are we trying to fix our equipment okay let's try that again it's eight o'clock
time once again for an exciting edition of off the hook
the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off the wall i cut myself while shaving
now i can't make a cost it couldn't get much worse but if they could they would
i hope that's understood so be my
a snapshot of the smashing time is my fingers in it
make a big pie and i'm tempted by the dark side of a big flash motor car moving in my direction
and there's a many ways to have an excuse with a smile then bore everyone to dance
and a very good evening to everybody
the program is off the hook emmanuel goldstein with you on this uh tuesday night where we just
found out thanks to a taped program that we're not on the air next week uh because of the fundraiser
uh we'll keep listening to other tapes to find out if we're going to be on two weeks after that or
three weeks after that because we have fundraisers coming up and we have not heard a word as to what
the schedule is so there's nothing we can tell you our listeners until we know maybe maybe somebody
will run in here before the end of the hour and tell us when we are on during the marathon so we
can tell all of our listeners outside of our listening area what to expect because we know there are
many of you out there in uh radio land which is no longer radio land now it's computer land
yes all over the planet off the hook on wbai new york we'll be taking phone calls a little bit later
but uh first some updates some some reader mail and various other things like that
here's a letter from somebody on aol you see we don't discriminate everybody's welcome here
america online they can send us mail directly and you can send us mail directly too if you're on the
internet oth at 2600.com is is the address uh regarding the new copyright bill applying to music
if you recall we were talking about this over the past couple of weeks the bill that uh
that uh makes it illegal to have almost anything really software copywritten material it can be a
felony total felony uh just to possess things you don't have to sell it you just have to have it
there was a caller on the 1223 show talking about how the copyright bill applies to music and how he
won't be able to make custom cds anymore uh this may not necessarily be true because there is a home
recording act of 1991 section 1008 uh which uh this person believes is is the right number and
hopefully hopefully that is right um and that says it's okay to make however many copies of music for
anybody for whatever purpose as long as it's made from the original cd slash tape slash laser disc
etc and is not sold to anyone i'm not sure how this mp3 technology works but if there is no
middle medium between the original cd and the custom cd there shouldn't be any problem making
copies you know it's it's it's unbelievable how uh bent out of shape the recording industry is is
getting over this you know you have recordings and people are are listening to them and that's like
the worst thing that the recording industry can can ever have happen to it is uh have people actually
like what it is you do because then you don't realize a profit on every time somebody listens if
they could charge you every time you turned on your cd player believe me they would they'd figure
out a way for you to uh to actually uh i don't know pay through the nose it's all about greed you know
and and if you have people listening you have people uh appreciating what it is you're doing
that is really what the goal is you've achieved the goal and i'm sure the profits will follow at
some point because people will want to buy all the crap that goes with it you know the the original
cd covers the posters the shirts whatever whatever it is that people market everything is about
marketing you know that's why no matter how alternative the music it always winds up as a
pepsi commercial someplace okay let's uh continue uh one uh another reader uh writing into us one
comment on new punitive copyright legislation some potentially illegal software many people have
and uh do not realize it you ready you know what it is fonts that's right fonts
for those of you who uh who aren't in the 90s and are just emerging from a cave fonts are those
things you know that that determine the the type style you know when you look in the newspaper
it's like a certain some letters look different than other letters that's that's what it is it's it's it's a
font and uh and um they all cost money you can't use a font without paying for it didn't know this
everything you have to pay for you have to pay to listen to music you have to pay to type in a
certain style it's uh it's just the way it is if you if you could pay for space they they'd charge
you for that too yeah fonts many fonts which sell from vendors for as high as 200 per typeface
end up on websites or gobbleware cd-roms or bbs's often in converted versions that can mask the
original owners some software that converts between type one and true type or mac windows formats
tends to mangle and remove copyright messages it's quite possible that the average fontaholic has
thousands of dollars worth of illegal software on his or her hard drive it's pretty sobering isn't it
very sobering do you manage your fonts properly do you know i'm not actually one of those people
i'm definitely not a fontaholic all right all the fonts i have are free fonts can put you in prison
you know having the wrong fonts the wrong fonts having the wrong uh music we gotta keep track of
all this okay now this person here says it was made legal to own mp3 copies of music as long as you
own the cd so the guy who owns the smashing pumpkins mp3 will not have a problem with owning
that so uh that that seems to agree with the the letter before then if you own the cd so i guess the
software publishers people are gonna kick in your door and search around for cds now in addition to uh
to uh the shrink wrap software that you're supposed to have oh where's it gonna end okay we uh we were
talking about a radio station a shortwave radio station we got lots of mail about this one
uh a station in costa rica i believe it was that rebroadcasts some various pacifica programs of
which this is not one of them and uh we have a url for them if you're on the web you can connect
to www.clark.net slash pub slash c wilkins who i guess is the guy who's giving his web page for this
c wilkins slash rfpi stands for radio free peace international or something like that
uh slash rfpi dot html so it's two rfpis in there all right
i'm a part-time listener because i often have to work during the program i really do enjoy it i
would like to be able to listen more regularly i don't have a sound card so i can't use real audio
at this point well this is something i don't understand if you if you can listen to the show
you don't need real audio you know we don't need people listening who are in the area over real audio
because you have the radio station and that doesn't require anything except the radio anyway
um this person says i signed up for the cellular vision isp have you heard of this one cellular
vision rings a bell i'm not sure if you discussed it on the air so far i've had a great deal of
trouble with the service being down quite a bit earlier this month it was very difficult
uh to get phone calls returned and i was able to get 50 credit for the month service now seems to be
a little better uh i'm often free to use the service during the day but i found it often
quite difficult to get on in the evening with some nights of continuous busy signals performance
varies with the speed of the site but the biggest usefulness is clearly with ftps um i'm not sure
what cellular vision is so someone out there using it tell us i think it's one of the uh one of the
cellular companies that offers uh network connectivity over wireless there's a couple of competing ones that
are extremely underused that most people don't know about simply because they're not being marketed
very well well that's uh that's something and how would it how would it be is that um you'd need to
have some uh some form of uh wireless modem and a subscription to their service as far as security
is this you know i doubt it's uh i doubt it's anything special uh so if you have a you know a scanner
listening into those frequencies what do you hear oh you'd probably hear uh you'd probably hear
garbage but i'm sure if you had the proper equipment you'd be able to decode it and pick
it up no incredible what is that over there that's this is my new omnipoint let me see this let me see
this is so tiny yeah it's great it's this is like half the size of my omnipoint phone that is that is
something of course it flips out yeah but still pretty tiny yeah so what's what's this one called
that's the erickson 788 the cf 788 yeah all right i noticed looking at that that uh there's actually
less space on the screen yeah the only thing that i have to complain about is that there's only one
line of text on the word omnipoint barely fits in it yeah one line of text company yeah well i mean
you get used to reading it because the font is so large so as you're scrolling you can kind of read
it very quickly what happens if you go down to dc and you get sprint spectrum that's not going to fit
on that screen i think they just say sprint oh really yeah okay that's that's pretty smart then
yeah uh all right but but it's a great phone it's got great features tell us about the features
the feel of it is really nice the um you can customize the menus so that you can only have
whatever menus uh menu options you use most often uh be the only ones that you want to show up as
you're scrolling through the menus okay so the useless ones you can just get rid of yeah and you
can toggle back and forth to show all menu items or not and uh another thing is you could compose your
own rings which is pretty neat compose your own rings yeah it has a bunch of uh songs that comes
that that you know that come with it um but you could also uh program your own melodies for how you
want it to sound when the phone rings um the other thing that i thought is kind of neat is when you
remove the battery rather than having the little flip up uh window thing to stick your sim card in
right it's got a little slit with a lever here i'll actually i'll show you so you can you can see
what i'm talking about okay when you remove the battery look carefully at this yeah everyone look
all right there's basically a slit in the top of the phone i see that i see that and you slide a
lever on the back down and you can be careful be careful okay i could fly across the room wow
and there it is yeah it's a little ejector slit that is which is kind of neat so i can i can still take
my my sim card and sure yeah into your phone and confuse you that would be uh that'd be pretty
cool yeah the battery life is great it's uh i believe this battery is uh something on the order
of uh four or five hours talk time and i think 60 hours standby really that's yeah that's good yeah
really and it actually does it unlike mine which says yeah it actually it actually does it okay yeah
that's that's pretty good but uh it's another another good piece of work from from erickson i uh you know
again i'm the only thing i don't like is the screen that's i find it amazing that they're
actually reducing the the screen because you get news headlines on how you're supposed to read a
word at a time the news headlines it's you know it's hard enough with three lines yeah scroll through
when you're driving at 90 miles an hour to like you know read that could probably be a problem yeah
so i don't know how you're supposed to do it here yeah but uh yeah it certainly is tiny you could
swallow this thing yeah it's really small the best thing about it that i like the number one
improvement other than the size is the antenna how many times i didn't even notice the antenna
it's it's a retractable antenna okay all right if you compare it with the other two the 337 and the
388 they have those stupid rubber antennas that you're always worried are going to break off and
they're constantly bending in your pocket right and every time you sit down if you have it on your
belt it bends against your hip they're really irritating this is so much better because it's got a real
retractable antenna so it folds up nice and compact and it's out of your way so where do we go from
here from here can't get much smaller i think next we're going to go to i've heard that in uh in europe
they've come out with uh watch phones watch phones watch phones well maybe one of our listeners in
europe can call us up and tell us if that is in fact true watch phones yeah james bond era has arrived
hasn't it yep they're calling us the james bond phone actually are they yeah and do they have james bond
advertising like he's advertising on the box he's on the box here's brosnan is on the box oh boy
i wouldn't buy it just for that reason alone you know i think it's funny great marketing though
yeah i suppose so that's uh that's an ericsson that's the ericsson yep okay it's the smallest
phone yet next to the motorola uh star tank uh-huh the little which is yeah which is slightly smaller
uh lengthwise uh-huh and has a bigger screen and costs eight hundred dollars eight hundred dollars
for a little tiny phone yeah wow that's uh it's pretty amazing it's almost as much as a computer
yeah it's pretty ridiculous okay let's uh continue with some mail here oh wait you got to show us a
customized ring oh you want to hear uh do i should i program one in right now well do you have a funny
one or do you want to make one i can i can make one okay i'll make a quick one okay well if you want
to guide us through the steps as you're yeah actually uh let's do that okay we hear lots of
little beeps and buzzes that maybe you want to tell us what's going on i'm just i'm just uh turning
my phone on it's cool because unlike the other ericsson phones you could put this one in a mode uh when
you press the buttons you actually hear touch tones which makes it feel a lot more like a real
phone yeah with the other ones you can't hear anything okay so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna go
to settings those sound like silver box tones yeah actually any all the buttons all the regular
touch tones are the regular touch tones uh-huh except for uh the arrow keys and the yes no uh comes
out as uh an a tone really which i think is pretty interesting i thought it would have been cooler if
it had a b c and d yeah but alas well when there's a purpose for a b c and d i suppose they'll put
that on there yeah you know that's another way for us to have solved all our area code problems you
simply add a fourth column of touch tones right you know we could have been two one two a yeah
it would have been our new area code that would have been kind of neat to finally make use of those
yeah like have these hex type numbers going around yeah okay so right now i'm in uh the uh edit melody
section of the settings menu you want to tell us what the melodies are or oh the ones that come with
it uh i can play them the ones that come with i can play on the air okay we have the irritating ones
uh-huh then we have the songs
what song is that oh okay
they could use some help on that
do you have anything with a beat uh
oh boy well
this was actually on the uh old phone
they have a funny one in here
that one yeah that's a good that's kind of a good thing to get at a business meeting you know
oh excuse me it's the president on the phone yeah i i have mine set to uh this one
you don't like any phone calls do you
it's the uh the terror ring uh-huh that's what i call it that's uh yeah that's the ominous ring
there so okay so you're gonna compose one now for yeah i'll make uh i'll do something simple
all right how do you do this i mean what actually what they do is they uh map out the uh touchstone
keypad to uh an octave and a half okay and uh basically it's quite quite enough notes to uh
to compose uh most any little tunes you have to be a musician to be able to do this no actually uh
well as long as you know the musical scale you should be able to pick out tunes just by ear
is there in the manual do they explain the musical scale yeah they explain how to and they have a
sample songs in there too uh-huh yeah it's kind of neat how long can it be um i've never actually
reached a limit so i don't know exactly how long it is put in a god of the vita on there and it'd be
really cool yeah i don't know if uh you'd end up wasting a memory well you'd impress people that's
the important thing that's all that matters yeah you're programming now yeah actually i'm programming
in uh mary had a little lamb okay and uh it's probably going to sound pretty crappy but again
this is only a sample of just how easy it is okay and you did that just now just now that's pretty
good yeah that's pretty good i'm gonna actually call you now okay actually let me set that to my
ring yeah i want to hear with that uh okay okay i'm now dialing you on all right on my gsm phone
it says it's connecting
there it is and it has your number
you might want to put the second verse in there yeah sounds kind of dumb like that yeah
all right well that's that's kind of cool so now how many phones have you have you gotten
i have all three now i have the 337 the 388 and the 788 okay what made them jump from threes to
sevens um i'm not exactly sure i know that there are some uh sixes in between but um i don't think
they were ever released in the united states i don't think they were considered a big enough jump
interesting okay well that's uh that's that that's pretty cool um all right now uh considering um
uh we've been talking about this over the past few weeks you know the fcc business with the pay
phones right i've been getting nothing but uh letters from people about this you know how unfair
it is that uh the fcc has mandated that anyone with an 800 number has to pay extra now when someone
from a pay phone calls them 30 cents extra per call so this person came up with a really cool solution
to this and that is to call the fcc to tell them that this is a bad idea and you know what the fcc
has an 800 number which you can call from pay phones and then they'll have to pay an extra 30
cents every time you call them that's uh that's something to uh to consider let's let's give the
number a call actually they they have two different numbers um but they both work
this number is 1-800-322-1117
you have reached the fcc in gettysburg pennsylvania this number has been changed the new number is
1-888-CALL-FCC please remain on the line and your call will be forwarded that's handy yeah it's
welcome to the federal communications commission's national call center for service in spanish please
press eight para espanol o prima el numero ocho all other callers please stay on the line okay let's
stay on the line we don't need spanish right now
our normal hours of operation are from 8 a.m to 5 30 p.m eastern standard time monday through friday
excluding holidays if you are calling from a touchtone telephone certain information is available to you
at this time if you are a representative of a public safety entity and require immediate assistance
to address an urgent safety of life problem please press one if your call concerns the auctioning of
frequencies please press two if you are a member of the news media please press three if your call
concerns the status of a land mobile or amateur radio application please press four if your call
concerns interference problems to telephones televisions or stereos please press five if
your call concerns ordering fcc forms please press six if your call concerns retrieval of fcc documents
or public notices please press seven so you know i have to press eight
just to see thank you for calling the federal communications commission's national call center
oh no he hung up he got mad okay well that's very there's there's all kinds of things you can learn
there and i think it works in pay funds so uh feel free to give them all the feedback you want as far as
what a boneheaded idea that was uh charging people extra for for payphone use um i don't know it can't go on
much longer it really can't it's it's such a bad law i just can't understand how it ever happened in
the first place um oh speaking of uh frustrating things yeah you're you're talking about uh your
new gsm phone i'm i had this really frustrating incident with uh sprint pcs really no matter what
phone company you use you're gonna have frustrating incidents but this this involves actually i had this
problem with with omni point two for a little while uh where they don't actually uh cut over the
exchange they don't tell everybody that the exchange is working so it goes to a whole different
uh whole different phone number now there are people i know that are in this new exchange and i
wind up calling them and i get i get all these bizarre recordings you know i get connected to different
companies in different area codes now this is what happens i'm going to demonstrate right now this is
the kind of frustrating recording that you get if you uh if you call one of these wrong numbers
just to show you what kind of dead end you hit listen to this
you have been forwarded to a voicemail system however the person at eight six four eight does not
subscribe to this service call answering cannot be continued at this time transferring to an attendant
one moment please
your session cannot be continued at this time please try again later goodbye yeah that's that's what you
have to deal with 24 hours a day when you call that number imagine trying to reach somebody who you know
that's their number but you keep getting that stupid recording that's pretty wacky yeah it's uh it's a real
pain and just try getting sprint or barrel atlantic or anybody to understand what you're talking about
when you say you know i know this person is there i know that number works it's a new exchange
they just haven't cut it over yet and it's routing to the wrong thing so that's uh that's part of the
problem with uh with uh new services like this okay here's a uh a letter from someone in what's ms
that's missouri ms is uh no mississippi mississippi mo is missouri right okay i live in ms
i might live in microsoft who knows who knows uh i just found i just found off the air on the net
not not first of all first of all pal the show is called off the hook it's not off the air because
we're on the air all right it's off the hook so get that right just found off the air on the net
through the 2600 web page um i've listened to most of your pre-recorded shows and i'm looking forward
to tuesday so i can hear my first live airing which hopefully he's heard already um i was wondering
after listening to several of your shows i began to notice the background buzz clips
buzz clips i don't know if that's that's he watches mtv yeah i think i think that might be
the case in fact that's that's what the people of today say when they mean music um i was wondering
are there any tapes or cds you sell of your background music and of your theme song you see
this is how we could get into trouble by taking other people's music and selling it as our own you
see that i can understand being a crime but when you when you you know copy things and listen to
them in other mediums like your car you know your head as you're jogging or whatever uh you know
that's that's you doing this you should not have to be regulated by by the government for that but
no we do not sell uh other people's music uh we we just you know it's not right uh however if uh you
have questions this person does have a question as to what we were playing a few weeks ago uh who did
the guitar solo on the december 16th airing do you remember this fiber no guitar solo
december 16th airing i i know who it is i i'm pretty sure i know who it is anyway
give up yeah i give up all right david gilmore really it was david gilmore from his solo album
from back in the 70s someplace and i think the song was called raise my rent or something like that
um so yeah we don't always say what what we play like today we played this this person called mooloo
or a band called mooloo i don't know if that was it and the beastie boys but sometimes we forget to
say who we played so we're sorry if that happens you can always write to us and we'll try to answer it
either on the air or through the internet uh have you been following the new metro card thing it's
it's confusing as as anything where you get 11 rides for the price of 10 oh really yeah so
basically you give them 15 for 10 rides and you wind up with 11 rides okay now listen to this person
here um it the the pamphlet that you get well with all this hints that the card will be storing two
distinct types of money one of which is only for the extra rides since rides are the only thing a
metro card is supposed to pay for it would seem to make sense just to add money to the amount on the
card but the pamphlet says how do i know that my free rides are on my card you won't see them when
you pay but you will see them when you check your balance on the metro card reader at the station booth
this implies that the system won't just be adding money to your card but will be storing extra
information to keep track of how much you have for free rides um i've i've heard similar questions
from a lot of people i haven't actually you know gotten to give the transit authority 15 bucks yet
to see how this works so they're storing two different values on the card i think that's
something uh you have something on this or are you just playing with the microphone you do okay
what do you what do you got the transit authority rider are you not you're a rider yeah you ride the
transit authority okay well i'm not sure if they're distinct types of money but um you're a
little closer than you kind of far away okay yes but uh i know that it's not like just a subway ride
because it does work on um like other buses like the uh liberty lines express uh-huh and um that takes
it just like money okay well someone told me actually that the um the express bus pass is different than
the subway pass even though it looks exactly the same it won't work in the subway right okay that's
yeah you get more rides for the express bus if you buy that uh-huh but you can't use it on the
subway but if you buy the the the 11 for 10 pass someone told me that it's not like you really it
doesn't it doesn't show up as 1650 on the card when you when you check the balance it does show up
at 1650 it does yeah okay well then that would seem pretty simple i'm still not sure if it's stored
differently yeah people are getting confused out there so i guess the only way to do it is to
what happens if you buy 30 dollars worth i don't know i don't think you get you might get you know
you do get two free rides okay it's it's pretty confusing from from what i've heard but uh if
anyone has any questions or comments about that please give us a call i'm sure we'll hear some
some stories out there okay this uh this listener writes in about nextel phones we get a lot of mail
don't we yeah it was just went on the internet we more and more piles and piles of mail um i have some
information on nextel phones i have one sitting in front of me my first impression it's a heavy
ugly motorola piece of something we can't say on the air uh now if you think the gsm phones will
give you dementia i think these nextel phones are worse when i turn it on and it connects to the
network my monitor flickers and my speakers crackle i tried making a call and the speakers
consistently crackled and it made the portable phone in the other room buzz loudly the portable was in
use of course um i think i can feel the cancer coming up already i've never i've never gotten such a
reaction from other cell phones cdma or analog uh maybe fiber knows why is it causing my monitor
to flicker and everything well i don't know what mode he had the phone in but i know that uh if he
had the phones in uh in intercom mode uh they operate basically like a walkie-talkie uh right which
would make them relatively uh high power transmitters well he said he tried making a call you don't make a
call in yeah if he was just making a regular call i'm not exactly sure why that would be the case
i know that in general then the uh the iden iden is the uh the type of phones that they are um
i know that in general they're uh typically higher wattage than than other types of phones
um simply because they don't have cell sites all over the place um and they can be used as uh walkie
talkie like devices so i my guess is for lack of uh more information is um i would guess that it's
simply a higher wattage phone and it's more uh more likely to interfere with other devices do regular
cell phones have that kind of effect um it depends i mean um if i hold if i'm actually using my
omni point phone and i hold it next to uh my uh my cordless 900 megahertz phone sometimes i'll get
some buzzing or interference but in general not not the kind of thing that this person is describing
sounds like it's really high power interference coming from his next cell phone interesting
okay uh he goes on to say uh the phone itself doesn't seem to have many features and i'm
disappointed in next health using a proprietary paging slash messaging uh software rather than
an email or web-based solutions like other digital providers omni point air touch etc
so uh that's some next health feedback for you here's a question and it's a good question from a
listener um you're gonna love this guy's name you ready fiber
yeah his name is fiber acid fiber acid yeah there you go he took you and he took acid freak and he
merged them together unbelievable and uh yeah that's uh that's something right there fiber acid oh boy
um okay is it safe for me to download off the hook from the 2600 website or will the feds be knocking
on my door well uh fiber what do you think should we tell them how it works i think uh yeah we ought
to tell them the truth all right well look first of all there's radio technology now which can tell
the federal government what it is you are listening to at any particular moment in time we monitor that
information and we submit it to the federal government uh for the good of a better society if you are
listening to things that we deem to be disrespectful to society or potentially uh subversive in nature
uh you can expect a knock on the door and a visit at some point in time same goes for the internet if
you listen to things connect to things or take part in things that are potentially subversive in nature
you will have to pay the piper it's a simple price you have to pay for the kind of well-balanced
society that we have achieved today did i did i phrase that properly i think you've hit the nail
on the head okay now our listenership has gone down by about 50 percent uh let's tell the real tale
and that's of course not it's you can do whatever you want can listen to uh anything can download
anything you know it's it's a radio show you know it's it's it's it's for the public airwaves
you know it's it's it's not something that the federal government is going to prosecute although
lots of people are going to believe what i just said and i'm never gonna i'm never gonna live this
down you know people are gonna constantly we might as well name the technology you know you want to do
that right now the technology that allows the federal government to tell you what it is you're
listening to on the radio from washington dc we can come up with a name right now on the air
and it'll be you'll see it on the internet you'll see you know uh spam pieces of mail going out
saying are you aware of this particular piece of technology uh uh flubber no no that's used
that's that's used it's got to be something serious sounding how about the trans capacitor
trans capacitor yeah i like that that could work the trans capacitor not to be confused with the
flux capacitor which is used for time travel right exactly well we'll get into that some other show
or maybe we already have uh okay now um finally finally the last letter this is something that i
actually uh found out about a while ago remember when the uh the whole yahoo web page thing took
place right and the kevin mitnick threat was put on there uh this person uh notifies us that according
to cnn cyber terrorists demanded the release of convicted hacker michael mitnick threatening to
unleash a virus if he is not freed my question is when did kevin change his name to michael well
actually uh he did not change his name to michael nor is there another mitnick in prison
uh on hacking charges rather cnn just got it wrong along with i think the entire associated press and
it just makes you think you know we spend all this time talking about this trying to wake people up
and those morons can't even get his name right you know what is it what don't they understand his
name was not spelled wrong on any of those websites we don't say his name wrong therefore
some idiot down in the newsroom must have said oh yeah kevin or was it michael i'll just write
michael and what the hell i'm not even going to check on it uh i called uh wcbs the radio station
in new york city the news station when i heard that on the air and uh they expressed interest that
it was wrong but i don't think they ever corrected it they said oh how about that that's interesting
and uh that was the end of that story but yeah his name was michael in many places do you remember
when you got sent to jail uh your name became paul yeah i remember at least once or twice it did they
merged you with one of your co-defendants yeah and i was reading about i was in dc and i was
reading about you know paul whatever being sentenced and it's like uh okay how'd this happen
you know just some third entity that's somehow related to both of you it's fiber acid yeah exactly
and so it goes okay 212-279-3400 is our telephone number and of course if you're calling from outside
the country country code one outside the planet who knows who knows what else uh pick a number one two
one to six uh four good number good number good evening yeah hello how you doing where you calling
from i'm calling from new york okay what's up uh hey well yeah listen i'm not sure when that uh you
guys are talking about this or not but um i thought it would be important to bring up you got some jazz
playing in the background there yeah yeah a little should i turn it down well yeah except we're not
playing jazz so how could you be listening to another radio station i'm not listening to radio i'm
underground i can't get the radio you're underground yeah wow yeah don't ask but um okay i just want to
know uh nortel uh northern telecom supposedly is experimenting with phone service through the
power lines phone service through the power oh yeah no i read about this in the time um and they're
doing a isp service i guess in a couple counties or whatever they're in the uk and um you know i just
thought that would be uh significant because you know that could be you know what brings the internet
um i don't know whatever you want to call it um to the mainstream or whatever uh and you know
supposedly at isdn plus speed so yeah i wasn't sure when that you had heard about that have you heard
about this fiber well i haven't heard about that specifically i've heard of uh bundling internet
service with the power lines not over the power lines i don't know if if this is something uh
yeah i haven't yet heard about i could be mistaken but i know i had something to do with the power
lines and i knew it had a pretty fat bandwidth so uh as compared to the northern uh you know
analog phone service or whatever so i don't know i thought i'd let you know okay thanks for thanks
for calling yet another way of getting getting wired and electrocuted yeah yeah definitely if uh if
you mess around with those wires who knows uh what could happen there 212-279-3400 good evening you're
in the air speak up please yeah i was wondering uh about the sprint pcs phone if you ever figured out
the um code for it uh no you know nobody has sent us uh information basically what we need this is for
the uh samsung phone yeah uh when you first turn it on uh you and this is assuming you don't let the
people at radio shack or sprint pcs or wherever it is you get it do this for you uh when you first use
the phone it has a fake 10 digit phone number the first seven digits of which uh usually are zero
and uh you call up sprint pcs you tell them that number they tell you a special four digit code to
unlock the phone and then you enter in the phone number that you've been assigned and that four
digit code changes now we have one four digit code paired to one fake 10 digit phone number if we were
to get a second one we very well might be able to figure out if there is an algorithm attached to it
and what that algorithm is and then we might be able to unlock the phone with a real phone number
and do all kinds of fun things okay now i was playing around with one and i don't know if you
hit menu eight zero it brings up where it says service code and then it wants you to enter in some
kind of code let me do that right now menu eight zero yeah you get a service code that's a six digit
service code yeah so let me enter one two three four five i already tried that six it says invalid
code and uh puts me back in the in the menu there but i think i think the other one was uh menu five
zero yeah uh my mistake it was a six digit code there too not a four digit code so uh i'll enter one
two three four five six there as well and that's an invalid code and uh the phone shuts off phone has
shut off because of my invalid attempts so yeah uh if you have information on that uh please pass it
along to us did any more experiments on that phone uh no you have the same phone i do i guess
yeah uh-huh yeah i don't have the problem you've had with well no probably because you live in range
of the signal yeah probably have a good signal where you are when you have a bad signal
then you'll have battery problems which is why it's a good idea just to keep it turned off
all right all right take care bye-bye good evening you're on off the hook
hey speak up please hey it sounds like you're calling from orbit or something where where exactly
are you i'm from strong ways new york i'm a manual optic the first hacker ever you're a manual optic the
first time well you know you need to get you need to get a better connection a manual before you uh
try uh try dropping in on us good evening you're on the air hello yeah speak up please yes hi how you
doing um i have a question okay turn on your radio okay sorry or a computer or whatever it is um okay
my question is um the pcs phone um i'm glad you uh actually clarified something about that those
recordings that you get uh-huh because um i always i think it was about 10 times i already got that
and i complained to pcs which recording do you mean that recording you just played that you know
uh transferring you to an attendant you get you get the same thing you're trying to call somebody
in a certain exchange and you get uh that's interesting yeah and uh i mean there's a lot
of other type of weird recordings i get can i ask you a question what area code are you in
uh 718 718 and you get that from there yeah something because usually i travel out to pa
uh-huh so um my phone switches into an analog switch right because i get that roaming phone or whatever
you get the dual mode phone yeah and um yeah and i didn't quite understand why the hell i keep
getting that now i explained i complained to pcs and they went on and on and on about saying oh it's
just um you know you probably down the wrong number blah blah blah whatever yeah it's all your fault
yeah it's all my fault i also wanted to know information about the uh the wireless fax um modem
um do they does pcs have that the the wireless fiber maybe you you can answer this the wireless
fax modem wireless fax modem yeah because uh there was something someone told me about um because i
called his number and it says oh to send a fax this is a self cell fax number you can't use a regular
fax and it says after beep start faxing me some crap like that well you can you can send faxes over
gsm phones let's see that's what i wanted to know i wasn't sure about that well you could send it
with a regular fax machine too or else it would be kind of pointless yeah but that's what they told
me that you couldn't this pcs actually told me that oops i'm uh i'm sorry i inadvertently dropped
the dial tone in because i was attempting to uh to demonstrate something but let me uh i lost the
caller too on top of that but let me let me demonstrate if he's still there um can i call
your yeah call my number i'll just send it to voicemail send it to voicemail immediately and that way
we can demonstrate what this uh fax technology is yep have you sent it to uh voicemail as soon as it
rings okay there you go we didn't get to hear mary had a little lamb i stopped it in his tracks all
right now is there a certain key we can hit right away um i actually say it i believe around at the
moment so please leave me a message if this message is urgent please press the number five after the
message or you can page me by pressing the number one or you can send me a fax by pressing the number
eight thank you press start on your fax machine now start oh fax
now that doesn't actually come out of your phone no how does how do you get the fax it uh actually
gets stored all right go away sorry there are a uh a bank of uh fax modems at the service provider
omni point and uh the faxes get stored there and i can go into voicemail and give it a number to
deliver all my stored up faxes to on the spot or i can give it a number to periodically try to deliver
the faxes do you have to do this from your phone or can you do it from any phone you can do it from
anywhere you can access your voicemail system from so how you need the voicemail password i guess to
sure to get in then once you're in there you can retrieve the faxes yeah another thing you can do
when hacking a voicemail system is get people's faxes now yeah just tell it where to deliver the
faxes too obviously you have to have access to either a fax modem or a fax machine right to tell
them where to go right get many faxes um never how do you know you got a fax uh it'll say it'll say
where it'll say you have one new fax and will tell you how to get it um well provided you know how to
navigate the menus i don't think you need to know how to do that that voicemail system is kind of neat
yeah it is all kinds of wacky things in there okay let's take another phone call good evening
you're on off the hook hi um i had a question about this thing i got received in the mail a week ago
okay it was a box that said uh that they would uh if you put it at the end of your phone it would
root your uh calls to the cheapest uh long distance provider i think this is something uh bernie s was
talking about a few weeks ago uh an actual uh hardware device that you plug into uh your phone
line yeah it calculates what the cheapest route is at a particular time phone miser yeah phone miser
that's it oh uh is that what it's called i don't know i didn't say i called it it sounded like some
guy running this uh business out of his house uh-huh and i just was wondering many fine businesses are
run out of people's homes yeah i was just wondering how it worked things like that point that out right
now um well you know it's how much was it going for uh it didn't say i think was i think it was
something near like 200 or something like that that sounds a bit much i thought it was more like 50
and he but he said it would save you money only if you called more than like 300 a month worth of
long distance calls really yeah you can probably start saving well below that if you if you you know
know what you're doing as far as making phone calls i don't know if you need a little box to tell
you that or if you can just uh you know find out what the cheapest uh companies are yeah i mean
this is something that might be good for businesses i don't know if it's really going to be good for
people yeah that's what he said if your phone bill wasn't over 300 a month it's not going to save you
much uh-huh okay well uh you know keep investigating let us know what you find out all right thanks
all right take care good evening you're on off the hook hello how you doing okay i'm surprised i got
true where are you going from oh heck i'm just in brooklyn oh did your voice just like change
radically uh yes okay um that's just great okay what's on your mind um walking people from brooklyn
yeah okay someone sent me an email um one of my own line buddies uh having to do with um the uh fcc
charging internet customers uh per minute or sort of instituting you know or phone companies
instituting uh a charge per minute to be online um is that like true oh is this this thing's
rearing its head again yeah yeah there's something it said uh respond to some email um an fcc address
um what is it ipc at fcc.gov yeah well someone started where someone started this like 50 years
ago or something and it's been it's been bouncing around the net ever since okay um there is no such
thing if there was we would hear about it we would know we would have a specific you know docket number
or whatever to to pass on oh great yeah and uh you know i'm not saying it's beyond the realm of
possibility certainly you know the fcc has come up with some amazing things uh that i can't understand
how they ever figured out you know that that people would want to pay you know for for things like 800
numbers uh so if it does happen we'll of course you know talk about it specifically we won't just say
you know send the petition saying don't do this i thought perhaps i missed that broadcast or something
yeah oh okay great thank you we could uh reassure you there how many times have you gotten that
piece of mail oh uh about a hundred more than the kid that uh wants the last wish of you sending him
email oh yeah the last wish kid yeah what else what are some other good ones there's uh um forward
this message on to 10 of your friends you know what i'm sick of the the public radio one have you
gotten that one no that's the latest spam save public radio by creating this huge massive petition and
sending it through the email and you know and clogging everybody's mail down and oh i've gotten
that about 50 times yeah uh so uh yeah there's a there's a bunch and chain letters of course of
course yeah pass this on for good luck otherwise you'll die good evening you're on the air hello yeah
speak up yes uh this is off the hook yeah where are you calling from calling from stillwater oklahoma
really yeah this is a digital ebola okay if you say so uh yeah what what part of oklahoma are you
stillwater stillwater homo osu uh-huh okay you want to turn down your computer there because uh
we're getting some delay and it'll be confusing to everybody so oklahoma huh yeah running real audio
home of hansen uh don't mention that yeah okay just wanted to make sure we were on the same uh same
yeah yeah yeah i'm about side of civilization i don't want to deal with hansen okay all right
so um uh what's what's going on in oklahoma these days oh well nothing much uh just the computer
business uh-huh the computer business yeah just uh you know uh hanging out uh i run a computer
repair facility except i'm digital ebola i also run down that tack i won't say hi to napa he's been
bugging me uh-huh you run the tack channel i don't run it but uh most of my friends do uh-huh
on down that down that is another you know there's fnet is down that uh down that's not fnet
right right now i'm just pointing that out that's a different it's a different net on the whole irc
scheme of things uh yeah it's a pretty cool pretty cool network a uh we've got niv freak he's our
founder pretty cool at linux and we got napa he just hangs out and we got alien eye and okay well
apart from from naming everybody do you have you have a question for us yeah well um i was uh thinking
you know you mentioned the dtmf uh tones earlier today yes and uh you know it wouldn't be that hard
to say manufacturers of phones uh southwestern bell would would wise up well uh you could put the a
a through d tones in really easy well yeah i mean they put them in on two meter ham radios
every phone is capable of doing that yeah uh it's it's not a it's not a difficult thing at all
question is what would those tones be used for maybe we can come up with something on this show
some imaginative use for those four extra tones well yeah you can use those uh well you know in a
little bit more illegitimate scheme of things you can use those tones to your advantage or used to
it's getting anymore you can't do anything like that i used to be a i mean avid red red boxer and
now that's pretty well around here it's pretty well stopped yeah well that kind of thing won't
watch with the phone the phone companies aren't going to say oh this will make red boxing easier
or anything like that yeah but it would make it would make the uh phone number scheme of things a lot
easier because we're uh we used to be a uh two uh area code state and now we're getting a third area
codes like i don't know i can't remember five one eight or something it can't be that because it's
got a one in the middle but yeah it's something that you won't be able to remember that's for sure
yeah it's going to be uh something terrible but yeah the uh if they would uh upgrade the phone system
to where you had the uh extra four tones that are already in the dmf keypad i mean lots of radios
and stuff use them yeah that would be uh that'd be interesting i'm sure there's all kinds of things
some answering machines actually uh i believe use abcd as security codes uh some voicemail systems try
answering some abcd's in there oh yeah there's all kinds of weird things there's a definitely a lot
of exploits for the abcd tones this is probably the one reason they don't uh-huh uh no doubt about
that but i uh also um i was wanting to know um why is there so much talk about cell phones on 2600 i
mean there's really nothing intellectual about it i had a cell phone it cost me out the wazoo
and i got disconnected and i saw what we're talking about here i'm not sure what you mean by on 2600 but
uh we're on off the hook on this on this program we're talking about uh pcs phones which is the
next step beyond cellular phones yeah but they're still really costly well i don't know you know uh
the the latest ones have come down tremendously uh the the sprint pcs is seems to be really cheap
i've talked to a lot of people who have used that and uh i don't think anybody's been charged for a
phone call yet because you know you get a certain type of of service plan you get 800 minutes for for
80 or 600 minutes for 60 or something like that and you get this huge bill but every single call on
it says free you know it doesn't cost anything because it's covered by the minutes long distance
can be covered incoming calls can be covered so it's getting to the point it's not there yet but
it's getting to the point where it's it's almost cheap enough for everybody to use yeah i tell you
what really bugs me is the way the cell phones you go out of area someone calls you it comes up on
your bill that you call yourself yeah that's what bugs me and i mean i they said i had a cell phone
for six months and you know they said they called a follow me call and i didn't even know what the
number was because i couldn't remember my own phone number for the life of me anyway but
so you called it trying to track it down and you wound up calling yourself yeah yeah i got in a big
fight with the cell phone people over that but uh-huh yeah the cell phones you know i don't know
just yep uh-huh yeah no it's just a real just a real big deal yeah well i mean that's obviously
one of the things again sprint pcs seems to be tackling that in that uh they have this uh this
deal where you can pay for uh i think it's called free roaming or something uh you're in a city that
they're covered that they're covered by and uh you get a phone call there there's no roaming
so uh you know it they're they're hearing what you're saying you just have to keep complaining
about it yeah it's uh cell phones are some wacky wacky stuff but oh and get off this thing i uh oh
also surgeon and napa it was and uh let's see who am i freaking phoenix okay all right all right
okay thanks thanks all the shout outs there but uh we we got to move on oh boy any any comments
there fiber oh that's a lot of names there's a lot of names yeah i meant on the on the cellular
issue though oh um getting to a point where it's going to be a lot more affordable oh i think it's
uh i haven't met anyone yet who uh if i tell them what uh what sprint pcs's rates are say that they
can't afford it uh-huh yeah i guess you know when you have a phone company attached to you that uh
sort of makes it a lot easier yeah but where are all the other phone companies where's mci where's
at&t oh at&t uh i think they uh dropped the ball yeah yeah i think they threw the ball down good
evening you're on the air hello how you doing good i enjoy your program uh i have a uh a quick
question up until about a month ago i was able to make some uh good illegal phone calls through a hotel
in manhattan and uh just until recently i was able to third party calls through this number and the
operator uh you know you've got the whole town looking for you oh that's quite all right and i'm
on a uh a cordless phone too which makes it better because they could scan that i'm sure it's a very
old 26 uh uh 46 rather phone but uh regardless the the hotel that i that i i was going through had a
third party uh where you would be able to make the third party call and it would just route it through
for you as a recording in other words there was no live operator involved okay then they changed that
scheme over to where you would have to speak the uh you'd have to say the word third number you're
familiar with that through at&t yeah that basically at&t now has a system where you say collect operator
third number right fraudulent call depending what it is you want to do exactly and they've changed that
scheme over the third number so then i i was calling up and i was saying third number all the
time and every time i would get through it would be perfect now what they have done is they block the
entire thing so if you say third number it immediately goes to a live operator so when i got through to the
live operator i would go and tell the operator that i wanted to bill it to my room number and i would
make up a room number such as 356 or something like that because she thought you were calling from a
hotel exactly now here's the thing i i can still make the calls but what they do now is 10 minutes
after i make the phone call they call the people back that i've called and they tell these people
who have you been speaking to from new york city so some flag must have been thrown someplace saying
that i was wondering exactly how i could get around this uh well you could look for another another
hobby i suppose is one one thing uh but i don't want to spend too much on my long distance calls
that's the thing well no it's not rebel uh farby you have any any helpful hints here yeah he could
get a job well i don't know i don't know you don't want to be rude here but uh there's got to be like
uh i mean i just want to figure out what it is that's happening how do they know
so quickly what what's going on well if somebody's billing uh third party numbers uh from the same
place 10 minutes after the phone call is over well yeah if there's enough fraud from any given
place repeatedly for a long enough period of time they're certainly going to give those calls in
the very near future special treatment do you think they're actually monitoring it as it's happening
and not just 10 minutes after i think that uh that at this point in time since uh since the fraudulent
calls have been going on for so long from that specific place that uh that that it's um caused the
phone company to give whatever uh phone numbers those pay phones are special treatment yeah and uh
it's probably uh being being flagged and recorded somewhere the hotel and and specific anyway thanks
for that call we're out of time and you know i don't know when we're going to be back because
we're not on next week i just found out through a third party we're not on next week and i don't know
if we're on the week after that or the week after that because it's a marathon coming up so uh i i would
say tune in at a certain time if i could but i can't because i don't know so the best thing for
people to do i guess is to check the web page www.2600.com and um and uh we'll uh have updates
there as far as uh as far as when we'll be on next we won't be on next week so um we'll see you
at the least in two weeks maybe maybe longer throw that a manual goldstein for fiber optic and
everybody else have yourselves good night take care
the telephone keeps ringing so i ripped it off the wall i cut myself while shaving
now i can't make a cost
we couldn't get much worse
but if they could they would
but i best expect the worst
i hope that's understood
dans elettor
don't
what are you doing
oh
yeah
We'll be right back.
Gut bucket. Gut bucket matinee.
Yeah. This is blues in the 90s.
This is Tom Mitchelson.
I want you to tune in for the gut bucket matinee.
Yeah.
And maybe we can all feel better. I'm just going to do it.
I didn't even listen to blues or something. Something would make me feel better.
Well, you got to pull yourself together long enough to let them know when to tune in.
Hey, how about Saturdays?
What time?
Three.
Uh-huh.
To six.
Oh.
Blue all up in there.
Oh, good God.
Three, four, five.
Then we got liquid sound.
Mound, yes, six.
Oh.
That's only a 99.5.
FM.
Here.
In New York.
W-B-A-I.
Gut bucket.
Matinee.
The blues, man.
If it don't kill you, it'll make you a mighty, mighty man.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Hey.
Thank you.
And good evening.
The time is 9.02 here on listener-sponsored radio, WBAI.
I'm Barbara Nimri-Aziz, host of Arab Voices Crescent Rising.
And I'm here with Brother Shine, who's the engineer.
And we have a full hour for you.
If you were accustomed to tuning in at 9 o'clock on Tuesdays and hearing Housing Notebook,
that show has switched to, I think, Thursday evening at 7 o'clock.
My show, Arab Voices Crescent Rising, with Hussain Ibi, Shibrahim Gonzalez, Reem Khat-Huda, Anissa Bouzian, and others,
was on Saturday afternoons.
And this...
Thank you.