And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI in New York.
It's time for Off The Hook.
Welcome to Radio Station WBAI.
And a very good evening to everybody.
This is Emanuel Goldstein.
The program is Off The Hook.
And this is our special Feedback Edition.
Yes, we'll have a fair amount of that and also listener feedback as well and all kinds
of other fun, exciting things on this program about high technology, abuses of civil rights
and all kinds of other things that are related to the very same.
Interesting program before this, all about how shooting a stop sign could be an act of
terrorism if Clinton has his way.
You look askance, Farber.
You don't think that's...
Shooting a stop sign?
Shooting a stop sign, yes, because you're using a weapon to do something that a weapon,
I guess, is not intended to do.
I don't know.
Do you think there are inalienable rights to be able to shoot a stop sign?
Well, in some western states you would find that train of thought, but I don't know.
We're moving to, I guess, some sort of a society where you can just be held responsible for
things that you never intended to do for long periods of time.
Like our colleague Bernie S., still in prison right now, and maybe we'll hear from him tonight
too, I hope so.
We'll be updating people on that, as well as other things that have been going on.
You've been reading the newspapers recently.
Which newspapers?
Well, any newspaper, really, but preferably things like the Times, you know.
Newspapers designed for people who know how to read, you know, that kind of thing.
I usually avoid the paper.
You do?
Just for that reason, yeah.
Oh, well, okay.
Dangerous.
We won't get into that then.
In the paper this week, though, there was an article about new three-and-a-half-inch
floppies.
Have you heard about them?
New?
New three-and-a-half...
New to people like us?
Yes.
They can hold 120 megs on a three-and-a-half-inch floppy.
Ah, I read about this years ago in Byte magazine.
Well, here it is on page D5 of yesterday's Times.
It'll cost 20 times the amount, but it's 80 times the capacity.
And it's backwards compatible, too, so that's going to change things quite a bit.
Walk around with a floppy, it's basically the same thing as a whole system of the past.
Well, let me guess.
It's that whole multi-layer titanium oxide deal.
Yeah, sort of like that.
Now, we have an interesting website, too.
Well, first of all, let's talk about our website.
And then we'll get into some of the websites that we've wandered into over the past week.
Actually, I'll let you have these pages.
And I'll just keep the last page.
Oh, is this our breaking news?
Well, yeah, sort of like breaking news.
Okay, you take that.
Okay.
I'll keep this.
Ah, yes, our breaking news.
Now, we mentioned the website we were starting up last week.
And we did start it up.
We started it up a little bit late, a few hours late, because of technical problems.
But it went up all the same.
It's our special Secret Service page on the 2600 website, which is devoted to news and information about the Secret Service.
Sort of like their home page, except that our home page has, how shall I say, a different tone to it,
where we're kind of, I guess, skeptical of their motives and the things they do in their day-to-day lives.
We have on that website, which can be reached at www.2600.com slash secret.
I like the slash part.
It sounds nice and fierce.
We're slashing the secrets, I guess, is the best way to say that.
Yeah.
I can hardly wait till somebody comes up with a web page, you know, a commercial person, slash price.
Yeah, we're slashing the prices on our web page.
And leave off the last S for savings.
For savings, right.
But anyway, our slash secret page has all the information on there that the Secret Service said was proof that somebody was not a terrorist, but a danger to society.
It's one step away from a terrorist.
But information such as frequencies, the names and addresses of offices around the country, code names.
You know, President Clinton is called Eagle.
What's his code name?
Eagle?
Really?
Eagle has landed, they say, when he sits down.
And various things like that.
There's all kinds.
What's Hillary again?
Hillary.
Oh, I forgot what her name is.
Okay, her nickname is the same name as the company that owns the new KTU radio station on the FM dial.
It's a big corporate name.
So if somebody out there has access to the web, maybe they can call, access it, look up what Hillary is and get back to us.
Because I forgot what Hillary was.
I just know it's the same thing as that entity that owns the radio station there.
It's a big national concern.
As Hillary is, too.
Anyway, so we have all that information on there.
We have all kinds of other things, including cases such as the Secret Service versus Steve Jackson, which we started reporting on here back in 1990.
And it goes all the way up to where Steve Jackson won his lawsuit against the Secret Service a couple of years later.
So that's all on there.
Also the Pentagon City Mall incident is on there as well.
And all kinds of other neat things.
We even have a few pictures.
You've seen it, haven't you?
Oh, yeah.
I've been looking around there myself a couple of times, looking for various interesting things to comment on.
We've gotten about 4,500 hits last I checked in the past few days.
I checked last night, actually.
So it's probably a bit more than that right now.
So that's the news.
And we're still here.
So we haven't been shut down yet.
They haven't gotten to us.
All this information is completely legal.
Just a bit risky in this day and age.
But we figured we had to do something to get the word out about what's happening with Bernie S.
Being locked up in prison all this time because of similar things.
And who knows how many other people are out there who don't have a voice, who don't have a way of reaching out to people.
So that's some of what we've been doing.
Now this other secret web page that we have.
Well, it's not really secret.
Although the URL for it is kind of hard to remember.
Maybe you can read that to us first, and then we'll take it from there.
It's printed on the top of the page.
164.117.147.223 slash tilde nc dash pp slash html slash gets dot htm.
I think I got all that.
Yeah. Okay.
So what is this website, you might ask yourself.
I'm asking it right now.
What is that website?
Actually, this website is related to that infamous 710 area code that we mentioned a few weeks back.
And that's 710 phone number that we announced over the year.
That 710 NCS gets phone number.
Well, which 710 number is that?
I don't seem to remember actually calling that number.
So I think maybe we should call it again just to see what it actually does.
But before I do that, I have to find an access code to dial out.
So continue with your story.
I'll look for that.
Basically, there's this website all about GETS.
And GETS, as we may have mentioned, was the Government Emergency Telecommunication Service.
And it's a service offered by the Office of the Manager of the National Communications System.
Hence, the NCS is the first three digits of the phone number.
And this is a system that's designed to be used in the event of an actual emergency.
Yes. I guess after you hear that funny tone on your television or radio, people would start using this network.
Well, they're doing away with that system, by the way.
They're coming up with a different system, the emergency alert system or something like that.
I don't quite know what it is yet.
But as soon as we find out, we'll let people know before you actually hear one of those emergency alert tones, one of the new ones.
Yeah.
So actually, can I have that page for a second?
Yeah, sure.
I just want to read something to the people.
Oh, the slogan.
Yeah, you know that you are in good shape when the emergency phone system has a catchy slogan.
Yeah.
And that catchy slogan is, remember, this is called GETS.
GETS, which is the Government Emergency Telecommunication Service.
When the going gets tough, GETS keeps you going.
We'll be hearing a lot of that when the nuclear age starts.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, what do we got?
So basically what GETS is supposed to do is, of course, in the event of an actual emergency,
one would dial the GETS access number, which is that 710-NCS-GETS.
Okay, let's get ourselves a dial tone here, and we're going to dial that number right now.
That's one.
710, what's the number, Farmer?
NCS.
NCS.
GETS.
NCS GETS results.
But right now it gets a tone, which means I've got to dial a special authorization code.
Here we go.
Nothing's happening.
Uh-oh.
There we go.
I must have messed up.
Was that you or them?
No, that's us.
Okay.
That's the BAI lady there.
Okay.
Here we go.
Could I have entered a wrong code?
This is the code they gave me.
Now I have a bad code here.
Why don't you continue with your demonstration, and I'll try and hack the phone system.
Okay.
All right.
Well, anyways, you would dial the NCS-GETS access number, and you would enter in a PIN code,
which you would have to be authorized to use through all kinds of stringent measures.
There's actually a form on the website that you can print out, fill out, and fax back
with the appropriate signatures of various spook agencies.
And everybody's going to be calling the same number?
Yeah.
Everybody calls this one main number to gain access to the network.
You enter in a PIN code, and just like a long-distance company, you enter in the person you want to call.
All right.
We're going to try this again.
Okay.
Now I have to enter our special code.
Here we go.
Please re-enter your PIN number now.
You know, I think they changed all our PIN numbers for some reason.
Well, I can't get through.
You know what?
I can get through.
I know how to get through.
I can't tell you what I'm going to do, but I'm going to do it.
Oh, you know what it is?
What's that?
It's not our PIN code.
We don't have AT&T.
This system does not work if you don't go through AT&T.
Really?
Yeah.
I've noticed that.
Actually, they claim in here that it should work with MCI, Sprint, or AT&T.
But what they claim and what is actually true are two different things.
There we are.
There it is.
Okay.
Now we enter a five-digit code.
It doesn't say how many digits it is.
That's left out.
They don't?
No.
Please enter your destination number now.
Well, she wants a destination number.
What do we give her?
A phone number?
Yeah, the normal area code and phone number.
Okay.
Let's give her…
But is that one first?
They don't say.
I don't think so.
Let's see if she likes that.
Please re-enter your PIN now.
Well, I didn't enter the PIN.
That was destination number.
But, okay, I'll enter the PIN now, which would be one, two, three, four, five.
I believe this is a good PIN.
Please re-enter your PIN now.
You see, that's what they do because, for security, they make you enter the same one twice.
Yeah, right.
It's like a double-check type of a thing.
See?
It'll go right through now.
Your call cannot be completed as dialed.
Please check the number and dial again.
2-N-2-8-T.
Now, is it significant that that went to 2-1-2?
Yeah.
Because these people are not in 2-1-2.
They're in 7-1-0, which is God knows where.
Yeah, but we're in 2-1-2.
Okay.
And, basically, the way it's supposed to work is that it would get routed with a special high priority
over the local exchange or interlattice exchange carrier that you're nearest.
So, in the event of an outage, then your call would be given special priority.
Okay.
So, tell us more about the system.
Let's see.
You did read over this whole thing last night, didn't you?
Oh, yeah, I read the whole thing.
Give us a summary of what's all about.
I'm trying to find if there's any other salient points to bring up.
While you're looking for that, let me just read a warning that I got while I was browsing the web here.
I wound up in the Defense Information Systems Agency.
You can sort of hop around.
I just sort of hopped over there.
And I got this little page that says, please read this.
You are entering an official U.S. government system.
This is an official U.S. government system for authorized use only.
It's a web page.
I mean, how can a web page be for authorized use only?
It's open to everybody.
There's no password or anything involved.
I mean, am I going to break some kind of a law by entering into a web page I'm not supposed to be in?
Do not discuss, enter, transfer, process, or transmit classified or sensitive national security information of greater sensitivity than that for which this system is authorized.
What does that mean?
What is that supposed to mean?
Now, don't say anything that we wouldn't approve of if we don't want you to say that because that's what the system is designed for.
How do you know what the system is designed for?
Use of the system constitutes consent to security testing and monitoring.
Outside the page throughout the rest of your life?
What?
You know, there's no rules here.
Unauthorized use of the system or the information on this system could result in criminal prosecution.
So I don't know if we've already done that tonight.
We may have.
Is it like if you click on the wrong links or something?
Well, it's like they put the warning for logging into the system onto the web page, which I think is pretty silly because the web page is not a system.
I mean, yeah, you're using a computer, but you're not logged in.
You're not accessing things that you're not supposed to see.
Well, according to the letter of the law, every time you click on a link, you're modifying files on their system.
That is true. That is true.
And you went to prison for that, didn't you?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Just the mere logging into a machine constitutes modifying a file.
All right, I'll just shut up about it then. I won't make any more confessions.
Anything else we should know about this?
I think there's like several different categories of alertness.
Yeah, the categories.
I was actually looking at the signaling and interoperability with the other networks.
It says that you can access GETS through your FTS2000, that's the Federal Telecommunications System, or DISN, which is the Defense Information System Network.
But you should note for all you AutoVon users out there, your equipment is outdated.
Well, now, DISN, who uses DISN?
That's the Department of Defense.
Do you realize DISN is ISDN, all screwed up?
That's true. I never thought of it that way.
Well, now, okay, so who has DISN and who has the other one?
Well, just to give you an example, when I was being processed by the Secret Service, their telephones and all their post-it notes for leaving phone messages and so on, for every post-it note, there's three checkboxes.
And that's for what phone number.
Right, sweet and...
No, it's for what network the phone number of the call was from.
Okay.
For example, if you call the Secret Service, then they would check off Public Switch Telephone Network.
Okay.
If somebody from the Capitol calls the Secret Service, they would check off FTS2000.
If somebody from an Air Force base called the Secret Service, they would check off the AutoVon box.
What about normal people?
That's for the Public Switch Telephone Network.
Public Switch, okay.
So, wasn't there one other? Was it DISN?
DISN was not listed on the Secret Service's post-it notes.
So what happens if somebody from there manages to call?
Then I guess they have to check off Other and write DISN.
That's pretty amazing.
So now, we can access the 710 thing now.
Right.
Which is the GETS network.
Right.
Can we access anything else?
If so, how would we do it?
It just seems like you access everything you always could except with higher priority.
For example, it says you have enhanced routing.
That it will route 710 calls to one of the three inter-exchange carriers.
It says that AT&T has implemented an enhanced routing service for 710 calls in its network.
And it goes on to say enhanced routing services for MCI Sprint.
And the local exchange carriers are under evaluation for benefits and cost effectiveness.
So I guess at this point in time, it is only AT&T.
Interesting.
And the idea is when there is some sort of an emergency,
the rest of the people will just be knocked off the phone network
and everything will go through this particular carrier?
Is that the idea?
I don't think people will necessarily get knocked off.
But I would think that let's just say if there were two trunks left in the world.
Right.
And somebody was on one of them and you tried to get the other at the same time that a GETS user tried,
you wouldn't be able to place your call.
Interesting.
And those GETS users, they probably would want to hog the bandwidth quite a bit.
Yeah, because you never know when there is going to be an emergency.
Speaking of bandwidth, can GETS handle data?
That's a very good question.
I didn't see anything in here.
Although, hold on a second.
Because they do mention, they don't mention digital data,
but they do mention that you can use a standard telephone, a Stu3 phone,
which is a crypto phone, a facsimile, a modem, or a cell phone.
Interesting.
Cell phone, I imagine it would be a scrambled cell phone.
But then again, you never know.
You never know.
So that's the GETS system.
710-NCS-GETS.
And that's as much as we know about it.
Again, give out the address for the webpage for people who might want to explore it a little bit.
But be careful.
You might click on the wrong thing and commit a crime.
Yeah, it's 164.117.147.223
slash tilde N as in Nancy C-PP
slash HTML slash GETS dot HTM.
Now, what's wrong with these people?
Why, first of all, do they have IP numbers instead of...
Maybe some kind soul out there can do some name service for these poor people.
They're only the government.
I think they should be a little more familiar with the way the net works,
which doesn't seem to be doing too well for them right now.
Speaking of things, first of all, a couple of regulatory things that I think people should know about.
Number one, and I'm just going to mention this for a second
because I'll give people a chance to look up more information throughout the course of the program.
But did you know there's a motion picture?
It's called the Motion...
Where is this?
Here it is, the Motion Picture Patents Company.
And you know, according to this company,
it is illegal for you to produce your own film without getting permission from them.
Did you know that? Or direct a film or anything like that?
Really?
Yeah, can you believe this?
I wonder if anybody knows anything about this.
I think people should look this up right away.
The Motion Picture Patents Company.
Scared me, but anyway, we'll get to that later.
But the other thing that scared me this week was the iPhone situation.
Have you heard about that?
No.
Various companies are kind of upset by this,
as we knew they would be last year and we talked about it.
The Trade Association of Long Distance Phone Service Carriers has asked the FCC
to halt companies from selling software and hardware products
that enable use of the Internet for long distance voice services.
In a statement from Washington, the America's Carriers Telecommunication Association
says it submits that it is incumbent upon the FCC
to exercise jurisdiction over the use of the Internet
for unregulated interstate and international telecommunication service.
A growing number of companies sell such software
with hardware for transmitting and receiving voice over the net,
which says the statement creates the ability to bypass
local long distance and international carriers
and allows for calls to be made for virtually no cost.
Well, I say that's great.
Now that if you can make a phone call for no cost, what is the problem?
Apparently these people are upset that they won't be able to make money
off their particular businesses because people have figured out a way around them.
I guess they'd outlaw conversation if they could.
For example, adds the ACTA statement,
online service providers generally charge users around $10 for five hours of access
and then around $3 for each additional hour.
Five hours equals 300 minutes divided by $10 is 3.3 cents per minute.
The average residential long distance telephone call
costs about 22 cents per minute or seven times as much.
That's in their little world, anyway.
Long distance and international telephone service carriers
must be approved by the FCC to operate
and must file tariffs before both the FCC and state public service commissions.
ACTA says technology may once again be surpassing government's ability
to control its proper use.
I love that statement. That's a great quote.
Technology is surpassing government's ability to control its proper use.
However, the misuse of the Internet as a way to bypass
the traditional means of obtaining long distance service
could result in a significant reduction of the Internet's ability
to transport its ever enlarging amount of data traffic.
So I don't know if that's a threat or what, but...
I say that's just less money in the man's pocket.
Yeah, that's something.
We knew they'd get upset about it, but, I mean...
They have to get with it, you know?
iPhone is here to stay and there'll be more programs like that.
People will be using the Net for all kinds of things.
What if we just wrote our own?
What if they outlawed iPhone? We just wrote our own iPhone.
Would they make it illegal for us to use iPhone?
They would make it illegal for you.
It's like the software Bernie Eskott locked up for having...
Even though he was responsible for writing it or putting it out.
It doesn't matter. It does something that they don't want you to do.
In this case, make copies of cellular phone numbers.
In our case, it would be allowing communication by voice over the Net.
They have no conception of how the technology works.
They have no conception of what our goals and motives are.
They just say, oh, this violates the tariff.
This violates the law. Therefore, you must pay a penalty or go to prison.
And that's just the way it is.
So that's kind of an ominous development.
I don't know if it's going to go anywhere,
but it's something we should all be aware of,
especially those of us who use those particular programs.
You haven't used one in a while, have you?
No.
They're kind of clumsy right now, but they're getting better.
They're getting much better.
And the ones with pictures on them, they're really good.
And you can't say that the phone companies are providing picture phone service,
because they're not.
No, that's true.
So you're getting there before they do.
Okay, what else is going on?
You hear this latest development, which is kind of also ominous.
Word that the government is actually running a lot of anonymous remailers.
I did read that, yeah.
What's this all about?
Anonymous remailers, the things that you use so that the government
doesn't see what you're sending over the Internet.
Now we're being told that the government is running them?
What gives?
That sounds like entrapment to me.
You're expecting...
I guess there's no law protecting the rights of anonymous remailer users,
but there should be.
Yeah, I know, but who is running these sites,
and what are they doing with the information?
Has that been established?
I haven't heard of anyone being prosecuted based on messages
that they remailed through a government-run remailer.
The only real case is the one that came out of Finland a while back,
where a list of names was taken by the Church of Scientology and Interpol.
That was the first I had heard there was even a list of names being kept
as to who uses the Internet, who uses the anonymous remailer on the Internet.
This is something I think definitely deserves a bit more attention.
Now if you're using an anonymous remailer,
and the person who is running it is untrustable,
does that ipso facto mean that everything that you've sent across
is compromised or compromisable?
I would say yes, sure.
The other thing that people should remember is that, by default,
probably better than 95% of every site on the net uses sendmail,
and like lots of mail delivery agents, it logs all email transactions.
If somebody even got their hands on email logs,
and were able to sort of mash them up with, say,
the email that was coming into the system,
and of course the email that's going out from the system,
is all in the same log.
If somebody pieced this together, they would be able to tell
what mail coming in was anonymously remailed back out again.
So there's various traffic analysis that somebody could do,
even if somebody is innocently running an anonymous remailer.
If somebody gets their hands on superuser privileges on their particular machine,
and they get their hands on the sendmail logs,
they can attempt to piece together who sent what mail.
They can also compare sizes of pieces of mail going out
to sizes received by somebody else, perhaps?
Yeah, there's all sorts of traffic analysis that one can do
if one has access to a particular machine.
Well, I think the best way, if you really are into maintaining privacy,
and you know all the people that are,
is to use the same methods for everything, trivial and non-trivial as well.
If you only encrypt and go through anonymous remailers on the important things,
those are the only things that they're going to waste their time looking for.
However, if you do it for everything that you send,
you know, a one-line message just saying hi to somebody,
A, they'll waste a lot of time trying to decrypt that if they are in fact doing this,
and B, it just adds to the number of messages that they have to deal with
and makes it, I guess, not worth their time.
So that's my personal way of looking at it,
because you never really have 100% trust in any system.
It could be through incompetence, it could be through maliciousness,
but somebody could mess up, and that's usually how people wind up
being put in a lot of trouble they don't always deserve to be put in.
I guess, ironically, the safest anonymous remailer is the one that you run yourself.
That's true. That's true.
But I guess you could only talk to yourself then, right?
Yeah.
All right. Dave Burstein, you're here.
You have a special announcement for us,
which I think is the same announcement that we had last week, right,
except it's one week closer now.
Oh, again and again and again, and we get a better announcement next week
when you say, hey, we're heading down to the Yack Cafe next Tuesday the 19th.
Well, next Tuesday we'll say tonight,
but tonight we'll say next Tuesday, right.
We don't want to confuse the folks.
They're going to be confused enough by me coming on Tuesday.
Well, they'd have to be to want to hang out with people like us.
But, yeah, okay, so next Tuesday.
If you want to hang out with people like Fiber and Emanuel
and probably half a dozen of the other folks who are here and will be joining us,
showing what you can do with computers,
and I dare say some of these folks know a few things you can do with computers.
We'll also have some basic sessions for those who don't want to see such involved and demanding things.
Okay.
Next Tuesday night from 830 to midnight, the Yack Cafe on St. Mark's.
Voluntary donation to the BAI website.
Food and drink for sale.
Come join us.
When you say voluntary donation to the BAI website, do you mean a web page or do you mean money?
Oh, we want lots of things donated to the website itself,
but there's going to be a fishbowl there, say,
if you can leave $10 to help pay for the BAI website.
I want to get this show up on Real Audio.
I want to get a whole pile of shows up on Real Audio.
I don't have enough disk space to do it.
Yeah.
Well, this show is up on FTP now.
You know that, right?
Yeah.
It's up on GSM format.
You can download various editions of it.
It hasn't been updated in a while, but it also goes back to the early shows of the early 90s.
You've got all the classics up there.
We've got everything, yeah.
You can hear it unfolding as it happened.
And we who fool around with computers at BAI,
I want to share this with the rest of the folks at BAI.
So we have the website.
Just go to wbai.org and see what we've got there.
And we want a lot more.
We can use volunteers, too.
Absolutely.
So if you can come, let us know,
because we want to know how many people are coming,
just to make sure we've got room.
So call here at 279-0707.
But where is the At Cafe, anyway?
The At Cafe is on St. Mark's Place.
Okay.
It's between 2nd and 3rd.
Beautiful downtown New York City.
Yes.
Okay, the one with all the buildings.
Yes.
Okay.
A pleasant place.
Some of us have been there before and enjoyed it.
Call here and leave a message on extension 122 that you're coming,
or just e-mail me.
daveb at escape.com.
Let us know you're coming.
If you want to contribute something to that night itself,
you can do a presentation, whether it be your web page or software
or something you've discovered.
Also e-mail me, daveb at escape.com,
and we'll try to schedule some time for you.
Have you seen our website?
The Secret Service page that we have?
No, I haven't.
You're afraid, aren't you?
Well, you might be.
But many people have looked at it.
We've had 4,500 hits in the past few days.
And all kinds of information about the Secret Service
that they don't want you to know.
I have been told there are phenomenal things over there,
but I was just told that about an hour ago,
and I haven't been on since.
Oh, what's the delay, man?
Get over to our terminal right away and get to the website.
No, get over to the terminal next Tuesday night,
and, in fact, all of that,
some of the stuff that I suspect we'll be showing.
That's right.
If you're too nervous to actually click onto the Secret Service page yourself,
you can stand back and watch as other people do it.
That's what we'll be doing next week, among other things.
Okay, thanks for stopping by.
It's ironic, speaking of the Secret Service webpage,
and we've said this on the page too,
that because they were so upset about one person having information,
now literally millions of people have access to that very same information.
Power of the web, power of the net, power in general,
in the hands of ordinary people.
Okay, what, do you have something?
Master Chemist has his hand raised.
What do you have?
I was just saying, power to the web.
Yeah, do you have an article, not a slogan?
Little tidbits of information.
America Online announced two major alliances yesterday
with AT&T and Netscape Communications
that were intended to help the world's largest online information service
take fuller advantage of the Internet's growing popularity.
Wow, so...
This is general information.
America Online said it would offer the news services, discussion groups,
and the information material from its own online service
to customers of AT&T's World Net Internet Access Service
at an unspecified discount.
America Online also said yesterday
that it would provide Netscape's popular navigator software
to its more than 5 million subscribers.
Just thought I'd share that.
Yeah, that's interesting news.
Another alliance with two of the biggest corporate giants in the world.
And a little ISDN update too.
I have one here.
Microsoft is also in the news.
Again, surprisingly.
Announced that an ambitious alliance to promote the acceptance
of something new here
and use of the high-speed digital telephone service
known as Integrated Services Digital Network.
Oh, ISDN.
This service, which more than doubles the speed
at which data can travel over phone systems,
has been available in many parts of the country for years
and is popular overseas.
But its acceptance has been slowed in this country
by the technical complexity, regulatory squabbles, and high costs.
And 9X. No, 9X as well.
Oh, well, it gets into that here.
ISDN is powerful and has lots of features.
That's a... let me highlight that.
Who are you highlighting it for?
Well, you know, these are new things to me here.
But it can be complex and frustrating to get ordered and installed,
said Chris Fitzgerald, a program manager
at Microsoft's Internet Platform and Tools Division.
Phone companies ask customers questions like,
how do you want your octets configured on your X25D chip?
I was never asked that.
How about you, Fiber?
Have you ever asked about your octets?
No, I was never quite asked anything like that, no.
And the last part here releases to us the information
that Microsoft also said it would collaborate
with Progressive Networks Incorporated of Seattle
on a new technical specification
for delivering real-time audio and video over the Internet
and corporate computer networks.
The proposed standard called Active Movie Streaming Format,
or AMSF for short, would allow people to publish
a recording of a child's flute recital
or an executive speech on the Internet.
Those are the only two choices right now, huh?
Well, having access to neither one of those things,
that's very limiting, but I guess it shows promise for the future.
Getting more and more complicated.
Joko, what do you have?
Another sign of the apocalypse.
Wait a minute, where's your microphone?
Try it now.
Another sign of the apocalypse.
Have you seen Penthouse's issue this month?
No.
Women of the Internet.
Is it Playboy?
I don't know, I didn't read either of them,
so I just saw it on the net.
It's apparently a pictorial of women that are on the Internet.
Okay, all right.
Well, we'll have to check that out.
That sounds rather intriguing.
Cable and Wireless sent me a letter this week.
Yeah, the long-distance phone company
that I happen to somehow be a customer of.
They sent me a letter talking about intralata rates.
Intralata, you can now choose.
Within the ladder.
You can choose your phone company within your ladder.
I have no idea how you can tell what phone company you have
for your intralata calls.
There's no 700 number to call to check that out.
But they sent me this letter highlighted,
the headline rather says,
Select Cable and Wireless as your regional calling carrier
and benefit with flat rates and a single bill.
Well, you know, I called them
and I asked them about their flat rates.
And, you know, their definition of flat rate
is different from my definition of flat rate.
Flat rate to me means pay one price.
To them, it means 8 cents per minute.
Now, I don't understand how 8 cents a minute is a flat rate.
I guess it's like the same.
It's always 8 cents a minute.
It's always 8 cents a minute,
but that's not the same thing as what a flat rate,
like the thing 9X offers now with their calling plan
where I'm paying $6 a month
and I'm making thousands of dollars worth of phone calls every month
because I'm taking full advantage of this plan.
That's a flat rate.
But 8 cents a minute, I just don't see that as a flat rate.
So you've got to be careful of these.
And it took forever to find it out, too.
You can't just call them and ask what the price is.
You have to be transferred to a special person
who has you in their file
and they tell you man to man what the price is.
The flat rate specialist.
It's pretty silly there.
Okay, we're taking listener feedback now.
212-279-3400 if you have any kind of, I guess,
questions or feedback or anything else.
212-279-3400 is our telephone number.
We have not heard from Bernie yet.
Probably won't be hearing from him tonight.
This motion picture patents company is really getting me upset.
But we'll talk about that a little bit later.
Imagine that, not being able to make your own films
without permission of something.
That's just one of the hazards of life in a free society, I guess.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello.
How are you doing?
Hi, good evening.
I had a question about the Communications Decency Act.
Yes.
This is a U.S. bill, right?
Yes.
So what about people in other countries
who put, let's say, so-called indecent material on the web, on the Internet?
How will that affect them?
Well, that's a very good question.
It's one of the points that people are bringing up
when they say this bill doesn't make any sense
because the Internet is not something that's confined to our borders.
It's something international.
So, yeah, you know, we can be violating laws of other countries
if they decide to regulate the entire Internet.
As many people will be violating our ridiculous laws
when they say something or post something.
So what you've touched upon is the reason why the law cannot possibly work.
Fiber?
Yeah, I think I can tell you exactly the way the government would deal with it.
If somebody in the United States clicked on a website
that was deemed as being indecent,
that person would be charged with the importing of indecent material from overseas.
So the person here would be charged.
What about the person who started the whole thing overseas?
It's not illegal in their country.
And we wouldn't try to silence them?
No, that's highly unlikely.
So somebody posts something that's indecent on the net,
and we see it here.
We're going to get prosecuted.
Yeah, you're the one that's actually transferring the material.
But what if we don't know we're doing it?
What if we click on something that says...
Ignorance is no excuse.
But it's like a Mother Goose fairy tale or something.
We're clicking on that and we're getting all this indecent language instead.
We're going to be held responsible for this?
I don't believe it.
I think we're up for some pretty trying times ahead.
Thanks for the call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Oh, hi. Emanuel?
Yes, go ahead.
I just wanted to get an update on something you spoke about,
I believe, a few weeks or a month ago.
When you were talking about, for $2,600, your magazine,
where you sort of canceled a contract with this company
who you originally signed a contract for, for Internet provider.
Right, PSI.
What if they've taken up their threat and sued you
or had lawyers contact you?
What's the status?
What happened was they originally threatened to sue us
and then I guess what we really did, which rankled them,
was we printed the letter on the website that they sent to threaten us.
And then the next thing we knew, they sent us a refund
and the whole thing was over.
That's cool.
We had won, and the reason we had won was because so many people
had seen it and had expressed their feelings about it
and they had done this all over the net, which was pretty cool, I think.
That's cool.
Is there sort of a special section on the net,
or do you think there will be for sort of those type cases,
like, I don't know what you would call it,
like an Agipop section on the net to draw people's attention
to the atrociousness of corporate America?
Well, I would hope so.
You see, the thing is, when we put something like this up there,
we have a lot of people that are always checking our website anyway,
so naturally that draws a lot of attention.
And since we have sort of a reputation for putting outrageous things on there,
you know, people tend to spread it around quite a bit.
Once you get a reputation like that,
you can start putting all kinds of interesting things on the website
and you're insured of many thousands of people visiting it.
So I would say to all those groups out there that want to get the word out,
yeah, definitely, the web is one way of doing it.
Just make sure that people know about it.
Two more brief things.
I just came up with this idea.
I'm planning how to use the extra room in my apartment
once the person I'm living with leaves this planet.
And I want to.
You're one of the reasons you've inspired me to get into the net.
And I thought, how about this as a concept,
sort of like an exercise computer room,
sort of like, you know, having all the computer hardware,
but instead of sitting at a desk,
sort of, you know, being at a stationary bicycle
while using the keyboard,
sort of killing two birds with one stone.
And you can sort of be, like, pulling hard drives and, you know,
different sizes and things like that.
And even hooked up to some sort of virtual reality game
or virtual reality cycling toward the France thing.
I mean, it might be expensive, but it's something to look forward to.
Oh, several people are already jotting this down,
so I think you might have actually hit upon something.
Well, it's in the public domain.
The last thing is I want to publicize an event.
My friend, Louis XIV, was going to call in,
but he's probably down in the...
You're friends with Louis XIV, are you?
That's his name, also, DJ Mancat.
Of course, that's his name, yes.
But he's probably, like, at some club on the Lower East Side
or he slept late or something.
There's going to be some sort of...
He has all the details.
It's going to be at a club on the Lower East Side.
There's going to be something in terms of live music on the Internet
with video and live in real time.
I don't know if anyone there knows about it,
but it's going to be in some Lower East Side club,
and it's, like, the big thing.
But if you don't know about it,
he'll probably try and call in and publicize it.
It's, like, an underground thing,
but it's going to be on, like, a major thing on the web.
Any of you know about that?
I don't.
Master Chemist does.
What do you know?
I was just wondering.
They're able to do those things now, right?
I'm sorry?
This can actually happen.
This is not, like, a fictitious thing that's just not going to happen.
Oh, no, it's real.
In the same way that they're broadcasting, like, from ABC, No Rio,
they have their transmitter,
and they're broadcasting 50 blocks of, you know, avant-garde art.
This is going to be, like, jungle music.
They're going to play over the net.
It's going to be with a digital video camera.
But, again, you know, my friend DJ Madcap,
if he's listening at home, he'll call up and tell you.
Okay, guys.
Stay well and keep out of jail.
Bye.
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
Yes.
Okay.
I always want to spread information around.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes.
I wanted to ask Emanuel about my remote phone.
You want to ask Emanuel about your remote phone?
Okay.
Go ahead.
This is Emanuel, and I'm listening.
Oh, hi, Emanuel.
You have a lot of courage.
God bless you.
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
I talk about, you know, important issues like this.
I bought my regular phone system, a remote phone,
and got shocked when I had a bill with a lot of people using it.
Of course, AT&T said, okay, they'll forgive me.
But I asked a lot of people.
I'm getting different answers.
One says that once it's in the base, it's locked in,
no one can cross the line.
Another says you have to completely get rid of it
for a couple of months to see if anything happens.
Could you advise me, how do I use a remote phone?
By remote phone, you mean a cordless phone, right?
Cordless, and not get abused.
I think Freiberg can help us with this.
You're the owner of a remote phone, are you not?
Yeah, actually I'm the owner of a digital cordless phone.
With digital cordless, it tends to be a bit more secure.
In your particular case, what people commonly do
is drive around residential neighborhoods,
and they'll have the same handset that you do.
And they'll go around attempting to pick the phone up
and trying to get some other person's dial tone
that they were within proximity of.
They might pull up in front of someone's house
and just drive around the neighborhood
looking for dial tones, basically.
Now, the fact that it's in the base, would that stop that?
No, not at all.
Because I was told that my regular whole phone system
would become radio frequency.
In other words, if I use my regular kitchen phone on the wall
and give out my credit card number,
it's still going over the radio.
No, that's not true.
It would only be if you gave it out over your cordless phone.
Oh, I see.
So, how could I stop it being used when I'm not using a phone?
The only thing I can recommend that you do, unfortunately,
is to get rid of that phone.
Okay.
And either not use a cordless at all,
or consider getting a newer digital cordless phone.
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Okay. Good luck.
Good luck. Bye-bye.
That happens to all too many people, though,
the problems with cordless phones.
Plus the fact that your conversation is being broadcasted
throughout the neighborhood.
It's pretty easy to find somebody with a cordless phone.
You just cruise around with a scanner until you hear them,
and then there's somebody there with a cordless phone
who can figure out a way to get their dial tone.
Yep.
Not that hard.
Do you ever have that happen to you?
No.
Not even once?
I can't say it's happened.
Really? Even on those old cordless phones?
Well, I haven't used the old cordless phones.
You've never had an old one?
No.
I've never had one, period, at all.
No.
My first and last cordless phone is the one I have now,
the digital cordless.
Mm-hmm.
Spread spectrum, 900 megahertz, the whole deal.
No problems with that yet, huh?
No problems, no.
Okay. Well, we'll see if we can work out for that.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Oh, I'm sorry.
My YUM AT&T annual report,
which anyone, of course, can request by calling YUM 800-3-488-ATT,
and you don't have to be a shareholder,
and it pointed out that AT&T Bell Laboratories,
among all kinds of interesting information,
will be split up with the coming split of AT&T.
AT&T will get something that will be called just AT&T Laboratories,
and the part to be called Lucent Technologies
will get something that will be called just Bell Laboratories.
So, anyway, I wanted to ask you this question.
Let's see.
Hypertext markup language is what the HTML stands for
when you want to go to the web.
What does the one that actually seems to be commoner, HTTP, stand for?
HTTP is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
Transfer Protocol. Thank you.
Was there one other thing I wanted to mention?
Oh, I'm afraid, yes, last point.
I'm afraid Emanuel still didn't quite come down hard enough
on what you might call cable and wireless.
If you'll stop and think back,
especially living out there on the razor-sharp cutting edge
between West Suffolk and East Suffolk,
where you can get real flat rate service,
what flat rate service always meant was
you paid a modest few dollars a month for your phone service,
and within your local calling area,
all calls were then entirely free, right?
That's only because they didn't have message accounting in those areas yet
because they were so archaic.
Well, I mean, the years I was growing up, going back some decades,
you could choose, in big cities,
you could choose message rate service if you wanted,
and for an additional dollar or two a month,
you could have flat rate service,
which was all calls free within a local calling area,
which was bigger or smaller depending on which area you lived in.
Like from downtown Albany,
it's still a 25-mile radius or 50-mile diameter from downtown Albany.
If you have, let's say, residential flat rate service,
you probably can't get business flat rate anymore
except for a very high price.
But let me, I must ask,
when you talk to somebody at Cable & Wireless,
did they actually think there was anyone out there
who could be fooled into thinking
that eight cents a minute for your local calls
would be a competitively priced bargain?
That's a good point.
I don't think they really checked to see what the cost was themselves.
Well, it's what it said.
You remember when AT&T and Time Warner
went in as local carriers in Rochester,
and I got the biggest tickle I ever got out of it.
I forget about Time Warner,
but AT&T said two reasons they couldn't make any money.
Number one, the way, I guess,
the Public Service Commission had priced it,
RochesterTel, the local company,
was an independent, non-Bell local company,
was allowed, who, by the way,
have now, same as some local and long-distance company,
the way Sprint owns Centel,
well, Frontier, Allnet, Long Distance,
and RochesterTel all seem to be the same company now.
Anyway, first of all,
it was priced so high for the local connection
to the RochesterTel central office
for the charge to complete each call
or make the in-going outcome and connection each time.
They could barely make a profit
if they got a customer anyway,
but the other thing was,
and I got such a chuckle out of this,
of AT&T, huge, big muscle company
being twitted by comparatively teensy little RochesterTel,
they said, they complained to, I guess,
the Public Service Commission or whoever,
this was in the Times, what was it, several months ago,
they said, whenever a customer called them
or we called them and said,
this customer would like to have us, AT&T,
as their local carrier,
that RochesterTel dragged their feet
and dragged their feet
and had all kinds of excuses,
or they just took forever
to actually switch the customer over to AT&T.
The only ones they would switch over promptly
were the ones who had been so delinquent
with their RochesterTel phone bill
that RochesterTel had been about to cut them off for nonpayment.
And they figured they'd just give it to another company
as a kind of retribution, I guess.
Interesting. Thanks for the call.
We're going to move on to somebody else.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello.
Okay, we're having a good time over there.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Emmanuel?
Yes, how are you doing?
Hi, I have a question.
Recently, I made a long-distance call.
I think 9X is my regional
and AT&T is my long-distance.
Okay, that could very well be.
Yeah, and before the call went through,
a voice came on saying,
WorldPath Communications.
Have you ever heard of that?
WorldPath Communications.
Now, this is when you made a...
Excuse me, WorldWide Communications.
Well, you were making what kind of a call?
A long-distance call.
One plus or zero plus?
One.
And you got a recording afterwards?
Yes.
That's not normal for you to get a recording.
No, it was a one-time thing.
It was so startling and out of the ordinary,
I didn't know quite what to make of it.
It hasn't happened since.
WorldWide Communications, it was a mail voice.
Well, what I suggest you do to make sure
your long-distance company is correct
is to dial 1-700-555-4141
and see if that matches who you think it's supposed to be.
And if it doesn't, then you could have some problems.
Could you run that one more time?
Yeah, 1-700-555-4141.
There's no charge for that.
Right.
And that will tell you who your long-distance company is.
Now, if it's not the company you want it to be,
A, call that company and tell them to, you know,
that you never signed up for them,
and B, call your local company and have them switch.
Okay, well, then there shouldn't be a problem,
but that does sound kind of...
Unless it was the number you were calling
that answered with that for some reason,
but it doesn't sound likely.
It could have been a fluke, but you never know.
Yeah.
But check just to make sure.
Okay.
All right, good luck.
Thank you.
Okay.
All kinds of weirdness going on out there in the phone land.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Okay.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Yes, I want to know who I can complain to about my new phone bill.
Uh-huh.
I keep on hearing that beep.
Some idiot in the other studio keeps picking up all the phones.
I'm sure that situation will be alleviated in a moment.
Also, when you said a cordless digital telephone,
can you elaborate on that?
Is that the 900 megahertz?
Fiber, what was that?
What's your question?
You said you had a digital cordless phone?
Yeah, I have a 900 megahertz spread spectrum digital cordless.
Okay.
I think that guy has a very old phone if he's getting all those other calls
picked up on his cellular phone.
It's an old problem.
It's not a cellular phone.
Yeah, it's a cordless phone.
I mean, a cordless phone.
Sorry, a cordless phone.
Even the 25 channel,
and he must live near an apartment house or something
because I know a lot of people who live in apartment houses
have terrible problems with the cordless phones.
Yeah, that's definitely true.
Also, would you know anything on the Internet?
There's something called Switchboard where you can get phone numbers.
There is a website where you can look up phone numbers,
but nobody here seems to have the address.
We're all pointing to each other.
Nobody knows it.
It's switchboard.com, I think.
Do you have the address?
I have the address.
Wait.
Go ahead.
Come up and tell us the address.
I'm not sure.
We have someone here who has the address.
Yes, you're correct.
It's www.switchboard.com.
www.switchboard.com.
Who's behind that?
That I'm not sure of,
but it works the same way as your white pages would.
Yeah, it's like those phone discs.
Those CD-ROM discs they're selling.
Right, exactly.
I think it's someone who does sell those as well.
I heard a rumor that while it's free now,
it's not going to be forever.
They're going to figure out a way to charge you somehow on the web.
Right.
The guy was talking about the underground thing.
I think he meant the Internet Cafe next week.
Not the Internet Cafe.
The At Cafe.
There's an Internet Cafe, too.
You've got to be careful.
I know. I'm sorry.
Right, right.
I think that's what he meant next week.
Yes.
Yeah, we know because we're part of that.
You're not live on the Internet, right?
We're not live on the Internet, no.
But we are on the Internet.
FTP to FTP.2600.com.
And soon it'll be on our website, too.
You can download some shows.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Okay. Take care.
And that's going to do it for us as far as that particular part of the show.
But just to finish up with this,
what I think is something we should all take note of,
this motion picture patents company.
Now, let me read you what this is all about.
It was founded by a group of film producers and distributors
that have pooled all their patents claims and formally assigned them to one entity.
And they have proclaimed that nobody is entitled to produce,
distribute, or exhibit films in the United States
unless so licensed by that corporation.
They also set a system of fees and royalties
to be paid for the use of cameras, projectors,
or any other motion picture equipment covered by their patents.
And I guess about the only thing that really applies to this,
which I guess I really should point out,
is that this was dated 1910.
That's right, 1910, when films were in their infancy.
Yes, it's a while ago.
Is that what you're trying to tell me?
Yeah, it seems like quite a while ago.
Yeah, it's quite a while ago.
When films were in their infancy,
they decided to form this organization
that basically would control everything,
would prevent people from making their own films.
The Patents Company launched a campaign of pressure and intimidation,
at the end of which they bought out or drove out of business
all but one of the largest film producers in the country,
but everybody else was pretty much intimidated.
That lasted until 1917,
when finally the creative process overtook the corporate greed,
and now we have the film industry as it is now.
Same thing is going on with high technology and the Internet
and telephone companies and things like that.
You'll see periods of pressure, you'll see intimidation tactics,
and you'll see unreasonable claims being made.
In the end, though, creativity will win,
and we'll all be benefiting one way or another,
because of people, individuals like you and me, hopefully.
We'll see where it goes, and we'll be back again next week
with another edition of Off The Hook.
Until then, take care.
Write to us, send us email,
oth2600.com or 2600.net,
our newest Internet address.
So we'll see you next week, same time,
and don't forget to show up at the Hat Cafe
next Tuesday night, at about this time, too.
Good night.
Coming up now, it's 9 o'clock, is Housing Notebook.