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This is a public service announcement of WBAI Radio on behalf of La Tea.
And it's 8 o'clock, time for another exciting edition of Off the Hook.
It really is.
The machine's not cooperating though, because machines are running the world and we have
no control over them.
How about this one?
Ah.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
For Billy Bond, but the best expects the worst.
I hope that's understood.
For Billy...
No!
Me, Emanuel Goldstein, fiber optic over here.
It's election night?
Yeah.
You're really...
I kind of missed... I've never voted.
Really up on current affairs.
Well, you know, I know stuff about you.
Yeah.
I guess I won't reveal it here, but...
It's part of my secret mission.
You are registered.
I am registered.
That's interesting how you registered.
When I first hatched my plan.
I didn't know that party was still around, but...
Oh, don't worry about it.
God bless them, you know.
I hope they rise up again.
They're making a comeback.
Well, the imperialist pigs.
And all that kind of thing.
Bernie S. is also here.
Okay.
I think Bernie S. is here.
Bernie, are you there?
All that silence tells us that Bernie is not there.
Okay, well, we'll keep his microphone up.
He could be there.
He could be there and just...
Busy with something.
Who knows?
And more importantly, though,
the whole rest of the world is here, too.
Because we have, I believe,
at least the same amount of bandwidth we had last week
as far as getting out to the rest of the world.
And we're in the process of getting more.
So, we might have a lot more over in Europe
and various other parts of the world.
So, I think people will let me know.
I'm supposed to get an email on my OmniPoint phone,
but maybe you could explain what's going on here.
I have a message on my phone that says,
MemFull Read.
What does that mean?
MemFull Read means that you have
a whole bunch of messages that you received
that you didn't either save or delete.
Well, explain something to me.
I'm driving in here with this thing on,
and it didn't go off once to tell me I had a message.
And then when I get here, all of a sudden,
I have a million messages.
It didn't send me the news of the day.
It didn't send me the weather.
Really?
It sent them all just now.
Usually it doesn't do that unless you're out of area.
All right, well, now I have to quickly read the headlines.
Iraq again halts UN inspector.
Have you seen the headlines?
I mean, this is unbelievable.
And I think having people from all parts of the world listening,
I think they just need to hear
another American perspective here.
Look at this headline, today's news day.
Don't threaten us.
US to Iraq.
Oh, yeah, we are so scared that Iraq is threatening us.
We're like this big monster that's going to crush them,
and already has crushed them into little tiny bits.
And because they say, stop doing that to us,
hey, don't threaten us.
It's like the bullying cop routine,
where the cop is beating you over the head with a club,
and you say, stop that.
And he's like, are you telling me what to do?
How dare you insult me?
And that's sort of what we are as a policeman of the world.
We're clubbing a bit too much.
So it'll be interesting to see how that goes.
Maybe some world perspectives on that would be most welcome.
What's going on in the world?
In the world?
Yeah.
In the news?
Bernie, are you there yet?
I'm going to try calling him again,
because I think something horrible happened to his phone.
But while you're talking about what happened in the world,
tell me the stuff that happened that I'm going to talk about.
But you talk about your stuff first.
All right.
It turns out that some fine gentleman in Australia
decided to take it upon himself
to come out with a very interesting patch to Netscape,
both Netscape Navigator and Netscape Communicator
and all the different Netscapes.
For all the major Unix platforms,
as well as Windows 95 and NT,
what this patch does when you run it
is it will transform any export version of Netscape.
That is, the Netscape that has the really crappy security
transforms it basically into the U.S. domestic version of Netscape.
And in technical terms,
it enables the export version of Netscape,
which uses the RC2 hashing algorithm at 40 bits,
which is considered weak since it was broken.
It allows Netscape to use the RC4 hashing algorithm at 128 bits.
RC4?
RC4.
Wow.
Which is considered stronger than RC2.
And the interesting thing is that the NSA
does not want you to use that out of the United States.
And if you install this patch,
another interesting thing that people may not be aware of,
which I wasn't, I had never noticed, I admit,
the little key in the bottom left corner of the browser
Ah, yes, the broken key.
Yeah, normally when you go to a site that uses SSL,
Secure Socket Layer, it closes the key.
Like, for example, if you go to a site
where you're going to do some kind of, God forbid,
do some kind of purchase over the internet with your credit card,
or go to...
Have you ever done that?
I have never done that, no.
Do you even have credit cards?
I don't have any credit cards.
Okay, then I guess, asking you to do that.
I'm going to not have a credit card as long as I can.
Well, let's get off the subject for a second.
I just got an offer from one of my credit card companies
to put a picture on my credit card.
Right.
But the thing is, the thing that's interesting is that
they said, just send us the picture and we'll put it on.
Anybody could send any picture.
Well, do you think they'd check?
Could I send a picture of my dog and put that on my credit card?
Or would they say, no, look, you can't do that.
I don't know.
All right, I want to try something like that.
Of course, I'd have more trouble making purchases.
Yeah.
But I still think it would be worth it for just the conversation.
It would be funny.
Okay, I'm sorry, resume with your topical remarks there.
So, basically, the key, when the key closes,
you know that you're communicating over a so-called secure connection.
It's at least encrypted.
The interesting thing is that if you count the number of teeth on the key.
Teeth?
Teeth.
It's a picture of an old-fashioned skeleton key.
Okay.
And normally, people are probably used to seeing the key with one tooth.
That's on the export versions of Netscape.
The key has one tooth.
That's basically the RC2 40-bit version.
If your key, when it solidifies, has two teeth on the left-hand side,
that's actually the domestic stronger version that uses RC4 with 128-bit key,
which is an indicator that you have the stronger Netscape
and will be evident to you if you install this patch.
If you're a Unix user,
they have the patch available for various versions of Unix,
including Solaris and HP-UX and Irix and Linux
for all those Linux users that are still wandering around.
You still say it that way, huh?
Yeah.
We're an American.
The guy's name is Linus.
Okay, I don't want to.
Yeah, but it's supposed to rhyme with.
Well, never mind.
We shouldn't even get into it.
But, yeah, so, and if you go to a site, again,
that uses SSL where the key closes,
you can, well, there's a number of ways you can verify
that this is actually working, this patch, if you do install it.
The first and easiest way is when you first load Netscape
and you get the Netscape title screen,
you'll see on the bottom in small letters,
it'll say US domestic version as opposed to export version,
which is a sure sign.
The second sign would be when you go to a site,
like a site that does some kind of commerce,
and the key closes, you should see two teeth on the key.
For those people listening on the radio now,
what, you know, if they want to see this little key thing,
what can they connect to?
For just as an example, American Express,
www.americanexpress.com.
If you go to the section that has to do with checking your bill,
it's just a simple example of something that uses SSL
that encrypts the connection.
You'll see the key close and solidify,
and if you click on the key,
you can review the certificates that were issued by the server
for this authentication and encryption,
and you'll see that they are actually using certificates
that were used to authenticate the connection,
and it will say that it used RC4 with 128-bit keys.
So there's a number of ways to verify
that your Netscape was, in fact, enhanced.
I can give out the URL of where you can get the patch
for your particular flavor of Netscape.
Unfortunately, it's not a very easy-to-remember URL.
So listen carefully, kids.
So listen carefully.
And maybe somebody out there would want to link to this site
with an easier-to-remember URL.
My phone just told me Levi Strauss is laying off 6,400 people.
Yeah, you know, I got that too.
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
All this news information coming over our phones.
It's just an overload, isn't it?
Yeah.
But, okay, so here's the URL.
Okay.
It's www, the little dot.
You almost don't have to say that anymore.
Geocities.
I don't know how to pronounce this website.
I see it a lot.
I don't know if it's geocities or geocities.
I'm going to guess geocities.
I say geocities.
Okay.
geocities.com.
Slash Eureka with a capital E.
That's capital E-U-R-E-K-A.
Slash Plaza with a capital P.
If you don't know how to spell Plaza, you shouldn't be listening to this show.
Slash 6333.
6,333.
That's the URL.
Wow.
That doesn't make any sense, I know.
But that's the URL.
And if you go there, you'll get information about this patch.
It's called Fortify.
And it's totally free.
And you can go straight to the download section.
There is a little questionnaire that is purely there for statistical purposes to find out if people want Fortify to be made for a platform and a version in Netscape that it's not currently made for.
It is not there to collect personal information about you and the fact that you're using this.
In fact, you don't even have to fill out the little questionnaire.
You can go straight to the bottom where it says, if you don't want to fill out the questionnaire, go straight to the FTP section, which you can do.
And you'll be presented with a number of choices for FTP sites both in and out of the country.
If you're particularly paranoid about international transportation of arms regulation or whatever the heck it's called, you can go straight and FTP it.
And once you've done that, there's instructions on what to do.
And it'll patch your Netscape.
It'll save the original in case you're worrisome.
And there you go.
And you should be using the more secure enhanced version of Netscape that you're always meant to use.
Okay.
And everyone will have a happier life as a result.
Definitely.
Look at this headline I just got.
Well, I didn't just get it.
I just read it.
But it says, Iraq threatens fire.
What does that mean?
They're threatening fire?
Maybe they're threatening to set themselves on fire.
We're going to put you out?
Or are they threatening us with fire?
They're going to set fires all over the place?
Speaking of Iraq.
They're going to fire people?
It doesn't make any sense.
There's something that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority did.
Here's another headline.
New York City fears the rise of the Bloods.
Oh, yeah.
I heard about that, too.
No, we feared that so much.
You know what we've got to do?
We need to initiate all the police into the crypts.
Yeah.
There you go.
And that should really cancel itself out really well.
You hear that, Giuliani?
Maybe you would have won this election if you had come up with an idea like that.
How do you know he lost the election?
He conceded half an hour ago.
Really?
I'm just putting out information like the network.
Oh, is it like, do we want Truman lost?
Everyone has to put out misinformation on election night.
And I get into the spirit of things.
So, you were saying?
Yeah, did you hear about Iraq and Libya?
Is this some sort of joke?
No, this is true.
Iraq and Libya.
And it's angering a lot of people.
And it'll probably anger a lot more people once they know about it.
If it's going to anger me, don't tell me.
It's going to anger you.
I have enough anger.
But it's only going to anger you for political reasons.
Okay.
Okay.
Iraq and Libya being the, you know, the menace that they are.
And Sudan, that's the newest one.
They just said today, Sudan is like...
You mean Sudan?
Well, however you pronounce it.
It depends what part of the country you're from.
Okay.
See, in this country, we can say things different ways, and it's okay.
Okay.
That's what makes America great.
Sudan and Africa.
If you want to say it that way, go ahead.
Yeah.
Linux, Sudan, whatever.
Are they bad?
I thought they were the good guys.
No, they're not bad.
They're bad.
The communist regime took over?
I don't understand what's happening.
I just heard that we're not supposed to talk to them anymore.
Okay.
But Iraq and Libya...
Iraq risks consequences.
All these foreboding headlines going over my phone here.
Wow.
Okay, continue.
You sure?
Yeah.
Okay.
But interestingly, a company by the name of Net Names,
who is notorious for registering, holding, and then selling domain names,
much to the chagrin of people who would rather that not happen,
has registered two top-level domains, Iraq and Libya.
Uh-huh.
Isn't that interesting?
Now, Iraq and Libya have top-level domains where various company names have been reserved in,
both with and without their knowledge.
For example, let's see, what was an example?
There was an Intel.
There's a bunch of major corporations, Estee Lauder,
and Net Names registered all the things you're used to, .com, .gov.
The only problem is that they end in .ly for Libya and .iq for Iraq.
Uh-huh.
And if you want to look up the information in the NIC,
you can go to the IANA's website, number one, which is the easiest way to do it.
It's the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.
That's www.iana.org slash IANA.
Okay.
And you can look up by country.
And you'll notice that Iraq and Libya are now on the list.
And it will give you the whois information if you click on it.
Or you can type whois.
And I believe the handle for Iraq is iq11.
I'm getting a whole lot of messages now because I just cleared out my mailbox.
Ah.
Listen to this.
It's crazy.
Unbelievable.
Okay.
Now it says no messages.
Why is that?
Well, if you go back, I bet you there are.
No, there aren't.
They're gone.
Oh, yeah.
The 337, it saves up the beeps even though the messages are gone.
Oh, is that what it does?
I hated that.
Oh, okay.
The 388 doesn't do that.
Okay.
Much better.
Chuck this one in the trash.
Okay, are those people out there sending me mail?
Now you can do it because the mailbox is cleared.
So if there's anything to tell me about the network connection, please go ahead.
Yeah.
Oh, and Bernie S. is with us.
Bernie.
Oh, he's there.
Okay.
I just stepped off a train.
Well, hopefully you stepped onto a platform.
Yes.
Okay.
None of that business with not having a ticket again.
Okay.
Never.
Not me.
Ever.
All right.
That's good.
Bernie, have you heard that a company has registered the top level domains for Iraq and Libya?
I was just listening.
It's fascinating.
It sounds a little scary.
The part that really aggravates me, and I'm sure lots of other people, is that they went and registered all kinds of large major corporations,
like cosmetics and electronics, government, and various industry, as valid domains in these countries,
even though some of these companies know about it and some of them don't.
A couple of them that I checked, if they have a website, they have the website just pointing back to their website in the United States.
Or in other cases, it doesn't point anywhere at all.
The address just points to an invalid address at net names.
So they're simply holding them just in case, I guess, Intel ever opens up a plant in Iraq and they could sell the address to Intel,
which sounds kind of sleazy to me.
But there's a lot of uproar about it because I don't think Uncle Sam, who funds a large part of the internet,
necessarily wants Iraq and Libya to be registered in our name servers.
I'd like to have an Iraqi top level domain.
Would you?
I think it's neat because it's IQ.
It could be high.IQ.
You come up with neat stuff.
Yeah, that's true.
Italy is .it and there's all kinds of things you can do with it.
sh.it
Whatever.
Things like that.
Yes, you can do all kinds of imaginative and destructive things.
I've got some interesting news for all our Canadian listeners.
Hopefully we have some of them listening tonight.
Concerning PCS in Canada.
They have new services that they're offering.
In early October, Bell Mobility and ClearNet each launched their personal communications services offerings
in selected cities operating in their licensed portion of the 1.9 gigahertz spectrum band.
Both carriers are using CDMA technology, the first PCS offerings in Canada to use CDMA services.
BCTel Mobility is also using CDMA, but so far only at 800 megahertz.
Microsoft's Fido uses GSM at 1.9 and Cantel's digital PCS uses TDMA at 800 megahertz.
So a couple of these services.
One is known as ClearNet.
They launched October 1st in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto with national analog roaming on Cantel's cellular network.
Their pricing is pretty interesting.
Listen to this.
Talk a lot.
They have this.
Is that sir talk a lot?
No, there's this feature they have called talk a lot.
Actually, they have one called talk.
It costs $20 a month and it's Canadian.
And that provides 100 minutes of local calling per month.
Talk a lot costs another $10 and adds unlimited weekend calling.
So for $30 Canadian dollars, you can have 100 minutes and unlimited weekend calling.
Billing is in increments of one second from the first second for both outbound and inbound calls.
Additional local minutes cost 20 cents.
Long distance calls anywhere in Canada or the U.S. are also 20 cents a minute.
Canadian.
I mean, that's nothing.
No offense to the Canadians, but I mean, it's not a lot.
All right.
It's a good price.
These prices also apply to analog roaming calls within Canada.
Roaming in the U.S. over Sprint's PCS network will be available in the new year.
System licensing charge of $4.50 a month also applies.
And that's in comparison to annual licensing fees of $48 charged by the other three PCS providers.
You can also send text and often numeric messages for $5 a month for 100 messages or 10 cents a message.
Then we have Bell Mobility, which is also CDMA, also 1.9 gig.
And they have similar fairly low prices.
I think lower than what we have here in this country.
What's interesting here is they can subscribe to a caller pays service.
Basically, what that means is that the caller pays whatever extra charge there is for calling.
It's like automatically reversing the charge?
Well, here's the interesting thing.
In Canada, they have a 600 area code.
So in Canada, you dial a separate 600 number to reach the subscriber.
Prior to being connected, you receive a warning that you're going to be paying for the call.
Isn't it technically callee pays?
You are the caller making the call.
Yeah, the caller pays.
Well, apparently, I don't know if there's no charge to call PCS phones in Canada.
And this makes them pay and the person being called doesn't pay anything.
Or if there's an additional charge.
I'm not quite sure how that is.
It's not very clear here.
They offer three, Bell Mobility offers three basic PCS rate plans.
Flat monthly rates, $30, $50, and $100 for 100, 200, and 500 minutes of local service.
Additional 200 off-peak minutes are available at $10 a month.
And long-distance calls are $0.20 a minute in Canada, $0.35 to the U.S.
And keep in mind, that is Canadian.
So that's significantly cheaper than here.
So we have two services there, Bell Mobility and ClearNet, added to the PCS family.
And that's, I think, kind of cool.
I think GSM is really dropping the ball with the rates.
Yeah, I don't understand why that is.
I mean, obviously, yeah, it's harder because you're all separate companies.
But you form this whole consortium thing.
What's the point of that?
If it wasn't to, I mean, yeah, you arrived at like a flat roaming rate.
But $0.69 a minute compared with CDMA rates is not particularly spiffy.
And I think a lot of the GSM providers are dropping the ball on the number of minutes that you get in these packages.
Well, is it all GSM carriers?
I know OmniPoint isn't doing too well at that.
But, I mean, what about Sprint Spectrum, for instance?
It seems to be comparable.
I mean, I don't know what Sprint's position is as far as Sprint PCS competing with Sprint Spectrum.
I mean, Sprint Spectrum isn't really, I mean, Sprint Spectrum is actually American Personal Communications,
which is a smaller company that Sprint sort of took over and made their GSM wing and called it Sprint Spectrum.
But it's really APC.
I don't know how Sprint is dealing internally with the difference in rates between Sprint PCS, which is a CDMA, and Sprint Spectrum, which is a GSM.
In the Washington market, people are switching over from Sprint Spectrum over to Sprint PCS, which was just turned on last week.
Really?
And the rates, they're not pricing the rates anywhere close to each other.
The Sprint Spectrum rate prices, I don't know what they are off the top of my head, but they're still as high as they have been.
And the Sprint PCS rates are down like they are in the Philadelphia market.
So it's something like two to one, about half the cost to switch from Sprint Spectrum to Sprint PCS in the Washington-Baltimore market.
This just started last week, so I imagine that people aren't all waking up to that fact yet, but pretty soon they will.
Of course, they're going to have to buy a new handset, but if you can save almost half on your wireless bill, then I think people would opt to get another handset.
Interesting.
We have, that news came from, the news on the Canadian PCS came from Telemanagement Magazine,
who just sent us a letter saying that I'm reviewing our subscription policy.
We've concluded that we can't continue providing this subscription to you.
What?
Well, they have this deal where they send out free subscriptions to various telecommunications firms and magazines, things like that.
And I guess someone told them they were hackers and they're not going to send it to us anymore.
But we can subscribe to them for about $600 a year or something like that.
But, you know, words are nice, but they don't mean that much as far as paying for them.
So I guess we won't be hearing too much more from Canada unless it comes over the net, unfortunately.
Because that's a really good source.
They tell you all kinds of neat things about telecommunications up there, new area codes, things like that.
Someone from Chicago sent us mail.
First of all, people from New York have been sending us their MetroCards, and that's really kind of nice.
I assume they're blank MetroCards, but they tell us, you know, when they leave certain areas.
And we're supposed to try and figure out what it says on the card and correlate it to some sort of algorithm.
So we're figuring it out slowly.
But Chicago, here's the interesting thing.
Take a look at these Chicago Transit Authority cards.
Don't they look kind of familiar?
Wow.
They're the exact same shape and size of the New York City MetroCard.
And after this show, I'm going downstairs.
You should try to use one.
And I'm going to cause some trouble because I'm going to pass this through and see what it says.
I just might get, you know.
I hope they don't treat you the same as somebody that tries to use a slug in a turnstile.
Well, it's, you know.
They kind of arrest you on the spot.
It's a CTA transit card here, so I think it's perfectly valid.
It looks just the same.
You know, I'm just in the wrong city, that's all.
It happens to anybody.
Whoops.
Honest mistake.
I don't think it's going to work.
I think it'll just, you know, maybe hang the whole system.
So if you're in the subway, better hurry.
Might be a safe bet to go to the thing where you could check how much is on the card without actually trying to use it.
That'd be cool.
Wouldn't it be nice, though, if you could use this on any subway system in the world?
Actually, that'd be neat.
Yeah.
It's never going to happen, of course.
No.
Of course not.
All right.
Shall we open up the phone lines?
I hear we're having some trouble with the net.
But I think we're getting out there.
And if you want to help out by getting our signal to various parts of the world.
And by help out we mean if you have access to a large amount of bandwidth and you can donate some of that bandwidth for an hour a week to send the show out.
We already have people in Wisconsin.
We have people overseas.
People in various parts of this country as well.
We'll get a list of them at some point that are basically receiving the show from here and then distributing it out to as many as 60 people at a time throughout the rest of the world.
Anybody who can connect to it.
If you're interested in doing that and being a part of this, you can send an e-mail to one of our coordinators, portshopat2600.com.
And he will help you out with all that.
Hopefully things are going okay.
So give us a call if you're out there.
If you're in this country, fine.
Call us, too.
I mean, if you're in the city, call us.
But if you're outside the country, country code 1 and then 212.
Wrong area code.
212-279-3400.
Bernie, anything from you that's new this week?
I'm playing with a new product that I think is going to represent a paradigm shift in the home long-distance market for residential customers.
It's a thing called PhoneMizer.
You might have heard about it.
It's a little parallel port device that plugs in the back of your PC.
And you wire it into your home telephone wiring so that all of your calls, you can pick up any phone in your house, basically, that's hooked to this phone line that's connected to PhoneMizer.
And in conjunction with software that's running on a PC in the background under Windows 95.
They don't support Linux or Macs yet.
But in any case, it's a least-cost routing system.
It has a database that's regularly updated by a company called Mediacom, I believe.
And they guarantee that every call you make will be the, depending on no matter what time or day it is, it will be the least-cost routing that you can possibly make.
You can go on their web page, PhoneMizer.com, and see what the rates are.
Generally, they're about 8.9 cents a minute, day or evening.
And big companies have been able to afford least-cost routing systems for a while because they could afford it with all the volume they were doing.
But now this $50 hardware software package lets anybody take advantage of that.
And you'd have to pay a $5 monthly fee for the subscription to the least-cost routing database.
But if you make a fair number of long-distance calls, if you want to pay about 9 cents a minute, and you make $100 worth of calls or so a month, it could be cost-effective.
I heard there was some sort of a rate decrease announced today by AT&T.
Did you hear anything about that?
I haven't heard anything about it.
I heard something just in passing.
There was a conversation going on as I was running down the street.
And something apparently in the works involving AT&T and dropping prices.
Refunding money?
I don't know about refunding money, but I think things are starting to get a lot cheaper, which is about time.
They've milked us for about all they can.
All right, we're going to take a phone call, but do you have something there that Bill Gates said?
Yeah, really quickly.
This quote has been attributed to Bill Gates, who claims that telephone numbers will disappear.
That was his exact quote.
He's lost his mind, hasn't he?
Yeah, he thinks that phone numbers and email addresses are too restrictive.
And he believes that in the future, first you'll indicate who you want to contact, selecting from a personal address book or a large directory.
Then you'll choose what kind of contact you want, and software will take care of the rest.
Well, golly.
Yeah.
Who's software?
That's a highly simplistic way of viewing things, but that's not surprising coming from the president of Microsoft.
I'm told that all streams are down, and the reason is because they don't know my password.
Okay, well, because it doesn't really matter because you have to be there to use it.
I'm going to say my password over the air.
I've never done anything like this before.
Which password is this?
I can't tell you that.
See, the people that are listening to me now know what I'm talking about, and that's the protection right there.
I'm going to say a password, but nobody's going to know what it's for, except for the people that need it.
But if somebody ever runs into anything of yours, they're going to try that password.
But it's, you know, you have to be at the particular piece of hardware in order to use it.
Oh, this is going to be one of those boot-up password things.
Well, yeah, that's what it is.
Okay.
Didn't take you long, did it?
Yeah.
Okay, guys, ready?
And I'm only going to say this once.
All right?
All right.
Two ones.
One one, the letter C-E-D, and then three three.
Got it?
One one, C-E-D, three three.
All right.
All right.
Can't believe I just said my password over the air.
Where are you going?
Come back here.
All right, let's take a phone call.
Who wants to pick a number this time?
Last time we picked a number, we got England.
Well, actually, if all the streams are down, we're not going to get England.
Well, he picked last time.
Okay, five.
Five?
Okay.
All right, let's try this.
Good evening, you're on the...
Oh, nice, nice guess there.
Dial tone.
Come on, pick a number.
Go ahead.
Three.
Three?
All right.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Great.
Just wonderful.
A one card thing, and we're doing work on MasterCard.
And, of course, there are different ones.
These are, you know, all these different names.
You might want to name all of them so we don't have favoritism.
But the thing is that it seems to me that there can be, not that I'm in favor of it exactly,
but in the terms of the modern computer world and, you know what I mean, numbers and digits and megabytes
and all these things, it seems to me that people using cards that, you know, relate to some firm
that handles all these transactions or firms that handle all these transactions that we will have eventually.
You know, you get on this subway, you get on this bus, you get on this airplane,
and it all gets calculated into your number.
Uh-huh.
And full accountability, we always know where we've been.
Well, I mean, the thing is that this is a world you want.
I mean, there's no place like home, and I think that people are out of their minds.
But big businesses, you know, going international and exploiting and, you know, if we can only have a good world,
that's really what the problem is.
And I'm not sure we're headed for that.
I think we're headed for, you know, all kinds of computers like Dr. Kaku was saying.
We'll have a computer on our shoelace that'll tell us whether our feet are happy.
You know what I mean?
Uh-huh.
And the results will be monitored in Washington, D.C., and they'll know everything there is to know about us.
You know, I heard something interesting about EasyPass.
What's that?
It works?
Well, sort of.
It's debatable, but it's being used to track criminals of all sorts.
Really?
I couldn't find a story about it.
I just heard mention of it on the news, which means that there's, you know, more to the story.
They basically just said, and the police report that it's been very successful in tracking down some crimes.
Which means that now criminals won't use EasyPass.
Pretty much.
Well, that really accomplished a lot.
These are criminals who own cars and drive them through tunnels and over bridges.
I see.
You know, it's...
That take EasyPass.
Yeah.
Well, actually, I think they all do now.
That use the EasyPass lane.
Except for ones that don't have tolls, but I'm sure they'll take care of that by putting tolls everywhere.
Okay.
That's true.
You know, if you think about it, what our esteemed caller was saying about credit cards,
just think that if DuPont didn't invent plastic towards the end of World War II,
we'd all be carrying around credit cards made out of Bakelite.
You think?
Oh, yeah.
And they'd probably be twice as thick.
I like Bakelite.
Yeah, Bakelite's cool.
All right, let's move on to another call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
How you doing?
Hey.
It's Ryan, NetWeasel.
Hey, how you doing?
What's going on?
You're the person who's supposed to bring in the story about the EasyPass.
Yep.
Hold on, let me turn off my radio.
Yeah, I got the article right here.
Ah, okay.
Okay, here we go.
Okay, to cover the daily news, Monday, November 3rd, it's easy to spy.
Toll lane records used in criminal cases, divorce court could be next.
And what they're saying is that they have actually used it already in convicting some criminals.
And how is that?
Well, here's one.
Let me get to the, let me get to the, there's one story here.
Let me get to it where somebody was kidnapped.
Let me just get to the part in the article.
Okay, here we go.
Always good to be prepared, isn't it?
It's always good.
I was actually, I was trying to get to tonight, but what can I say, school.
What can I say, school?
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Give me a couple seconds.
Okay, here it goes.
And at least in one big case, it came in handy.
Police were trying to track down missing millionaire Nelson Gross, who was abducted by two teens
outside his Edgewater, New Jersey restaurant, September 17th.
Oh, yeah, that worked out real well, didn't it?
EasyPass.
Well, he was dead, but EasyPass records showed his car had crossed over the George Washington
Bridge twice that day, and his body was found in Manhattan days later by the Hudson River
near the Span.
Mm-hmm.
So, but now they talked about...
I guess EasyPass didn't pick that up.
No, it didn't pick that up, but then they talk about, I guess, the MTA's use of it.
It says, at first they said they wouldn't release it to anybody without a court order.
Right.
But now they're saying, you don't need a court order.
It just has to be a serious crime.
Serious, okay.
A serious crime.
By whose definition?
Yeah, really.
I guess by the MTA.
But then they ended it with, if information is inside a room and it costs 50 bucks to
get a key, someone will try and do it.
But if it's against the law, then you're looking for more trouble.
But, you know, what can you say?
I mean, it's...
The other thing, they want to use it in divorce court.
Yeah, that's serious.
Actually, they say pretty funny.
They say, when he says, I was at work, and now she can check the EasyPass and prove he
was at the hotbed motel in Long Island.
How are you going to prove he was there?
How are you going to prove he took a road that could go there?
They could have EasyPass pingers, or whatever you want to call them.
Yeah, they could put them up all over the place.
Anywhere.
They don't have to deduct money from you.
They could monitor where you go with these things.
Burn these things.
Anybody who has them.
Well, I have one.
It's kind of fun.
Yeah, but you're experimenting.
Yeah, I am experimenting.
These are innocents that are out there that have these things.
Burn them.
Yeah, you've got to think about this.
They expect over 50% of people to start using them.
Over 50%.
That's a lot.
Well, if you drive through Long Island, you know that you get to these tolls,
and these things cause more traffic.
Yeah, they do.
They do.
Because they start the lanes back about 300 feet before the tolls end,
and then you get more traffic because people cut into the lanes and try to
get right in before the tolls.
Yeah.
And you've got more accidents.
What can I say?
Yeah, it's an ugly scene at the Midtown Tunnel there.
Anyway, Net Weasel, thanks very much.
Japanese after this?
We'll see about that.
Okay.
Are you coming into the city?
If there's Japanese involved, I'm looking for the Saki.
Well, they haven't shown up yet, but we'll see if they're here.
Okay, so you know my number.
I know the number.
Okay.
We'll talk to you later.
Speaking of crime, speaking of serious crime,
I've got something from the latest Harper's,
which provides some interesting material sometimes.
And Bernie, you'd be interested in this, being a perpetrator of serious crime,
I guess is the best way to describe you, right?
So it's been said.
All right.
He's also a victim of serious crime.
Be glad.
Well, yeah, first things first.
Be glad that you are not in China,
because in China you could be sentenced to death for many, many things.
Listen to these actual cases of people sentenced and executed to death.
January 2nd, 1996, four unnamed men, reportedly a government official,
a policeman, a businessman, and an ex-soldier,
are sentenced to death, accused of illegal elephant hunting.
Whoa.
I've never been accused of that yet.
January 30th through February 1st, 1996,
Shan Zhikang, Li Zhimeng, Lo Yun, Ji Gishan,
and 34 unnamed others reportedly executed to maintain social stability
before the Chinese New Year.
Most favored nation status here.
Social stability?
Social stability.
What does that mean?
Like regulating the population?
Is that social stability?
Who knows?
When we have a phrase like that, you can do anything you want.
Social stability.
Too many redheads in the population.
Just mow them down.
That's crazy.
March 19th, 1996, sentenced to death,
Wang Zheng, accused of beating up a man on behalf of a friend
after a road rage incident.
Yeah.
You listen to California?
Okay.
That's something that could apply to a lot of us.
March 29th, 1996, Wang Zheng was sentenced to death.
He was accused of severing the head of an antique statue of Buddha.
Wow.
Which he sold for $36.
He was not represented by a lawyer and had only a middle school education.
He did not know the value of the antique until the judge informed him,
at which point his handcuffed hands did not stop shaking.
He had thought that he would only serve a prison sentence if he was caught.
April 14th, 1996, Li Shanwu and Wu Deben,
both peasants accused of stealing 28 television sets, both executed.
Daozhan Ping, accused of embezzling $1,300.
Deng Xiaoping?
No, Daozhan Ping.
Different guy.
Accused of embezzling $1,300 and setting fire to the office when he feared discovery.
He was executed May 14th.
Yan Yuzhen, accused of stealing four motorcycles, executed May 16th, 1996.
Yan Yanwang, accused of kidnapping.
Reportedly said that he had gotten the idea from watching television
and that I deserve to be executed for my crime.
Well, he got his wish.
Great.
May 25th, 1996.
And June 14th, 1996, Li Quan and Lu Wanlang were sentenced to death for stealing mules.
Zhang Zhizhi, June 21st, 1996, executed for a highway robbery of $24 and a watch.
Hao Zhizhong and Wai Zhuming, the two were executed after a public sentencing rally
in which they were convicted of the theft of ballpoint pens and badminton rackets.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
And Lu Zhikang, a worker at a horticultural farm,
reportedly used needles and thorns to stab female cyclists in the buttocks.
Well, he's not around anymore.
Executed July 24th, 1996.
Female cyclists can rest easy over there.
August 31st, 1996, Wang Q, a self-styled golden goddess and acclaimed mystic.
She was given valuable gifts by her followers, among whom was a young girl who was sick
but who ultimately died, was given to her as a gift.
It is unclear what charge Wang was arrested and executed.
But she ain't around no more either.
Receiving gifts from dead people.
And finally, finally, three peasants, Yi Zhirong, Li Deku and Yi Zitong,
all peasants reportedly stole packaging for cigarette and alcohol brands from printing shops
and sold them to people making fake products.
Executed October 16th, 1996.
So Bernie, I think you have some words of gratitude to express to the Secret Service
for being so lax, only locking you in prison for two years.
They were easy on me.
Yeah, think of what could have happened.
It's all been downhill since that Chairman Mao died, let me tell you.
Yeah.
All right, 212-279-3400.
Hopefully our internet problems have been solved
and we won't be able to get some callers from different parts of the world.
But if not, we're happy with New York.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, could you give me some idea of what might be superior for a business,
superior to ISDN lines and any elaborations so I could do further research to hook to a PC?
Well, you just want to hook to one PC?
No, they're going to be, we just had a brief discussion earlier today
and I said I'd be doing some research, so I just wanted a starting point.
So something that, any new technology that would be superior to ISDN lines for a business.
In order to answer that, though, we need to know what your needs are.
What kind of bandwidth do you need? How many machines do you have?
Yeah, this is actually the starting point.
I'm going to, oh, well, they have about maybe 13, about maybe 6 Macs and about 7 PCs.
Do you need connectivity to the net?
Yeah, they're online, definitely.
To the outside, I don't mean within your office, I mean to the outside world.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm not talking about LAN either, I'm talking about literally, they're hooked up to the internet.
They're thinking of getting intranet and I just, this literally, this call will be the starting point
because whatever notes I can take from this conversation, it'll facilitate me researching when I go to the library tomorrow.
Okay, well, it's good to be at the starting point of this venture here.
Now, as far as how much you want to spend per month on connection, what can you afford?
Well, it's not me personally, but I guess they wouldn't mind going into the thousands per month.
Okay, I mean, a T1 seems like a logical choice, right?
Yeah, I mean, you got 13 machines, ISDN's definitely going to be too slow for you.
Right.
If you jump on and get a T1, I mean, you can, in some cases, if you find a good reseller,
you can pay less than 2,000 bucks a month to get a T1 line put in.
Right.
Where are you located?
They're located in downtown Manhattan.
Okay, you should have no trouble.
No problem.
No trouble at all.
Yeah.
You can do this for under 2,000, certainly a month.
Yeah, definitely.
And get all the bandwidth you need.
I mean, I think a T1 would be sufficient for that.
Yeah, I wouldn't think of going over that yet.
I mean, if you don't see your needs being that high even,
you might want to look into getting a fractional T1 over frame relay,
and then you could gradually just pay for more bandwidth.
I think that they also might be interested in the Crème de la Crème,
because this is a graphics design company.
Oh, yeah, if you're a graphics design company, you definitely want at least a T1.
I say start off with a T1 and see how it works out.
I think it will be enough for you, especially since you don't have anything right now.
They have ISDN, but I had told them, I hope I wasn't wrong,
but I had told them when I had listened to the show maybe a few months ago,
if my perception was right,
someone had made an announcement about something that was even superior to T1.
ADSL.
Oh, AD, all right.
ADSL isn't being offered yet.
It's not here yet.
Oh, okay.
And we're not certain if it's going to actually solve all the problems it says it's going to solve.
We'll know that probably within the next year or so.
And it's called ADSL.
Yeah, yeah.
For now, though, T1 seems to be the best choice for you.
And is there such a thing as T4?
No, well, the ones that are actually used are T1s and T3s.
Oh, I see.
Not counting fiber.
Okay, so are you saying that T3 is superfluous for our needs?
I think that's a little too fast, yes.
That's going too far too fast.
Oh, okay.
Will you probably be giving us, as information becomes accessible,
would you be giving us information on any new developments in ASDL?
We don't hold back.
We'll give out information on whatever comes down the pike.
All right, thank you.
All right, good luck.
Bye.
Always nice to be at the starting point of a new venture, you know?
Yep.
All right.
212-279-3400.
I heard an update from the network folks recently,
so maybe we'll find out if things are going okay over there,
if my password made it out of the air, if my machine is still secure.
Who knows?
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hi, Manuel, Fiber, whoever is there.
How are you doing?
Okay, this is Nebraska calling.
Nebraska.
So we're getting out there.
Yes.
Are we on right now?
I have no clue.
I have a bad modem, and it shares the phone line with this.
So you're just calling because you know we're on?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
That doesn't really tell us anything, does it?
I'm sorry.
All right.
No, that's okay.
So what's going on in Nebraska tonight?
Not allowed.
We're starting meetings on Friday.
These are the Omaha meetings I've heard about.
Yeah.
Okay.
Did you send information to the meeting address?
No, not yet.
Okay.
It won't get publicized unless you guys tell us that you have meetings
and give us updates.
Okay.
That's important.
Yeah, a couple other quick little thingies I've found out.
Apparently, there's a company in Virginia that is currently beta testing
ADSL with their members.
Okay.
From what I heard, they're charging about $45 a month for it,
which out here is cheaper than a cable modem.
Okay.
Also, according to AT&T, two weeks ago,
they're still not offering 5 cents a minute no matter how hard you haggle.
Uh-huh.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm told.
Okay, here we go.
We've got some information here.
We have 180 listeners on the Internet right now.
Whoa.
That is something.
Now, according to this, we have four in the U.K., one in Singapore.
What's KR?
Korea.
Korea.
One in Korea, three in Canada.
And my machine is working just fine.
Okay, we need coders.
If you want to be a coder, if you don't know what a coder is,
you probably don't want to be one.
But if you know what a coder is and you want to help us with the broadcast,
contact portshop at 2600.com because we need your help.
And that's to get it out to as many people as possible.
Let's see if anybody else out there can call in this week.
Anything else you want to say to us from Nebraska?
Not a lot, I don't think.
Okay, well, good luck with the meeting and let us know how it goes
because we want to help you.
Yeah, I don't think you guys take bribes to come out and visit.
Well, if we're in the area, you know, we'll send people by.
Start a world tour.
Hey, I'm from Nebraska.
Yeah, that's a little known fact.
Bernie S. originally came from Nebraska.
Wow.
Oh, cool.
Have him come home for a weekend.
Say something Nebraskan.
Corn and pigs.
Happy Combine Safety Day, two months late.
Explains why you're in Philadelphia.
I can see that.
All right, good luck there.
Nice talking to all of you.
Good luck.
Bye.
212-279-3400.
If you're outside the country, not including Canada,
but you'd still have to dial the 1.
So I guess it's country code 1 no matter what.
But if you're in other parts, if you're in other parts of the world,
you've got to do whatever you have to do to dial out, which is usually 00,
country code 1, and then 212-279-3400.
So any overseas people out there, we'd like to hear from you, see who's there.
So you want to pick a number?
One through six.
Five.
He said six first.
Okay.
Speak up, please.
Hi.
How are you doing?
Where are you calling from?
Unfortunately, right down here on the Lower East Side.
Oh, that's not so bad.
Lower East Side is a great place.
It's far away, though.
Yeah, it certainly is.
So, you know, if it wasn't going to be plastic, which is petroleum-based,
it would have been hemp credit cards.
Yeah, you know, hemp really has a lot of potential.
It has potential.
The petroleum industry took over, and now we have plastic.
Yeah.
May I ask a question about the Nokia portable phone with the internet access?
Has any one of you seen that or anything?
The communicator?
Yeah.
9,000.
And how does that work?
Basically.
How well does it work?
Yeah, it's little elves.
No, actually, it looks like a palm-top computer.
It's a little larger than a regular phone.
But I haven't seen any of them except the GSM models.
I don't know if they have any others that are not GSM.
Oh, yeah, no, because I've seen them advertised in magazines,
but I think they have sort of a large screen,
so you can get quite a large amount of data on them.
Yeah.
Now, incidentally, I heard that OmniPoint is supposed to be
the sole distributor of the communicator 9,000 in the United States,
but I've yet to see evidence of this.
Really?
Yeah, I haven't seen them available, really.
I've yet to see them in the stores.
Yeah, me neither.
Speaking of OmniPoint, I was looking over some of the places they serve,
and where's the 316 area code?
316?
Yeah, because they have a single exchange in 316,
and I couldn't figure out why.
Is it Kansas?
I thought it was Kansas, actually.
Bernie, do you know where 316 is?
Somewhere out in the Midwest, I think.
Oh, okay, yeah, I know that.
Nebraska.
It's not Nebraska, though.
It's not Nebraska, okay.
I think it is Kansas, but it's Wichita, Kansas.
Is there a reason why they have a single exchange out in the middle of Kansas
and everything else is in Philadelphia and New York?
Yeah, I heard that they have in the works,
and they've been talking about this for a while,
I think they may have some information about it on their website,
that they want to open up local service in Boston, Miami Beach, and Kansas.
Wichita, Kansas, of all places.
Big three, yeah, okay.
I don't know what the reasoning behind it is.
I mean, I can see Boston, it's in the same general area,
but Florida, maybe for the tourism, and Kansas, I really don't know.
It would be an interesting place to visit and see how they're doing in Wichita,
you know, how many people are using OmniPoint phones.
Just a note on the coverage maps on their website,
I noticed that if you go to the maps, especially the ones in the United States,
So it's www.omnipoint.com?
OmniPoint.com, yeah.
If you go to the maps, specifically the United States maps for coverage,
and you choose, you know, the West Coast, Central, or East Coast,
you're better off selecting city by name,
where you actually go to the little scroll bar,
and you can scroll through the names of the cities,
because I noticed that those, for some reason,
are more up to date than the little cities on the map.
Oh, really?
On the picture.
It's also a great way to find out the names of other GSM carriers,
because they tell you everybody that serves the area.
Yeah, and then you can go to their website and find out what their rates are.
And just spend all your time doing that.
It's like an adventure.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello.
How are you doing? Where are you calling from?
Hi, Larchmont.
Larchmont.
Yeah.
It's all up in 914.
Sorry, it's a local call, but what can I tell you?
Our people are telling us, all these listeners,
but, you know, I don't hear them, so maybe they're not actually there.
Well, who knows?
Okay.
Anyway, I've got a question for you.
It's a line quality question.
Okay.
A few years ago I had 9X in here to install a fifth phone line,
and they said, we've got five, four lines out there.
Let's put it all on a six-wire line.
So I put it all on a six-wire line,
and ever since then I've had this tick, tick, tick sound on my phone.
Any idea what that might be?
You can hear it now if you listen carefully.
It sounds like a bomb.
Let's listen carefully.
It sounds like a bomb.
Hear it?
Yeah, I hear something.
It sounds like ignition noise or something.
Yeah, it does.
I have no idea what it is.
If I disconnect the line from the street and just listen to their line
without my house connected, it's clean.
Uh-huh.
Any idea what that could be?
Wait, if you go to the interface and just connect there, you lose the noise?
Correct.
So it sounds like it's in your house.
To my house, but it wasn't there before they put up that six-wire line.
They put up a six-wire line, or they put in a concentrator
so you have six phones, or six phone lines, technically, on one single pair?
Well, what they told me was they were putting a cable from the pole to the house
that would carry all the lines instead of having to have separate wires going from the pole.
That sounds kind of nebulous.
They could have done one of two things.
They could have put six individual pairs inside one sheath and handed that to the house.
I'm pretty sure that's what they have because when I look at the wire,
that's what's coming out of it.
Okay, what they sometimes do to save on copper,
if they're running out of copper in your area,
is they'll put in a concentrator, which is basically a piece of hardware.
Yeah, but this is only like 40 or 50 feet.
Okay.
I can't think that they would do that.
All right.
So, yeah, that's odd.
If you go to the demarcation point and you don't hear the clicking, but you do within your house.
Right.
As soon as I hook the house back up, I hear it.
It's possible that you might need them to come back and put some kind of filter on the line
if they haven't done that already.
It would actually be surprising.
I've had them back several times, and they say,
it's your problem, nothing we can do about it.
If you want, we'll look at it.
We'll charge you, you know, whatever it is an hour.
Yeah, that's the problem.
And that's that.
Well, what I would suggest you do, and you might have done this already,
is unplug all six of your phones and connect one at a time by itself.
Yeah, I started doing that.
It's a very complex phone system I got in the house.
It's a real pain, I know, but that's really the only way to get it.
They're not going to help.
Yeah, I had a friend who looked at it and said that he thought that it was because
I don't have the reds and greens lined up on all my phones.
Does that make any sense to you?
It's possible.
Certain phones were polarity sensitive.
Most any decent phone that was manufactured in the last, I don't know, long time,
would have a rectifier.
Do you have a phone system or just individual phones?
It's individual phones, but I got rotary switches.
I bought Radio Shack two-pole rotary switches, so I can switch phones from one line to another.
Is there something there that's just not reacting properly?
And if you could isolate that, it would make it a lot easier.
I thought you might have heard of this before.
It's an interesting problem, but we're out of time.
Yeah, okay.
Well, I appreciate you taking the call.
All right.
And we really are out of time because this is election night,
and we have election coverage coming up right now.
So we want to wish everybody who's running luck.
It's a shame you all can't win, but that's just the way it is.
We'll be back again next week,
and thanks to everybody who was encoding for the show this week,
and hello to everybody out there in the rest of the world.
If you want to send us email, oth at 2600.com,
and send us mail, too, if you want to help out with the broadcast in other parts of the world.
Until next week, this is Manuel Goldstein for Bernie S and FiberOptic.
Have yourselves a good night.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
That's the music of Harry Chapin from his Cotton Patch Gospel,
a musical retelling of the greatest story ever told.
The Off-Broadway Melting Pot Theater is presenting a new production of Cotton Patch Gospel,
and the first previews will benefit listener-sponsored WBAI
on Wednesday, November 12th at 7.30 and Sunday, November 16th at 1 and 5 p.m.
Cotton Patch Gospel is at the theater at Riverside Church at 120th Street and Riverside Drive.
Join us for a benefit performance of Cotton Patch Gospel on Wednesday, November 12th or Sunday, November 16th.
Tickets are $35 a pair.
Call 212-575-0263 for reservations to see a WBAI benefit performance of Harry Chapin's Cotton Patch Gospel.
That's 575-0263.
Old Baldy, an anti-war piece by Colombian playwright Jairo Anibal Nino,
and a hit in New York's recent Fringe Festival, comes to La Tea, Lower Manhattan's pioneering Hispanic theater company.
It tells the story of Colombia's involvement in the 1950 war which split the Korean Peninsula.
Colombian soldiers responding to a U.N. Security Council S.O.S.
suffered heavy casualties in a surprise attack on a hill not far from La Tea.