don't place too many overseas calls.
Yeah.
That might not be too bad, actually.
Are these only international calls?
No, you can place national calls, too.
For 79?
And then we charge you less, of course.
I see.
Okay.
All right, we'll look into this, and thanks for the info.
Do you want me to place a call off the air or something?
Uh, place a call where?
We'll call you, give you the name of the company so you can check out.
You can call us after the show.
Yeah, try reaching us after the show, and we'll try to take the information then.
Thanks for the info.
What do you think of that?
That's pretty peculiar, but you have to wonder how high-tech some little call-cell shop in Queens is going to be.
Yeah, that's true.
So it's not surprising, although it is peculiar.
It tells you that it worked in his advantage this time.
It could work to your disadvantage the next time.
You know, when they say they give you five minutes or whatever, they could only give you three minutes.
Yeah.
How are you going to know unless you check it out?
You have to be able to know these things.
Okay, this, we still have a feedback line.
I don't know if you remember last week we had one phone line that was feeding back,
and that meant the person that was on it unfortunately wasted all their time by calling us.
What we're supposed to do is skip this line.
However, just to make everybody feel better, we're going to take the call anyway,
listen to how ridiculous it sounds, and then move on.
That way the person won't have completely wasted their time.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Oh, wonderful.
Good evening, you're on the air.
You're the person that has wasted his time.
Oh, wonderful.
Good evening, you're on the air.
It's kind of funny how we can hear you many times.
Good evening, you're on the air.
It's kind of funny how we can hear you many times.
Good evening, you're on the air.
It's also going to keep feeding back forever.
That's pretty good.
Maybe if you could shout out a question, we might be able to hear it,
but I kind of doubt it.
Let's give it a try.
A question, we might be able to hear it, but I kind of doubt it.
Let's give it a try.
A question, we might be able to hear it, but I kind of doubt it.
Let's give it a try.
Oh, no, okay.
Yeah, it's going to drive me nuts.
I'll just start calling back.
Okay.
All right, thanks for being such a good sport about that.
Someone really should take a look at that phone line there.
Good evening, you're on.
Yeah, Emmanuel, I thought you might find it interesting
that 9X is coming out with a Visa card.
Are they?
Yeah, what happened was I was shopping in King's Plaza, Brooklyn,
and they have, like, Equifax, which does market surveys as well as credit stuff.
So they asked me,
survey will pay you $5, is it in cashes?
Yeah.
You have to have a 9X card and any other credit card.
So they're asking, some of the features are like some of the gasoline cards,
which were converted to MasterCards.
And so if you use the charge card, they'll give you a certain percentage off
or you use the thing to reduce your phone bill.
That's how it basically will work.
Really? It's interesting.
It seems like everybody's getting into the credit card company.
You know what's funny about that?
That could probably be used as a calling card and as a Visa card,
and neither one of them would have been taken by that cellular company I was dealing with before.
Yeah.
I thought you might find it interesting.
Maybe AT&T has a credit card, so why not 9X or one of the other baby bills?
That's true, that's true.
Okay, take it easy.
Thanks for calling.
It doesn't surprise me at all.
I'm surprised it took them this long, actually, to do this.
Good evening. You're on.
Anybody there?
Okay, we have a silent line.
Let's try over here.
Good evening. You're on.
Yeah, hi.
On the prepaid calling cards,
they advertise them as being cheaper than any long-distance company.
Do you know if that's true?
Well, I don't know about the international rates.
I mean, I don't make that many international calls.
I mean nationally, say AT&T or MCI,
that it would be cheaper to use their card than just to pick up the phone.
Since I have AT&T, I'm wondering if I should buy these cards.
Not that I make a lot of calls.
Okay, AT&T, if you have AT&T,
your rate is $0.10 a minute anywhere in the country after 5 p.m. all-day weekends.
If you can beat that on any kind of prepaid card, go for it.
But that's the rate AT&T offers, as far as I know,
and all the other companies are pretty similar with their calling plans,
with their special calling plans.
That's a special reach-out USA rate.
But I use that as a guideline to what is being charged.
Well, that pretty much answers my question.
Can I ask you a question about the caller ID?
Sure.
As you know, in several areas of the country,
the caller ID also shows up the name as well as the telephone number.
In the New York area, I understand 9X's policy is that they're reluctant to broach that subject
because New Yorkers are so jealous of their privacy.
Can you foresee that happening in this area,
that the name as well as the number would come up on the caller ID?
Yes, it's going to happen at some point.
All these things that come about always happen,
and we really don't seem to be able to stop them from happening.
What we are able to do, though, is tailor their implementation to our needs.
In other words, 9X recently changed its policy as far as blocking call return.
Now they allow call return to be blocked.
They never allowed that before.
When do you foresee this happening? Within a year or so?
Probably within the year, I would say.
What's the maximum amount of information that comes across on a caller ID?
Would it just be the name and the phone number?
They don't do addresses, too, do they?
No, there aren't enough characters for addresses.
I see. Thank you very much.
Okay.
But why are there not enough characters?
Who says there shall only be these many characters?
Well, they could always expand it in the future,
but then everyone's caller ID box won't quite be compatible anymore.
There's only two types of messages.
There's the short message with just a number,
and then there's the multi-part extended message that has the name and the number.
They're fixed length. They're not variable length.
So right now, there's only standards for those two types of messages.
Every caller ID box, most every caller ID box that you buy today,
is capable of displaying names.
So it's not like you're going to have to go out and buy a new caller ID box.
All the specs for all the caller ID chips from all the major telecom chip manufacturers that I've seen
support both formats, the short and the long.
Okay. You think we'll see that within a year in this state?
Maybe not within a year.
I think the best thing to do is to keep calling the Public Service Commission
and see if there are tariffs that they're trying to put through in Albany
to charge for extended caller ID if they're going to treat it as a separate service
or if they're even addressing it or not.
Well, one thing that is happening in the next year, 1995, will be nationwide caller ID,
something we've predicted for quite some time.
FCC pretty much has mandated that this be allowed throughout the nation between phone companies.
And their privacy restrictions are less than our privacy restrictions.
They don't seem to care that much about blocking.
They say that phone companies should offer per-call blocking,
and they don't have to offer per-line blocking.
Here in New York, we do have per-line blocking, and hopefully that will stay that way.
Hopefully we'll be able to block all kinds of things we don't want to send out
if we don't want to send them out.
So we'll see what happens with that.
Good evening. You're on.
How are you doing?
Okay. How are you?
Okay.
Last weekend, this weekend passed, I saw a hacker attack.
Ah, hack attack, right?
Yeah, maybe it was a hack attack.
Yeah, Discovery Channel. What fun that was.
You got to see the BAI studios on that.
Yeah, I was wondering why, if you knew what I was going to rerun again.
I missed most of it.
No, they ran that a lot.
Ten times at least.
Yeah, a lot. Within two days.
They seem to be on all the time, actually.
You might want to contact Discovery.
I'm sure they'll be happy to sell you a copy of it.
I don't know if they repeat them.
If you call them and ask them if they're going to repeat it, they'll tell you to.
Yeah, because I caught, like, the last 15, 20 minutes or so,
and they had you on, they had a manual on,
and they didn't have his name at the bottom at the beginning.
I thought it was you, and then they finally announced that it was you,
and it was interesting.
Yeah.
It was strange. I'd never heard of him.
I'd kind of listened to your program for the last year or so.
Yeah, in fact, I remember that program.
I was talking about how I had bought a six-pack of beer in a supermarket,
and they had entered my driver's license into a computer.
Yeah, I was pretty upset by that, but I realized, you know,
looking at the show as a whole,
they were kind of, like, making me into a hypocrite by saying that,
because I'm a hacker.
I'm someone that defends hacker rights and things like that,
and they define hackers as those people that go in and invade people's privacy,
and yet here's this radio talk show guy getting all upset at someone
violating his privacy.
There, America, do you see how this is kind of ironic?
They just kind of missed the boat.
Yeah, they allowed fiber.
They allowed me to talk a lot, but...
Fiber was on?
Yeah, I was on it towards the beginning.
And I probably missed that.
Yeah.
You know, it was good for that in that, you know,
people got to see what an injustice it was sending someone to prison,
but they really didn't seem to come up with any new definitions of hackers.
They seemed to be just the old Geraldo thing all over again.
They kind of went in different directions.
In parts they seemed like they weren't too critical of hackers,
and in other parts they seemed like they were critical.
They kind of seemed to play both sides of the fence.
Yeah, well, I think they spent a lot of time on the corporate side of the fence, actually.
The thing I found real interesting, too,
is when they showed that area of Brooklyn or Queens
where those guys were stealing cell phones.
They didn't show how they did it, but they showed how they caught them.
They didn't really show a whole lot, no.
And I don't necessarily agree with that statement of the New York State cop
that there's not a single legitimate cellular phone in this whole neighborhood.
That seems to be kind of a generalization, you know.
Not a single one?
Yeah.
You sort of don't have a very high view of the community you're patrolling
if you don't think there's a single legitimate person in it.
Yeah.
No, no.
All right, guys.
All right.
Thanks for calling.
Bye-bye.
Well, we could borrow a phrase that you used earlier about cellular phones,
that the show sucked.
But it was pretty bad.
The show really had no direction at all.
It seemed to start out, you know, kind of okay.
Then it crossed over to being questionable.
Then it just decayed into real trash TV with the call cell stuff.
And then finally the show finishes up with this total red herring,
this Chinese businessman, this immigrant,
who's embezzling funds from a Fortune 500 company that he happens to be working at
and starting his own corporation on the side with the embezzled funds
and using the insider information to his advantage.
What business does this story or this person have in the subject matter of the show?
I mean, they know who did it.
The guy did it.
They know what he did.
It's one company hired this guy.
He went and he copied something.
They know everything about it.
Where's the mystery?
Where's the hacker element?
Where's the hack attack?
There's nothing left to the imagination.
It's all out in the open.
You had some guy that did something.
Deal with it.
It's an internal issue.
It's something inside your company.
You know all the facts.
So why bother the rest of America with it?
I don't understand that.
The other thing, if you saw at the end, they were showing all these.
First of all, Wynn Schwartau modified his electronic Hiroshima.
You get this electronic Chernobyl now.
He's changed it.
Unlike the now-can-be-told folks showing a picture of. . .
Actually, no.
He said an electronic Pearl Harbor, and they showed a picture of Hiroshima.
Oh, really?
Yeah, because he said an electronic Pearl Harbor is what we're heading towards,
and you see a nuclear bomb going off or an atomic bomb.
There wasn't one of those dropped on Pearl Harbor, to the best of my knowledge.
I have to admit, when Wynn Schwartau was on, I kind of ignored the TV momentarily.
Well, Wynn Schwartau was funny because all he did was he just kept saying
how he could do these bad things if he was evil.
He must have listed a dozen different things that if he was evil, he would do this.
He would go for the cash.
He would get your Social Security number.
He would destroy you.
He'd stalk you at night, all these kind of things.
Doesn't he know that people could go to prison for making statements like that?
Well, he was just being subjective.
Well, how do we know that?
But at the very end, or towards the very end, they show apartment buildings falling down.
Did you see this?
Oh, yeah. I remember that.
What bearing does that have to do with anything?
I mean, who's knocking down apartment buildings?
I don't think hackers are doing that.
I don't think anyone except construction workers are knocking down apartment buildings.
So what does this have to do with anything?
Don't you get it?
It was metaphorical.
The walls come tumbling down.
These were tenement buildings.
They weren't walls.
I don't get it.
Sorry.
Whatever they were trying to allude to just missed me by a mile.
But it was fun.
It was fun to see.
Did you notice that the film technique, though, made it look like it was done in the 70s?
I don't understand that.
It looked like a Kojak episode.
It really did.
The whole thing.
It really did.
Well, the church music at the end was a nice finishing touch.
Well, it was Christmas, after all.
They sort of had to do that.
But, no, it was an English production for one thing.
But it was kind of like a grainy film thing.
It looked old.
It was done this year.
I can't explain why that was.
Okay, let's go back to the telephones.
Good evening.
You're on.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Good evening, gentlemen.
A couple months ago they switched my system over to, I believe it's a 5 ESS.
Okay.
And the ringback number that I was using doesn't work anymore.
Do you have any suggestions?
What were you using before?
660, and then I would get, like, a dial tone, and then I would hit 112,
and you would get, like, you would have to hit the flash hook.
You'd get another tone, you hit the flash hook, and hang up, right.
Well, that's a lot of information we've just given out here.
112.
That's the old crossbar method where they actually connected you with an electronic office
when you hit 660, and you actually use speed calling to do ringback.
Right, and you could do a lot more things with that, too.
Yeah, you could kind of deprogram ringback.
You see, the point is that it doesn't work anymore.
Well, what you do now.
660, you dial it, and it's just like you hear nothing.
Okay, well.
If you're on a 5 ESS, it's really simple.
All you do now is you dial 660, and the last four digits are your telephone number.
And it'll ring back.
And you'll get a dial tone, then you flash the switch hook, and then you hang up.
Now, sometimes you have to enter more than four digits.
Yes, sometimes in other offices, and I've only seen this in Manhattan,
sometimes they get creative, and you have to do 660 and all seven digits of the telephone number.
But that's as crazy as it gets.
All right, number two.
I bought one of those MCI debit cards.
And a few weeks ago, I was out, and I tried to use it,
and there wasn't enough money on the card to complete the call.
So I called up the number that they provided,
and it said that I only had like $0.12 or $0.13 left on the card.
So we both know you can't make a local call from a pay phone for less than a quarter.
And there was no place that I could have called that was like for less than what the card was on.
So they beat me out of $0.13.
Okay?
Next thing I noticed is that when you get the clip that tells you you only have a minute left,
they don't give you exactly a minute.
We timed it.
They only give you about 50 seconds.
Well, if they give you exactly a minute, then they have to bill you for the next minute.
Uh-huh.
Well, that's not the concern.
That's still beating their customers.
I mean, 10 seconds isn't a lot, but combined with the hundreds of thousands of customers they have,
don't you think they're getting over?
Well, you know, you're saying that the beep comes 10 seconds before.
Do they actually disconnect you on the minute, or do they disconnect you before the minute?
We timed it from the second that you hear the click that tells you you have a minute left.
Right.
The second to the time they actually cut you off is about 50 seconds.
Hmm.
They don't give you the full minute.
Well, I mean, that is something.
You're right.
When you add it all up, that does, especially if they're using a carrier that bills in 7-second increments,
that will add up for sure.
Uh-huh.
So, yeah, you've got a good point there.
I have my last question.
The telephone number for 2600 Magazine and the subscription price.
Well, all that information is contained in the telephone number, so I'm just going to give you that.
Okay.
716-751-2600.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Thanks to you all.
You guys have a nice night, and Happy New Year.
You too.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
1995, around the corner.
Wow.
What do you hope for?
I hope that Windows 95 for Microsoft will be really horrible.
You won't know that until 1996, I don't think, at this rate.
That's probably true.
So they'll probably change the name a few times.
I mean, in a way, we should be reviewing 1994, what's happened over this past year.
Of course, you've spent virtually all of it in the slammer.
Yes.
Not very much happened.
Not very much happened from your perspective.
It was kind of a weird year.
I don't know.
What happened this year?
A New York telephone went away.
Right.
Replaced by 9X.
We had the Hope Conference.
Gosh, I don't know.
I know a lot happened.
Damned if I know what.
Good evening.
You're on the radio.
Go ahead.
Yeah, hi.
Let me just turn down my radio.
Okay.
I have an interesting situation here.
I just got home and I have a number on my call ID that I believe is a cocotte.
Okay?
It's in Bayside, Queens.
That's a pretty serious allegation, sir.
Well, anyway, I called it back.
The reason I think it's a cocotte is because I called it back and I got a computer.
Did she say thank you and play four tones?
Sorry?
Did she say thank you and play four tones or was it a computer modem?
No, it was a modem.
It was a modem.
I called it back on my modem and I got connected.
I have a 1,200 baud modem, so I didn't think it would connect, but it did.
And I just wondered if I was to poke around, what would I do from here?
Well, let's see.
Those particular kinds, did it say anything to you?
No, it just disconnected after about 20 seconds.
Try connecting at 300 baud.
Yeah, a lot more often.
It's odd that you were even able to connect at 1,200,
but most frequently the phones are at 300.
I know what it does is it prints out the –
I don't think you can actually do anything.
I think that's mostly to get information.
You can get the phone number.
You can get how much money is in the phone, the time of day, et cetera, et cetera.
So I think it's just to find out information.
I could be wrong and it could be a totally different model.
The best way to find out is just to experiment.
See where the phone is.
You can find out through various means where that particular phone is.
Well, I have an idea because I know where the person was that called me.
Okay.
Well, then find out what kind of phone it is,
and then you can simply contact the manufacturer and say you're interested in buying one,
and then you'll get all kinds of technical information.
What you might also want to try doing is that if it doesn't do anything when you connect at 300,
you might want to try different parities and different –
either seven or eight data bits or none or even parity, and always one stop it.
But other than that, if you don't see anything on the screen, you might want to –
if it's not waiting for a password or anything like that,
you might want to hit Control-E to see if it gives you any kind of acknowledgement.
Control-E is what?
Yeah, that basically does an inquiry.
Okay.
All right.
It's old teletype speak.
We're out of time.
This is our last show for 1994.
We won't be back again until next year at this time.
Well, next week at this time is next year.
Again, the New Year's –
oh, and you have a party coming up too, which I was going to ask you to –
Yeah, that's right.
Let's get information on that out.
The party is going to be on January 12th.
It's meant to be my official welcoming home party, and it's going to be a big event.
We're going to have music, and there'll be a bar.
It's going to be at Irving Plaza, and if anyone wants specifics,
they can call Echo at the number that I gave out earlier, just in case.
212-255-3839.
And that's the first fiber optic welcome home party of 1995, I believe.
Yes, it is.
Okay, great.
And the New Year's Eve first night thing is taking place in Grand Central Station
on one of the balconies.
Right.
And it'll be giving people access to the net,
showing people what the net can do,
and a rather unique way to ring in the new year.
What time does it begin?
It begins, I believe, at around 8 o'clock.
Okay, and runs until when?
Sometime after midnight.
I don't know how long after midnight we're going to stay out there.
It's probably going to be maybe 1230 to 1 o'clock, as far as I know.
Okay, well, we're out of time, so I want to thank everybody for calling.
Thank everybody for being—oh, no, not again.
Okay, we're out of here, so we'll see you next week.
Good night.
To share the time
You make new friends, then lose the old
So much lost until you find
We're all connected
Don't let pure friendship slip away
The telephone keeps ringing
So I ripped it off the wall
Good evening.
In the news tonight, Zapatista rebels say they're ready for peace talks with the Mexican government.
We have an exclusive report on a Bronx community's battle for justice
in the death of one of its more promising young men,
and Paul DiRienzo looks at Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's first year in office,
and one area where his detractors say the mayor deserves a failing grade.
With these and other stories, I'm José Santiago in New York
with Verna Avery-Brown in Washington, and this is the news for Wednesday, December 28, 1994.
First to Washington for the Pacifican National News.
President Clinton has announced Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey has resigned.
Woolsey has been under harsh criticism for his department's handling of the Aldrich Ames spy case.
Ames, as the man investigators say, has done more to damage national security than anyone else in CIA history.
The president says he accepted the resignation with regret
and praised Woolsey for advancing U.S. intelligence in the wake of the Cold War.
At a White House ceremony, President Clinton said negotiations with North Korea
for the release of the surviving pilot of a downed U.S. helicopter are ongoing.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Hubbard arrived in Pyongyang yesterday.
Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Hall has been held in North Korea since December 17.
Pyongyang has accused the U.S. of sending the helicopter on an intelligence mission north of the demilitarized zone.
We have made it clear to the North Koreans that we want the prompt release of Airman Hall
and that there is no reason for his detention.
He was on a routine training mission, that's all.
The North Koreans are asking the U.S. to apologize for what they call a deliberate act of espionage.
Russian forces continued bombing Grozny today,
just one day after President Boris Yeltsin promised to stop air attacks that could hurt Chechen civilians.
Emily Harris reports from Moscow.
Both Chechnya's biggest orphanage and the house where Russia's Human Rights Commissioner is staying in Grozny
were reportedly hit today.
No one was killed in either case.
Witnesses say all the children were hiding in the basement when the bomb struck,
but heard the sounds of a plane overhead just before the explosion.
Russia's official news agency reports that Commissioner Kovalev was not in the house at the time of the bombing.
Heavy fighting also continued in the small towns around Grozny
as Russian troops advanced closer to the capital.
Chechen officials claimed that bombs hit a town 15 miles to the southwest
where many refugees from Grozny are now staying.
Russian officials confirmed that troops are pressing closer to Grozny,
but the Secretary of Russia's Security Council said soldiers are liberating the city, not storming it.
Officials denied that any bombs had been dropped on Grozny itself.
For Pacifica Network News, I'm Emily Harris in Moscow.
President Clinton today nominated former Congressman Dan Glickman
to serve as his Secretary of Agriculture.
Glickman will replace Mike Espy, who is...
to be continued...