The prison system, a very intense report from someone very close to its operations.
This is Jerry Brown for We The People, goodnight.
Hi, this is Sean Rhodes, calling out to each of you to tune in to City in Exile on Tuesday,
February 25th at 10pm, as I speak to the respective writers of these two songs, Smokey Robinson
and Mickey Stevenson.
They'll be discussing their latest musical, Raising Hell, and will be joined by Marjorie
Moon, director of the Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn, where the musical will debut.
So mark it on your calendar, tell a friend, and be sure to tune in to City in Exile on
Tuesday, February 25th at 10pm, as I speak to Smokey Robinson and Mickey Stevenson, only
on WBAI in New York, 99.5 FM.
It's 8 o'clock, time for another edition of Off The Hook.
Let's go!
And a
very good evening to everybody.
This is Off The Hook.
We're back after two weeks of not being here, and now we are here, and we're back.
And amidst all the fanfare, we have all kinds of news and updates, and fun things to talk
about.
Some good news, some scary news.
If we all face it together, we'll get through it in one piece.
To start with the scary, let's go straight to 9X.
And this is kind of scary news.
9X completed 1996 with a dramatic increase in the quality of service in New York State,
resulting from the company's aggressive improvement programs that were begun early in the year.
Yes, they're getting better, at least according to their own studies, and certainly not according
to what customers have said.
During 1996, 9X shifted additional funds to its telephone network construction program
in New York.
The company invested last year some $1.3 billion on its central office and network
capital investment program in New York.
But there is something that 9X has come to terms with.
I think this is a good development.
Some would disagree, but they're not here tonight, so it's a good development.
You know those yellow phones that I hate?
Those yellow phones in the streets of New York?
The ones that don't take quarters?
The ones that have a 10-minute limit on all phone calls?
The ones that don't take incoming calls?
You know, the ones no one ever uses?
The ones that are all beat up and urinated on and things like that, because that's the
way New Yorkers express themselves when they don't like something, and most people do
not like these yellow phones.
They're supposed to be phones that take these little cards that have been working in Europe
for years, and it's supposed to be the heralding of a new age and that kind of thing.
Well, guess what?
They don't work all that well.
That's putting it nicely.
And in a really surprising move, 9X last week agreed.
That's right, 9X Corporation said that it will remove its payphones that only accept
prepaid telephone cards with updated coin-operated payphones.
Most of the 800 change card phones are situated in Manhattan on city sidewalks, or actually
thrown into the street on some occasions.
9X said other card-operated phones are at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal and at several
other indoor and outdoor locations.
9X will begin the replacement program next week.
9X will replace the majority of the change card phones with phones with smart chips that
tell 9X when a payphone is not working or needs servicing.
Although we conducted a variety of marketing and advertising campaigns to inform the public
about the 9X change card phones and to encourage their use, these phones just never caught
on with our customers.
That's according to Brian Price, director of marketing and sales at 9X.
Most New Yorkers prefer using coins for their phone calls, Price said.
In addition to the change card phones, 9X will replace all of its other city sidewalk
payphones with advanced payphones this year.
And if you're one of the suckers that went out and bought a 9X change card, well, don't
worry.
9X will provide full refunds to those of you unfortunate enough to have done that.
Maybe we can all get some yellow phones, you know?
It would be kind of cool to have.
Nice door stops.
Okay, what else do we have in the news?
Well, I'm sure people heard the news last week where AT&T admitted that they give the
dime a minute rate to anybody who asks for it.
What do you think about that?
All you have to do is ask.
They can have the same dime a minute rate that Sprint clients enjoy, but they can have
it all the time, not just nights and weekends.
That's right.
One rate, which is AT&T's offer of $0.15 a minute around the clock, was designed to
compete with Sprint's dime rate for long distance calls on nights and weekends.
We played with this here.
We figured that $0.15 a minute is more expensive than $0.10 a minute even at night.
You know, it sort of balances out, and it depends on what your calling patterns are.
But this new deal of $0.10 a call 24 hours a day has not been advertised, and AT&T's
customer service representatives aren't talking, according to the Wall Street Journal.
How did you find out about this?
Who told you?
One representative asked a customer who called about the rate.
News of AT&T's latest deal may irk customers who find out they are paying more than they
have to, but in the heavily competitive long distance price wars, AT&T is making no apologies
saying the best deals go to those who haggle best.
Just remember that, folks.
Haggling.
That's how you get the best long distance price.
So if you think it should be $0.05 a minute, you call them up, and you don't let them go
until they give it to you.
They'll respect you more.
Well, Sprint will likewise match AT&T's $0.15 around the clock rate if their customers demand
it, which is kind of strange because their rate is $0.10 a minute after a certain time.
I wonder if they'll raise their rate to match it.
MCI, however, says it won't haggle over its $0.12 per minute deal.
But then they winked, so we don't know what that means.
The AT&T dime a minute rate, called One Rate Plus, can be made even sweeter by pushing
AT&T to waive a $4.95 a month fee for several months.
Just ask them about One Rate Super Plus.
I just heard rumors.
It's out there somewhere.
Well, we also have heard news about an agreement on Saturday to open the $600 billion global
telephone market to increased competition.
And that will produce more than $1 trillion in benefits to consumers from Bombay to Buffalo
by providing lower rates and better service.
That's according to the Associated Press.
U.S. telecommunications companies obviously are the ones that will benefit the most because
there are all these new markets for them to exploit.
So we'll see how that actually benefits consumers, if it ever does, and what it will do to people
in other parts of the planet.
It should actually bring things down since there are so many monopolies in other parts
of the world and so many inflated costs.
People actually call back to the United States so that they can get a dial tone to go out
to another part of, say, Europe or Asia because it's cheaper than calling direct when you're
in that part of the world.
So obviously that kind of thing has got to stop.
Here's the latest thing from the fun folks over at, what do you call this organization?
The cyber angels.
Remember them?
The cyber angels?
The guardian angels on the net?
The ones that are out there making sure that everything is safe for your five-year-old?
Well, they're striking again.
It's called the F.A.C.E. Project.
And just in case you need some other kind of catchy saying, F.A.C.E. means Freeing Abused
Children from Exploitation.
And you just ignore the from.
And it's Freeing Abused Children Exploitation F.A.C.E.
There you go.
And it has to do with faces, too.
So it's like a double type of a thing there.
We're in the process of constructing an online database of the faces of the children who
have been abused and photographed to make child pornography.
Yeah.
Child pornography, as some of you no doubt know, is regularly posted to the usenet.
Child pornography is also illegal.
That is why we are regularly passing evidence to federal authorities that we gather from
the usenet.
Who are the children who are used in the child pornography that is posted to the usenet?
Do you know any?
How could you find out?
That is exactly what our F.A.C.E. unit is all about.
Our volunteers spend time each week finding child pornography posts on the usenet and
cropping the picture so that just the child's face is left.
These faces, the faces of innocent children who are the victims of abuse crimes by adults,
are then passed with the full header reference to our F.A.C.E. unit leader.
F.A.C.E. unit leader.
Yeah.
The images are then posted up to our website in the hope that as thousands of children
pass through our website, someone somewhere may recognize the face of someone in our online
database.
And then we can contact law enforcement and perhaps bring someone to justice and rescue
an abused child.
To help on this unit, you need to have cropping ability.
In other words, not just to be able to crop the truth, but to be able to take a JPEG image
and cut out the child's face and make a new JPEG out of it.
For legal reasons, the F.A.C.E. unit accepts only volunteers 18 years and above because
in effect, what they are doing is hiring people to just go out and find child porn and look
at it and cut out the faces.
I can imagine the type of people that are going to be applying for this position.
That's what they're doing.
They're going to actually go out there and spread these faces around so that these people
that may have been traumatized won't be traumatized anymore by having their faces plastered all
over the place so people can see who they really are.
I don't know about these good intentions sometimes.
That's the cyber angels for you.
That's what they're up to.
We'll see where that goes.
The F.A.C.E. project.
Yeah.
And then we have this latest thing from the FCC.
This is dated February 13th, 1997.
Manufacturing illegal scanners includes scanner modification.
Not quite sure how they mean that, but this is what they say.
It has come to our attention that entities are offering to modify scanning receivers
in order to receive frequencies allocated to the domestic public cellular radio telecommunications service.
Such modifications are not permitted under federal law and the commission's rules.
Scanners are radio receivers that can automatically switch between four or more frequencies anywhere
in the frequency range of 30 to 960 megahertz.
On April 19th, 1993, the commission adopted a report and order that prohibits the manufacture
and importation of scanners capable of receiving or readily being altered to receive frequencies
allocated to the cellular radio service.
Well, they are changing this.
Scanners that are capable of readily being altered by the user include,
but are not limited to, those for which the ability to receive cellular telephone frequencies
are added by clipping the leads of or installing a simple component such as a diode, resistor,
and or a jumper wire, replacing a plug-in semiconductor chip,
or programming a semiconductor chip using special access codes or an external device.
Scanners and frequency converters for use with scanners must also be incapable of converting
digital cellular frequencies to analog voice audio.
Manufacturing a scanner to receive cellular telephone frequencies is a violation of the Communications Act.
The modification of scanners on a substantial scale to receive cellular frequencies will be considered
to constitute manufacture of such equipment.
It's amazing how they're just going to twist the law until it says what they want it to say.
So now if you modify something, you're actually manufacturing it,
if you do it enough times to be annoying to them.
Entities engaged in such activity are cautioned to cease advertising
and or performing any such activity immediately.
Willful or repeated violations may be subject to a monetary forfeiture of $10,000 and a total of $75,000.
Use of scanners by individuals to intercept and divulge or use beneficially wireless telephone conversations
is subject to Section 705 of the Act.
Other federal and state statutes also apply in this area, blah, blah, blah.
And that's, uh, that's where that stands.
They're just clamping down all the more.
And this, uh, even though technology is finally starting to catch up to the, uh, to the problems
that cellular phones have long since offered us,
you know, the new digital phones you can't listen in on, at least I don't know of anyone who's done that yet.
So, uh, it seems like these laws aren't really needed if technology actually is improved.
They certainly can be used against you in all kinds of other ways.
They can, they can make it so it's illegal for you to monitor all kinds of things.
You can maybe have a, have a law against monitoring the police, monitoring pagers.
Who knows? Who knows what they'll think of next?
But the, um, the structure is already there.
All they have to do is modify it just a little bit.
Our phone number is 212-279-3400.
This is Off The Hook.
Fiber's not here this week.
He's out on assignment in California.
Guess what? His OmniPoint phone does not work.
Not out there.
Uh, it was supposed to work, but if you call him now, you just get his voicemail,
so there's no way to, uh, to actually reach him.
We have quite a bit of information on, uh, some other PCS services in other parts of the country,
but we're gonna save that for next week because, um, he'll bring back even more information next week.
And we'll be able to compare things.
But, um, be prepared for a shock.
Because all is not as it seems in the PCS world.
212-279-3400, uh, that's our phone number.
Uh, one more story and then we'll go to the phones.
This is kind of old, actually.
Uh, Bernie S. sent this in because I, I think he, he saw the humor in it as, as well as I'm sure many of you will.
The headline of the story is Peninsula Kids Allegedly Took Over Voicemail System.
San Jose police are investigating about 30 youths, age 12 to 16,
whom they say invaded the phone system of soft drink maker Icy USA.
I've never heard of them. Have you ever heard of these people?
Icy USA, that's the name of the soft drink company.
Um, virtually disabling its voicemail with as many as 500 messages a day.
The invasions cut off an important lifeline for the company.
At its busiest time of the year.
And costed about $40,000, police said.
That's pretty scary.
Workers at the company, which makes frozen carbonated drinks popular with children.
I, I, I'm not sure how they mean that.
If they, their job is to make drinks popular or if they make drinks that happen to be popular with children.
But that's what they say.
They make frozen carbonated drinks popular with children.
They said they noticed an intruder on their voicemail system around the end of April.
They were leaving phone messages, changing a password here and there.
Said Kamina Jensen, customer service manager for the Ontario based company.
It's Ontario, California.
We thought it was a prank.
Yeah, just a prank, you know.
That's all it was.
So, they didn't do anything, I guess.
After all, pranks go away.
Investigator Keith Lowry, who works in the police department's high-tech unit.
Wouldn't you like to see that?
He said it is the first case he has heard of involving the virtual destruction of a company's voicemail system by outsiders.
I guess the insiders do it plenty, but this is the first time the outsiders got their hands on it.
He said one youth obtained a password that permitted access to the company's phone system.
Then, get this, began passing the information along to friends.
I'll tell you, these kids these days.
The knowledge was spread among young people throughout Santa Clara Valley.
And soon, IC's toll-free 800 line was flooded with calls.
Boys were leaving sexually explicit messages for their girlfriends and vice versa.
Many of the youngsters changed passwords, erased legitimate voicemail accounts, and created new ones for themselves.
They eventually overloaded the system with messages, which brought it down.
We were hit pretty hard starting in mid-May through June.
At the end of June, the whole system crashed, Jensen said.
IC had to bring in a technician and buy software to repair its system and improve security.
The crash also disrupted communications among many of the company's 400 employees who are spread all over the country.
The company called Ontario Police.
Since calls to 800 numbers leave a record of the caller's number, police were able to trace the calls to the San Jose area.
They could trace it right to somebody's house, not just to the area, but I guess one thing at a time.
We have junior high school students and high school students, said the policemen.
They run from Morgan Hill to Cupertino, from East San Jose to West San Jose, all the way across San Jose. Amazing.
Lowry said he is trying to track down the ringleaders, said the decision on whether the filed charges will be made later.
That probably has already happened since this is a story from last year, but it's so funny the way they deal with this kind of thing.
Instead of just fixing their system, you know, and it's not a difficult thing to do,
they have to make a big federal case. I read about this in New York now. That's how big a case they've made out of it.
I wonder, do you think they still have a voicemail system?
We're not going to hack it, we're just going to see if they have one.
Can we get a dial tone here?
See if we can get one of our magical dial tones.
There we go.
And we're going to take the first step like anybody would.
We're going to call information.
I've never even heard of this company before.
Hello, I'm looking for the number for ICUSA, that's spelled I-C-E-E-U-S-A.
Thank you.
The toll free number is 800-423-3872. Repeat, 800-423-3872.
Okay, let's give that a try.
Dial tone.
Dial tone.
Dial tone.
Dial tone.
ICUSA customer service, please hold for the first available operator.
Oh, they got smart. Okay. Well, I guess you have to go through an operator then.
At least at this time of day.
Of course, you might be able to hack that recording, I'm not really sure about that.
But the important thing is that they learn something and they don't just keep making the same mistakes.
Of course, where one person makes a mistake, hundreds of others will follow and make the same mistakes.
All right, 212-279-3400, let's go to the telephones, see who is out there.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi. How you doing?
How you doing?
That's funny, 1-800-423-3872 is 1-800-ICEUSA.
You know, I guess if I was a little smarter, I would have figured that out on my own.
Well, I'm bored and I have nothing better to do.
Wow, that is something.
Okay.
Good night.
I don't know who that is.
Okay, good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, Emmanuel.
Yes, how you doing?
It's me. Hi, I haven't called for a while. Four things, okay?
Yes.
Number one, before you lay a guilt trip on me for not listening or contributing during the membership drive,
let me just say I gave $500 11 years ago for Bob Dylan tickets to Scalpers for selling for $10.
I gave the Laughing Cavalier $300 for the station's first CD player that someone eventually stole and took home,
not to mention all the liquor I gave people there.
So, is it cool?
Well, you know, that's all in the past.
Yeah, I know.
But if you remember, I'm bankrupt and officially dead.
Anyway, number two, I was in Fiber's neighborhood a few days ago.
You know the store Little Ricky's?
Yeah.
I was there. I got like a Betty Boop plastic doll and like a mini TV.
It's like a joke.
It says good stuff on TV and it's like a Viewmaster and this like classic art on it.
Number three.
Oh, who is this Pam woman named after the goddess of nonstick cooking
that then comes on the show?
Is she a hacker or the main squeeze of one of you guys?
I cannot comment on that at this point.
Okay. And the last thing which has to do with the topic.
I don't know if you got this mailing.
It's one of the weirdest in a while from working assets.
No.
Long distance company, you know, the ultimate PC company.
If you join them, now dig this, besides the usual, you know, long distance certificates and all that stuff,
you get for a year, a month's supply of Ben & Jerry's ice cream for real.
What do you think of that?
Well, that sounds like incentive, I guess.
I guess they've got something going with them.
The last thing, I wrote you a letter about this a long time ago.
I don't know if you ever answered it.
Is there like an electrical current in the phone line?
Because I'm thinking some phones have those ugly green lights
and then there's the redial memory that needs power.
So like is there electricity coming in the phone line?
Well, there's power that comes down.
There's power to light up, say, princess phones
and to do various things along those lines to give you the voltage needed.
But there's no way of like, you know, splicing it to light a light bulb
or getting electricity from a phone jack?
No, you can't really. There's not really a whole lot there.
Okay, well, I'm back. I'm glad the marathon is over.
And are you going to be doing any more worldwide web simulcast soon?
Hopefully, yes.
You can still download our shows off the web,
but we don't have a live feed at this point in time.
Oh, you know I'm low tech.
I mean, it took me 10 years to learn how to use a telephone.
Okay, have a great show and I'll be listening. Bye.
All right, take care.
212-279-3400. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hi.
How are you doing?
I wanted to know how Bernie S. was doing.
I have been able to listen on and off
and I never did hear anything more about him ever since I got on.
Well, he's been getting better.
He's almost, I don't want to say completely healed
because it'll take quite some time physically and mentally to heal from all this,
but he's definitely making his way back into society
and, you know, working a steady job and just enjoying life.
So, I mean, he's doing quite well in that regard.
They're still making things very difficult for him
as far as having to report to all these places
and face probation or the equivalent for a long period of time.
He recently went through the area of the house that he was living in
where they had searched and he saw the damage that they did.
They had gone through the basement and just broken things,
like, you know, snapped circuit boards in half, things like that.
Things they didn't have to do.
You're talking about from before.
Yeah, from when the house was originally searched two years ago.
And it was just, I mean, it tells you a lot about the mentality
of these kind of people to just go around and vandalize like that.
Right. But otherwise, they haven't started anything new on him or anything?
No. As far as I know, everything is okay as far as, you know, his future.
Terrific. Okay.
Thanks for asking. Take care.
212-279-3400. Give us a call.
By the way, thanks to everybody who pledged two weeks ago.
It was had a really good response from everybody out there.
And I think the station did quite well overall.
So, again, thanks for everybody who called in and pledged.
Give us a call now. 212-279-3400.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello. Speak up. Yes.
Yes. I want to bring up the topic of the current case
before the Public Service Commission in New York,
which is being asked to allow a merger of Bell Atlantic with NYNEX.
Yes. And the problem we have with that is that
Bell Atlantic has very good rates.
NYNEX has the highest rates, for instance, for flat rate service.
Actually, that's not entirely true.
Bell Atlantic charges more for per minute ISDN.
And one of the concerns is that if they merge,
NYNEX rates would go up as well.
I think it's two cents a minute, Bell Atlantic, one cent a minute here.
And we don't want there to be any charge at all
because pay per minute for a data connection is kind of absurd,
especially in this day and age.
I'm sure there are some rates of Bell Atlantic that are better,
some rates of NYNEX that are better.
Did you happen to see the New York Times editorial on Friday?
They actually came out against it.
Yes. Well, there's a lot of things.
For instance, even New York's Attorney General Vacco is against it.
And, of course, you have AT&T and MCI
and a whole host of others are against it.
What it is doing, essentially,
is to let the people with the highest rates make a...
Well, when you compare the flat rate charges
that, for instance, a lot of people paying in Newark and New Jersey,
they pay $8.19 for unlimited flat rate service
reaching over 300,000 people
and a comparable rate in New York,
which covers Buffalo area and Nassau County, is $20.
So they're over $11 difference there.
Lifeline, which is supposed to give people a break, is $15,
which is almost double what Jersey charges.
Now, Jersey, Bell Atlantic would be a great competitor.
They could come in and wipe the floor with NYNEX.
But why should they do that?
It's much simpler to become a partner in the high rates with NYNEX.
Well, yeah, that's true.
But that crushes any other competition,
which, again, makes it a sweeter deal for them as well.
And that's another point.
For them to come in and merge,
they are crushing and making it very difficult
for anyone to compete against them.
Right. I think when this thing first came out a while back,
we considered it, we gave it all the attention it deserved.
And I know I didn't say right away I was for it or against it.
I said, let's get more information.
Now I would have to say I'm pretty strongly against it
and a lot of other people are as well.
If you listen to NYNEX, the way they're talking,
they're talking as if it's a done deal.
They say it's been approved when the merger is finished.
It's not. It's not at that stage.
Well, the commission already, we've turned in our reply briefs
and they're expected to have a decision early in March
on what they're going to do.
Now, of course, the phone company,
also the attorney general,
the federal attorney general,
is looking into the antitrust aspect of it as well.
Can you tell us something about a timetable
as far as what we're going to hear next?
Yeah, well, what you will hear next,
if the commission says what it said it was going to do,
they're hoping to be coming forth with a decision
in early March, maybe mid-March at the latest.
The absolute latest probably would be April 1st.
Is it too late for people to voice their opinions?
No.
Well, by the way, the Public Service Commission
toured the whole entire New York telephone territory
with public statement hearings
where they took public statements,
where they had a debate between the phone company
and the staff.
The Public Service Commission staff also, by the way,
is opposing the,
unless they get some important information,
unless they get some important concessions,
rape concessions.
Even with rape concessions,
I don't like the idea of a monopoly.
No.
The position that we're taking,
well, I speak for Buffalo, Erie County,
and Nassau County,
the law departments of the respective areas,
and that position is
just turn down the merger at this time.
Let's see how free competition develops
over a period of time
and then if you had,
if you had a bunch of competitors
coming into the market
and really offering service and so forth
immediately,
then maybe the merger would have less against it.
But right now,
it's a long and hard ride,
especially for companies
that haven't been in the business before.
But of course,
Bell Atlantic is the best competitor
because right across the river
they're all set up and poised
to show NYNEX how to run a phone company.
That's certainly true.
But people can.
You asked about,
the Public Service Commission
will continue to receive
and be grateful for any expressions
of public interest in this.
So anybody that wants to
send in any,
you know,
let the Public Service Commission
know how they feel,
at the Public Service Commission in Albany
or they're at 1 Penn Plaza
in New York City.
Do you have a phone number for us?
For the Public Service Commission?
Yes.
It's located at the front of your telephone book.
Just a second, I'll come up with it.
But, oh, if you just,
in the front of the phone book
they have the, you know,
the state agencies
and it's listed there.
You don't have to go through the alphabetical.
You can do that to voice your opinion
and do it soon
because this is going to come to a head really quickly.
That's true.
Alright, listen, thanks for calling.
You're welcome.
Alright, take care.
It's good for people to get involved
in something like this.
It is important.
You know, I was just down south
over Atlanta,
Charlotte, North Carolina,
Charleston, South Carolina,
various places like that
and they pay connections.
They pay a set rate
which I think is under $100 a month
and they get two channels,
a total of 128
and they can stay on as long as they want.
Here, in this particular neck of the woods,
the similar service would cost us
over $1,000.
So, obviously, something is definitely wrong
and the area is definitely
ripe for competition of all sorts.
So, yes,
that's one of the things
I learned down there.
Another thing I learned
is how stupid smart technology can be.
I rented a car to go down there,
to go all the way down to Atlanta
because, obviously,
it's a good deal
and you get unlimited mileage,
you can drive anywhere you want
and I had this car
that has those stupid running lights.
You know, running lights are the lights
you can never turn off
although I figured out a way to turn them off.
If you put the emergency brake on,
that's the only way I could see
to turn these damn lights off.
But there were all these other
stupid things that kept happening
with this car
where it would decide something for me.
It would decide to lock the door
at a certain point in time.
It would decide that the lights have to be on
or some other thing doesn't work.
At one point,
it was sending me some sort of a signal.
It was dinging.
Whenever I would turn the key and leave,
it would ding to remind me.
It was a very fast ding.
You get those when you leave the keys
in the ignition
or you leave the lights on somehow.
But this one was just a ding
every two seconds or so.
You forgot something, idiot.
But it doesn't tell you what you forgot.
I was searching all over the place
trying to find out what it was
that I hadn't done.
The lights were off,
the keys were gone.
It was in park.
I was parked in a legal space.
Then, suddenly,
it just stopped happening.
It would happen every time
I stopped the car at one point.
After about four times of this,
either it just gave up on me totally
or it decided that it wasn't
such a big deal after all,
whatever it was.
I never found out what the problem was
with this car,
why it was upset at me
for doing something.
That's kind of annoying.
Nothing to compare, though,
to these stupid things.
I was sitting on a street.
Actually, I had stopped in Philadelphia.
I was sitting on South Street
just hanging out,
resting for a little bit
until I continued my journey.
All of a sudden, right in front of me,
these two guys start getting into this argument.
It looks like it's about drugs or something.
I don't know.
It just seemed that way
because of the gestures
and the way things seemed to be going.
It just seemed like a drug deal gone bad.
It's a good opportunity
to hear some interesting dialogue,
maybe pick up a few of those
new catch words that they use.
I decided I was going to...
I was sitting in my car.
It was off.
I was going to listen to what they were saying.
Guess what?
I couldn't open the window
because the window is an automatic window
and it wouldn't open
unless I turned the key.
I said, okay,
I guess I'll have to turn the key
and put the key in.
That's okay because it's inside the car
and the window is closed.
It's not making all that much noise.
I turned the key.
What do you think happens?
The lights come on.
The running lights come on
because I'm running the car
by putting it into the accessory mode.
Of course, now these two people
who are arguing are bathed in all this light
and they look over at me like,
what's this?
Are we about to be busted by a cop or something?
I turned the key at that point
and I got out of there.
These smart cars are dumb
and I'd look for any kind of way
of getting around the technology,
defeating the things
that have been decided for you
because they have not always been
the right things,
not by any stretch of the imagination.
All right, 212-279-3400,
please, any car stories you have
on new technology,
crazy things that have happened,
I'd welcome those.
I'd like to hear what else
is going on out there.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Well, you were on the air.
Now you're on the air.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Go ahead, speak up.
What can you tell me about
an internet service provider
called IDT in New Jersey
and its chairman of the board,
Howard Jonas,
and his business ethics and so forth?
Well, try not to get too personal,
but tell us about the company.
Well, I'm not familiar with
the chairman of the board.
I just wondered if he's the same
kind of guy he was 25 years ago,
as he is today.
You don't sound like someone
who went to high school 25 years ago.
You sound a bit younger.
Well, that's the way it is.
Take that as a compliment.
Gary Knowles influence.
Okay, yeah, well,
natural living will do that to you.
All right, so you went to high school
with the guy that runs IDT,
and he won an election
for most likely to succeed,
but if there had been
that sort of thing
at the Bronx School of Science
25 years ago,
then he most certainly would have won it.
Was he a real cutthroat?
Well, when he was 16 years of age,
he ran his own advertising agency
with an office in the Empire State Building.
Wow.
He was also a student government president
and had copies of Advertising Age
lying around his office.
I'll give you an example.
I'll tell you why I asked a question
about his business ethics.
You'll recall that Bill Clinton,
the question was put to him,
have you ever smoked marijuana?
And he said,
I have never violated
the drug laws of this country.
And subsequently we learned
that he did smoke marijuana,
but he did so in Britain.
So the answer he gave,
technically speaking, was correct.
That was a typical Bill Clinton
way to smoke marijuana.
I'm talking about in terms of the way he...
That's what we really want to know.
I wouldn't know about that,
but in any case,
the important thing is that...
You went to high school with him.
How could you not have known that?
Well...
So tell us something,
give us some dirt on the guy.
Excuse me?
Don't you have any dirt?
Well, I was just wondering
if you had any dirt on him
while he was fond of making
all kinds of grand gestures.
For example,
paying off his employees
with the high-denomination bills
he'd pull out of his pocket.
He was just a fascinating character.
His company is publicly traded now,
and he's worth millions probably.
There's an article about him
that appeared in an individual investor
magazine a few months ago.
Does he come to the reunions?
Well, there you go.
That's success going to your head.
He also subsidizes WNYC.
Uh-huh.
Oh, that other public station.
Ah, that's correct.
That's just fine.
Well, we'll look for dirt on him.
We'll let you know what we find.
By the way,
mainly through what I call confidence,
he managed to con his way into Harvard.
He conned his way into Harvard?
True.
I'd like to know how to do that.
He's an engaging character,
and one reason above all others
why he's so effective,
and that is he's a super salesman.
The product of which he's been selling
all his life is himself
and his personality.
Especially in one respect,
he's able to affect an air
of total innocence.
Uh-huh.
That's all I have to say on the subject.
Okay.
Well, thanks for coming.
By any event,
bye-bye.
Okay, well,
we'll see if there's any dirt to dig up.
I have a feeling that was really him
to find out if we had any dirt on him,
you know?
That's what I think.
That's my first suspicion there.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, hi.
How you doing?
Okay, two things.
Uh-huh.
I don't want to miss out.
You were in prison.
Okay.
Writing the same music you brought back,
only a little better.
Okay.
A lot better, sorry.
In any event,
I didn't hear what happened to him in prison.
If you can tell me that one other thing
so I can hear this on the air.
You asked about cars.
I rented a new Thunderbird last week
from Hertz over at 55th Street
and 6th Avenue.
The car had no bass
and that is a driving hazard.
That's crazy.
You're trying to listen to music that has bass.
My own music is worse.
I want to blast it.
You have to compensate somehow
and that leads to all kinds of problems.
That is mad, man.
No, that's not right.
You should have taken that right back.
It had the low coolant light on
for the whole trip.
I didn't even want to try to go back.
I wanted to do what I had to do
and get back there.
The guys didn't know either.
They must have been away too.
Do you have net access by any chance?
No, I actually do
and don't know how to use it.
I got a penny that I'm sitting here
with the crazy stars coming.
I don't know how to use this crazy stuff.
I put a scanner and lost everything.
If you hit our website,
obviously everything will be there
as far as the whole update.
To put it briefly,
Burney was in prison
all of last year
maximum security prison for no particular reason and he was attacked by a maximum security
inmate and he was hurt very badly and at that point, to put it very briefly, at that point
people on net, people from this radio station, people listening to this radio show really
got involved, really got upset, really started to organize and we began a letter writing
campaign, a phone campaign and we started organizing a protest down at the prison and
the very week that was supposed to happen, he was just suddenly released, apparently
the pressure was just incredible on them and he's been out since October, he's been able
to find work, he's been able to start putting his life back together, it's a long road ahead
but at least he's not in that hell anymore. I just wish I was here to help you guys do
that but I appreciate you guys really, you know, going to bat for your own. Well, you
know, spread the word, that's one way of helping. Okay, thanks a lot. Alright, take care. Bye
No treble, no bass, that is sad. Oh boy. 212-279-3400. Good evening, you're on the air. Hello? Yeah,
speak up please. Hi Emmanuel. How you doing? I'm not listening so I don't know what you're
talking about but I'd just like to mention something. Well, the fact that you're listening
has nothing to do with that, does it? Well, I'd just like to mention a couple of things.
I got caught up in work. Where are you? I'm in Flushing, Queens on my way home from work.
Flushing, Queens, huh? Yeah, apparently I got caught up in some deliveries here and
I planned to listen but couldn't. Oh, that's a damn shame. Yeah, I know. How was Atlanta
or wherever you went? Atlanta's a nice town. Oh, I know that. You know, I don't think you
really want to try the sushi there. Oh. I would caution against that. Have you ever
been to Waffle House in Georgia? I passed a lot of Waffle Houses but I would not stop
at them. Oh, I love that. When I drove down to Augusta, Georgia, you know, on the way
down to Florida, I stopped at a Waffle House. It's like a roadside restaurant. Anyway, just
one quick thing. I've noticed that there are a lot of 9x pay phones with the earpiece removed.
I'm standing right next to one right now. There's the earpiece removed on a lot of 9x
pay phones in the city. Are you talking on one right now? Well, I wouldn't be hearing
it. I'm saying I'm standing next to one. Yes, very good point. And anyway, also,
there are a lot of 9x payment centers that are in 9x buildings, by the way. It's a courtesy
phone where you can make free phone calls. You just dial 9 and then they carry your access code.
There are a list of them like 13th Street and 2nd Avenue and Brooklyn on Bridge Street. I have
a list of them on my website. If you want a whole complete list of where you can go and how to make
free phone calls from 9x payment centers, go to my website at www.escape.com. And those of you
who are tired of hearing that website, that's for the people who don't know it. Well, there
are still people out there that don't know it, which is surprising to me, but they still exist.
Rebel, by the way, this is something that I actually would be interested in. Have you heard
that the yellow phones have been deemed a failure by 9x and they're all going to be removed?
Oh, that's surprising. They're all going to be removed, every last one. I guess they're
not doing well. They are not doing well at all. Nobody uses them. Well, a few people use them.
Fiverr used them, but you know. What about the ones that say...
What about the ones that say what? That say thank you for using 9x.
Oh, those things. You know, they say they're going to replace every phone in the city with
a new smartphone. I hope those aren't the new smartphones. Isn't that what the smartphone is?
Well, I sure hope it isn't, because they're not very smart. They cut off your touch tones
and they do all kinds of horrible things. A lot of them don't take incoming calls.
What I think we need to do, and I think 9x is fairly responsive to when people say things,
but you just got to say it a lot. We need phones that take incoming calls. We need phones that
allow touch tones. We're not going to win the war on drugs by cutting back on simple things
with technology. Drug dealers are amazingly... What's the word? They survive. They can survive
anything and they can survive these hard line tactics of 9x. I think a lot of us will be much
better served by having pay phones where you can call someone and say, hey, call me back,
or beep somebody a pay phone. Can't tell you how many times I've been searching for a phone where
I can get an incoming call because I need to page somebody and have them call me back and I don't
have a cell phone on me. It's an important feature. Also, there's lots of times in this day
and age where you need to use touch tones after you've connected to something. They should not be
cutting you off and they certainly shouldn't be charging you for a phone call where you can't use
touch tones afterwards. Agreed, Rebel? Yes, I agree. A lot of cold cuts are now blocking touch
tones after you dial certain 800 numbers. That's nothing new with cold cuts. We don't expect 9x
phones to act the same. Some of them don't even let you call the 800 number. Yeah, I know. They
can block that. They ask for money for an 800 number, things like that. This thing with the 9x
courtesy phones that I described, I've told 9x and I've gotten to the right people that is in
charge of the place in Manhattan. They've fixed it partially. They've cut off the part where
the operator, like in other words, what they would do is they would make it so that the operators
know that it's a restricted line. Apparently, you could still dial 9 and then the carrier access
code. Now, apparently, this happens throughout the city. There's payment centers in Harlem.
There's payment centers in Brooklyn and the Bronx and Queens and other places too where
this happens. I've been to them. I've actually gone to them to see whether this
really works and it has. There's a list of them on my website.
Just dial 9, pick up a courtesy phone, dial 9, dial 0 or a carrier access code like 10288.
By the way, you know that all the carrier access codes have gone to seven digits now.
I checked everywhere and everywhere I went, 1010288, which is the new AT&T carrier access
code works along with 10288. Be prepared for that. You're going to be dialing some extra digits.
All right, Rebel, we're going to have to let you go. Thanks for checking in.
Good luck on your journey. That's Rebel reporting live from Flushing.
Good evening. You're on the air. Everyone in the 1970s who went to
the Bronx saw you and smoked marijuana, I should know.
Thanks for filling us in on that little tidbit there. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello? Yes, go ahead.
Yeah, I just wanted to know. A friend of mine was talking about some kind of
modified pager from Radio Shack, one of those touchtone dialers.
Yeah, a modified dialer. Yes.
Yeah, no, he told me that that little thing can provide the tones from when you drop in change.
You know, I'd heard that theory passed around. And, you know, it's just a remarkable coincidence
that if you put a certain crystal in there, it can make tones that sound remarkably similar to
the tones that are made when a quarter is dropped into a payphone. It's the damnedest thing. But
it does happen. And what's even more amazing is that payphones to this day actually only
want the tones. They don't really want the quarter. They just are looking for tones.
Yeah. That's the funny thing.
The other thing I wanted to ask is another friend of mine, he had showed me
he takes like a paperclip or it was a wire or something. I think it was a wire because I think
he tried to isolate himself from grounding the wire or whatever. He sticks it in the 9x phone on
the side by the I think it was the keyhole. And he could only do it maybe one or two phones at a gas
station, the 9x phones, but he couldn't do it to the other phones on the other side of the gas
station to make free calls. What kind of free calls, long distance, local? Local. Local calls.
Yeah, that's an old trick. I'm surprised it even still works anywhere. That's a very old trick.
It used to be done where you'd stick it in the mouthpiece, stick a wire in the mouthpiece,
and then stick it on the like on the frame. Right. And every mouthpiece in lower Manhattan
had a big hole in the middle of it because, you know, the phones were used for that purpose.
But I was under the impression that that no longer worked. Yeah. But maybe it still does.
Yeah. I just thought maybe like with the keyhole, I know sometimes when 9x comes around to take
their change, they have a little computer about maybe the size of a phone just tapping away just
to get the change off. Are they doing like an auditing on the phone? I'm not really sure if
they can do that, but I would I would imagine they're capable of doing something like that.
There should be some sort of record as to what they are expecting in the phone. I know CoCots do
that. You know, the phones that aren't 9x, they tell you exactly how much money should be in the
phone. If it doesn't match, then obviously something's wrong. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean,
I'm not sure if they do that, if they just collect it without even counting. That's something I think
we should look into, see just what, you know, how accountable they are to what goes on with their
phones. Yeah, sure. No problem. I guess that's it then. You have a good night then. OK. All right.
Take care. OK. Thanks for calling. Good evening. You're on the air. Speak up. Hello. Yeah. You
got to speak faster than that. Good evening. You're on the air. See, by the time he hung up,
I had already pressed the button and that's why he's gone. Is somebody there? Yes, Emmanuel. OK,
go ahead. Yes. I was wondering if you heard about this new product from Motorola. It's
supposed to be like a super duper walkie talkie sort of in between the walkie talkie and the
cellular phone. In between the walkie talkie and the cellular phone. Describe it a little more.
Well, I saw it in popular science. It's supposed to have like a one or two mile radius. And of
course, it would be, you know, that's under optimum conditions. Buildings would would reduce
that. But, you know, it was described as the as basically a super duper walkie talkie. I didn't
really see anything else other than the popular science report. Sounds sort of like a PCS phone.
Did it have any kinds of other features? No, no email, no. I don't even think it had Morse code
or anything, but it went for about one hundred and fifty dollars a unit, something like that.
And it's just basically a walkie talkies with your walkie talkie with that. Yeah. Tremendous
range. I mean, sort of like CB CB kind of range, I think. You know what kind of frequencies it
used? It didn't say the repeat. The story was so bare bones. I was hoping you had heard something
about it. No, it was in what magazine again? Popular Science. I think it was January or
December. And it's from Motorola. OK, I'll look into it. OK. Thanks for calling. Thanks.
We have time for about one more call. I think. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello. Pick up. Yes. Yeah.
Twenty six hundred. Yeah. Wow. You got something to say?
Yeah. I forgot there's a delay at the radio on. OK, turn on your radio. All right. All right.
Yes. For the last guy, I was talking about about the pay phones and how you can't dial into them
anymore. They don't pick up incoming calls. Right. And we're talking about the drug dealers and
stuff. Right. Well, you know, like AT&T took over that market by giving free weekends and
and evenings on their cell phones. Yeah, I guess you could say that.
The other thing is, is how come I have three cell phones, but I cannot get the same number on all
three of them? And I'm sure this is a really old issue, but I still really want to know when they're
going to make it so you can do that. Well, you know, you can do that. But by doing that, that
you're guilty of of, you know, cloning. And yeah, I could be sent to prison like Bernie S. was.
Yeah. I like I work I work at I work at a wireless company, you know, but I'm a programmer. But like
so I'm up on all those issues. Well, let's assume let's assume that a cell phone company is listening
right now. Why don't you as a user tell them how why is a legitimate use for you to want the same
phone number on three different phones? Why? Excuse me? Why would it why would a legitimate
user want the same phone number on three different phones? Because it's like I'm already paying for
one service and they're not they're not going to be providing me anything more by me paying three
times as much. You know, I'm the one who's actually paying for three telephones. They're
providing. OK, why do you have three different telephones, I guess, is one of them I got free
with my with my, you know, I got I changed carriers from SNC to AT&T and they gave me a free phone.
And I was like, well, can you program my existing phone that I already paid for to the same number?
And they were like, no, we can't do that. That's against the law. And I'm like, well, it's only
against the law of someone else's, you know, charging money on my account, but me paying for
both of them. So we're going to have to cut you off because we're out of time. OK, I think you
made the point. And hopefully something will be done about that. Thanks for calling. Thanks,
everybody else for listening. We'll be back again next Tuesday night at eight o'clock
for FiberOptic, who is away on assignment. This is Emanuel Goldstein. Have a good night.
But if they could, they would.
For Billy Bomb, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. For Billy Bomb!
I hope that's understood.
And you're tuned to listener sponsored WBAI-FM in New York City. Time is now nine o'clock. WBAI-FM
with a staff of members of the United Electrical Workers. So sayeth the National Labor Relations
Board.
I'm
gonna raise your rhythm.