In New York's recent Fringe Festival comes to Lattea, Lower Manhattan's pioneering Hispanic
Theatre Company. It tells the story of Colombia's involvement in the 1950 war which split the
Korean Peninsula. Colombian soldiers, responding to a UN Security Council SOS, suffered heavy
casualties in a surprise attack on a hill known as Old Baldy. A demented ex-sergeant, a gung-ho
patriot, and a clown meet in a desolate place and play out their individual despair with irony and
wit, despite the subject matter. Don't miss this production. October 15th through November 9th,
Wednesdays in English, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday matinees in Spanish in the newly renovated
Clemente Sotoveles Cultural Center. Call 212-529-1948 for reservations and information.
212-529-1948. This is a public service announcement of WBAI Radio on behalf of Lattea.
Welfare reform, workfare, and homelessness today mirror British colonial policy in Ireland in the 1840s
when evictions, mass starvation, exile, and death led to the great hunger, the defining event in modern
Irish history, and the worst human catastrophe in 19th century Europe. On November 1 and 2,
historians, artists, and activists from Ireland's nationalist and unionist communities and the Irish
diaspora will explore political, cultural, and psychological reverberations which are still being
felt today. Join us in a historic symposium, Breaking the Silences, Legacies of the Irish
Starvation, on Saturday and Sunday, November 1st and 2nd from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Hunter College,
presented by the Irish Famine Genocide Committee and the Irish American Club of Hunter College.
For information, call 917-469-2619. That's 917-469-2619. This has been a public service announcement of WBAI.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York, where the time is 8 o'clock, and once again,
we resume our off-the-hook transmissions.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cost.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
From Bilibon, for the best to stay for us.
I hope that's understood.
From Bilibon!
Bye-bye.
This is Off the Hook, returning after a three-week absence.
I'm Emmanuel Goldstein here.
Forgive me, I'm a little bit rushed tonight.
I just got in here and I didn't quite finish everything I had to do before the show.
So if you just bear with me for a moment, I just have to finish up some loose ends.
Problem with my phone bill, if you can believe that.
I just got to make a quick phone call, deal with the folks down at the phone company.
Let's just take a moment.
Here we go.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
Your call is very important to us.
There will be a short wait time to reach an AT&T representative due to the number of calls we are currently receiving.
Oh, boy.
Please stay on the line as calls are being handled in the order they are received.
We apologize for the wait.
Again, thank you for calling AT&T.
They're usually pretty good about this.
Ah, there we go, there we go.
Going right through here.
That's good.
Oh, that hurt.
Okay, here we go.
The AT&T True Connections personal 500 service number that you dialed has changed.
Please make a note of the new number, 1-800-TRUE-500.
That's 1-800-878-3500.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
But I didn't want to reach...
This must be it.
Hold on.
We are sorry for the inconvenience, but you have reached your non-working number at AT&T.
For assistance, please call 1-800-222-0300.
Thank you.
No, wait.
I'm starting to get...
Okay, this is it.
Here we go.
Your call is very important to us, and we realize that your time is valuable.
Please stay on the line, and an AT&T representative will be with you shortly.
I don't know if you realize how valuable this time is.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
You have reached the Lee Summit office of the CSSC and Residential Pro-Watts.
These offices are currently closed.
Oh, wait a minute.
The hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Central Time,
and Saturday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Central Time.
I don't even know what that means.
Please call back at that time.
If you need to speak to someone immediately, please call 1-800-222-0300.
Okay, I demand action.
All right, this had better be action ringing.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
You have reached the Lee Summit office of the Wembeck Center.
This office is currently closed.
The hours of operation are Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Central Time.
Please call back at that time.
Yeah, I'm just starting to get a little bit ticked off here.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
Due to high customer demand, all representatives are assisting other customers.
You may continue to hold for the next available representative or call again at a later time.
I think I'll hold.
Okay, here we go.
I can tell this is it.
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If you wish to speak to a representative regarding your AT&T long-distance bill,
please call 1-800-222-0300.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
Currently, all representatives are busy assisting other customers.
Please hold for the next AT&T representative.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
I'm sorry, but our office is temporarily closed.
Please try your call again later.
Oh, I'll temporarily close you.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
I'm sorry, but our office is currently closed.
Please call again during usual business hours of 7 a.m. to midnight, Eastern Time, seven days a week.
And thank you for calling AT&T.
Thank you for waiting.
All of our managers are still assisting other AT&T customers.
The next available manager will be with you as soon as possible.
Thank you for your understanding.
And, boy, is that...
If you continue to hold, you will not be disconnected.
That manager is going to get an earful.
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We are experiencing heavy call volumes due to an overwhelming response to our True Connection service.
If you are calling about a business 500 number, please call 1-800-392-1190.
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Lengthy delay.
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All of our representatives are still assisting other AT&T customers.
The next available representative will be with you as soon as possible.
Thank you for your understanding.
If you continue to hold, you will not be disconnected.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
You have reached the Lee Summit office of the Wendat Customer Satisfaction Complaint Call Handling Team.
This office is currently closed.
The office hours are 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Saturday.
Please call back at that time.
I think they just don't like to answer the phone with that huge name they have.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
Currently, all of our representatives are busy.
Please hold for the next available representative whose goal is to provide you with individualized service today.
You will not be disconnected.
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Our office is currently closed.
Please call back during our normal business hours, Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Central Time, and we will be happy to assist you.
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To speak to a representative regarding the Connecticut 5-Cent Offer, please hold, and a representative will be with you shortly.
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Do I take a callback commitment?
We should have done this at home.
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Thank you for calling AT&T.
You get the feeling I'm getting the runaround.
Yep.
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Thank you for calling AT&T True Rewards.
If you're calling to check on your current True Rewards account balance or to redeem points...
Well, I guess that's all we get.
We got disconnected.
What do you think?
They say you really got the runaround.
I got the runaround, all right.
Well, you know, there's only one word of explanation for what you've just heard.
And I will tell you what that one word is.
800-SCANNING.
800-SCANNING.
All you need to know, okay.
And everybody out there goes out and starts scanning.
You'll find neat little things like that.
Like test numbers.
Test numbers of all sorts or recordings of all sorts or just, you know, endless loops.
Fun things like that.
Fun for the whole family.
And it's free.
That's the really cool thing.
Well, that was my attempt to do business with AT&T over the phone.
And we've been away for a while.
We're back now.
And we're over the net.
You know, we have more streaming going on over the net than you could possibly imagine.
I hear we have like a T3 now in Wisconsin someplace.
Yeah.
And we've got a T1 here in New York.
And people all over the world are able to listen to us right now.
I don't know if they're actually taking us up on the offer.
However, we've got a special deal with one of the people that's handling this.
And he's going to email me on my Omnipoint phone to tell me if anything weird is going on.
So hopefully the Omnipoint phone will work.
But you know, I got something cool over the past few weeks.
You know what it is, don't you?
Yeah, I do.
I got my Sprint PCS phone.
And the reason I did it was because the prices were just so apparently amazing.
You were practically giving it away.
Well, I had to go to Radio Shack, okay?
And that's always a problem when you have to go to Radio Shack for, you know, for various things.
So I went to Radio Shack.
I dealt with those numbskulls over there and bought myself a phone.
You've played around with it.
What do you think?
I think it's nice.
It's kind of lacking in features, if you ask me.
I think the only thing it really has going for is the price.
This is not AT&T, I promise.
I hope it's not AT&T.
Well, yeah.
We'll get into what kind of features you're looking for.
I will admit the package deals on the minutes are really nice.
What's the maximum they have?
Hang on.
That's like 500 minutes.
Did someone pick up?
Hello?
Ah, Bernie.
Hello?
Bernie, we were worried about you.
We thought maybe something happened to you.
Okay.
I'm stuffing myself with Chinese food.
Well, we don't need to know that, now do we?
No.
All right.
So you asked about the minutes.
Yeah.
We're talking about Sprint PCS.
What's the biggest deal they have?
The biggest deal?
Well, the biggest deal I got.
I got the $60 for 600 minutes, which I think is a darn sight better than Omnipoint's 300 minutes
for $90.
No, 300 minutes for $80.
$89.99.
No, $79.99.
I'm paying $89.99.
You better not be, because that's not what the price is.
Oh.
All right.
Well, I'll look it up.
I'll make sure about that.
Plus, they have this other deal, right, where you pay an extra $20, and you get 1,000 minutes
of long distance.
Now, Omnipoint is $0.69 a minute.
Well, yeah.
Around the clock, day and night.
There's an advantage there when you run a long distance company.
They do run a phone company.
But, you know, I think if Omnipoint were smart, they would do something with people that run
long distance companies, like maybe MCI or, you know, one of the ones that isn't taken
yet.
Yeah.
Then they could afford reasonable prices.
Okay.
Now, on top of that, for an extra $5 a month, you get roaming, no roaming charges at all.
You can...
Again, it's all one big company.
I can go any place in this country that has Sprint PCS service, which is quite a few
cities, I think like 75 cities or so, and it's like I'm calling from my home.
Yeah.
And when I do those additional minutes, let's say I go above the 600 minutes that I got,
it's instead of... I think Omnipoint is, what, $0.25 off-peak and $0.49 on-peak.
With Sprint, I believe after the 600 minutes, it's $0.20 no matter what time per minute, which
is really pretty good.
So there's no peak off-peak.
I don't think there is, because it said $0.20 per minute in the fine print.
They don't get involved in differentiating between peak and off-peak.
It's just too much of a hassle for them now.
Yeah, it's a bother.
So they just, you know, one price, yeah, that's what you pay.
So as far as the service goes, well, first of all, the coverage is better than Omnipoint
out on Long Island.
Omnipoint is getting better.
They're popping up.
Just today, I was driving around.
I saw them in some other places.
It's kind of weird, you know, because you drive for a block and they're there and then they're
gone.
I don't know what good that does you, really.
The transmitters are very, you know, low power.
But so are the CDMA transmitters of Sprint PCS.
I'm not sure which is more powerful.
The coverage seems to be a little better with Sprint PCS.
Well, I think the bigger difference is that a CDMA phone talks to more cell sites.
Right.
It's not a power difference so much.
You're comparing apples and oranges.
The CDMA talks to, I believe, half a dozen cell sites in any given time.
And I think with GSM, it's half as many.
Yeah.
The point is, it seems to work better.
I think GSM is better technology.
Yeah.
It's the world standard.
But as far as in this country, I think CDMA seems to have the advantage.
Why is a GSM better technology?
Well, I think that's your question.
Well, from a consumer standpoint, what makes GSM superior to CDMA?
Well, for a really simple reason is that once analog cellular is more or less just gotten rid of over the next five to ten years
because it's really just cumbersome and costs the industry a lot of money.
But then it'll all be CDMA cellular.
Well, it'll also all be GSM.
Okay.
This is the basic battleground we have laid out here.
Well, the big difference is that CDMA's encryption has already been broken before it even became widespread.
GSM's encryption hasn't.
It's not to say that it won't be.
Well, how does that affect the average consumer?
Because if the average consumer can be eavesdropped upon, then I think he's going to care.
Well, he doesn't seem to care over the last, like, 20 years or so when they've been broadcasting their conversations in the clear, you know?
Yeah, but if people didn't have a choice, all cellular was analog.
So CDMA's encryption was broken, you're saying?
Yeah.
So why don't they simply make a new encryption algorithm?
Because the, I mean, it's already standardized.
All the equipment is already deployed.
They can't just change something.
So you're saying there are people out there right now that can just listen at will to CDMA?
No, I'm saying that in theory, the algorithm that they use for encryption was shown to be weak.
Ah.
And breakable.
Breakable.
But has it been broken?
Has somebody actually in the field listened in to a phone call?
Yes.
I haven't heard yet of anyone actually doing it.
Okay.
I think that's an important distinction.
Yeah.
Bernie, you were saying something?
I was just saying, yeah, in theory, this and that.
There are a lot of theories out there, but I have yet to hear of anyone whose CDMA-based phone has been cloned
or whose CDMA-based wireless conversation has been eavesdropped upon by other than law enforcement.
Well.
You will.
Yeah, I'm sure it's going to happen.
I'm sure it's going to happen, too, but I think it's going to happen on a number of different fronts.
And we're talking about, you know, possibilities.
Right now, the way the technology looks and the way the pricing is, I mean, Omnipoint could have a great advantage if the pricing went down.
Yeah.
The question is, how do they get their pricing to go down?
You know, they would have some really, you know, cool things going on.
They have a lot of features right now that CDMA does not have, but I think CDMA is going to get those features.
Well, they claim they are.
SMS messaging, things like that.
Bernie, do you have anything about that, short messages?
Yeah, they'll have it in Philadelphia.
They're saying they will have it in December, short messaging.
And then by February or March, they will have data services where you can just plug your phone into the serial port on your PC
and have a digital connection without any modem.
Interesting.
You don't need a PCMCIA card or anything like that?
No, plug it right in the serial port.
How is it that the handset can talk directly to a computer?
Well, it depends on what's on the other end, obviously.
No, but I mean, they're coming out with a new handset that's going to have modem integrated into the handset?
Excuse me.
Hello, I'm hearing tones.
No, that's me.
I'm getting a phone call on my Omnipoint phone.
It's really annoying.
It is.
It is.
And I apologize for that.
So, was there a question for me?
No, I was curious if, because with GSM, you basically have a bus connector on your phone,
and you can connect it to a PCMCIA modem card that was made for GSM that you would then plug into your computer.
I'm just curious if they're going to come out with a new handset for CDMA phones.
It's going to have that integrated into the phone.
Now I'm getting a call on my Sprint PCS phone.
Oh, man.
That's crazy.
It's amazing, yeah.
You know, Omnipoint does not pass along their caller ID to Sprint PCS.
Yeah, I noticed that.
Why is that?
I don't know why that is.
They only seem to pass their caller ID along to other Omnipoint phones.
And they seem to steal caller ID from people that want to block it.
Well, that too.
Yeah.
Very important fact there, you know.
Oh, we discovered something interesting.
What's that?
If you call the mail numbers of Omnipoint, try this, okay?
What are some Omnipoint exchanges over in 917?
774, 945, 770.
Okay.
Any of those, you call that number and put the suffix of mail, M-A-I-L, which is 6245.
Call that number and try blocking your caller ID, star 67, before it.
You'll get a reorder.
You'll get a reorder.
And then try unblocking your caller ID by donning star 82.
You'll also get a reorder.
Very strange.
So it's as if the commands that are being sent somehow confuse the switch.
Because if you call from an all-call block number, it'll go right through.
Right.
Of course, your number will still go through even though you're blocked, but the call will go through.
So it has trouble somehow translating the star commands, I guess.
I also tried all this with Sprint PCS.
They use the mail suffix as well.
Yeah.
And you're forgetting the Sprint silliness.
Well, there is some Sprint silliness.
The Sprint silliness with the voicemail.
Yeah.
I'm going to get to that.
First of all, they block when appropriate.
When you want to block, they block.
When you star 67, they don't send a number.
Or when you send a number, it gets displayed in your voicemail.
But yeah, I think this is kind of a feature, actually, in the voicemail system.
You can have an option set up where you don't have to enter your password if you call from your cell phone or from your PCS phone.
And it takes caller ID from that phone and says, okay, it matches the number that we agreed to and just starts playing back your message.
Not only that, you just have to press one button on a handset and then you're in.
Driving my car, operating heavy machinery, whatever it is that I'm doing when I'm talking on the phone, hit one button and not have to hit any other buttons and just listen to the new messages that come in.
I think that's kind of cool.
I'm a little concerned about the security aspects of that, but I haven't found any way to hack it.
I'm actually kind of excited by the security implications because if we can figure out a way to spoof caller ID, then you can simply get into anybody's mailbox that easily.
But, you know, you don't even need to do that.
You know why? The default passwords for all Sprint mailboxes is the word Sprint.
So all you have to do is call all these numbers and 701 is an exchange in 917.
Call all these numbers, right, and you hit star, that's for a password.
If you enter Sprint, most times I think you'll get in.
Yeah. 805 is another one.
805 is another one.
So, I mean, that's silliness. That's really silliness.
But, you know, it's up to the customer to fix that because you can have any password you want, obviously.
Yeah.
Another thing which I was very annoyed by, they asked for, I bought the phone at Radio Shack.
I'll just skip all the unpleasantness with dealing with Radio Shack because it's just not worth getting into.
We don't have the time.
But I called Sprint PCS to activate the phone.
Now, I did like I did with Omnipoint and I gave them, you know, information, enough information so they could reach me.
When they asked for a Social Security number, though, I don't like giving that out.
So, I gave them a fake one, just like I gave to Omnipoint.
Omnipoint had no problem at all.
Sprint, I failed the credit check.
They wouldn't tell me why.
They just said, oh, you failed, that's it.
What do you mean that's it?
I bought this phone.
What am I supposed to do with it now?
Well, you have to go to our office located over here and show two forms of ID.
The office was 60 miles away.
You know, I didn't feel like driving to an office with two forms of ID.
And plus, they're probably going to ask me for my SSN again when I get there.
And then I'll have to lie to their face.
Probably take a lie detector test, a urinalysis, whatever else they have set up there.
I just didn't want to go through it.
So, I wound up giving them my real Social Security number.
And you know what?
They lied to me.
They said, it still doesn't work.
Now, the only way they could say that would be if they didn't try it.
You know, so I just got really flustered.
And I just waited until the next day and started over from scratch.
And it was as if I'd never done anything.
You know, it just went right through.
And I got my service.
But...
They're wise to you, Amanda.
Apart from that unpleasantness, you know, I have to say, it's okay.
But, you know, I got a bunch of ninnies working there.
You know, I...
How many markets is GSM up and operating in now?
It's all over the place.
If you go to the Omnipoint webpage, you'll see all the different places you can roam.
Omnipoint itself, I wasn't aware of this.
I thought they had offices all over the country.
They're only in Philadelphia and New York.
Right.
I thought they were in different places.
Oh, no.
Only two areas.
No, they roam with the other members of the North American GSM Consortium, like Sprint Spectrum and so on.
Yeah, Sprint Spectrum isn't in that many places either.
No, they're Baltimore and D.C. and that area.
The interesting thing is, if you have Sprint Spectrum, you have GSM.
You can't use Sprint PCS because that's CDMA.
So if you're in Washington, D.C.
You have a Sprint Spectrum phone and you journey up to New York, that phone will begin to say Omnipoint on it instead of Sprint PCS because that's the GSM company up here.
However, there is a new twist to that problem.
Oh.
A positive twist, actually.
Okay.
Qualcomm has recently released a dual-mode, dual-band handset, which operates on PCS frequencies in 1,900 MHz in CDMA mode.
And it also operates on 800 MHz analog cellular.
So, you would think, well, then I'd have to have two accounts, wouldn't I?
Wouldn't I have to have a Sprint PCS account?
I would think that.
And a cellular account.
I thought that, too, until just a couple days ago when I learned otherwise.
Apparently, Sprint PCS is rapidly establishing roaming agreements with cellular carriers across the country.
And with this dual-mode, dual-band handset, if you are out of range of Sprint PCS CDMA service and there's analog cellular in that area, which there is in an awful lot of areas, it will work through that analog cellular system.
And you can say, well, analog cellular isn't all that great, but it's much better than not having any communications at all.
And the roaming rates that Sprint PCS has established with other cellular carriers are, in the northeast region, it's 55 cents a minute, day or night.
And in other parts of the country, it's 69 cents a minute, day or night.
But that's not exactly a bargain.
It's not a bargain, but it eliminates the, it doesn't eliminate, but it addresses the problem of not being able to use your Sprint PCS phone in areas served by other wireless technologies.
Well, now, how about this?
You're driving along and your Sprint PCS signal disappears.
Does it automatically get picked up by an analog system at that point?
No.
You have to reestablish the call.
Exactly.
Okay.
And when you reestablish the call, you know which service you're using?
It would say so on the handset of the phone, yeah.
Okay.
Because I wouldn't want to be, yeah, I wouldn't want to be, you know, pushed into using a service I didn't want to use.
A little thing, actually.
There's an interim standard, IS-41, that's in the works, that's supposed to cover the so-called seamless handing off between the various different cellular technologies.
So your call would not be interrupted.
Yeah, but your pricing scheme would be.
Your pricing scheme would suddenly skyrocket from 10 cents a minute or whatever to 55.
That's not too cool.
So, yeah, I don't see where it really has any merit, this IS-41.
Well, I mean, they have to get transmitters up in all kinds of different places, both the GSM and CDMA, and I don't see how, I really don't see how GSM operates in the countryside.
I mean, does it?
Does it operate all over Europe and, you know, away from cities?
Yeah.
So, what, do they have transmitters every few feet in farms or what?
I don't know what they do, but I know that they have coverage in, you know, in countryside-type places.
Okay, well, this is an appeal to those of you in Eastern Europe that are listening now on the Real Audio or wherever, you know.
Or in the British Isles, there's plenty of countryside.
Them too, them too.
But we want to give everybody a chance.
Country Code 1.
Yeah.
No, seriously, you need that.
Country Code 1 and our area code, we don't call them city codes here, we call them area codes, 212-279-3400.
We are broadcasting all over the place tonight.
And, you know, it was kind of cool.
Somebody set up on this server last night, they were playing the first Off the Hook show back from 1988, but they were streaming it.
So, everybody that was conversing on IRC was listening at the same time.
It was like, you know, a film playing on HBO or something like that.
And we were commenting on the various callers and how stupid they were.
Well, we don't say that, no.
Just, you know, commenting on the various things that went by.
And it's kind of neat to be able to do things like that, you know, to have a server up where we play things at a certain time.
So, we're going to play around with that idea as well.
You've got something there, something from the front page of the Daily News.
That I think both me and Bernie will be kind of alarmed about.
We're alarmed at everything.
Yeah.
It's called, the name of the article is Dial V-I-N-E for Criminals.
And it's a new toll-free number that's being set up as a Victim Information and Notification Everyday Line.
That's a really bad acronym.
Yeah, it sure is.
That's what V-I-N-E is supposed to stand for.
But it's basically meant for victims of muggers, robbers, rapists, and other criminals.
Which is the part that worries me.
Yeah.
Basically, they can call up an 800 number.
In this case, it's 888-V-I-N-E 4-N-Y.
It's not an 800 number, then.
Well, it's the toll-free number.
The same thing.
The terminology is very important.
But you would call this up, you being the victim.
Okay.
And you could find out if a particular inmate...
Email coming in.
No, go ahead.
You could find out if...
You know, my phone rebooted.
It rebooted?
It just rebooted after I got that email.
Does that mean I lost the email?
No.
Of course not.
You know, the victim can basically call up this line and find out if a particular inmate
is still incarcerated or not, whether they were released, simply by entering in either
their last name or their inmate number.
Uh-huh.
And they can have the system notify them.
They can enter in a passcode, have the system notify them within 10 minutes of the inmate being
released.
That's...
They actually call you to tell you...
It actually calls you and lets you know, and if it doesn't get a hold of you, it tries
every half hour.
Wow.
I wonder if there's, like, you know, a panicky tinge in the voice.
Hey!
He's out!
He's out!
He's coming to get you!
I'm told our T3 is at 73% with 59 users right now, and lots of spoofing.
Great.
Yeah.
Okay.
And there's another message, but I'll get to that in a second.
So, are we going to call this number?
Yeah, so this...
Yeah, I guess we could try it.
Um, I don't know if it's actually up right now, but we should probably see if it is.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Well...
Feel free.
It's, uh...
So I get a phone line here.
Get a happy dial tone.
Okay.
There we go.
Okay.
1-8-8-8.
V-I-N-E.
4-N-Y.
We've got to ask for a name.
How about we do, like, Smith or something?
Yeah.
Okay.
Welcome to the New York City Victim Information and Notification Everyday System.
You must have a touch-tone phone in order to use this system.
To continue in English, press 1.
So if you want to be a victim, you've got to have a touch-tone phone.
Please be advised that this system is only for inmates in the custody of the New York City Department of Correction.
This system is provided for victims of crime committed in New York City.
The purpose of the Vine system is to assist you in obtaining information regarding the custody of inmates from the records of the New York City Department of Correction.
As with any automated system, it is not completely free of errors, and there may be delays in reporting inmate information due to technological difficulties or human error.
Just plain stupidity.
You should not rely on the Vine system or any other information system for protection.
If you know the New York State ID number, press 1.
No, we don't know that.
If you only know the inmate's name, press 2.
Okay.
We know that.
Please enter the last name of the inmate followed by the pound sign.
Smith or Jones?
Use the one key for Q and Z.
Okay, here we go.
S-M-I-T-H, pound.
The inmate's last name is S-M-I-T-H.
As a Smith.
If this is correct, press 1.
Yes, yes.
Otherwise, press 2.
Please enter the first name of the inmate followed by the pound sign.
Use a one key for Q and Z.
If you do not know the inmate's first name, please press the pound key.
Let's just say John.
I don't think that works if you press the pound key.
No, they said if you don't know his first name.
It's got to be a John Smith in prison somewhere.
The inmate's first name is J-O-H-N.
If this is correct, press 1.
Yes.
Otherwise, press 2.
Please enter the inmate's arrest date followed by the pound sign.
How am I going to know that?
Enter two digits for the month, two for the day, and four for the year.
If you do not know the inmate's arrest date, press the pound sign.
Let's say July 4th, 1997.
Well, what happens if you press the pound?
A lot of people get arrested on July 4th.
I think it just tells you to, like, go somewhere else or something.
Okay, hold on.
Invalid date.
Really?
A date is eight digits.
Huh?
Two for month, two for day, and four for year.
Oh, four for year.
Right.
Like you got arrested in 1899.
Followed by the pound sign.
All right.
It's year 2000 compliant.
All right, all right.
Yeah, I guess they're thinking ahead.
There.
Happy health, pound sign.
Invalid date.
What's wrong with this date?
A date is eight digits.
Two for month, two for day, and four for year.
Didn't I do that?
Please enter the inmate's arrest date followed by the pound sign.
I'm going to try this one more time.
Enter two digits for the month.
I'm losing patience, though.
You enter July 4th, 1997.
If this is correct, press one.
Otherwise, press two.
We see the odds with John Smith being arrested on July 4th.
That arrest date could not be found.
Please enter the birth month of the inmate followed by the pound sign.
Okay.
If you do not know the inmate's birth date, press the pound sign.
Let's just say January.
You entered January.
If this is correct, press one.
Yeah, sure.
Otherwise, press two.
Why not?
Something's happening.
No inmate could be found with the information that you provided.
Either the information you provided is not correct,
or the inmate may not be in the custody of the New York City Department of Correction.
They let him go.
It takes at least 48 hours after an arrest for an inmate to be in custody.
The accuracy of the information which you provided will increase the likelihood
that the information which you received from the fine system will be accurate.
Yeah, yeah, it's my fault.
Okay, I get it.
To decrease the likelihood of misidentifying the inmate,
you should know the inmate's New York State ID number.
For further assistance,
please contact the district attorney's office in the county where the crime was committed.
For a crime that took place in the Bronx, press one.
For a crime that took place in Brooklyn, press two.
For a crime that took place in Manhattan, press three.
For a crime that took place in Queens, press four.
For a crime that took place in Staten Island, press five.
And if you enter these numbers, they just give you, like, the DA's phone number.
What happens if you commit a crime on a bridge?
Ah.
I don't know.
You'd fall right out of the system.
Yeah.
Okay, 212-279-3400 is our phone number.
Country code of one if you're calling from outside the area.
Outside the country, that is.
And, of course, if you're calling inside the country or inside Canada.
You still need the one.
You still need the one.
1-2-1-2.
It confuses people so much when they come from out of the country to dial the one anyway.
All right.
Let's see who's out there.
Should I take the first one or pick a number?
I'm afraid you know it's going to happen.
The fourth one.
That's what we did last time.
Is it?
Yeah.
7-7.
2.
2.
2?
You want 2?
Sure, 2.
All right, 2.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Good evening, Emmanuel.
How are you doing?
This is Stephen, and I'm calling from London, England.
Oh, my God.
Overseas.
You're listening to us now, huh?
That's right, yeah.
Wow, this is cool.
This is really cool.
We've finally gotten over that big body of water there.
Yeah, finally.
I was listening to your problems with AT&T earlier, and it sounds like the American phone
network is so busy that I was amazed I could get through myself.
I'm amazed, too, because they disconnect after about 20 rings.
Did you have to call a few times?
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, 3 or 4.
Wow, but you actually got through.
That's really good.
How do we sound on the Internet?
Your real audio is coming in through absolutely fine.
Obviously, over this side, everybody's sort of asleep, so...
We'll just crank it up a little loud so they can hear it.
Unfortunately, my other phone line is busy doing something else in the other room.
I see.
A friend of mine's working on that, but yeah, no problems at all.
I haven't had any dropouts on the real audio.
It's been great to listen to you live at last rather than just through your real audio archive.
We want to thank Port Shop and the support for their hard work, because they're not here
tonight because they're slaving away on servers, making sure that the signal gets out there.
Right.
I know you were hoping to have almost a continuous real audio service live.
Well, we want to be able to do this every week, and it looks like we'll be able to, but
we also want to get WBAI on that as well, so that people around the world can hear our
particular thoughts on things and also participate as you are.
Yeah, I mean, there's nothing like that, this sort of listener-supported radio in the
UK.
Yeah, tell us about the radio scene there.
Now, you have a lot of pirate stations.
There were up until a short while ago.
A lot of them have gone, have been, there's been a recent round of sort of radio licensing,
and so a lot of the pirate stations have actually been licensed now.
Really?
So these people that were on the air illegally, they got legitimate licenses?
Oh, there's still a few tower blocks with antennas sticking out of windows, a couple of stories
up broadcasting to small areas, but...
Did they have to change their policies when they took these licenses, like not use certain
language, you know, things like that?
Yeah, it does seem to have changed quite a bit the way the pirate stations have been working.
When they've moved legitimately, they really have changed the way they work.
In fact, a lot of them have lost a lot of listeners.
Really?
What were some of the old pirates like?
What kinds of things do they have on?
There's been a lot of dance stations, you know, rap stations spin around, but there's
certainly been nothing interactive in any way.
One problem we have, especially here in New York, is the FM dial is practically full, but
I think over in London there's lots of gaps.
There's lots of space, and also we've just started a digital audio broadcasting, so obviously
only the main, sort of the BBC networks have got that.
How does that work?
What do you need to listen to that?
There's a special receiver, which is sort of ten times the price of a normal radio, and
that picks up the main, I think all the BBC radio stations over here, the World Service
and the sort of UK local channels are all broadcasting on that.
Do you know what frequency a broadcaster?
I'm not really sure.
I'm not sure whether there's like a carrier wave that everybody transmits their markers
onto, and that determines where the, I think there's just a set of bands, and everybody
jumps onto those, and sort of multiplexes.
I was going to mention actually BT's ADSL.
Oh boy, they have ADSL over there, huh?
Well, very disappointingly, they have decided to go to give it to companies before sort of
the individuals.
I heard the guy from, I think he was in, he was in Bell Canada.
Yeah, he was in Ottawa.
Yeah, and I mean, he, it sounds to me like they were, they were doing their trials.
Bell Canada, yeah, Bell Canada has trials with residential, and Bell Atlantic says this
coming year they'll be doing trials with residential instead of businesses, so yeah, it is surprising
that BT chose to go with businesses instead.
Yeah, the first trials will be in London, and they'll be, you know, exclusive to the businesses.
Do you know when they begin?
Um, I think they begin in the next, in the next month or two.
Uh-huh.
Um, so obviously, I know you were, you're talking about, um, the competition between the TAL
SLT one-lines to companies versus the ADSL, but obviously in the UK they've decided that,
uh, they'll just move the companies over to ADSL.
Hmm.
And, uh, hopefully not miss the, uh, the residentials out, but, uh.
How about ISDN?
You guys got that over there?
Uh, ISDN's certainly nowhere near as big as, from what I've been hearing on your Real
Audio archives, um, you know, in the States it seems to be much, much, um, it's pushed
a lot more.
Well, I think ISDN is, is a lot bigger in Germany, isn't it?
Uh, that's right.
I think with the, uh, re-cabling in, uh, East Germany, everybody's getting ISDN, nobody's,
nobody's having a choice.
Uh, the whole, the whole system will be digital right from the beginning with the, uh, as
they rewire all the, uh, German exchanges.
Uh-huh.
Okay, listen, thanks very much for calling you.
Are you going to go to the, uh, London 2600 meeting?
Uh, yeah, if I can, but, uh.
How are those going?
Uh, to be honest, I haven't been in a while.
Yeah.
But, uh, I think the interest is still there, and, uh, particularly now with, uh, you guys
available live, and certainly your, your archive is very impressive.
Yeah, it was great to have listened through right from the, sort of, the 88 ones all the
way through, and, uh, and it's, uh, it really shows how the technology's moved on and on.
Yeah, we've got to get some more hard drives, though, because they take up a phenomenal
amount of space.
It's like, it's something like, uh, eight megs per show, which isn't very much, but when
you add, you know, from 1988 till now, every week, or thereabouts, it really gets up there.
Well, I'm lucky enough, I work in sort of academic community, so bandwidth's not a problem.
Yeah, what kind of bandwidth are you using to listen to us right now?
Uh, at the moment, I mean, I'm, I'm sitting at home, so I've just got, you know, the sort
of 33K6 modem.
And there's no problem listening to that?
No, not at all, not at all.
Great.
Okay, that, that's good to know.
Hey, listen, thanks a lot for calling.
That's no problem.
All right, take care.
Um, carry on with the, uh, the good work over there, and we hope that, uh, WBAI, the whole
station, is live in the future, because, uh, it's certainly, from what I've heard, it's, uh,
unique.
Yes, it is.
Spread the gospel.
Spread it around the world.
Certainly will.
People know about BAI.
Certainly will.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
You know, people do know about BAI all around the world.
Really?
Because we're, like, the wackiest station around.
Oh, really?
Yeah, there's, there's, there's books about us.
I found a book about WBAI in a German bookstore in Berlin.
I didn't understand what it said, because it was in German, but it was about us.
Yeah, it was a while ago.
So, yeah, there's, there's talk out there of all sorts.
That's cool.
We finally made it overseas.
We've been waiting for this for a long time.
Okay, let's, uh, take some more phone calls.
Country code one, we'll have to say that now, 212-279-3400.
Who, who picked two?
All right, you get to pick the next one, because that was a good one.
Five?
You can say it out loud.
Okay.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, where are you calling from?
Hi, I'm calling from Spring Valley in New York.
Spring Valley, is that normally in our listening area?
Yeah.
Oh, it is.
Okay, so are you listening on the radio or on the computer?
Radio.
Okay.
Well, that's good.
We, we, we care about you folks still.
So, what's, uh, what's on your mind?
Well, I just have a general question.
Um, I want to purchase a cellular phone or a digital phone just for everyday use, so I
wouldn't need, like, 600 minutes or anything.
Okay.
So, from what you were saying about Sprint and Omnipoint, which would you suggest for just,
like, emergency use or just general use, but not for business?
I don't know if Sprint or Omnipoint is even available up where you are.
Uh, well, I don't know about Sprint.
So, Omnipoint now goes to Stoney Point, so that would be the Rockland County area.
Uh-huh.
So, I'm...
Well, Omnipoint has a deal.
I think it's $9.95 a month.
Is that what it is?
That was, uh, that was the summer deal.
Oh.
I don't know if that's around still.
It's still around?
I'm told.
Well, call them, you know, if you have 45 minutes to wait on hold, call them and ask them about
it.
You don't have to wait.
It's only a couple of minutes now.
Only a couple of minutes.
Okay.
Yeah, they fixed that.
All right.
All right.
I'm sorry.
So, call Omnipoint, then, and see if they have a deal like that, and then what happens
from that point on?
They, uh, what would she pay?
Um, you basically pay $9.95 for...
I don't...
Do they...
I don't think they include any minutes, do they?
$5 worth of minutes.
Oh, $5 worth?
$5 worth of minutes.
Okay.
Well, that's good for emergency calls.
Yeah.
Um, and one other question.
I know digital is, I guess, replacing cellular, but what is it about digital that makes the
quality superior to cellular and gives you better features?
Well, the difference is that, uh, your voice is actually, uh, it's, goes through what's a
process known as digital signal processing.
Mm-hmm.
And your voice can basically be enhanced, and all the...
All the flaws and faults, uh, background noise and clicks and pops that would be there in,
uh, analog simply aren't there.
Okay.
Um, for example, if you listen to an AM radio...
Right.
Uh, that, that's, that's, um, something that's, by nature, is analog.
Mm-hmm.
There's, there's a lot of static, there's a lot of clicking.
If you compared that with, uh, with, uh, with, if you could take the same medium and make
it digital, like, for example, listening to this radio show over real audio, it's, uh,
been taken from, uh, an analog form and turned into a digital form.
Okay.
Uh, it's a lot clearer.
Right.
You're not really going to detect, um, a lot of the, uh, noise that you normally would
that's, uh, associated with an analog signal.
Okay.
And I know that Omnipoint and, I guess, Bell Atlantic had made some kind of deal with the
city to put up their microwave dishes on their street lights.
Did you hear about that?
Yeah.
I had heard about that a while ago.
Yeah.
But I don't know...
That was, like, in the summer.
Yeah.
I don't know if that's really happening.
I don't know if it's on buildings.
I don't think it's on lampposts.
I know they're, I know they're on buildings because my husband works for 9X or whatever
it's called now, and he's seen them on buildings, and they were supposed to be putting them on
street lights, but I was wondering, is that really, like, a necessary thing just for them
to get their signal out?
Because they had some outrageous number that they wanted to use, and people were protesting
and complaining about these microwave dishes and stuff.
So I just wanted to know if you guys heard anything, and what was your opinion?
Well, no, I did hear that, that they wanted to get permission from the city to put them
up on lampposts.
The only thing it'll do, really, is increase the coverage.
As far as being a health risk, that really hasn't been shown.
I mean, there's no real proof of that.
I mean, it's not to say that it isn't a health risk.
We just don't know.
There is really no tangible evidence as of yet.
That our brains will get fried.
Well, that's the layman's term, yeah.
I mean, the fact remains that as you're walking down the street, you're constantly being bombarded
with all kinds of radio waves and things.
It's funny, you know, you look back on the 1950s, and you see people, you know, walking
around all about, you know, this carcinogenic stuff, watching nuclear tests, you know, from
down the block.
And you say how stupid those people were.
But, you know, back then, they didn't think they were stupid.
And, you know, I'm just wondering, what are people going to think of us, you know, 40
years in the future?
How stupid are we being, you know?
Well, you live and you learn.
Yeah.
Hopefully not stupid.
But we're not the ones that learn.
The people after us are the ones that learn, unfortunately.
Okay.
Thanks, guys.
All right.
Take care.
Bernie, you still there?
I'm still here.
Okay.
I just wanted to make sure we didn't lose you.
Okay.
Let's take another phone call.
I'm going to pick it this time.
Before you do, I want to ask a question.
Have you noticed, since you were a former, well, you're still an OmniPoint user,
and a Sprint PCS phone?
Yeah, I haven't given up my OmniPoint phone.
Have you noticed any difference in the audio quality with either, with the phones?
Some people have told me I sound better on the Sprint PCS phone.
How about what you hear?
I think, you know, that really depends on the kind of phone you have.
To me, I like the Sprint PCS phone better.
It sounds a little better.
But that's because it's a little bigger than the Sprint, than the OmniPoint phone.
But as far as, like, the compression or the companding and any of that stuff going on?
I'll be honest with you.
They both kind of suck, as far as that goes.
It's because you can't talk at the same time, you know, as somebody else.
There's this delay.
You know, it's almost like talking on a satellite.
You know, if you keep interrupting somebody,
because you're both talking at the same time, but you don't realize it,
you know, it's not like a regular phone call.
You know, I don't know if it ever will be.
Probably not.
All right.
Sorry to have to be so blunt, but that's the way I feel.
All right, let's take another phone call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, how you doing?
Good.
Where are you calling from?
Utah.
Utah.
Another call from Utah.
Can you believe it?
This is our second Utah caller.
Oh, tonight?
Well, no, our second Utah caller.
I can't say that phrase.
Utah caller in history.
We had one person that called about three times.
Yeah.
Unless you've grown into somebody else.
No, no, no.
Okay.
My voice is much deeper than the previous caller.
Well, yeah, but that changes over time.
What part of Utah are you from?
I'm actually from Salt Lake, but I'm calling from a city called Springville right now, and
that's just south of Provo.
Wasn't the previous caller calling from Spring Valley?
I thought they were calling from Salt Lake City.
No, no, no.
The previous caller just now was calling from Spring Valley.
Oh, Spring Valley, New York.
He's in Springville.
The previous Utah caller was calling from like a way southern part of Utah called Saliner
or something like that.
Uh-huh.
Wow.
Anyway.
Well, that's pretty cool.
How's the signal coming in over there?
Not too bad.
I guess the topic tonight is real audio.
Well, not really.
No, we've been talking about PCS phones and private radio.
Yeah, I've heard all that fun stuff as well.
Mm-hmm.
I did have a question for you guys.
I saw like a trail of a news clip on TV, something about somebody had cracked in three hours one
of the stronger encryption schemes, and I didn't quite catch what he cracked, and I was wondering
if you guys knew.
Cracked an encryption.
If you're talking about one of those distributed attack things, it was a lot longer than three
hours.
Oh, he had like, I don't know how many hundred sun machines, and he said he was able to
generate a ton of keys for something.
I know fairly recently, I don't understand what the purpose of these things are other
than to generate a lot of publicity and circulate money around between hands.
Yeah, I don't know if it's making, you know, anybody feel more or less secure or anything
because the brute force attack's always there.
Yeah, basically there are contests every so often.
Yeah.
Well, usually sponsored by the RSA folks, one of the sponsors.
Because that would have been some expensive computer time to crack whatever it was in
three hours.
Well, it was a lot longer than three hours, I assure you.
The thing is that people all over the world, basically, are taking a really small part of
the key space and doing an exhaustive search of it.
Right.
So, I mean, if you have about a million people looking for one key, which is basically one
number in essence, somebody's going to get it at some point.
But, you know, that goes without saying.
I mean...
Right, like, well, like I said, I heard the trail end of this thing, and I heard three
hours thrown out, and I thought you guys might have heard something, so.
I don't know.
Lots of stories floating around.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
That's certainly true.
Okay, well, listen, thanks for calling.
We're going to try to squeeze in a couple more calls.
Thank you.
All right, take care.
Bye-bye.
So, Utah and Great Britain.
Utah.
Home of Novell.
Yeah.
What was that you were talking about on NBC Nightly News the other night?
NBC Nightly News.
You were on NBC Nightly News.
Yeah, I was, last Friday.
No, it wasn't last Friday.
It was two Fridays ago?
Yeah, it was two Fridays ago.
Time really flies.
I was on Good Morning America last Wednesday.
Yeah, that's right.
That was fun.
You were really hitting them left and right.
Well, it's just weird, because I think this was the first time I was ever on national TV,
and I realized that just as I started to speak.
And there I am.
I don't know who I'm addressing, because, you know, everyone's off to work.
So, who are you talking to at 7.08 in the morning or whatever?
I don't know who these people are, you know?
So, I'm just sitting there in that ridiculous little room they have.
Well, it's not a room.
It's a huge studio, but they make it look like a little room, you know, with a couch and
a table, you know, bookshelves, things like that, and, you know, 100 cameramen around.
So, it's just a very strange environment.
And if anybody knows what it was I was talking about, please let me know, because I don't.
But maybe you remember what you were talking about on NBC News.
Yeah, actually, I got a copy of the tape.
Oh, you did?
I want to see it.
Yeah, I have it at home.
Oh, cool.
It's basically, they wanted to get me on there to talk about the really poor state of security
at whitehouse.gov and eop.gov, the executive office of the president.
Security's horrible.
And NBC was leaked a document of some kind in which the executive office of the president
made a plea to the House Advisory Committee for lots of money.
Basically, they want something like $16 million in funding so that they can...
Have a study.
No, so...
No, the study was mentioned in the paper.
But the DISA study, the Defense Intelligence something or other agency.
Yeah.
They want this money so that they can update their firewall and keep it up to date.
And they say that the executive office of the president is at great risk from attackers,
computer terrorists, and all kinds of silly things.
And that if they didn't get this funding, then they would be forced to unplug themselves
from the Internet.
Well, unfortunately, after a cursory glance at those two domains, I realized that they,
in fact, did not have a firewall.
And the fact that they would make a statement like that indicates to me that they don't know
what a firewall is because all of their systems were directly reachable from the Internet,
which indicates that there is no firewall.
Well, you couldn't tell that to them or anything.
Yeah, you could, some of them.
You could tell that to them.
Yeah, some of them you could.
A lot of them were, they were using, obviously using TCP wrappers, but, you know, that's
not a substitute for a firewall.
But it was, it was really, it was a really sorry state of affairs.
They could be listening right now.
Yeah.
But I have heard.
We can, we can add.
There is, there is an update to that.
Okay.
That the, probably fairly clueless people at a very, very large corporation was awarded
a $10 million contract to provide security for WhiteHouse.gov and EOP.
Oh, we could just say who they are.
Okay, who are they?
It's Northrop Grumman, Martin Marietta, Lockheed Missile Group, you know.
That was one hell of a merger, wasn't it?
Yeah, they got everybody in that one.
But they're the ones that are supposed to be doing it now.
Okay, well, we're out of time.
So we, we can't go into this anymore.
Did you see the thing on TV, though, about the, the, the subway signs?
That was, uh, Bernie, you'd be interested in this.
Someone hacked the subway signs.
And it said, uh, 2600 or something like that.
It was kind of, kind of weird.
Those kids do the darnest things.
They, they certainly do.
But for some reason, it was on all the news stations.
Like, it was the biggest news event of the, of the, of the century.
And basically, it's, you know, one of those signs that you see, like, in stores,
announcing Lotto or something like that.
Yeah.
Someone hacked that and it makes the news.
Well, one, uh.
Don't figure.
What one station said was it was vital messages that were normally displayed on that sign.
Yeah, graphs, you, you, the handrail on the escalator or something.
Yeah, vital messages to commuters consisted of, uh, uh, you know,
hold onto the handrail and watch your step.
I don't know.
Well, anyway, that was just kind of fun.
Uh, so we have a bunch of media things.
But we're out of time now.
We'll be back again next week, hopefully on the net as well.
Uh, until then, it's Emanuel Goldstein for Fiber Optic.
Have a good night.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
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 maybe we're on for the best.
Expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
But maybe we know.
We'll be right back.
Hi, I'm Barbara Nimri-Aziz of WBAI's Arab Voices Crescent Rising,
welcoming you to another season after our successful membership drive.
And I personally want to thank all of you who pledged your support and became WBAI members.
Well, starting in November, Arab Voices resumes on its regular Saturday afternoon schedule.
November 1st, we begin with a two-hour Sufi special featuring Shahram Shiva
and his reading of the great poet and mystic Rumi, accompanied by musicians.
That's on Saturday, the 1st of November at 2 p.m.
And it's just the beginning of an exciting season of Muslim and Arab issues and voices
from here, around the New York area, and abroad.
That's on listener-sponsored radio.
So why don't you join us on Saturday night?