1998 marks the 100th anniversary of the invasion of Puerto Rico by U.S. forces, leading to
100 years of U.S. domination and control.
So as we approach the new year, there's no better time to reflect on the 15 Puerto Rican
political prisoners who are serving time in U.S. jails for their struggle to end U.S.
colonialism on the island.
The National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners of War and Political Prisoners invites
you to the 5th Annual Human Rights Celebration for the Imprisoned Nationalists on Friday,
December 12th at 6 p.m. at Hostos Community College, 500 Grand Concourse at 149th Street
in the Bronx.
They will honor the many families who have resisted U.S. colonialism, and there'll be
an awards presentation by Puerto Rican freedom fighter, Don Rafael Cancel Miranda.
For more information, call 212-427-3874.
That's 212-427-3874.
Hey, what's the time?
Eight o'clock.
You sure?
Yeah, sure.
It's eight o'clock Wednesday.
I thought it was later than that.
It was, but not anymore.
You better be here at eight o'clock Wednesday night for the Personal Computer Show.
I'm Joe King, and I'd like you all to join me on the Personal Computer Show, Wednesday
nights from eight to nine.
Hank Key, Dave Burstein, and I will be doing the same show we've been doing for the last
decade or so.
News from the world of hardware and software, reviews of the latest and greatest, interviews
with the folk who make all this work, and most important of all, calls from you in the
audience.
We'll try to answer your questions about computers and the problems you're having with them.
So please tune in, whether you use a Mac or an IBM, or you don't even use a computer.
There'll be something for you on the Personal Computer Show, here on WBAI, 99.5 FM, from
eight to nine, every Wednesday night.
And that's coming up in exactly 24 hours.
But in preparation for that, how about a show about how we can cause all kinds of problems
for computers?
Yeah, it's called Off the Hook.
Off the Hook, every Wednesday night, at eight to nine, on WBAI, 99.5 FM, from eight to nine.
And good evening, welcome to another exciting edition of Off the Hook, where we're going
to be going into some detail about a lot of things that have been happening on the net
and around the world.
Hopefully, we're reaching people from around the world, as well, on the internet, as well
as 99.5 FM in New York City.
It's been, I guess, a busy week, is the best way to say it.
Did you hear about what happened with Yahoo yesterday?
Pick a microphone, Trevor.
How about the purple one?
Okay, the purple one's good, yeah.
Yeah, actually, I did hear about what happened with Yahoo, but not in any real detail.
In fact, I was highly suspicious of the email I had gotten, because initially, it sounded
so ridiculous, I didn't believe it.
Well, then, as far as ridiculousness and detail go, let's go to the source, which is the Associated Press.
Hackers broke in through the Yahoo Worldwide website last night, demanding the release
of an imprisoned comrade and threatening to unleash a crippling computer virus if he is
not freed.
The hackers, who call themselves Pants-slash-Haggis?
Is that how you pronounce it?
Haggis.
Haggis, that's how you pronounce it.
I would pronounce it Haggis.
Okay, it's a Greek mythology thing going on there, right?
No, Haggis is the Scottish food.
It's a Scottish what?
Food.
Scottish food?
Haggis.
You don't know what Haggis is?
Well, I just know Scottish food is the most unhealthy in the world.
No, Haggis, you basically take a sheep's bladder, you slice it open, and you fill it with the
sheep's guts, and then you boil it.
Yeah, okay, this is appetizing.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
I'm surprised you never heard of Haggis.
Probably, I tried to keep it out of my mind.
You boil sheep guts.
Okay, fine.
And they name themselves after that?
I guess so.
All right.
Well, you do boil the sheep guts.
Well, thank God for that.
It's not eaten raw.
Anyway, these sheep gut people left a ransom note threatening they would unleash a virus
on Christmas Day 1998.
Yeah, that's right, Christmas Day 1998.
Oh, we have a full year.
I thought it was only a couple of weeks away.
Yeah.
Oh, okay, I misread it.
Christmas Day 1998.
That leaves someone like a whole year and a few days to write a virus.
Well, or to release Kevin.
Unless hacker Kevin Mitnick was released from jail.
Can you imagine if he's not released by then?
Unbelievable.
It is unbelievable.
Computer security experts are skeptical of the hackers' claim that they had implanted
such a virus while Yahoo officials discounted any possibility of a virus.
You know, I heard Josh Quitner on the radio on my way into the station.
Really?
Yeah, he was on one of those all-news stations.
All-news all the time?
Yeah, and they gave him like about 35 seconds to explain the whole thing.
Oh.
And he didn't really...
I mean, I agree pretty much with everything he said.
Yeah.
Obviously, I don't think someone really planted...
Well, here's what happened, okay?
You may have wondered why people who connected the actual Yahoo webpage didn't see this.
It was only on the links page.
Okay.
If you connected through links.
And a lot of people do connect through links.
Can you give us an idea of what kind of person would connect through links?
Someone that doesn't have graphics.
Right.
Doesn't have a sophisticated enough machine to have graphics to run Netscape.
Which a lot of sophisticated hackers don't have sophisticated machines.
This is true.
Yeah, so it does happen.
And a lot of non-hackers, too, I would imagine.
So, anyway, if they were connecting to any one of Yahoo's connections on links last night,
for I'd say about a half hour to an hour,
because it seemed to be a battle for a while.
It was going down, then it was going back up.
It's kind of funny, actually.
Basically, you would see this message,
Pans Haggis World Domination 97,
for the past month.
And this is something that would really, I imagine, make people panic.
For the past month, anyone who has viewed Yahoo's page and used their search engine
now has a logic bomb slash worm implanted deep within their computer.
The worm part of this virus, in layman's terms,
spreads itself across internal networks that the infected machine is on.
Binary programs are also infected.
On Christmas Day, 1998,
the logic bomb part of this virus will become active,
wreaking havoc among the entire planet's networks.
The virus can be stopped,
but not by mortals.
An antidote program has been written.
This program is resting somewhere on a computer in the Southeastern Hemisphere.
First of all, I didn't know there was a Southeastern Hemisphere.
There's only two hemispheres.
There's a Southern Hemisphere and a Northern Hemisphere.
Hence, Hemi.
Where would the East part be?
East as opposed to what?
Hemi kind of means that there's two.
Yeah, right, right.
Two hems.
Anyway, the U.S. government will be notified of the precise location of the antidote program
upon the immediate release of Kevin Mitnick.
In the meantime, it would be a wise move on the part of the children of corporate and militant America
to remove all money they have in any financial institutions.
One of the many functions of our virus is that it will cause an acceleration of clocks to the year 2000.
The Pants-slash-Haggis Alliance has taken control of the world's computers.
We own everyone and everything.
No one is safe.
No computer is safe.
Our goal, which we have achieved, is world domination.
Okay, that's better.
Yeah, so we have all these people panicking all around the world now,
thinking that they have some sort of logic bomb.
And, you know, that's kind of like the bad thing.
The bad thing is when you go out and make people panic and point the finger at hackers.
So I could see, you know, that's bad.
One thing I think which is very good, which is people got their finger on,
is drawing attention to what's happening to Kevin Mitnick.
And I think that's something that we really have to kind of raise our voices about,
much the same way we did with Bernie S, you know, a year ago.
But more so because this has been going on since February of 1995.
He's been in prison for that long.
And no matter what you think he did, that's a bit much, you know,
for any kind of crime that doesn't involve money, doesn't involve violence,
just involves access, knowledge.
I agree that the whole Kevin thing is ludicrous,
but it would have been ample for them to just put up a message where everyone would see.
Lots of people use Yahoo, lots of people would have went to the links page anyway.
Yeah, so what message would you have put up?
Well, just to free Kevin, not this whole childish rigmarole
about taking over the world and giving everybody a virus.
I mean, that's idiotic.
Would you have put this up?
On February 14, 1995, Kevin David Mitnick was incarcerated
for the sole purpose of furthering the egomaniacal agenda of the United States secret cervix
and the self-aggrandizement of both would-be security expert Shimomura
and has-been media lackey John Markoff.
Well, I might have phrased it in better English, but I think it kind of...
To commemorate this date and further etch our outrage into the hearts and minds
of the militant America, we have built in a fail-safe on exactly...
Here's another one.
0100 hours, February 14, 1998.
There will be a nationwide failure of power grids in strategic locations.
Remember, this will only occur if Kevin David Mitnick is not released
and exonerated of all trumped-up charges made against him.
Well, considering that there's no way to transmit a virus by clicking on a link,
well, unless you use Internet Explorer.
Yes, that's true.
So, even if one-fifth of this was true, it kind of reminds me,
last night they had a whole series on the Learning Channel about UFOs,
and forgetting the fact that I think 99.9% of it is absolute garbage,
it's like you have to wonder if even one-tenth of 1% is true,
some of it is probably scary.
Yeah, yeah.
So, even if one-tenth of 1% of all the nonsense in here is true,
then it could mean that everyone who clicked on this page somewhere
that uses Internet Explorer may in fact have incurred some sort of virus or something.
Well, I don't know.
I think that might just be something against Microsoft there, you know,
that, you know, an agenda on your part to bring down Microsoft
by making people panic who use the Explorer.
Well, it's not my fault that, I mean,
there aren't as many stupid problems with Netscape as there are with Internet Explorer.
I mean, I call them like I see them.
Yeah, that's true.
And I've been noticing there are some sites,
there's an article about this actually, I think in the Times yesterday,
about how certain sites are blocking certain browsers.
I think Warner Brothers blocks Netscape.
They say, well, you're almost there, now you just have to download Explorer.
Yeah, I heard about that.
Yeah, that's kind of nasty, you know.
And that's not the way it should be.
It should be open to all explorers.
If you're an advanced user, you could actually patch your browser
to always identify itself as a different kind of browser.
I know people who do that.
Yeah.
I know people who do that, yes.
They don't know what kind of trouble they're getting into, but yeah.
It's certainly possible.
It goes on with more details about Kevin Mitnick.
He was wrongly jailed for a crime he did not commit.
Everyone is well aware of the fact that Mitnick was not behind the attack on Shimomura's computers.
Tsutomu Shimomura is a hypocrite who is out to make a fast buck and a name for himself.
Throughout the entire course of his and John Markoff's lame excuse for a book,
he trashes Mitnick's...
I'm not sure what this is trying to say.
He trashes Mitnick's mocks him for not having a life.
I guess they're trying to say he trashes Mitnick and mocks him for not having a life.
He makes no mention, however, of his own illicit activities with cellular phones.
Mitnick did what he did out of intellectual curiosity without compromising the hacker ethic.
The goal of Shimomura's activity, however, was merely to listen in on other people's conversations,
including mine, I might point out.
He listened in on my conversation.
I'm still upset about that.
Never apologized.
Never sent a note.
Nothing like that.
If Mitnick doesn't have a life or ethics for checking someone's email for reasons of self-preservation,
then what does that say about Shimomura who eavesdrops on unknowing victims for recreation?
Shimomura also constantly slams hackers as being clueless and ankle biters.
He is a puppet of an increasingly Orwellian government,
and he is owned by Pence and Haggis,
not to mention quite a few other individuals who shall remain nameless.
The media hails Shimomura as cyberspace's top cop.
Anyway, there's all kinds of interesting things there,
and I think what they're saying is very valid as far as that kind of stuff,
as far as getting the word out as to who's really guilty in a case like this
and waking people up to the fact that this guy has been sitting in jail now for almost three years.
It's time we do something, you know?
And this, I don't think, is 100% right to make people panic.
It does draw attention, but I think there's other ways of drawing attention.
I mean, I think everybody out there should be getting buttons, okay?
And if I had the money, I'd be doing this myself.
Buttons, stickers, bumper stickers, posters.
Just, let's say, Free Kevin.
And you post those all over the place.
Everybody wears buttons saying Free Kevin.
People wonder, who's Kevin?
You tell them.
They learn who Kevin is.
Kevin's a political prisoner.
There's no question about that.
He's in prison because he pissed off the wrong people, much like Bernie S. was.
So we have all these, you know, Free Kevin bumper stickers showing up on, you know,
every stop sign in America or, you know, even every bumper in America, for that matter.
It might start waking people up, you know?
It might start getting people who are not hackers to realize that there's a big injustice going on here
and that we can't forget about this.
So I hope people take some action.
This is action, yes.
And there is some positive in there.
And I hope the people at Yahoo! don't, you know, go crazy over this.
I don't think it really caused them that much damage,
although it did point out some security holes that they have.
Chances are they will go crazy.
You think so?
Yeah, because these people are posturing and making all kinds of ridiculous claims.
I've heard Yahoo! mentioned a lot today, though.
I mean, everyone's talking about Yahoo! now.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure it's great for publicity.
I mean, it'd be another thing if Yahoo! pulled the whole thing themselves.
You think?
No, this is not the way Yahoo! talks.
Well, it'd be great for publicity, but I doubt they did it.
I mean, you know, these people are, you know, they're known in the hacker community.
Oh, yeah, haggis.
They talk with numbers, you know.
They spell with numbers and things like that.
You can't do that if you work for Yahoo!
Sorry, you just can't.
They could have hired somebody.
It takes skill to do something like that.
Anyway, we had some fun with Yahoo! last week.
We were playing around with their search engine, watching people searching for things, right?
Right.
And I think that still works, because I think it's intentional, actually.
Yeah.
And we had quite a bit of mail.
One person sent us this piece here.
This is actually the person who sent us the mail in the first place about the Yahoo! AltaVista thing.
And there is another search engine that does this intentionally.
MetaCrawler has a thing called the MetaSpy.
All that stuff.
However, I'm suspicious of how MetaCrawler's setup is.
Over the past few days, I've come across the same searches over and over.
About every fourth search includes a search for someone named John Valletta.
And some other searches are repeated.
I also noticed something.
I was playing around with this.
I didn't notice any sex searches.
Every other one on Yahoo! is for sex of some sort.
Yeah.
And these were all filtered.
So I think there is a filtered and an unfiltered version.
I think, in fact, there's a button you click on that site to unfilter it and get all the good stuff.
So that's one indication of that.
What else?
Okay, hackers breaking into Yahoo!
We have an Argentinian hacker thing.
Yeah.
The bell has tolled for Julio Cesar Ardita,
the Argentinian hacker who was traced with a court-ordered computer network wiretap,
the first ever of its kind after his activities were detected in 1995.
Ardita entered a plea agreement Friday with the U.S. District Court in Boston
on charges of illegal wiretapping and computer crime felonies.
He waived extradition and will return to the United States on his own will.
He agreed to plead guilty and return to this country,
said Amy Rinskop of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts.
We couldn't do anything until it became extraditable or until he became extradited
or until he returned to this country for another reason.
If he came into this country, then we could arrest him.
Because his charges do not apply to the U.S.-Argentina extradition treaty,
it was not possible to extradite Ardita,
and he remained free after his apprehension almost two years ago.
As per the joint sentence recommendation to the court,
he will serve three years' probation and pay a $5,000 fine.
My only question is, why?
Why is this guy coming here voluntarily to surrender himself
when it's not even a crime in his country and he can't be extradited for it?
He must love the U.S.
I don't know. I mean, he doesn't live here in the first place.
I could see if you lived here.
Yeah, you might want to, you know, clear things up in your homeland.
Does it make sense?
No. He was known as Griton, G-R-I-T-O-N.
That's Spanish for screamer.
Really?
Yeah, he operated from his parents' Buenos Aires apartment
while studying computer science at nearby Universidad Argentina Jean F. Kennedy.
I have one minor point of order.
The person who wrote that article apparently didn't do very much research,
but as far as data tapping goes...
This is from Wired News Service.
I guess that settles that right there.
It must be true.
But we were led to believe that data taps being used in a hacker case
were the first of their kind in my legal case.
Yeah, the M.O.D. case.
Yeah, and that was in 91, which is four years earlier than this case.
So I don't know what they're saying.
Well, they're saying it's a computer network wiretap,
not a wiretap of voices like you guys had.
No, they had a data tap.
They had a data tap in your case too?
Yeah.
Maybe it wasn't a network data tap.
It was a data tap.
Computer network wire... I don't know what they mean.
I don't know what they mean either, but they had data taps,
not on me personally, but on at least two other people in my case.
And they said it was the first of its kind ever used in a hacker case.
So it wasn't the last.
Certainly will not be the last.
What do you have over there?
Oh, I have all kinds of interesting things.
We have an update from the guy in Halifax, the ADSL guy we talked to last week.
And he says that, just to clear something up, the company does not use IPX.
This is the guy that was saying that you needed to use their own crummy software
in Windows to log into a Novell network server to use ADSL?
Correct.
They do not use IPX.
They actually use straight IP with access control lists.
So that was the most he could tell us.
I'd be actually curious as to the effectiveness of these access control lists.
And we have yet another clarification that we're well aware of,
that the so-called maximum speed on analog modems,
that the FCC says you can't go above 53 kilobits a second.
I've been hearing that a lot recently.
Too much radiation or emissions or interference or something.
A lot of clarification going on.
Yeah, lots of clarification.
That is true, what that person said many weeks ago.
Yeah.
Then we have something that was mentioned in Risks Digest about a GSM challenge.
Yeah, now this is interesting.
This was interesting, yeah.
Unfortunately, I can't comment in too much detail on this information,
considering that I've done work.
One of my clients is a major GSM operator.
Well, you can't comment on them, but they're not GSM.
I mean, GSM is worldwide.
Yeah, this is true.
It's many different companies.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, I had heard about this.
The German Telekom, which is one of their subsidiaries,
which is a GSM company in Germany,
offered 100,000 Deutschmarks to a telephone hacker
who was able to communicate using the phone number that they gave.
And they kept the actual SIM card, the chip card,
in some lawyer's office to prove that the original was in some known location.
Isn't it easy to just break into a lawyer's office?
Well, they could do that, but I think that's not what they were trying to illustrate.
Okay.
They wanted to see if somebody could actually clone the service.
And some people from Cambridge University
came up with this whole roundabout space age way
of using a laser microprobe workstation to probe the SIM card to read it.
And the problem I have with this is that, yeah, everything they said,
I mean, in theory, is the most expensive way you can possibly do something.
They estimated the cost of this, what did they call it?
They called it a triple wavelength laser microprobe workstation.
The cost of this, they estimated, $20,000.
Okay.
So it basically proves that for $20,000 you can break even in, what,
in a few years' worth of fraudulent calls?
That's a lot of calls even for that.
Yeah, so basically they proved absolutely nothing.
They proved that the cost of their method greatly outweighs the benefit of the fraud,
which I think kind of makes the whole test ludicrous.
Well, I mean, is this just for the first time they do it?
Can they now do it faster and cheaper?
No, they claim that they would need this apparatus to probe the SIM card every time
to get a certain piece of information off it.
And then the other thing is that they need some other piece of equipment
to monitor the airwaves to pick up yet other information.
And the problem I have with this is that the thing in question that they're talking about,
the International Mobile Subscriber ID, the IMSI,
that's basically the unique serial number, if you will, of your SIM card.
The other pertinent piece of information that would go along with that
is the subscriber's secret key.
And the two things together uniquely identify the subscriber's SIM card.
In all the cases that I'm aware of, that I've seen,
the IMSI on the SIM card was plainly readable.
It was not protected in any way because it's not considered secret.
So basically if they had a simple SIM card reader,
which probably costs on the order of a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand dollars
as opposed to $20,000, they could have simply read the SIM card.
And in this particular case, they're claiming that they found a loophole,
which isn't necessarily a loophole, but it's more an option,
that GSM companies are not required to encrypt anything.
They can choose to, they can choose not to.
In fact, I know for a fact that a GSM handset can claim that it's incapable of encryption.
And depending on the way the GSM switch is configured,
it can either reject the handset outright or allow it to continue along its merry way
after it's been authenticated to the network to allow the user to communicate free and clear
over the airways and unencrypted.
Without the user's knowledge.
Without the user's knowledge, yeah.
What these people are basically saying is that knowing the serial number of the subscriber
from the SIM card, that they can clone all the service that they want,
which may be true in this mobile company's case.
Unfortunately, that would be extremely stupid,
that these people would make encryption optional.
So I think that's their own fault.
They claim that they tried to fax this company multiple times.
And I don't think these people at Cambridge University actually collected their money,
their 100,000 Deutschmarks.
Well, maybe some people involved in that were listening,
and they can call us in a little bit later and clarify some things.
Certainly, yeah.
See, I heard about this back at Beyond Hope, that there was this challenge.
And I never really heard any confirmation about it.
Supposedly, some German people claimed that they did it but couldn't prove it.
So I don't know what the deal is with that.
Well, speaking of telephones, GSM, CDMA, whatever,
I had a bit of an adventure with my phone.
Really?
Well, with my CDMA phone, actually.
Not my OmniPoint phone, not my GSM.
Because I use this one more frequently now because of the pricing and all that kind of thing.
Right.
But I had the thing plugged into the charger overnight.
And there's two ways you can do it.
You can take the battery out and just stick it in the charger
and discharge it and recharge it and things like that.
Or you can just stick the whole phone in.
And they say if you leave the phone on, it takes longer to charge.
I figured, you know, I'll leave it overnight, who cares.
So I grabbed the thing today as I'm leaving.
And as I make my first call as I'm driving in,
I notice the battery indicator is only down to a single little unit.
So apparently not only did it not charge, but it discharged while it was sitting there.
Either that or when they say it takes longer, they mean it takes days to charge.
That's funny.
Yeah, so I was pretty upset by that because, you know,
that means my battery is going to burn out pretty quickly
and I won't have a chance to even talk to anybody
and people are going to try calling me and, you know, not be able to get through.
So I decided on the spot to buy another battery, a second battery, so I'll have a backup.
So this little thin battery here, as you can see, it's like wafer thin
and lasts about, you know, 13 seconds or so, I don't know.
It gives you about an hour of talk time is what it turns out.
Although if you go to Radio Shack, they'll tell you it gives you four hours of talk time
because that's to entice you to buy from them.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, I should have gotten the guy on camera doing this, but that's what they said.
And then when I went back and said, you know, this thing's only giving me an hour of talk time,
they said, yeah, that's what it's supposed to do.
You know, it's before and after.
So anyway, this little thin one, I got a nice thick one.
I went to a different Radio Shack, and they kept me waiting forever.
And that's the one that's truly four hours.
They're so annoying.
I mean, I just can't say enough about Radio Shack, you know.
I'm there. I'm the only person there.
Yet they still find something to do besides wait on the customer, you know.
I'm standing there.
After 15 minutes of me standing there, do you need help with something?
No, I think I'll just stand here and stare at you for a while longer, you know.
So that's Radio Shack for you.
But, yeah, as you can see, this one, that's what it sounds like when you drop it.
But the big one, uh-oh.
Much bigger.
Oh, dear.
Can they operate with a crack?
Sure.
Okay, good.
I haven't tested it yet because when I put it in my phone, it was discharged.
I have to charge it.
So even though I have two batteries, I still don't have any power.
So that's, I have no phone.
That's weird.
You know, the other phone, the Ericsson GSM phone, has to be on if you quick charge it.
Oh, really?
Yeah, that's true. That's true.
If it's off, it won't charge.
I don't understand that.
That's hardware.
You know, that's just stuff that I guess we'll never quite understand why it happens that particular way.
There was a front-page article in the New York Times yesterday.
This is why I like the New York Times.
They have, you know, like 83 front-page stories, and some of them are kind of weird.
What we were talking about last week, about the payphones that block 800 numbers now,
or that people who own 800 numbers are now getting charged extra for the people that call from payphones.
There was a big article, a huge article about this in the New York Times yesterday.
For decades, Americans have assumed correctly that they could call 800 telephone numbers for free,
any time, from any phone.
But, as a result of the deregulation of the telecommunications industry,
consumers may soon find they are unable to call some toll-free numbers from the nation's roughly 2 million public pay telephones.
In a little-noticed move that could cost American consumers and businesses almost $1 billion a year,
the FCC ruled in October that owners of toll-free numbers must pay a fee of $0.284 a call to owners of payphones
when customers dial a toll-free line from a public phone.
It's just unbelievable. I mean, they say it here, and I still don't understand it.
There's this whole big article about this, but nowhere in there does it say that this makes sense in any way.
I mean, it's a free call. Where is the expense?
You know? I mean, does it make any sense to you? Is there any way you can justify this?
Well, no. I mean, actually, the only reason I could think of why they would start charging for 800s
is with the 800 number portability.
Maybe they're realizing that it actually costs more money to maintain the 800 translations database.
No, it's not that. You know what it is?
What?
It's that people are getting upset when they see other people using payphones and not putting money in them.
They feel the payphone is there to collect money from people.
If you're making a call and not putting money into it, you're putting money somewhere else.
Right.
And that payphone should get money for that.
You're not using the phone, and its mechanism is wearing out because you're talking on an 800 number.
Listen to what this guy from Bell Atlantic says.
For many years, 800 providers have been able to use payphones for no charge,
while everyone else had to pay 25 cents or 35 cents.
This is just leveling the playing field.
Isn't that nice and simple? I mean, that's just ridiculous.
The more I hear, the more I think that Bell Atlantic is an evil company, and we're actually better off with 9x.
I can't believe Bell Atlantic would even support something like this.
But anyway, two paging firms have decided to block all calls from payphones.
The Mobile Telecommunication Technologies Corporation,
which serves about a million clients from its headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi,
has shut off access from payphones to pagers using its 1-800 SkyPage, SkyWord, or SkyGram numbers.
And PageMart Wireless, based in Dallas, which has about 2.4 million paging customers,
has decided to shut off payphone access to its toll-free pagers,
although the company had not settled on a timetable for the change.
Other large paging companies, including Paging Network Inc., which has about 10.4 million customers,
said they would impose new monthly charges ranging from $2.49 to $5 on customers who maintain toll-free pagers,
or would bill those customers based on how many calls they received from payphones.
So, you know, I just don't understand how this applies.
Yes, do you have something to add?
Aren't there multiple charges involved in the long-distance calls from payphones?
It's the long-distance charges itself, but there's also the payphones costs.
If people are using payphones only for 800 numbers,
do the people who actually are providing the payphones and the lines get any money for the equipment itself?
I don't believe so. Why would they?
The people providing the lines would get money for what?
For actually having the equipment on site, maintaining it.
When you have a payphone, you're operating it to make a profit from the money that's put in there.
Yes, but if people mainly use it for 800 numbers,
they aren't putting any money in, and you aren't making any money for providing that service for people to call the 800 numbers.
Well, that's true. Also, if the payphone receives calls,
which is why they've turned off incoming service, which is another unfairness.
I mean, the payphone is there for several purposes, not all of which are to just drop money into it.
I just disagree with that premise that every time it's used, somebody should get money for it.
I've never seen a payphone that was tied up 24 hours a day because people are making 800 calls on it.
No, most people do put money in it, which I can't figure out.
That's what I notice on the street, too.
The charges are grossly inflated.
I can't really think of something off the top of my head that is a parallel to this,
but it's a toll-free call is what it comes down to.
You shouldn't be charging people for that.
You know, how about this?
Those people who are so concerned with this, just block 800 numbers from your payphone, okay?
All Bell Atlantic payphones no longer require...
You can't dial any 800 numbers from them. Fine.
We'll start using other phones that do allow that, all right?
That'll solve everyone's problem. Nobody will pay for an 800 call.
Are you waving for a particular reason?
What about cellphones?
What about cellphones?
Same situation.
You need a microphone.
I was telling you.
Cellphones are in the same situation as a payphone.
Yeah.
And they do it, and no one has a problem with it.
They do what? They charge?
They charge you.
Well, I have a problem with that.
First of all, they charge less, actually.
At least a lot of services charge less than what they want to charge at payphones right now.
And they do it under... I mean, they charge for incoming calls as well,
and they say that it's airtime.
And I think that's something that's going to go away at some point,
because why is airtime more valuable than wiretime?
It's not.
The whole purpose of toll...
That's payphone time.
Yeah, but the thing is, look.
Someone is paying for the phone call already, all right?
Now, if someone comes and uses my phone for a toll-free number,
am I entitled to money now?
Because they're tying up my phone.
Do I charge them?
Do I get something from the FCC?
Where is it written that every time the phone is off the hook,
someone gets money for that?
I don't think it was ever written anywhere.
Well, I think the logic in this case is that there are more wires than air.
Oh, you're going back to why airtime is more valuable.
Yeah, I believe the twisted logic is that there are more wires than air.
I think if I were a phone company, I'd probably want to charge the payphone.
But you see, if you're a phone company,
you're already getting the money from the people that buy your 800 numbers,
because phone companies already offer them.
They can't get paid both times.
But it might be a different provider.
The whole purpose, yeah, that's true, but it evens out.
That's what competition is all about.
It evens out in the end, you know?
If you're a phone company, you provide certain services,
and if they're competitive, people will buy them from you.
All right, 800 numbers are one thing.
If you provide 800 numbers, people will start buying them from you,
and you'll get money every time somebody calls somebody else.
Now, to ask for money from the people that call,
as well as from the people that are called,
I mean, it just seems to me the height of greed,
and illogic.
So why are you surprised?
I'm not surprised. I'm upset.
Well, I think this can be changed,
because there are people that are lobbying against this.
And I think if we speak up about it enough,
you know, it'll at least bring the issue to a forefront,
and force some kind of a change.
They want to make this like 50 cents, too.
You know, they want to really hike it up.
I mean, think of what this is going to do to people making phone calls.
You know?
You're not going to know when you're being charged extra,
because if, say, you call,
I don't know, you call American Express or something
to talk about your account, right?
From a pay phone.
They're not going to pass that 50 cent charge on to you,
you know, because you spent their money
making a toll-free call to them from a pay phone.
It just makes things so complicated,
and so ridiculous,
that no one's ever going to want to even use a phone anymore.
No, I think ultimately everyone's just going to want to get a cell phone.
If they become reasonable in price,
and stop radiating your head and things like that.
Yeah, I guess that could be a more logical thing.
Alright, our phone number is 212-279-3400 in the United States.
If you're calling from outside the United States, country code 1.
Hey, you know, I had my court date.
Remember a few months ago, I said I had to go to traffic court?
Right.
Because I was caught driving with one headlight out,
like, you know, 10 seconds after I left my house.
Whammo, they got me.
And then I, you know, I did what I was supposed to do.
I, you know, fixed the thing, filled out the form, sent it in.
And then they sent it back saying,
no, no, this indicates, the ticket says,
insufficient headlights with an S.
Which means two headlights were out.
And I tried to reason with them back then,
say, you know, they wouldn't have given me the form to fill out
if, you know, if it was two headlights,
because that's a totally different thing.
So, I knew I'd wind up dragging this poor cop to, you know, to court.
And was he going to remember me from six months ago?
And how many headlights I had out?
You know, all he's going to be is mad that he's in court.
So, I got to go to court bright and early in the morning.
And it's fun because you get to watch other people
and see them, you know, fall down in front of you.
There was this one cop there, skinhead cop.
You ever see a skinhead cop?
No, they always have their hats on.
No, this one didn't.
Wow.
And he was like, you know, he had,
well, he didn't have the earrings or the tattoos, but, you know,
he had the swagger, I'll say that.
And he had the smirk, okay?
And he just, you know, person after person was just, like,
testifying against him, saying, you know,
oh, but he didn't, you know, he didn't actually say that, you know,
I was speeding or he didn't actually, you know,
they were coming up with all these different things.
One person even came up with a law saying that what he did was illegal.
And the judge acknowledged it, but still found that the charge had merit,
even though it was breaking the law.
It was pretty funny.
He won every single case, but he still looked angry,
like he was going to, you know, kick some ass when he got out of there.
So anyway, after like 45 minutes of that,
they bring me into another courtroom where I'm the only person.
They just bring me into this one place.
I'm the only person except for the cop that's there.
And right away they ask him, you know, so what are the circumstances of this?
And I wish they had asked me first because I could say, you know,
I'm not saying he's a liar or anything like that.
I'm just saying you guys screwed it up.
But instead they ask him and he says that he pulled over, you know,
the person for having insufficient headlights.
Right away the judge jumps on this and says, was it one light or two?
And he said one.
And I said, look, that's exactly what happened.
You know, this is exactly what I said happened.
The only people that got this wrong were the people upstate that, you know,
said it was two headlights.
And everybody had a good laugh over it and, you know,
we shook hands and parted friends and things like that.
But then I had to wait for my money.
I had to wait for my receipt and the computers were down.
And apparently they never had anything like this happen before
because right away the clerk in the courtroom says,
exception in courtroom five.
I'm like, what?
What is this, Brazil or something?
Exception in courtroom five.
Apparently, you know, it's a real big deal when somebody wins.
So they like ceased all activity in that room.
I had to sit there for another 45 minutes.
I'm not kidding.
45 minutes sitting there just waiting for the computer to like figure out
how to like, you know, give me a receipt and get money.
So then after that happened I got to wait in line with all the pissed off
people that had to pay the cashier.
Except by the time I got to the cashier, she gave me money.
You know, she handed me cash.
And I'm like, wow, look at this cash.
I'm getting money.
And I, you know, I walked out of there with my head held high.
Everybody looking at me.
Then I got back to my car.
And as I'm getting into my car, I start feeling around for my, you know,
radio faceplate thing, which I always carry with me.
I can't find it.
There's no way to be found.
I searched my car.
It's not there.
I look around.
Look under the car.
I'm like, oh boy, I must have, when I was moving courtrooms,
I must have dropped it out of my coat pocket.
So I had to go all the way back there.
Go back to each courtroom.
Look like a total idiot, you know, searching around,
looking at people's feet while they're testifying.
I had to stand in the same line again at the cashier,
ask her if I might have left it there.
You know, feeling like a total imbecile after feeling so proud.
All the time realizing that I'm being taught some sort of stupid lesson
by the great gods above saying, you know, you're on top of the world
one moment, and then the next moment something happens,
and, you know, everything goes bad.
I just refused to learn that lesson.
I just said, I'm not taking this.
I'm not going to, you know, sit back and say, oh yeah, that's interesting.
So I went to two different lost and founds,
filed all kinds of, like, you know, reports and forms
and got numbers and things like that.
Then I went back to my car, and that's when I discovered
there's this crevice between my seat and the emergency brake
where the thing fits so perfectly that it looks like it's part of the car.
Wow.
So it was a fun day in traffic court.
Enough of that. I'm just glad it's over.
I hate getting tickets. This always happens to me.
All right, let's take some phone calls.
212-279-3400.
If you're listening on real audio, maybe you want to put a country code 1 in front of that
or just at least a 1.
And pick a number. 1 to 6.
The 3.
3? Okay. Let's hope you're right.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hey.
Where are you calling from?
New York State.
I wanted to talk about the Yahoo bug.
You want to talk about the Yahoo bug?
Yeah, basically, my name is Cyrus, and I'm in love with Alexandra Carlman.
Okay, enough of that.
I don't even know what he's talking about.
Nice pick there, Fiber.
What's that?
Oh, it's not my fault.
Yeah, it is. You picked 3.
Well, I didn't know who was going to be there.
Well, why do you think I asked you? I'm going to pick 5.
Okay.
Good evening. You're on the air.
I should point out for our Internet listeners, are they hung up?
Okay, we're batting 1,000 tonight.
For our Internet listeners, there's approximately a 20-second delay.
For our radio listeners, it's about a 7-second delay.
So you should be calling a minute ago.
Well, I'm just saying, if you're on the phone and the phone is ringing,
keep the phone near your ear so at least you'll hear me in the phone saying,
Hello, you're on the air.
Hello, you're on the air.
Am I on the air?
Yes, you are.
I guess I should have waited for that to transmit itself.
I have a question.
I have a cell phone, an old cell phone that came out of a raid on a dumpster,
a 9X dumpster.
They discombobulated it.
And they said this broken thing will never be fixed.
And, of course, I dug it out and then made a circuit board repair
and threw everything back together.
And it was dirty so I scrubbed it with a brush and it still works, you know?
Good for you.
I like electronics.
Where would I get the code to program a, it's called an AudioVox 832 Plus.
Where would I go to get the unlock code to somebody who would actually give it to me?
They all tell me it's super secret.
Well, I guess a friendly dealer might leak that information.
Well, either that or there's a heck of a lot of cell phone information on the web.
You're calling from a pay phone, aren't you?
Yeah, I don't have that.
I'm one of the people who have a cell phone.
I'm one of the people who doesn't have access to a web.
You put a whole quarter in.
What a waste.
You have 15 cents credit toward overtime.
Isn't that noise right before it asked me for money?
That hollow noise, what's that?
No, not that.
Before that, it was a hollow noise.
It sounded like, oh, we'll hear it again sometime.
Oh, the clunk?
Yeah, the clunk.
It swallowed his quarter.
Yeah.
Before it swallowed the quarter.
Oh, okay.
No, that was when it swallowed the quarter.
Why does it echo like that?
I don't want too many distractions when I'm on a 50,000 watt station.
I don't want to put a dime in at a time, you know?
That's true.
That's true.
PCS, how many systems?
You know, like some of that has A and B.
How many systems does PCS support?
Well, there's GSM, there's CDMA.
Yeah.
What about TDMA?
Is that a PCS?
Well, GSM uses TDMA.
No, straight TDMA is just the digital cellular.
Mm-hmm.
No, that's amps.
What's that?
Amps.
A-M-P-S.
No, D-amps is TDMA.
Amps is analog.
Yeah.
Which is not PCS.
Which is not digital cellular either.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, but as far as PCS is basically CDMA and GSM.
Mm-hmm.
But I mean, how many systems, A and B?
How many companies?
I found three companies in our area so far.
In our area specifically?
There's only one GSM company.
And to my knowledge, two CDMA companies, Sprint and AT&T.
And that's how many companies you can put on PCS?
No, you could put a heck of a lot more than that.
That's just all who's operating around here.
Mm-hmm.
So it has limits for a whole bunch of companies?
In other words, the sky's the limit?
Well, there's plenty of bandwidth.
I mean, the sky isn't the limit.
I mean, bandwidth is limited, but there's plenty left.
Mm-hmm.
PCS is new to me.
It's new to just about everybody.
You don't really understand it until you understand the system.
Mm-hmm.
Well, you've got to play around with it quite a bit.
By the way, Kevin Mimic, what cellular are you?
In fact, you're getting the wrong one.
Oh, he's putting a quarter in.
You have $0.15 credit.
Please deposit $0.15.
If he's $0.15 credit, why does he have to put in $0.15?
That's what I never could understand.
And it won't take nickels.
It doesn't take nickels?
No, this phone is broken.
Wow.
Can someone beep like a nickel?
Please deposit $0.15.
I've got to hang up.
Okay.
Well, you know, we could wait until she disconnects you.
Oh, yeah.
Let me see.
How long do you usually get?
How long do I get?
About a minute.
About a minute, okay.
See, that tickly noise is what I was talking about.
That's when it swallows the money.
He's gone.
He's gone.
They took him away.
Wow, that was quick.
It's Bell Atlantic.
They're unforgiving.
If you have $0.15 credit, why is it asking for another $0.05?
I don't understand that.
It's like telling you you had $0.15 credit.
Now it's time to put in more money, maybe.
But I never could understand that.
I don't...
It's a problem with the tenses or something.
Yeah, pronoun trouble.
Yeah.
Now...
I don't know what they're doing.
OmniPoint, have you noticed this?
We haven't gotten a weather forecast in like three weeks.
Actually, I got the weather yesterday.
Really?
Every time I check the weather, it says forecast not available.
Yeah, for the past...
I don't know if anybody's listening who can affect the change here,
in case nobody's reporting this.
Yeah, there hasn't been any weather report.
And I know there's been weather out there.
Oh, yeah, there has been plenty of weather.
Yeah.
There's been no weather report for the past couple of weeks,
except, I think, for yesterday.
Uh-huh.
For whatever reason.
And this is nationwide because I've been calling up weather from all over the place.
Not really.
And it's always unavailable.
Yeah.
I have been getting my news, but not weather.
Interesting.
There was a report somewhere on the net about Sprint PCS and Sprint Spectrum.
Right.
And how Sprint is saying that the CDMA services actually have the same features as GSM,
and they seem to be implying that they're going to be moving more in that direction.
What do you think of that?
Well, the problem with that is, A, and number one, it's not true.
Well, actually, the first part isn't true.
The second part is true.
CDMA still doesn't do a lot of things that GSM does.
I mean, it's perfectly capable of it.
They just haven't set it up yet.
There is no short message service on CDMA at all,
which means there's no e-mail, there's no news, there's no information services.
There should be.
Period.
Yeah, there should have been by now, actually.
Yeah.
And there's no mobile-to-mobile messaging or anything like that.
Speaking of which, I think I just got mail.
In fact, I was hoping to hear from people on the net as far as what's been going on.
110 listeners so far.
Wow.
Okay, so I guess I connect over to there.
Well, no, don't connect over there if you're listening to me now,
but if you're listening to me on the net,
you might want to tell other people in other parts of the world to listen in as well
because we only have another 12 minutes left.
Yeah.
Okay, let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hi, I got through.
It's been a while.
How are you doing?
Pretty good.
Okay, three things.
First, about your odyssey in traffic court,
just curious because I had something with criminal court.
Did you have to take your belt off and go through the metal detector in your pocket?
No, no such thing there.
Really?
They're not afraid of, like, irate people going ballistic and stuff?
No, people there seem pretty controlled, you know.
A lot of people actually had lawyers for, you know, for traffic offenses.
Lawyers actually charge more, you know, to defend them.
Yeah, they sure do.
These are the kind of lawyers you see on late-night TV, you know,
if you have an accident or you want to sue somebody.
These are the people.
They don't even dress up, you know.
Really?
It's, you know, lawyers typically cost more than a ticket.
Yeah, that's what he said.
Where was this?
Is this Center Street?
I'm sorry?
Where was this traffic court?
Is this Center Street?
Well, I'd rather not give out the physical location.
Okay.
There's all kinds of people flocking there.
They're like a souvenir.
Just two more things.
I'm not going to be too goofy or too long tonight.
I'll let Rebel do that.
Remember when you had that 14-year-old kid two weeks ago?
Yes.
You were really derelict in your duty in interviewing.
There were two pivotal questions I felt had to be asked.
Which were?
Number one, does he have a girlfriend?
And number two, is he a trekkie?
Yeah, I guess I really missed the boat on that one.
Yeah.
And the last thing, I see these TV ads for this new pager, beeper service.
They say it's totally free for life with no contracts.
But the people who call to beep you, they're charged a fee.
You know, what can you say about this new service and concept and beepers?
Probably a 900 number or a 540 number or something like that.
Well, I mean, are you familiar with it?
Have you seen the TV ads?
They sell it at Sears and some other places.
Well, I mean, no, I haven't seen it.
But it doesn't seem that much of a reach to have a service like that
where you charge somebody a little bit more to call you
and you give the hardware away for free.
Right, but there's no charge at all to the person who actually owns the beeper.
So that would be, like, a good deal.
Well, yeah, it's probably a piece of crap, though.
And the last thing is, when Rebel was always talking about that free phone
on 12th Street or whatever, do you know if it's still active?
I try to avoid places that he's been to.
Right, all right.
So just to announce to people listening on the net,
there's someone from good old Bronx, New York, USA,
and maybe someone can call him later from Botswana.
All right, take care.
And I should point out that he does not represent the Bronx,
as none of our callers represent the areas that they call from.
Or Botswana, for that matter.
Yes, I would like to get a call from Botswana.
Yeah.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, I wanted to ask you some questions regarding Yahoo
and some of the other search engines.
Make it fast.
Oh, you're in a hurry?
Yeah, we are.
I'll just call back next week, then.
Okay.
We're going to be in a hurry then, too.
I didn't think we were in that much of a hurry.
It's a radio show, you know, it's not like, you know, a lounge
that we can just hang out and chat.
Well, you know, we do have a delay system for such calls, so.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
About the non-incoming calls.
Oh, let me turn on the radio.
About the non-incoming calls on the pay phones.
Right.
Sometimes the phones, they actually have carrier tones.
If you call that number, you can't call into the pay phone.
You'll get a carrier tone.
Yes, that's true, that's true.
And that's used to add up how much is in the phone
and what kind of restrictions are in effect, things like that.
Is that why you can't have an incoming call?
Or they use the fact that they don't accept incoming calls?
Well, you can do both.
You can make call cuts that ring about four or five times
and then go to a carrier.
So it's not like you have to have one or the other.
And a lot of Bell Atlantic phones give you recordings
when you call them saying that it's not in service for incoming calls.
So I would say no, it's not something that necessarily has to replace the other.
Oh, and about the Yahoo thing, that just doesn't sound true.
It sounds maybe somebody hacked into them and changed their site,
but it doesn't sound like anything plausible.
Right.
You're kidding.
You're talking about the virus and the logic thing and all that.
Yeah, of course.
It doesn't sound that way.
But to the average American, seeing that pop up on their screen
might cause them a little bit of panic.
Yeah, well, the average American doesn't usually use links.
That's something for mostly Unix users and stuff like that.
Maybe, so they would see the humor in it,
so maybe there wasn't that much harm done.
All right, well, thanks for calling.
All right, bye.
212-279-3400 is our telephone number.
And let's go to this phone over here.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hello.
Yes, go ahead.
Where are you calling from?
Michigan.
Michigan.
How are you doing out there?
Oh, pretty good.
Yeah?
I don't know, kind of surprised.
Kind of surprised you got through?
Oh, yeah.
Well, our door is open to everybody, so eventually everybody gets in.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, it can be great.
It can be a nightmare, too.
But what's on your mind?
Oh, well, I was kind of wondering if there were any 2600 meetings in Grand Rapids.
In Grand Rapids?
I think there are meetings in Ann Arbor,
and I think there's something in Detroit.
Hmm.
Or there's something being planned in Detroit.
But, again, if you want to start a meeting in your town,
and we ask that it be a town of fairly sizable proportion,
something that we might have heard of,
simply start having the meetings and reporting to us
by sending mail to meetings at 2600.com
and let us know each month how they go.
And when you do that a few months, then we will start printing them in the magazine.
Because we don't want to put them in the magazine if someone just says,
hey, I'm going to have a meeting over here, and then they never show up.
So you have to be serious about it,
and we have to hear from other people that it actually exists and is going on.
Yeah, I've been kind of interested in meeting anyone in the area that was into this stuff.
Well, you know, if there's any schools, libraries, things like that,
that's one way of meeting people.
Supermarket.
Maybe the supermarket, too.
It's a good place to meet people.
You find a place that sells 2600 and you just stand there reading it for a few hours,
and eventually somebody will come up and either tell you to leave or say,
hey, that's something. I read that, too.
Yeah, who knows?
Also, a few shows ago I've been listening to Real Audio,
and I heard something about the 10-321 thing.
And recently I've been hearing ads for it on the radio and stuff.
And is it still that company that's probably just ripping people off?
Well, it's not necessarily ripping people off,
but it is challenging the way people think about how they're charged for phone calls.
10-321 is simply another company.
I understand it takes about 20 minutes for the savings to really kick in.
Whether or not you save anything before then, who knows?
You know, it's hard to say when you call somebody
if they're going to talk to them for more than 20 minutes.
Maybe they're not in and you'll lose money.
There's a lot of questions to ask,
and a lot of people don't want to take the time to figure it all out.
Anyway, listen, sir, we're out of time.
But thanks for calling, and I hope things go well up there in Michigan.
Okay, I'll bet.
Well, you'll get through it.
Yeah.
All right, take care, then.
Yep, thanks.
And that's going to do it for us here tonight.
Another edition of Off the Hook.
We'll be back again next week.
And I guess we should end the show
with what we said was an important thing for people to get involved in,
simply a call to Free Kevin.
Yeah?
Free Kevin.
Get those buttons.
Get those stickers.
Get billboards.
Whatever it takes.
Shotguns.
And since we're talking to the whole world here,
I think this is a good chance to get the word out.
All right, for FiberOptic, this is Emmanuel Goldstein.
Have yourselves a good night.
Take care.
Good night.
You