right wing and we're going to have to leave it there where they had never joined together on
an issue in their life before robert we're out of time that happened yep and we are lucky we
had a chance to speak with you and those who would like to dig into it more thursday this
thursday eight o'clock at the we the people on down and debate about how terroristic that the
i would love it this is jerry can i give the 800 numbers go ahead quick quick the peace the not
the peace quick give it non-violence conference if you're interested in it and want info want to
register you can call 800-937-8728 937-8728 that's it robert thurman thanks a lot
jim bennett for engineering mo erwin for producing we'll be with you tomorrow good night
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well that's a cold ending there wasn't it okay it's eight o'clock time for another exciting edition of
off the hook
the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off
i cut myself while shaving now i can't make a cost
it couldn't get much worse
but if they could they would
but i best expect the worst
and a good evening to everybody we're gonna try and uh start things up right away so we can get
through the show uh with as many phone calls as possible because last week of course uh we we
started to deal with the crisis facing new york city with the uh uh the robbery the taking away of
the 212 area code and a lot of people are very upset of seeing people in the street that
have been emotionally affected by this and of course they want more time to speak out so of course we'll
be taking more phone calls from that fiber you have you seen much of an outpouring of uh you know
human emotion out there no actually most people uh at large have no idea well yeah you don't you
don't see that i mean by by having absolutely no idea they're reacting oh yeah once i tell them
they're even more enraged yeah people don't know what's going on and when you tell them then they
react they don't like 646 at all no and in case you don't know what we're talking about
too bad i mean you didn't listen last week obviously you don't know what we're talking about
uh to walk okay to make it real quick 212 is going to be split next year
somehow we don't know how there's the the uptown split there's the down the middle of the island
split there's the downtown split there's the l-shaped split the quasi l-shaped there's the overlay
split there's all kinds of ways of doing this but you know i i think the idea that we we sort of
brought up last week and which i since found out was brought up a few years ago is the best one and
that's to go with four digit area codes i think that really makes a lot of sense you know 718 could
have been uh 2122 uh 212 would have been 2121 and then this new split would be 2123 or 917 would be
2123 this one would be 2124 we'd all still be 212ers well there's there's good points and bad
points to that there are no bad points to that no there's one major bad point what that you have
to dial an extra digit boohoo what you're looking at it from the perspective of the customer not
from the perspective of the phone well gosh darn it all that's who matters here isn't it the customer
well yeah we're supposed to be looking at some some cranky engineer in a central office someplace
that has to program a few extra buttons no but a couple a hundred engineers who have to change it
in the in the hundred and or so uh uh tandem and tandem and toll switches well you know if they
were on the starship enterprise it would be considered a challenge all right true they're
working for 9x or about atlantic or whatever but 9x can't reroute the calls through the main
deflector dish and make everything work properly give them 20 minutes until meltdown and they'll they'll
get it done that's that's that's that's what it's all about any other bad points besides besides
slight inconvenience to some workers no that that's going to be the major thing is that it's a lot
easier to add one more three-digit area code than it is to change all of them to four digits yes but
if you change all of them to four digits you don't have to keep splitting like oh i agree ultimately it
will have to be done well you see ultimately it'll be too late let me tell you what i did this last week
i drove out to chicago i did i drove to chicago i believe you yeah called me yeah what area could i call
you from you called me from some area code i never even heard and you can't remember can you i don't
mean it was something like 847 that's exactly what it was oh i did remember you and your
photographic memory yeah okay 847 is where i called you from it's it's it's by the airport don't ask
how i wound up by the airport but i did uh 847 but that's not all chicago is in worse shape than we
are they split so many times i mean it's you can't even see the city anymore on on the area code map
312 split to 708 there's a 630 there now there's the 847 and there's also a 773 i think and you know
i asked many different people where the demarcations are for all these area codes and i didn't get the
same answer twice nobody seems to know where the boundaries are and everybody when they're giving
out their phone numbers they just give all 10 digits out to everybody you know even if you're i mean
the most shocking example of this was when i saw somebody ordering a pizza and they gave as their
callback number a number with the area code in it they were so unsure they didn't even know if the
pizza place down the block was in a different area code do we want to live like this no i don't
think so i do not think so i think someone could get elected to office just on the basis that he will
preserve 212 clean up the area code mess so if anyone out there still thinking of running for mayor
this could be a good uh a good platform to run on um i think you know it could be done now i think
enough people stood up and said you know when they go to the psc hearings or whatever that uh this is
silly that we got to go to four digit area codes who knows it might it might actually spur a change
that will turn into some sort of maverick movement throughout the united states we can hope right
yeah we can hope yeah so anyway yeah that's um that's uh what i did i went out to chicago and uh
looked at their phones out there and yeah i didn't find out much about pcs service gsm no i don't know
i don't know how existent it is i mean there's got to be some company out there i'm not sure who
they are i've heard rumors i've heard rumors that it exists but again nobody really knows for sure
if there is a company out there that gives you that kind of phone service actually we could we
could track it down probably there's enough gsm websites now that try to catalog what companies
pop up that actually have gsm service i did see an internet service provider on a billboard
really called flash.net and they offered unlimited internet access for guess how much
for 1995 a month no try 825 a month unbelievable they just they cut the cost in half i mean in a
year they'll be paying you it's going down so fast 825 i mean i don't know what kind of service they
offer i've never heard of it before oh did you hear this uh america online right right they have
commercials now for earthlink on on radio it's the guy whose voice is on aol you know the guy that
says you have mail and goodbye and all that kind of really he's now a spokesperson for earthlink and
he's telling people to say goodbye to aol wow i mean they're gonna sue over that oh yeah i i don't
like aol and i think they got a case here i mean you know they're using something that's aol to to
yeah but just think in such a short time he's he's like reached the the upper echelons of legendary
voices as the meridian mail lady or the at&t recording lady yeah yeah she's pretty cool you
know yeah she is uh but regardless yeah i mean they own his voice he can't use his voice yeah
there's just no way no way at all so any updates on uh on pcs yeah actually there's a new consortium
was formed it's called uh is it something with the fox no no boxing this week no this is actually a
consortium of uh gsm uh companies uh and uh it's it's actually the aptly named gsm north america oh
really yeah okay and gsm north america is actually chaired by uh the president and ceo of pacific bell
mobile services which is one of the gsm countries in our fine nation uh-huh now tell us what what is
the difference a few people have been asking this difference between gsm and pcs well actually in
north america okay there is no real difference since we never had any older gsm network the introduction
of gsm in the united states is for the purposes of providing personal communication services
which are things like sending and receiving email from your handset sending station to station messages
between handsets receiving news updates and getting stock quotes and as well as being able to make
telephone calls of course right that that always adds yeah thrill of it but um in other places around
the world such as uh in england uh there is a a more dated gsm network that was in place before
they offered any personal communication services so to speak you know what frequency they operate on
yeah it's um it would be 900 megahertz 900 okay in england yeah all right they also have a newer
english gsm network which they don't call gsm they call it pcn the personal communications network and
that's the 1800 megahertz that's the 1800 one which we call dcs 1800 we call dcs not pcs no we call
dcs i know bell south called it dcs they're they're they're confused okay well dc bell south calls their
1900 megahertz service dcs the 1900 megahertz one is our one and only gsm network which is also
a personal communication services network now just to confuse everybody even more the the at&t pseudo pcs
service that they've been spouting you know right that actually is not really pcs we defined that
last week i saw an ad for them this week and it said if you want to use their service you can use
your own phone but a pcs phone is required now your pcs phone by your definition would not work on their
system would you know so what is that just false advertising or is it possible they're they're
offering it we don't know it no it's confusing advertising because what you'd need is there are
already phones out there there are already cellular phones that can do both analog and digital what at&t
is calling pcs is basically offering new services that were obviously would would require newer phones
which i'll explain in a second and also requires newer software to be installed on the older digital
switches using the the damps network the digital advanced mobile phone service network and that
was basically just a retrofit of amps which is the honest to goodness analog cellular network that we
still use and that people uh get cloned on every day um the uh the thing with with uh pcs over damps
is that the handsets themselves actually have to support these new services just like my handset supports
the sending and receiving of email and so on those protocols have to be implemented in the phone
and in the switch no matter what the underlying communication protocol is whether it's uh you know
a revamped uh digital network or whether it's a true gsm network so so d amps so pcs over d amps is one
thing which i don't really think should be called pcs because it's very confusing to people
i think pcs should remain associated with gsm alone i get the feeling that people behind this
whole pcs mess are the same people behind the area code mess they're just out to confuse everybody
i think i think try explaining this to somebody you know the thing is pcs is is becoming such a such a
buzzword i'm sure it'll continue to do so that a lot of companies are are rushing to define exactly
what pcs is and that while most of the rest of us who jumped on the bandwagon earlier as well as the
people overseas have already defined uh you know what personal communication services are
uh other companies are in the united states are trying to define exactly what they what they mean
how was that bandwagon you jumped on um it's doing great yeah any breaks on it nope i haven't i haven't
had uh haven't had any problems all right that's good that's good uh speaking of three letter acronyms
dvds i hear they're available at pc richards really somebody told me that they saw an ad for it and
um i don't know if that means that's the place to go when they are available if they're available
right now but from what i hear they are available in some places so if anyone out there has had an
experience with dvds please let us know do they sell players at pc richards um i'm not really sure
i imagine they have to if they sell dvds you buy the i mean you can pretty much sell any kind of disc
and say it's a dvd if you don't have the player for it no one's going to know for sure
but i think they do i'm not saying for sure i don't know if they're still open so maybe somebody
listening to the show can zip out in their car and check and zip back or use their cellular phone
and call us and let us know that would be kind of cool it seems kind of premature to to invest in
something like that now especially since they don't even have the higher density or the double
sided discs yet it's never premature to be the first person on your block to buy something that
could one day be obsolete yeah like betamax exactly you know how cool you are if you have a betamax
yeah you are i mean i know a couple people who uh who have those and they are cool it's like having
a hula dancer lamp you got one of those no oh yes uh you know that um um since america online
announced their flat rate um a couple of companies have have been countering with a different kind of
tactic netcom is now planning on charging by the hour right they've they've used their own logic
against you isn't that weird i mean netcom was was for the longest time offering a set rate for
unlimited hours and now they're going to charge by the hour because aol decided not to charge by the
hour and i don't know if they think that's going to uh work better for them or or not but um it's uh
they say we're at eight million subscribers we get a twenty dollar subscription fee for each of them
and we're just breaking even what does that tell you about someone with half a million subscribers
i don't know what does it what does it tell you uh i'm not quite sure what the point is but i think
i think you know they must be wasting money or something well just think of aol and netcom as
matter and anti-matter they're eventually going to annihilate each other i think so i think so it
sure looks that way how sad but you know i think people are used to the flat fee i don't think that's
ever going to go away i mean why would anybody we can get internet service for 825 you know a month
unlimited why would anybody decide to pay netcom an hourly fee where's the where's the business uh
you know logic in that i don't i don't see it anywhere um speaking of new phone services which
we're not doing um sprint has a brand new type of phone service and it's called total voice you
want to try to guess what total voice is all about total voice um it has something to do with their
global digital network something or other uh-huh i don't know i'm just guessing well yeah sure um
basically it's it's on the um on the idea that you've got better things to do than than dial
or oh is it voice activated exactly it's voice activated it's now available
statewide to more than 1.4 million sprint florida customers it's a voice activated service that lets
a customer make a call simply by speaking a name into a phone whether the call is local long distance or
even international uh this new service offers an end to trying to remember multiple phone numbers
changing area codes and lengthy international codes i mean 9x has the same exact service yeah and
they've had it for years so it's really nothing new and the thing is that it's at the switch in 9x so
it doesn't matter what long distance company you use right you can even program in a carrier access
code yeah but aren't they talking about sprint offering local service in florida yeah i think that's
that's also part of the story yeah they're they're really pushing this voice thing total voice
customers create their own personalized directory of up to 25 names 9x has up to 50 yeah um simply
by following a short series of easy to follow prompts then when a customer is ready to make a
call he or she simply gives a spoken command and the call is made um i mean there's nothing new here
there's not there's really nothing new at all because this service has been offered by the local
phone companies there's one thing i'd like to see and that that's a duress indicator
ah let's say for example that if somebody breaks into your home right forces you to call someone
right under false pretenses your voice will sound different then it should be able to detect that it
should be able to detect the panic in your voice and have a pre-ring indicator uh-huh so that when
the person answer when the person hears the phone ringing it might ring at a different pattern
or something and when they answer the phone then they know that something's wrong they know it's a call
made under duress under duress exactly bernie s are you with us i'm here ah isn't it great how we
just sort of pulled him out of the sky yes uh bernie yeah if you heard us talking about uh sprint total
voice yeah i uh i did hello fiber hi how are you i'm pretty good um and of course hello manuel i was
just reading uh in um one of the telephony industry magazines uh just a couple days ago coincidentally
about uh these uh voice dialing um features that our box have been offering and the our box are
generally very unhappy with how well this particular um service has been doing less than uh i think it
was uh i think we're talking about 9x in this case less than one percent of their subscribers opted for
the service which compared to some of their other custom calling features um is pretty poor
yes i would say so so uh they're very unhappy with how unsuccessful they've been in marketing this
voice dialing the only thing i think it's useful for is it may be for uh for cellular or or pcs and
if you're if you're driving your car it makes sense to be able to dial by voice but frankly all that
stuff can be implemented at the customer premises and too with their hardware and like a lot of these
custom calling services uh you could have your own stuff do that at your end instead of having to
pay the phone company monthly fees ad infinitum that's certainly true absolutely i don't know if
you heard us talking about uh the area code split in 212 but that's something that we're facing next
year and we were talking about uh let's know what you think of this idea the possibility of instead
having four digit area codes where we could keep like say philadelphia was going to split
um you would go to 2151 2152 etc and that way you would keep your geographical number that would
make a lot of sense which is probably why they're not going to do it that way yeah i i think we agree
with that why is that why don't they do things that make sense well there's got to be a reason
i haven't figured it out though there was a really good article uh in in the new york times
yesterday uh by patrick lyons called the trauma of the 90s adding new area codes and it's it really
it gave all the details that you could possibly want um and and explain things in a very nice way
um explain how states with just one area code those with smaller populations had zeros in the middle
thus taking longer to dial uh the more populous states got ones got ones in their codes and the most
populous regions for all of all had the speediest codes 212 for new york 213 for los angeles 312 for
chicago but the human factor sometimes intruded among the zero in the middle codes new jersey
connecticut and the district of columbia three places where plenty of phone company executives
could be found they got the easiest codes to dial 201 202 203 alaska got 907 so and of course hawaii got 808
eventually um yeah they designed the early shorter numbers earlier and in fact trivia i think i've
mentioned this trivia thing before on your program that uh the uh in the early days of the bell system
they assigned of course this is before the days of touchtone when it was rotary dialing or it was the
number of pulses it was the number of like nine pulses was a nine but you know nine pulses takes
more time up in the telephone switch the central office so they assigned the highest traffic areas
uh particularly short number of pulse um digits like for instance manhattan was 212 which is only five
pulses um total um 215 for philadelphia is another example of that but then when electronic switching
went on of course it didn't make much difference but um in any case i just think that was clever
there's an interesting story that uh that we got yesterday uh about the um i don't know if you
remember this a few months ago actually maybe it was a longer than that uh some people running spy
shops got in trouble for for selling um equipment that the federal government said they shouldn't have
i heard about that on npr yesterday yeah three executives of the nation's biggest chain of spy shops
pleaded guilty monday to charges that they illegally sold eavesdropping equipment that had been
smuggled into the country the powerful bugs hidden in functioning ballpoint pens calculators
and electrical outlets were smuggled through u.s customs so the spy factory could sell them to
anyone rather than just law enforcement officers who were entitled to buy them according to prosecutors
the spy factory based in san antonio sold transmitters that were much more powerful and
had much greater transmission range than the fcc would allow transmitters also operated on frequencies
reserved for the u.s government and military the pleas entered by spy factory owner ronald kimball
and general manager marlon richardson were part of plea agreements that interrupted their two-week
trial and resulted in most of the charges being dropped kimball also agreed to turn over all the
company's assets to the government and close the stores i accept full responsibility for my conduct
kimball told u.s district judge sonia sodomeyer in a sort of monotone that made people think he was
probably possessed probably under duress when you have an associated press story there yeah when you
when you interesting thing is when you when you plead guilty yes you have to tell that you you
remember this whole thing fiber i'm sure yep um you have you have to say that you you're pleading
guilty because and you're not under any duress or no one forced you to whatever and and you're not
allowed to say that uh things truthful things like uh um no the specter of having to spend additional
years in prison for actually telling the truth um didn't influence my decision at all in in
pleading guilty it's ludicrous yeah but uh they on paper you know it looks like there's no duress
sure that's just the game they play and it's ludicrous so this guy uh i'm sure from what i'd i'd
heard the uh the assets of the spy factory were approximately five million dollars and he had to
turn that over to the justice department and uh what's interesting is this stuff this equipment
they say powerful transmitters there's no such thing as a powerful transmitter living in a ballpoint pen
there's no this defies the laws of physics anything residing in a ballpoint pen would have to
be running off a couple of little watch batteries and just there's no way you can make anything
powerful running off a couple of watch berries well well you shouldn't say that because they could
have a custom battery with that uh makes up the majority of the pen itself well you're still not
going to be able to get anything more than maybe a couple of hundred milliwatts if that maybe a
hundred milliwatts of power you're not going to get a powerful bug living in a ballpoint pen and a pen
probably isn't going to write either no we'd have to define what powerful meant that's true
uh well the only thing that i would think would be powerful as far as it could send the signal very
far these would be wireless bugs i i assume because it would be it would kind of give up the
give up the covertness if there was a wire coming out of the pen attached to something that gee that
doesn't look like a normal ballpoint that's always a red flag to me when i see wires coming out of
pens but this stuff has been sold on the market for years this has been available this stuff so um
i've known people who've been in the business of uh surveillance and counter surveillance equipment
for years and uh apparently the government just decided okay we've had enough of this
and uh decided to crack down on a few select companies however there are other companies
um who readily advertise in various electronics magazines the same type of equipment that you can
buy anywhere um so it's it's peculiar i think these particular individuals must have pissed somebody
off at the government or um were selling counter surveillance equipment that prevented certain
targets from getting nailed or who knows what but there's there's more to the story than
that people bringing in new powerful equipment that hasn't been available in the past this stuff
has been available for for years another obvious can buy can buy little kits and build them and save
even more money that's true so another story that also uh uh broke over the last week that i think
there's there's more too and that's the fbi saying they need quote unquote worldwide cooperation among
law enforcement agencies to catch bandits in cyberspace a new frontier where international borders do not
exist that's according to fbi director lewis free so ironic that name isn't it computers are the new
way that criminals and terrorists have found to achieve their objectives free told the international
computer crime conference in manhattan how do we manage to miss that how do we manage to miss
computer crime computer crime conference i wasn't told nobody told me no it's almost like they don't
want us to know about it well free cited three recent cases in which a computer was the weapon
used to commit crimes against a bank the flying public and a 9-1-1 system computer is a weapon
the flying public oh wait wait we should comment on that little 9-1-1 thing he threw in there well
wait a minute i haven't read the story yet oh okay good because i heard about that all right well
let's let's read about it and then we'll comment okay tradition we'll do it that way uh in in one case
someone with a laptop computer in st petersburg russia tried to gain access to millions of dollars
in a u.s bank you see where this is going oh yeah russians trying to take our money yeah i hate that
in another a convicted this is what i'm really curious about a convicted terrorist used a laptop
to create plots to blow up a dozen u.s airliners what does that mean they used that i mean what they
typed into it and that made it the weapon i was i was indicted federally for possessing a laptop
computer that's amazing i mean having a laptop having a device you can write on is like considered
a crime and that's a that's a terrorist weapon okay and here here's the one i think you want to
comment on yeah uh a young man in sweden hacked his way into computers in florida to shut down a 9-1-1
emergency call system for an hour crippling the networks responsible for speedy responses by police
fire and ambulances free called the florida incident a dress rehearsal for a national disaster
and said the agency must prepare for the absolutely catastrophic as part of its mission to protect
public safety and ensure national security um i don't know what do you make of that we have an
update on that story craig knight or fall over again but but uh even worse than that well this
wasn't the document this person actually did something no yeah and i'll tell you what he did okay
he was a kid from sweden right was conferencing 9-1-1 operators in florida together right that's it
well according according to this uh no computer was used nothing according to the associated press this
is the update on that story in january through march of last year the man would call and harass
dispatchers in one county or link county 9-1-1 operators through a conference calling system he had
hacked into uh they then go on to get this kind of wrong they say when a person dials 9-1-1 the call
actually is received on a telephone line with a seven digit number and the man was able to get
those actual telephone numbers to make his calls into 9-1-1 systems that may have been true there
but it's not true everywhere no that might have been true in the place in florida he was calling
small places i think that's true but yeah certainly in new york city there isn't a seven digit number
every 9-1-1 port that not at all um anyway in a few of them it was just a one-time incident where he
would hook up a 9-1-1 operator with another 9-1-1 operator uh in other jurisdictions it was multiple
times uh they refused to say how asians tracked the man down in sweden the case came to light
tuesday when fbi director lewis free mentioned it in a speech at an international computer crime
seminar in new york i guess that was last tuesday that happened uh and the florida case was one of
several he mentioned to illustrate how computer hackers and phone freaks have been able to penetrate
u.s businesses and institutions anyway he was convicted of a misdemeanor in his homeland
um since sweden has no laws on electronic intrusion it's not that serious a thing over there
but had he been a u.s citizen he would have been facing federal felony charges wow i mean it's a
stupid thing to do to tie up 9-1-1 or to harass them yeah let's let's not go crazy here with what
the the the you know capabilities of such a person there was there was no computer involved and there
was no hacking involved he could have called alliance teleconferencing with at&t calling card
he got off of bbs ah there's a computer right there bbs okay he couldn't have done it without a
computer shoulder surfed and got a calling card there's always going to be a computer involved
someplace these days here's a kid who was making prank calls from a regular phone and now he could
be he could be charged with a federal felony and locked up for years well here yeah if we're here
yeah over here over there he's charged with a misdemeanor and and the swedish officials didn't
even release his name to the federal authorities in the united states i guess the swedish government
had a little more intelligence than ours yeah speaking of hackers taking over corporate america
uh nasa internet website was invaded by computer hackers who altered a picture of the space shuttle
and threatened an electronic terrorist attack against corporate america officials said thursday you
know it's amazing how they how they're able to uh to uh take some some joking remarks and turn it
into a terrorist threat yeah um brian dunbar nasa's internet services manager said the hackers broke
into the website just before noon a couple of wednesdays ago actually it was last wednesday
uh and substituted an altered page for one routinely posted by nasa uh the message from the hackers was
a diatribe against commercial use of the internet and uh the message was a vague threat to carry out
an electronic terrorist attack against corporate america within a month it also called for the
release from jail of some well-known hackers actually bernie i think you were on that page too
uh-oh yeah i get about any knowledge of these people yeah um we don't know who they were either but
the site is mirrored on our web uh web page so if you want to take a look at it and judge it for
yourself this is the nasa web page yeah uh well it was the nasa now it's on the 2600 web page
ah i'll have to check that out yeah so if you go to www.2600.com and uh look around for the nasa
hacked site you'll see exactly what they said and you also see what what the page is supposed to look
like there was another hack over the weekend and uh i'd like to first of all read you a letter from
somebody that we got uh over at the website uh concerning that hack you may have heard of this
the ncaa also got hacked yeah um he wants to thank us for maintaining the hack site pages on
our website um i find it difficult to put into words exactly why i think what you are doing is a
valuable public service i do however feel that people who have zero hacker in them are at least
partially brain dead sheep i just recently added the nasa sites link to my page when i today heard
about the ncaa site i did not like what i heard about that hack and was pleased to see that you had not
added it to your site and hope and pray that this condition persists i'm completely disinterested in
ever seeing it uh those who hack motivated by hate are worse than brain dead sheep in my opinion
now yeah uh we've put up a lot of sites on 2600 that have been hacked including the um the east timor
site which opens people's eyes as far as the situation in that part of the world and the air
force and the cia and more recently nasa this ncaa thing i i took a look at it it's it's a bunch of
garbage really it's um basically a white power propaganda and whether or not it's put up there
you know as a joke or as something serious there is no message being conveyed here other than
yeah we can do it and we're stupid you know i mean a speech is a very valuable thing to to to use and
taking over someone's website i think is is the ultimate form of control when someone takes over
your website they kind of like are controlling exactly what it is you say and what you represent
so that's what happened to nasa that's what happened to the air force that's what happened
in sweden with the with the cia people uh and in this particular case it happened to the ncaa and
uh you know it the people who took over this website were stupid morons idiots i mean i don't want to be
too nasty but uh what they were saying was just you know insulting and what's the point of of of
enshrining that in history and saying wow look what look what hackers did i'm upset because you
know they they mentioned uh 2600 in one part they said uh what they say greetings to people who go to
the 2600 meetings or something like that well you know that's that's not what we're all about we're not
about just messing things up and and putting out messages that don't have any real value in them
nothing to say you know we have whether or not you agree with with the political agenda of somebody
if if someone says something that is obviously an opinion that that has some merit you have to
respect that this is this is just pure hatred and it's not something that i think uh anybody can
really defend if they if they would have if they would have insulted college basketball right at face
value yeah i mean that okay that would have been something they did this on like the busiest night
of the ncaa or whatever and they said uh you know if they had said something like uh college
basketball is just you know part of the whole capitalistic monopolistic you know stupidity things
like that just said it was crap yeah whatever you know they should back it up with something yeah
all right but uh you know tell us something tell us your opinion and okay you know you're good
enough to hack the website let's at least say something that makes a little bit of sense and has
some opinion behind it rather than just you know putting forth a bunch of you know four-letter
words and racist crap well it's kind of the way i see it it's kind of like this if you're going to
take the trouble to climb up those really really tall ladders to get up up to the billboard with
your spray cans right you should you should say something interesting when you're up there that's
that's good i like that not just something stupid right or what are we gonna you climb mount
everest right are you gonna you know plant the flag there or leave a coke can what do you think of
that something that makes it clear as to why you did it other than just to explain that you're an
idiot exactly i don't know but that's that's the reason why that's not on our website and um
let's let's hope let's hope uh we see some more interesting ones you know i mean no harm is done
when when people do this in the right way i mean no one's being locked out of a site if they were
being locked out of their own site that would be malicious that would be evil and that would be
something that would have to be fought but that's not what's happening in any of these cases these
hackers are going in they're taking over sites they're putting up their messages and people are
getting back in and fixing it and restoring what they had before and it's just uh you know it's a
little bit of an embarrassment a little bit of trouble but hey you know that's part of the whole
net experience all right uh let's go to the phones 212-279-3400 if anybody has any suggestions
on the whole in the whole area code crisis which is facing all of us in 212 those of you in new jersey
connecticut you're welcome to call in as well you know when i when i drove out to um to chicago i was
listening to wbai all the way across new jersey into pennsylvania 15 miles into pennsylvania i was
getting wbai i was listening to michi okaku talk about cloning i had i had to pull over into a gas
station because this other moronic station was interfering you know you don't have no idea how
moronic radio stations are when you're trying to listen to a good radio station and some idiot is
you know blasting forth their commercials and and garbage music and and you're trying to just listen
to this voice of sanity someplace so i pulled over into a parking lot and was you know listening for
about 15 minutes until you know the show ended and then continued on my way but i'll tell you you
know radio is a vacuum out there it really is you gotta prize what you have and and fight to maintain
it because it's uh it's not the kind of thing you'll find everywhere i found a couple of good radio
stations i found a couple of good college stations um even a couple of good commercial stations that are
better than commercial stations here you know they they sort of play alternative music but then they play
something different and they play things that are you know from the 80s maybe or from you know
they mix things up they're creative and you don't see that very often in new york you know on commercial
radio that is you see a lot of non-commercial radio as well but not commercial um actually uh bernie i
guess i i should mention this with you on the line that um people might not know this and maybe people
out there could explain this to me we had a station here wdre uh that was playing alternative music
and for some reason in philadelphia they also had a station called wdre it wasn't just simulcasting it was
uh it was it was doing other things as well when we lost our dre to whatever brain dead people are
running it now you still had yours but then last month you lost yours too what happened well they
were both sold from from what i've read and then local papers down here i think i i think i mailed you
a copy of this article too did you get that uh yes i did okay very sad article yeah it was a lot of
people were very unhappy that this uh um new music station uh went out but in any case i think they're
they're obviously both owned by the same company that sold it to a uh another company that specialized
in black entertainment and there was a lot of fear that it would be transformed into a rap station
which hasn't happened yet but it could happen but i don't know i guess the the buying company that bought
out wdre both stations decided along with some other stations part of the whole conglomerate
decided to phase in the new formats um in phases not all at once so sad thing people get very attached
to the radio station that's that's what happens to a lot of commercial stations uh they just you have
to understand it's it's not really the people who control them it's it's the corporate interests that
uh sell those commercials that's really what it's all about you're kidding yourself if you think
that uh you know your your commercial radio station is uh is something that's going to be loyal to you
because it never works that way the stations play music solely for you to listen to the commercials
between the songs that's the only reason commercial radio stations exist and this is going to be
greatly exacerbated with the uh with the telecommunications act of 1995 you know 95 or 1996 1996 i guess
i was looking at something the other day in the paper and it scared me all the popular radio stations out
on long island like you know the really popular ones like the top four or five they'll all own by the
same people now that used to be it used to be illegal but now uh it used to be the fcc limited the number
of radio stations in the country that one corporation could own and specifically limited the number of
stations in any particular market so there would be some diversity of uh programming and news and so forth
but now uh now there's virtually no limit one company can own all the radio stations and
in one city if you interpret the law that way it's it's really out of hand plus they can also own the
new one company can now own a newspaper tv station and radio stations uh don't forget the cable tv
system cable tv station uh company in the same city one guy can own them all it's like a citizen
cane you know it's exactly like that and this is something that we've been uh clamoring about now for a few
years and just it's getting bigger and and i mean it's not close to reality it is reality now and
what's worse is that the reason this didn't get reported much in fact there was a there was a good
thing on uh uh on not to plug npr too much but there's a talk program on npr today about the
telecommunications act in 1996 and it's passed i think early i think february of last year um there
wasn't very much press or media coverage of the implications of this bill that passed and a lot
of the hearings were held in secret and uh because there's so much money at stake literally billions
and billions of dollars um it's not just money it's also just uh the expression of thoughts and
well that wasn't that wasn't of any interest to the people who had the billions of dollars to to gain
from the passage of this this bill but uh apparently the house republicans the new the new ones that got
in um basically asked the uh the industry what do you want and they were told we want this this and
this and the bill was crafted and and it passed with hardly any deliberations or any media coverage and
the reason that the speculation is the reason there wasn't much media coverage of this is because
the people who own the stations at the time had a lot to gain by this thing being passed without any
public discussion about whether this is good or not and here we got it passed and it can only get
worse that's true and i think uh people need to do more things the equivalent of taking over web pages
you know with radio stations as far as maybe taking over their signals if necessary i don't know there's
got to be an answer to this someplace you can't have the same voice dictating to everybody in a
particular town uh there has to be choice there has to be access and we're just moving away from that
it's it's a very scary situation we need to take back some things anyway let's uh give the listeners
a chance to call in 212-279-3400 good evening you're our first caller hi emmanuel it's rebel we haven't
heard your voice in a long time yeah that's right i haven't heard from i haven't heard from you in a
long time anyway we've been we've been wondering what your take on the whole area code split is i don't
like it actually i don't doesn't like it all right rebel does not like the official word thank you very
much for calling rebel and now i just wanted to we have more to say oh yes of course all right
i'd like to also say that i think the person who hacked into the ncaa and who did those racist remarks
on the um web pages should get the same amount of treatment that bernie escott i think they i
wouldn't wish that on anybody yeah i mean people who are racist and who are like that i think uh
should be you should be arrested for racism i mean if you're a racist you should be put in jail
it should be against the law well it's it is a way of thinking i think you should be you should
be uh you know imprisoned for doing things you know like hurting people or you know discriminating
against people for for racist reasons but just thinking racist i think it's dangerous to say you
imprison somebody because of the way they think it is freedom of speech unfortunately that's the dark
side of the first amendment but unless you have you know you can't have no light side without the
dark side right there should be a little thing freedom of speech so long as it does not hurt
others as long as it doesn't offend someone else so then right you know you can't you can't do that
it doesn't work it's impractical but anyway um that's just my opinion and anyway i'm glad you're
not king rebel right i like the sound of that and if you want to um again make free phone calls
go to bernie esc do you have a thing uh down in philadelphia where like you have i don't have
anything that lets me make free phone calls well no well listen to this never did never listen to
this there's a there's a in 9x payment centers like where you get to pay your bill they have
you make free phone calls from the 9x office the 9x payment center on 13th street and 2nd avenue
you got you got a chutzpah i gotta tell you but look go to the 13th street and 2nd avenue 9x
payment center there's a courtesy phone and there'll be nice courteous people waiting for
you there too no i don't suggest doing that no wait a minute i've been doing this for years you could
just pick it up dial 9 you're supposed to dial the business office by dialing like uh 2 1 or 2 2
this guy's confessing to this over the air you know i mean come on the courteous people who'll
be waiting for you next time will be wearing badges next time is it has been a long time i've
been doing this and nobody seems to no they just think you're making you know now they think that
you're calling what you're supposed to be calling when i'm really just dialing 9 getting an outside
line and dialing 10288 for at&t and having them put long distance calls through it'll be a very
simple thing for them to put some sort of a monitor on that line and detect when you're doing that next
all right so i'd be very careful i would not well no well well but but wait i'm sure 9x will get word
of this and will fix this stupidity it's been going on for years well how many times have you
announced it over the other radio well a couple because nobody's seen when i tell somebody about it
you've given the address all right you've given the exact way of making the phone call i don't
think there's much left for them to do i mean uh when i in in in queens in jamaica and and you know
all over the city there's these phones that you could just make free phone calls on all right why
do you just distribute a list and well look at the list on my website at www oh there you go
what's that website again that website is www.escape.com that's e-s-c-a-p-e.com
slash tilde rebel r-e-b-e-l i don't suppose your your site has been uh hacked or i guess you know in
fact very funny you should mention it one time a long time ago it has been changed like by somebody
that um sort of i i guess i should say my website has been hacked once and uh somebody's changed some
uh you know phrases but but it was you know extend did something to make you look foolish perhaps
uh something something like that well i i don't think that's terrible when someone does that but but it
was a learning experience for all was well it was because you know it was my uh uh you know i know
why see that that's the thing i learned from it i know why it happened and i fixed it and i fixed it
so that it doesn't happen and you fix them good well with 9x you hack them or you make free phone calls
with them they don't understand you try and get the message to them yeah that's why don't we just
clarify for any 9x employees listening that's the uh that's the maintenance operation center at 204
second avenue at 13th street right are there any other phones or yes there's one in jamaica no no
no i mean in that building i want to make sure they get the right phone they might disable the
wrong one you know oh well no that you walk in the door where's the phone walk in your door yeah
yeah and it's at the back uh-huh and you it's on the left what color is the phone it's a wall phone
it's like beige it's a courtesy phone it's not a white courtesy telephone it's a beige courtesy
no it's a press button phone okay all right well we got that straightened out rebel i think you
should go put a sign on the phone so they don't mistake it for another one i know we'll just we'll
we'll go over there we'll put a sign saying free calls here and see if that gets them to
something about rebel thank you very much for for that hot tip oh boy you think he's gonna be
walking around in the next couple of weeks i think they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna
get him yeah they're gonna get i hope they don't lock him up oh boy oh i have a i have an audio
demonstration for for the listeners well you have to wait till the next caller gets off because we
have a new caller good evening i i'm usually first but i my timing was off tonight rebel had you beat
by a hair yes i i have to apologize i didn't listen to the show last week due to my bipolar disorder
but it's now in the upswing okay that's good to know bernie it's so great to hear you and you know
with no lock-up calls or police sirens or you know horror tales i'm not even used to your voice i'm
used to hearing it you know gargled and long distance um i don't know if you remember my
voice we had a lot of phone calls on this show while you were in jail i remember you distinctly
i'm so i'm so glad you're you're better and uh free and uh fiber i'm glad you're not tardy you
like missed two or three shows anyway this is what i'm calling about this is this is what i'm calling
about um first a question or a comment about voice activated dialing now um correct me if my if
i'm wrong with don't you have to first pick up the phone and dial an 800 number to get into the
system and then do your thing you can't just do it where you just pick the receiver off the hook and
say like call uh bill's pizzeria right no that's exactly what you do you pick up the phone uh-huh
and you speak you can even have customers in there to represent certain people is this for 9x or the
sprint one or what what's for both i would imagine yeah oh i haven't seen the sprint one i used the
9x one because i had the sprint one originally years ago oh that's something else yeah i saw
their ad in scientific american and you have you have to call the 800 number and you have that's
the one where you speak your social security number right yeah that's the stupidest thing i ever heard
so uh so the 9x one if i were to get that and i don't know whether or not it's economical i would
just like pick up the phone and say you call emmanuel goldstein and it would do it you just pick up
the phone and bark out a command and it will dial whatever sounds closest to that oh of course you
have to pre-record them yeah you have to tell it it's not going to know intuitively who you're
supposed to call oh hey you know but that's with an 800 number or something right so fiber does your
speech break the dial tone in no actually uh does it a tone come on you get a dial tone for about a
half second then you get a little chirp and that's when you're supposed to speak right and you can you
can dial throughout doesn't matter if you if you don't speak the phone i'm calling from now has
actually a volume switch um with that effect would you like a demonstration of it i don't know if it
will raise my voice or just the voice of i think the volume switch will only raise our voice but
try it but then we got to move on all right so okay i just did it to high do i sound the same you
sound pretty much the same to me okay we probably sound louder yeah yes you do but the last thing
before you go i since like your your talk on radio and freedom of speech i think this is sort of
important yes um in terms of electronics and computers and everything one of the worst stores i've ever
been to in terms of you know all their branches not just in my neighborhood in terms of poor service
and competent sales help here we go bait and switch scams okay um nobody beats the whiz i mean i think
they make crazy eddie who was a greedy sob look like you know harvey by comparison so i just have to say
nobody beats the whiz whiz sucks and uh it's great to hear bernie and uh okay okay thanks for calling
for lending lending your opinion on that matter it's it's not the whiz it's nobody beats the whiz
nobody beats the whiz they're listed in the phone book as nobody beats the whiz we should add we do
not necessarily share those opinions no the whiz does now carry omnipoint yeah they're now like
they can't be that bad well i don't know it depends how bad you think omnipoint is yeah but yes they
are they are service people for that or sales people for that as well um okay bernie you had a
demonstration for us yes uh david b came down to visit me in philadelphia this past weekend and we
walked around and uh uh we went over to south street and there's a pawn shop there and usually
there's just musical instruments in there but uh i was looking to actually buy a replacement for my
guitar that was stolen but uh instead i found a tdd there in the display case and tdd is a
telecommunications device for the deaf if people haven't are familiar with the term did you have a
tdd stolen at hope i did indeed and coincidentally this td is identical it's not the same one but it's
the same model uh of the tdd that was stolen from me i hope so it was wonderful to find this there
they wanted fifty dollars for it and i got them down to like twenty bucks and i don't i think they
thought it was one of these little things that you can store names and phone numbers in because it's
very small it's about the size of a vhs cassette you can fold it up and uh it works great um so for
the for our listeners i thought i'd play tdd tones unlike unlike a modem yes uh well it works similar
to a modem it it it converts um text to to tones that can be uh sent over phone line and then decoded
at the other end but uh tdd users uh most of whom are hearing impaired or communicating with people
who are hearing impaired use these things sometimes they're portable sometimes they're built bolted
onto the bottom of a pay phone if you see a pay phone that has a funny looking steel box bolted at
the bottom of it with a red light on it that fluctuates if somebody's talking in a phone the red
light yes it's a tdd phone and if in fact you can you can't open that thing unless you call a phone
number where there's a tdd at the other end and when your tdd at that pay phone hears the tdd tones
at the remote end it will activate a relay and turn on a motor and the tray with the keyboard and display
will magically slide slide out if anybody finds one of these phones and they're supposed to be in every
public location like a where there's a lot of phones like a shopping mall or train station or
something if you call uh at&t directory assistance for tdd users that number is 800-855-1155
as soon as uh the tdd hears their carrier tone at their end the tray will slide out and you'll get
a message from the at&t operator saying this is operator number of like 129 how can i help you i
have a question then uh that's directory assistance for the entire country it is it's an 800 number
well if you call that from a public phone how do they charge you well it's done by a and i however
they can tell if you're calling from a pay phone and they'll ask you how you want to have it billed
ah unfortunately um that it's an 800 number you're calling and they don't tell you if you're calling
from a residential line they don't tell you there's a fee involved and they just bill it right back to
your to your to your phone bill and you call an 800 number and they haven't told you that it costs
anything so i think that's that's a scam that's been going on for a few years actually has yeah
however if you call if you call through an operator they don't get the a and i information they ask you
what number you're calling from and if you give them a different number they will bill it to that
number um wow don't give them like the number of the phone company business office or something or
they'll get billed for it they don't they don't have a good sense of humor why don't you play us
those tones i stored a number a message in the buffer of this to uh tailored specifically for
uh listeners at home well they have a tdd what's nice about a tdd unlike a modem is it's very low
speed uh five bit binary code called vado you can hold the tdd unit up to a speaker
and it will it will display the tone all right so we'll see if any listeners out there actually
are able to decode this message any tdd users out there hold your pdd up to the speaker of your radio
and this might even work on for our real audio customer uh customers uh yeah they might be able
to uh decipher it that's a good test anyway to see if that actually is only it's a uh 45 baud
very slow very slow you're not able to make it out by ear then almost i bet i bet fiber could do
that i was thinking about that with enough practice i probably here it goes let it rip
hope that wasn't you
hope that wasn't too long no that that was fine we have our technicians working on it right now
in fact try and decode that uh that's um you can record you can record tdd messages uh on a tape
recorder the audio tones and then play them back into a tdd's microphone that's true and it will
display right on the display it's very neat way you could actually leave a tdd message on someone's
voicemail and play them back later it's unlike uh drives the feds crazy really does i've never tried
that and i never will well in any event if somebody figures it out they can email us oth at 2600.com
or they can uh call the 2600 office 516-751-2600 and uh tell us what the message said and uh i guess
we'll we'll say that you're right next week i encourage i encourage people to uh find find these
tdd's wherever they're uh they're located in public locations in fact if they don't find one at a
shopping mall or a bus station um it's actually required under the americans with disabilities act
the ada which passed a few years ago that they have to be publicly available in in these locations so
you have to talk to the management and tell them they're not in compliance to the ada and they
better get their tdd in there or they get sued and they have to install one so uh well we've seen
plenty of them at uh penn station oh yeah yeah they have them at most uh most big gathering points
oh uh by the way i don't i we have to we have to run out of here but uh i should mention this to
bernie i'm not sure if you're familiar with the yellow phones that we have in new york but they're
getting rid of them what are they going to do with them i don't know what they're going to do with
them i'd like to know that myself but back to japan the whole the whole project was deemed a failure
new york has just didn't get it you could have told them it was a failure earlier on kind of
upset by that but uh bernie thank you very much for uh for being part of the show tonight thanks
for having me and for for sharing those little tones with us and hopefully somebody will get the
uh get the message in and convey it to us you can also write to us wbai off the hook 505 8th avenue
new york new york 10018 it's emmanuel goldstein with fiber optic and bernie s saying good night till
next week we'll see you then good night
the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it up
i cut myself while shaving now i can't make the cost
it couldn't get much worse
but if they could they would
but i hope that's understood
good night
Thank you.
On March 17th at 10 p.m. in celebration of St. Patrick's Day,
City in Exile presents Cross Beyond the Edge,
written by Stephen DeLauro and directed by Kieron O'Reilly,
with actors from the Irish Repertory Theater.
Hear the extraordinary story of St. Brendan's Voyage
in a coracle with his band of monks
from Ireland to the Delaware River watershed
a thousand years before Columbus was born.