You know, Morris Collins over there, it's kind of remarkable.
What are the, you know, again, we're getting close, like I said, God, the time just flies.
What are the films can people look forward to seeing?
And John, give us the dates, times, where to call, how to see this film festival.
I can't, you know, I touted you guys on rules of engagement, and everyone who saw that,
I heard from literally hundreds of you, and you were all thankful.
You said it made you alert, it made you aware of a current, a tide, a trend going on in
this country that's frightening, absolutely frightening.
And I'm giving you the same feeling that I got watching this movie Crime and Punishment,
which will be part of this show.
If you go there just to see this, go, but some of these movies, again, I wish I had
the time.
I wish I wasn't so engrossed with my beautiful wife, Laura.
During the campaign to stop police brutality, Wake Up Call and some of its loyal listeners
have come up with a solution that everyone can participate in.
If you are against police brutality and state-sponsored murders, wear a black ribbon as an act of
protest.
Inform your families, your neighbors, your co-workers, your church, and your school that
this is being done in memory of Ahmed Diallo, Patrick Bailey, Eleanor Bumpers, Anthony Baez,
Yvonne Smallwood, Kevin Cedeno, Elizabeth Mangum, Clifford Glover, Randy Evans, Nicholas
Ashanti-Barton, and so on.
Why is this buying and selling still going on?
Why is this buying and selling still going on?
It's 8.01, time for a late 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 call.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
For Billy Bumper, the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
For Billy Bump...
Okay, because we're a minute late, we have a minute less theme to play.
He had a special dedication to Cyber Junkie on his Day of Liberation.
I think the authorities know.
And a very good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you over on this side of the room.
Isaac over there on the other four side of the studio.
How are you doing?
Why are we getting feedback?
You must have headphones facing the microphone.
No, you know what?
It's me.
These are my headphones, though.
I have to have my headphones on my head.
I'm going to turn down the volume a bit.
There we go.
It's still kind of weird.
I just turned mine off.
I can't even hear the feedback if it's there.
Okay, well, we're going to have a technically inept show tonight as always.
You know how it is.
Oh, boy.
I like your suggestion.
We call it the Bulldog Edition because we're late.
People demand us to be on time, like trains.
Well, not New York trains, anyway.
Well, the Long Island Railroad did.
Yeah, it's really annoying.
The Long Island Railroad?
No, I guess I'll have to turn my headphone volume down a little bit,
which makes me not sound so good to me,
but I guess it makes me sound a little better to others.
So we'll try that.
Okay, I can barely hear myself now,
and that means I can barely hear you because I can't see you
over behind all the equipment there.
Wave.
Well, yeah, it's a virtual wave because I can't see you.
We're going to be talking tonight about a couple of issues,
including, of course, the big one,
which is the virus.
Isaac, I'm told by not very reliable sources,
and maybe this isn't true, that you were hit hard by this virus
and all of your work,
all of your data was wiped out
beyond any hope of recovery.
I lost absolutely everything.
First it was Melissa.
It even attacked your backup tapes, I heard.
Yes, it just jumped right out of the computer and consumed them whole.
It jumped over and broke your TV?
This is far beyond...
All of your books have blank pages now.
What kind of an animal are we dealing with?
This was worse than Chernobyl.
It's worse than the Big Bang.
It sounds like you really got a lot of destruction going on.
Yeah, I know. It's really awful.
Were you a victim of your own ineptness,
or did this really come from a computer virus?
Well, you see, somebody sent me an email.
I forgot the exact phrase that was in the subject line.
I think it was something like,
I received your mail, and I'm looking into it.
Well, here's something to look at. Unzip this file.
Right.
I believe it even inserts your name into the first line.
Is that true?
I have no idea.
I don't know how it would do that
if your name wasn't part of the email address.
Either way, I decided to install Windows
so that I could run this little binary that I got.
I had no idea where it came from,
but dammit, I'm going to run that thing
and see what it does.
Lo and behold, I lost badly.
Can you imagine that?
Well, I'll tell you this.
Your career in acting is not going to take off anytime soon
because there's no way anybody could believe
you're that big a moron.
We'll need to bring someone else in here for that.
But yes, folks, if you do want to get the Explorer virus,
is that what they're calling it now?
Don't ask me.
I have not paid one bit of attention to this.
Worm.explorer.zip.
You've got to pay attention to these things.
It has three dots?
It doesn't know where the actual suffix to the file is?
I think that's DOS you're talking about.
I don't think Windows has that kind of problem.
I have no idea.
Well, in any event,
if you want to get the worm.explorer.zip virus,
it takes a bit of doing.
It really does.
If you're stupid, yeah, that's a good start.
That's why we're hearing that all these people
in big corporations are being hit by it,
but we're not hearing very many individual-type people
being hit by it.
If you've been hit by it, please call us.
We'll probably talk about how silly you are
after you hang up.
Basically, in order to get this virus,
you have to blindly trust
anybody sending you attachments.
It's very simple.
You can attach something
to a file that says
DEL star dot star
and pipe to a Y command,
so it basically allows you
to verify that without
having human intervention,
and then all of your files
will be wiped out.
Something as simple as that.
This virus, if you want to call it that,
goes a little further.
It's a little bit more complex.
I just can't believe people are getting affected by this.
We should have learned something.
First of all, Melissa should have taught us this much.
All these people being hit by this,
ignore the Melissa warning,
because Melissa taught us not to do that.
Not to blindly open files
and execute them,
sent to us by God knows who.
We're still not going to listen to this.
There'll be a third one.
It can't get much worse than this.
Obviously, deleting all files
is a pretty nasty thing to do,
but in some ways,
you deserve what you get.
To run something that openly,
that open to anything bad
coming in from the outside,
it's like running your PC
out in the street
and then being surprised
when a car runs over it.
That's my new street analogy.
I don't know.
212-209-2900 is our phone number.
We're still rolling that one around.
Yeah, roll that one around
and process it good,
because I mean it.
Here's a story from Newsday,
actually from the Associated Press,
which blindly prints anything Associated Press says.
Computer support lines
were inundated yesterday
with calls reporting
new outbreaks of a software virus
that spreads not only by email
but through shared files on a network.
That's right,
shared files on a network.
Dashing hopes that worm.explorer.zip
might be contained more quickly
than the recent Melissa outbreak,
a leading antivirus team warned
that the new file-destroying bug
may be more virulent than first thought.
Last week,
the primary means of infection
seemed to be through a friendly email
that tricks the recipient
in caging worm.explorer.zip.
But in addition to
ruining files stored on a computer,
the virus apparently worms its way
into other computers
linked to the same network server.
Further analysis has shown
that once installed,
the program may also behave as a worm
and it may be able to propagate itself
without any human interaction
to other networked machines.
The Computer Emergency Response Team
at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh
reported yesterday.
Although nervous calls to computer support lines
dropped off sharply during the weekend,
a support technician for the software maker
Network Associates said yesterday
that call volume was even heavier
than on Thursday and Friday
with 30 to 40 callers waiting at any one time.
The FBI was trying to track down
the author of the virus yet.
Good luck, guys.
You'll find all kinds of people
who claim authorship of this,
but I don't think you're going to find
The agency declined to provide
any updates on the probe during the weekend.
It seems all their files
were mysteriously lost.
It took only days earlier this spring
for authorities to trace the digital footprints
of Melissa and the Chernobyl virus
that struck in late April.
The new virus, first detected
in Israel about a week ago,
began spreading rapidly on Thursday and Friday,
infecting computer systems
at several big corporations including
AT&T, Boeing, General Electric
and...
Microsoft.
Imagine that. Stupid people
in Redmond. Golly, there's a first.
worm.explore.zip
targets computers using Microsoft Windows
operating system. There's also Microsoft
Windows NT it'll work on just fine.
It doesn't work on a Mac.
Nor my SGI. It just didn't fly.
Like I said, I had to install
Windows so I could have it destroy
my life. There you go.
The virus arrives in a person's email box
with a timely reply from an acquaintance
inviting the recipient to open an attached file
that will unleash a two-pronged
attack. It spreads by sending a copy
of itself to the address of any arriving email
and destroys files
stored on a person's machine
including those created by the popular
programs Microsoft Word and Excel.
If you get your mail
on a Unix system, there's no way this can happen to you.
You have to actually
save it, transfer it,
then open it,
open the attachment. You have to go to a bit of
work if you're reading a mail on a Unix system.
You have to be really stupid.
I really don't get this.
I haven't been following it simply because
one, I don't use the operating system.
Two, I'm not stupid.
And three,
the viruses of today simply don't have
the same elegance as Morris's worm.
That was
an adventure.
But you see, it didn't involve somebody being
really stupid. It was simply
some administrator being, you know,
neglecting to close certain things.
This propagates simply because you have some moron
out there who goes, ooh, looky,
click, click.
Why it didn't happen sooner, I have
no idea. This could have happened years ago.
I don't know why it didn't.
Let's call the good folks over at
McAfee.
McAfee.
First,
and I have a live dial tone here
on the air. It's a live dial tone.
Are you setting up? You're committing murder?
No, I'm just saying that this is not pre-taped.
This is something that's happening live right now.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to call
800-INFORMATION to demonstrate
something to you. I'm so confident this is
going to work that I'm going to do this to demonstrate
it live on the air.
Dialing?
Yeah, listen.
Oh, I'm sorry. I dialed the wrong number.
All right, it didn't work that time.
It's going to happen again. I'm so confident
that I'm going to make a fool of myself a second time
just to demonstrate
this to you.
Untouched?
Yeah, listen.
I'm sorry, I missed out again.
Okay, this is the last time I'm going to try it.
I promise. I don't mean
to harass operators. I really don't.
I don't like doing that.
I'm beginning to think
that this is something intentional
on their part.
If it doesn't work this time,
I'll explain it.
All right, I don't think
it's going to work, so I'm just going to get the number.
Yes, hi. I need the number
for McAfee Associates in Santa
Barbara or Santa
somewhere in California.
MCAFEE.
Thank you.
The toll-free number is
888
3460
165.
Repeat.
Okay, we got that number. You got it written down there?
Hang on a second.
65. Well, I'm just typing it into my cell phone,
and I'm not going to hit talk.
Now, this is what happens
when you are panicking
and you want to call somebody to get guidance.
Is it 346?
0165.
0165.
Whoops. I dialed a 2 instead.
Hold on. Let's try that again.
346.
0165.
That's it.
As far as I recall.
Let's see what happens.
Your call cannot be
completed as dialed.
Please check the number and dial again.
1202.
Odd, isn't it?
Now, you heard them. They gave us that number,
and for some reason that number doesn't work at all.
So all these people are tearing their hair out now
trying to get a hold of these guys who might have the answer
or might be able to help them somehow,
and they can't get through.
But let me try this 800 information thing one more time.
If it doesn't work now,
I'll just explain it to everybody what's going on.
Okay, if it rings, it's not going to work.
Basically, this happened to me.
You saw me dialing before the show.
I'd say it happened 4 out of 5 times in a row,
and it happened to me last night,
where basically you just get a recording saying,
we're sorry, we cannot take your call right now.
800 information. We're too busy. We can't take your call.
Go away. Do something else.
We can't help you.
Well, all those people are confused about calling McAfee and saying,
hey, wait a second. Isn't the number you gave me always this?
It's got nothing to do with McAfee. You know what it has to do with?
It has to do with downsizing. It has to do with about 3 people working at AT&T right now.
All computers. No humans to answer the phone.
And they don't have enough people.
It's very easy to overwhelm them.
I'll bet if you just get 10 of your friends to dial 1-800-555-1212,
total free number, no charge to you,
to dial all at the same time from the same basic area,
you'll probably overload them,
and they won't have enough people to answer the phones.
Back in the old days,
you used to be able to have thousands of people call in.
You always got a human being. They were helpful.
They gave you more information than you needed sometimes,
and they answered any questions you might have.
And the same thing went for local information,
information all throughout the country, international information.
Those days are gone.
Now you've got to pay for everything,
and there just aren't enough people working to help you.
I'm still laughing about that
they couldn't tell us what the area code was for California.
What was it? Los Angeles?
Anywhere.
That was rather amusing.
You have to pay to find out what the new area codes are.
It's totally insane.
What's the MPA for Los Angeles?
That'll be 95 cents or something?
Something like that.
But you know what? I'm going to show you a way around that.
It just gets me mad to have them do that.
So I'm going to basically get information out of an operator
they're not supposed to give me.
Watch this.
Operator.
Yes, voice activation.
AT&T, how may I help you?
Yes, operator.
I was interested in placing a call to London, England.
I was wondering if you could tell me
what the rate is from this line now, over there.
Are you on any special calling plan or anything?
No, I'm not. I'm just dialing.
Okay.
Okay.
After 6 o'clock,
it's 94 cents a minute.
It's 94 cents a minute.
Is that 6 o'clock our time or 6 o'clock their time?
Our time.
It always goes by where you're sitting at now.
I see.
Before 6, it would have been $1.29 a minute.
Really? Okay.
Yeah, it makes a big difference.
What's the time difference between here and there?
It's either 5 or 6 hours.
Let me go back up here and look here.
Change pages here.
Okay.
Right now, hang on.
I'm coming up here.
Five hours ahead.
What time would it be over there now?
Was it 8 where you are?
I believe so.
Midnight.
It would be after midnight, though, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
Okay. It's about 8.20 here then.
Thank you very much.
You have to work at it a little bit,
but I found out what time it is here.
Isn't that cool?
They didn't charge you for it.
No, they didn't charge me for anything.
I found out what time it is in England.
I found out what time it is here.
They didn't seem to know if it was 8 o'clock or 8.20,
but never mind that.
That's remarkably underwhelming.
You're not impressed by that?
Okay, fine.
Shall we move on?
No, we're not going to move on
because I'm going to prove to you
what you say is overwhelming.
It takes forever to get an operator, too.
That's the other thing.
Operator.
Please hold for operator assistance.
You enjoy that way too much.
AT&T, how may I help you?
Yes, operator. I was wondering if I could find out
what time it is.
8.20 p.m.
Okay. Thank you very much.
This is the night when things just don't work.
You're just striking out.
I've got to pay $1 to find out what area code it is,
but an operator will tell me what time it is for free.
I don't think she was supposed to do that.
Tell you what time it is?
I don't think so.
If you want to know what time it is,
you just call the U.S. Naval Observatory.
You've got to pay for that.
Long distance.
202-762-1401.
There are several ways you can get the time for free.
One is if you have a TV set, turn it on.
If you have several stations that have the time there,
like the Weather Channel.
Or have somebody call you and do star 69.
It'll tell you what time they called, too.
But you've got to pay 75 cents for that
or subscribe to it on a monthly basis.
If you tend to have enough money
to have a phone for a month,
I would tend to believe you are capable
of perhaps spending $1
to get one of those Casio watches.
It's not the cost.
It's the point of the thing.
I can understand that.
Never mind.
Moving right along here.
Again, we're taking phone calls.
212-209-2900.
For anybody affected by the virus here.
Here's a new copy of 2600.
Just came out.
It's already out?
It's on the verge of being sent out now.
That's one of two copies you have in your hand right now.
Really?
Yeah.
You know, this is the first time this has happened.
Is it?
Where I get a copy before everybody else does?
Give it back.
That picture there is illegal.
You can't tell people what the picture is.
They have to find it themselves.
That picture that is on the front cover is illegal.
You are not allowed to take that picture.
You can't take that picture.
You're not allowed to.
Be careful when you check out this issue.
You might want to keep the cover hidden.
Most of the time,
people ask me about what's in the issue
and I can't tell them because I don't have one.
It's like, hey, did you read that article on XXY?
And I go, uh, no.
Well, why not? Because I don't have one.
You can write to us, oth2600.com,
or send us mail here at the radio station
off the hook here of WBAI,
120 Wall Street, New York, New York,
10005.
Yeah.
And here's some listener mail that we have.
Hello.
I just wanted to let you in on a little tidbit you might find entertaining.
I got in the mail today a check for $3.50
from an ISP called cyberspace.com.
What you have to read with a magnifying glass,
however, is that this free gift
is actually a contract authorizing them
to subscribe me to their internet service
and have it billed to me
through my telephone company.
That sounds like that AT&T gift of $100.
Which I cashed.
I had to go through some sort of interrogation.
I mean, unbelievable.
I was on the phone 20 minutes with them
to get my $100.
I had to record a conversation saying I was authorizing them
to switch me over.
And the only thing I ever said anyplace
was that I have to keep them longer than a month.
So I can switch back to another company
and just wait for another check to come in.
And the funny thing is, they're sending me $100.
I don't think I've paid $100 for long distance on that line
ever in a year.
I don't think I ever have.
So I'm doing quite well with AT&T there.
I'm finally getting even for all these little charges
that they get you for.
Unbelievable.
Anyway, this cyberspace.com, that sounds like a real scam too
because they send you a check for $3.50
and you have to sign up for their internet service.
And from what I understand,
that costs $29.95 a month,
which is rather high for internet service.
So be careful.
If you get checks in the mail,
every time you get a check in the mail, it's unsolicited.
It's usually something evil.
You may have already won $35 million.
That's true too.
Speaking of something evil,
George W. Bush...
Oh, back up there, sir.
Yes.
I'm back up.
Just remove the evil for George W. Bush.
Why, is it illegal?
Well, no, but...
George W. Bush, what, do you like this guy?
I like that guy.
Who is he anyway? Have you ever even heard him speak?
Yes.
Where have you heard him speak?
On the radio.
Where?
Okay, the Nazi station, fine.
He speaks on that.
But other than that, where have you ever heard him speak?
People don't watch C-SPAN.
I watch C-SPAN.
Normal, everyday, average American people,
where would they have ever heard this guy speak?
I'm not counting this week either,
because this is the week he's crawling out from under his rock
and actually saying something,
because he's going for his election campaign starting now.
But where have you ever heard him say anything beforehand?
And what has he said?
Those two things.
He can't answer me, can you?
Me as myself, or me as myself,
the non-normal, non-American person?
Take the non-normal part of it,
and let's forget about the crazy radio station,
let's forget about C-SPAN,
because those are places where everybody shows up eventually.
But I'm talking about just average people,
reading newspapers, right?
Okay.
I have been looking.
I've been looking for the last year or so,
because I want to know where this guy stands.
And I can't find where he stands on anything,
because he waffles more than Clinton does.
That's quite a statement.
Well, I also think it's a false statement.
Regardless, let's not discuss
the political candidacies of the year 2000.
Well, my point is,
just to make it very clear and simple,
is that I've never heard this guy speak.
Before yesterday, actually.
I can't say I never heard him speak,
because actually he did open his mouth yesterday
and say something on TV,
and I finally heard him say something.
But before that, I didn't even know
what his voice sounded like.
Now, okay, who cares?
Well, this guy is the number one frontrunner
when people have never heard him say anything.
Doesn't that scare you?
They're so displeased with the other candidates
that they're willing to go to just about anyone.
Well, that should tell you something right there.
I mean, does he vote for anybody based on the name
and not on what they say or what they stand for?
It's rather amusing,
but the Nazi station,
one of their hosts actually does
an on-the-street interview and simply asks people
who is the Vice President of the United States.
And most of the time, they're sitting there like,
uh...
A very, you know, well-in-tuned individual
said Dan Quayle.
Okay, now wait a minute.
That disproves what you just said, though,
that they're dissatisfied, because if they're dissatisfied,
then they don't know who they're voting against.
I'm sorry, the same man-on-the-street interview
also says, how well do you think Bill Clinton is doing?
And they all say, really good.
He's a great president, at which point he asks,
well, other than the economy,
name one good thing Bill Clinton has done.
And they're all still sitting there.
Name one thing that George W. Bush has done.
I'll take that. I will.
Even though I've never heard him say a word,
I would like to know what he's done for the state of Texas.
Honestly, I don't know.
Going back to my original point, you're calling this man evil,
and yet you haven't really heard him speak.
He's evil because he scares me.
You know, his father doesn't scare me.
His father did scare me back in 88.
I was really scared when he got elected president.
I was afraid there'd be all kinds of retributions
for the things I was saying.
But that worked out okay.
He was like a nice grandfatherly type person.
But he's never said a word.
You've never heard his voice.
You don't know where he stands on anything.
And he's the frontrunner.
That just bothers me a lot.
Well, George Sr. did just recently...
Jump out of a plane, yeah.
Well, I could give that advice to other people as well,
but we don't want to get nasty here.
Anyway, to get to the point why I brought his name up,
he has no sense of humor either because...
Oh, okay. Now I see where this is going.
Yeah, you know about the websites.
I heard about this.
With some websites here
that basically kind of make fun of him a little bit.
Well, his campaign managers decided to grab these
before anybody else could,
which I feel is a futile maneuver
simply because you can't possibly register them all.
Uh-huh.
Well, that's not what I was talking about, actually.
Oh, really?
I was talking about this.
In America, we have a grand old tradition of lampooning,
otherwise making fun of leaders and would-be leaders.
The gwbush.com site is one website
that is keeping up this great American tradition
by lampooning Texans
who will be running for the White House in our next election.
But George Bush, Jr.
That's another way of saying it, I guess,
really wouldn't like you to see this website.
According to Democracy Now!,
which is on this very radio station...
Across the hall, too.
Across the hall, right down the hall.
Hey, guys, Bush has filed a complaint
with the Federal Election Commission
against gwbush.com.
You can go over there and check it out for yourself.
It looks just like
the George Bush election site.
Governor Bush changed his mind on trying minors as adults.
After self-reflection and consultations
with religious counsel,
Governor Bush decided to raise the age at which juveniles
can be tried as adults to 40.
There ought to be limits to freedom,
Governor George W. Bush said.
He really did say this in Austin, Texas,
on May 26.
Read press coverage of Governor Bush's amazing
televised press conference on the problem of freedom.
Bush is the only candidate with the courage
to take on excessive freedom on the internet
as well as its garbage men.
He's not very happy with gwbush.com
not belonging to him.
Well, honestly,
this is parody, and it's 100% open,
and I encourage it.
I frown upon
our forerunning candidate
for trying to take this down.
Okay, I'm glad you're frowning,
but it gets better,
because there is a legitimate account,
a legitimate site.
Okay.
www.georgewbush.com
That makes sense.
And that one he does have.
I'm not sure which one you'll find funnier,
but it's gwbush and georgewbush.
But if you type in on your browser,
and you may do this right now,
entering bushblows.com,
bushsucks.com, georgebushblows,
georgewbushblows, georgebushsucks,
georgewbushsucks.com,
.net, .org,
any of those, they will take you
to georgewbush.com, a legitimate site.
Right.
His campaign actually got all of those sites
because they didn't want somebody else
to get them.
Isn't that kind of self-defeating,
to have something that says something bad about you
pointing to you?
That would be the one he'd want to be a parody,
because it's saying that he sucks.
Instead, if you type georgebushsucks,
you go to the georgebush site,
which probably will prove it to you.
I would imagine that the name changes
to georgewbush.com
in your little title bar there.
Maybe it does, but the point is, the person who typed it in
is going to remember, hey, I typed georgebushsucks,
and here's the evidence.
I'm so disappointed, because I wanted to see
some really mean things being said about you.
Why would you want that person to come to your site anyway,
since obviously they don't like you?
Right?
Because it's still exposing this individual
to what you think.
Type 2600sucks.com, see if you get to the 2600sucks.com site.
You'll probably get to a site that says we suck.
That's fine, because that's what it's about.
But you just could have easily
registered 2600sucks.com and done your own parody.
But don't you see the hypocrisy here?
If you type gwbush.com,
and you don't go to that particular site,
you go to another site,
it's the same logic.
You're going someplace else
that the person intended for you to go
that doesn't represent what it was you typed.
When you type gwbush, you're not typing
I want to see a parody of gwbush,
you're typing I want to see gwbush, but you get a parody.
You type George Bush sucks,
you don't want to see George W. Bush,
but you wind up seeing that.
It's flawed logic.
But it gets even better.
But wait, there's more.
There is more, because these clowns
in their haste to register all these sites
forgot to register a couple of sites.
Like I said, it was futile.
You can't possibly get them all.
Bushforpresident.net.
That's a pretty big one, don't you think?
And bushforpresident2000.net.
Guess who has those two sites?
Who has those two?
I do.
I've got Giuliani sites, I've got Bush sites,
I've got Clinton sites, I've got Gore sites,
I've got Dole sites.
I've got sites, man.
And there's going to be some fun things on those ones,
so just stay tuned.
If you have any suggestions
as to what should go on our Bush sites,
please email us, oth2600.com,
because it's going to be a fun campaign.
And was it Giulianiforsenate2000.net,
I think, or Giulianiforsenate.net?
One of those.
Type that in, and you'll get our existing lampoon,
which they're not too happy about either.
But politics is like that, you know?
Okay.
We have a couple other stories,
but I think we should go to the phones.
212-209-2900.
Before we do, though...
You're going to try again?
No, I'm not going to try that again.
I'm going to try something else.
We have a brand-new service here
What is it going to be?
Us.
Us as in this show?
Don't be difficult.
Here we go.
I'm trying to build it up.
Yes, you've reached
Dr. Hook on the phone.
We're not here right now.
In fact, we're never at this number,
but you can leave a message,
and maybe we'll play it on the air.
Just leave a message at the sound of the tone.
Whoa!
Oh, my God.
We really have to get an engineer in here
to fix these things.
Yes, so that's our voicemail.
We have voicemail now,
and you can speak to us.
Well, you can leave a message for us,
and maybe if you can't get through on the air,
you can leave a message on a delay type of basis.
That's kind of spiffy.
Isn't it?
Actually, I'm going to hang up now
because we're leaving a message.
Let's see if we can actually get that message on the air.
I don't want to give away too many details.
With the feedback, might I?
No, we'll turn down the feedback.
It's going to be in the message.
You're right, it will be in the message,
but it won't be as loud, I don't think.
Obviously, I'm going to have to turn down the microphone
when I'm entering our password.
It's good.
It took us several hours.
Several hours of studio time
was devoted to that.
Let's see if we actually get through here.
Oh, great.
This is one of these systems where
it doesn't quite work the first time.
Please enter your security code.
Okay, I got that.
Oh, I forgot.
I forgot.
Here we go.
You have one new message.
To listen to your messages, press L.
To record and send a message, press RS.
For the complete main menu of features,
press 0.
Ready.
Well, we don't have an L key.
Press L?
I'll press the L key.
I'm pressing L now.
There.
Oh, my God.
We really have to get an engineer in here to fix these things.
Yes.
That's our voicemail.
We have voicemail now.
You can speak to us.
You can leave a message for us.
Maybe if you can't get through on the air,
we can play your message over the air
on a delay type of basis.
Actually, I'm going to hang up now
because we're leaving a message.
The message has been saved.
To erase the message,
press E.
To listen to the next message,
press L.
To exit the listen mode,
press the pound key.
For a complete list of listening options,
press 0.
I'm going to press the E key.
The message will be erased
when you exit your mailbox.
How do we exit?
I think we hit 9.
Press the X key.
To exit your mailbox, press X again.
To return to the automated attendance,
press the star key.
Goodbye.
That's the end of her.
We have voicemail now.
Oh, we forgot to give out the phone number.
212, although you could have gotten it
if you listened to the tones.
209-2967 is our voicemail.
If you can't reach us or you have a late-breaking story
to give to us any time of the day or night,
call that number and leave a message.
You can decode the DTMF and find the number.
Only the people that can do that will call in.
We want everybody to call in.
For a week, that would be kind of cool.
It's nice to have this means of communication.
We have that.
We have our mailbox.
We also have important news,
which we didn't mention, which we should have mentioned.
I'm sure a lot of people are tearing their hair out now,
saying, why aren't you guys talking about the Mitnikirin
which took place yesterday?
The reason is it didn't take place yesterday.
It was postponed a month.
Everybody was expecting this not to happen,
but the judge granted Kevin's defense team this delay
so that they could reply to the basically crazy allegations
that Kevin caused millions of dollars of damage
simply by looking at some source code.
This will give them some extra time to look things over
and to figure out how to counter them
rather than just have to be accused of it
the day he was being sentenced,
which was what was going to happen yesterday.
So this is good, but it also gives us more of an opportunity
to do some more activism-type things,
some more education-type things,
and we're open to suggestions, if you have suggestions
as to what we can use this extra month to do.
Some people are saying, hey, let's have more demonstrations.
Some people are saying, let's do some things on the Internet.
Let's write letters.
This is time that we have now to get this done.
The hearing was rescheduled to Monday, July 12th,
so we have practically a month.
All right, let's take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
Pick a number from 1 to 10.
Me? Yeah.
Well, we'll go with X.
Well, X would be 9, because that's what it comes out to.
Did you know that 9 wasn't lit when you said that?
No.
Of all the numbers, 9 is the only one lit.
I'm sorry, I was simply going with the whole voicemail thing.
It just started ringing now,
which means that there's no way it could be...
It just stopped again.
I'm going to pick it up now.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Yes, good evening.
You know, I do.
I would like you to dial information
and ask for the phone number of WBAI.
You will then know that Bell Atlantic says,
as you just said, 209.
However, Bernard White,
who says pay close attention
and acts like he's a very sensible guy,
and some of his group
always love to say 209, 209,
2-9-0-0-0 or whatever.
We're actually going to argue
whether we should be saying 209 and 209.
Listen, we're a controversial radio station.
We talk about a lot of things.
We talk about politics and revolution,
international affairs.
We're not ready for this debate, 0 or 0.
I'm sorry, I just can't do it.
I can't bring myself to do that.
Race relations, yes, 0 or 0.
Come on, it'll never end.
We'll have so many people getting upset.
Well, you've got to be careful,
because 0 is actually number...
Don't start, don't start.
Good evening, you're on the air.
How are you doing?
How are you?
How are you doing?
Okay.
You know, everybody else listening
has no idea what you're talking about.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah.
He says he apologizes
for not being there at the protest
and he couldn't do the taping
about the hearing
because they're in post-production right now.
So she apologizes
for not being able to include that
on the show that she's doing right now.
Uh-huh. Okay.
So, you know, I said,
well, that's too bad.
Hopefully she includes us all in the credits, of course.
Well, we'll just have to see.
But when you're dealing with mass media,
you should never really expect it to turn out
the way that you expect it to turn out.
Because I really like
the conclusion to everything
before they release the show.
But maybe the show is going to actually hype it up.
Well, have you seen
anything from the show yourself?
No, I've seen the interviews.
I've seen a clip of Porkchop.
But you haven't seen the slant
they're going to take.
No, and I've seen the FBI conversations that they're having.
Oh, really?
Yeah, it's so funny how they take the opposition so strongly.
You know, what's funnier to me right now
is that Isaac looks so perplexed.
He has no idea what any of us are talking about.
And I imagine that that face
reflects the face of our audience, too,
who probably have no idea what we're talking about as well.
Are we under some sort of obligation not to say what we're talking about?
Well, she said to me one time
when I first mentioned it on the show that I shouldn't be mentioning it.
But she didn't say that to me, did she?
I don't think she said that to you.
And, you know,
maybe because she just didn't think about it
at that time.
But right now, like she told me, it's in post-production.
And when I'm done with it, I'm like,
how could you do this?
We'd really like some more on it.
But, you know, leaving the cliffhanger
is kind of like leaving it open like Star Wars.
Maybe people are going to get more hyped about it
and actually do something.
You know, like the old saying,
get off your ass and just do it.
So hopefully we get a lot more followers
like the X generation who actually watches the channel.
Oh, these are clues.
Yeah, well, I think maybe that would be a good idea.
After all, your viewership has gone a lot down
Yeah, but Tom Green is out there.
And he's a pretty funny guy.
Maybe we'll actually do an interview with him.
Maybe, maybe you will.
That's why we're going to move on.
Thanks for the information.
Yeah, not a problem. We'll see you guys soon.
Alright, take care.
Those people who know what's going on,
please inform Isaac by calling the voicemail.
If you don't know what's going on by now,
I pity you.
You don't know what network Beavis and Butthead were on?
MTV.
What?
Good evening, you're on the air.
Beavis, if you're free.
How you doing?
The IRC guy.
Yes, the IRC person. How are you?
Pretty good. It is working.
The IRC network is working.
Okay, well, actually, it's not officially up yet,
but it will be up in the next, I guess, week or so.
What IRC network?
Actually, you were on it the other day,
so you should know what we're talking about.
I guess what I'm saying on the air is legal, right?
Why doesn't anybody tell me anything?
You were on it.
Well, yeah, you didn't tell me about it until that day.
Well, alright, but you know about it now.
Yes.
Alright, so basically, this is a way for 2600 people
to communicate without fear of...
And what's cool about it is that it is linked to EFnet,
so everybody does not have to move their bots
if they don't want to.
Yeah, we do have ways of linking,
but for the most part, it will be a way for people
to communicate without being taken over,
losing channels, and also we're going to have
all kinds of other 2600 channels,
if you, say, are in Guam,
and you want to meet other 2600 people,
there is a channel you can go to to do just that.
Yes, and if I'm not mistaken,
just for people online right now,
you type slash MSG space MrBot space channels
to get the list of all those regional channels.
And there's a lot of them.
There are so many.
I think there's something like 150 of them.
That's a lot, because there's one for every state
and territory, and there's one for every country.
There are a lot of them.
They're not necessarily channels that will exist,
but they're channels that if you are in that area,
go to that channel, and if someone else is in that area,
they should go to that channel,
and then you'll meet those people,
because people are always sending us mail saying,
can you tell us who else is a 2600 reader in my area?
And, of course, we can't do that.
So this is one way.
If you both have Internet access,
if you go to a channel that's common to your area,
then you'll meet people that way.
Yes, and if I'm not mistaken,
the information on all of this
has that information.
In fact, if you look, Isaac,
you'll find an ad in there.
I don't know what page it's on.
Just as I was saying,
the amount of people in IRC2600.net doubled.
How about that?
So now we have two people in there.
Now we have like 20.
That's like doubling my salary.
That's great.
I hope it works well, because I don't know if you remember,
but I originally called back in April.
You're the person who suggested this?
And see, it's only a couple months later.
It's reality.
See how things work? It's amazing.
You want to suggest something else now?
No.
If you have any suggestions, please give us a call.
Thanks a lot for all the work.
I think it'll work out really nicely.
Take care.
212-209-2900.
Let's go to another caller that knows something I don't.
Gee, there's so many here.
Let me go to this one.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hi, Emmanuel.
I was going to say, this is the clueless line,
but I didn't. I should have.
Yes, go ahead.
I'd just like to mention the following 800 number.
Are you going to tell us why you're mentioning it
at any time during this call?
Because of the fact that it's one of those psychic numbers
where they have this thing
where it's a scam.
Not a scam, but it's like a trick.
If it was a real psychic number,
they would block you.
That's what I'm going to get into.
When you call this 800 number,
they give you a message.
I did this from home.
Then they called me at home.
The next day, they left a message
because I wasn't home.
They said something like,
to get your free psychic reading,
do such and such.
I called this number from a pay phone.
They happen to know that you're on a pay phone.
In other words, when you call this number from a pay phone,
they say, this number cannot be called from a pay phone.
There's nothing new about this.
Yeah, but how do they know
whether you're calling from a pay phone?
There's a database that tells you all the pay phone numbers
for one thing that some of these companies have.
All the pay phone numbers in the country?
Well, I know that I've tried this before.
From other pay phones downtown,
I remember calling a psychic hotline
several years ago and them saying
that I couldn't bill it to this number.
Do you remember when 800 numbers started billing you
when you were actually able to call an 800 number
and it showed up on your phone bill?
This is how they get around the pay phones
when you're calling from a pay phone,
whether it's through a database or by...
Actually, you know what?
It might be something that the SS7 sends along
that basically flags the call as coming from a pay phone,
just like a prison call or a collect call,
something like that.
When you make a particular type of call,
it sends a flag along, says that this is a pay phone.
Do not accept or try to bill to this number.
Cellular phones.
When it calls from a cellular phone,
it gives you a RIODA tone.
That makes sense, too.
Or if you're calling from the operator.
Give us the number,
because we all have lives to get back to.
It's 1-800-273...
Wait a minute.
That's 2-7-3, not 3-2-7-3.
Right.
4988.
All right.
I'd also like to mention the fact that 800 numbers,
they ask you still,
you call some 800 numbers, they say,
if you're calling from a push-button phone,
press 1.
I don't know.
Would that it were true, though?
A planet would be...
How is he still there?
I hung up.
Go away.
He's not going away.
Look at this.
I can't get rid of him.
He overrode the phone system.
I could not press that button.
This is like a nightmare.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
You're at Yankee Stadium.
Yeah, I am.
Are they playing a game, or did you break in?
No, I broke in.
I have a question for you.
Go ahead.
It must be a dull game if you're calling me
during a Yankee game, but go ahead.
In about five years,
the surcharges on our phone bills
are probably going to exceed the actual toll charges.
Actually, on some of my lines,
they already have exceeded the toll charges, yes.
It's ridiculous.
You look at it,
and it's like every single federal and state and local agency
has a surcharge.
It's kind of ridiculous, if you ask me.
I'm wondering if there's a way that customers can get a surcharge on there
so that we can sort of get some of the money back.
And the thing is, they nickel-and-dime you to death
to the point where...
That's Indy Granite, if you don't mind.
I mean, the SEC was bad enough,
and now it's like six bucks or something.
That's crazy.
The ISDN line is like $11.
I mean, it's really ridiculous.
You're paying $11 in surcharges,
and that's only one surcharge,
when you're already paying like $50 for an ISDN line.
It's really ridiculous.
Oh, of course.
But you know, the people who suffer the most
are the people with the low phone bills,
the people who pay virtually as close to nothing
as they want to pay.
Now, the big companies that have $1,000 phone bills,
an extra $1.50 or something isn't going to mean that much.
But when you have, say, a $15 phone bill
and another $15 in taxes and surcharges,
it's significant.
And I'll leave it with this.
I think what they really should do,
and of course, who knows what's going to come of it,
they should really charge the businesses more
because they can afford it.
And, you know, poor Schmo has a lifeline line,
which I guess I don't have the courage
or don't have as many surcharges.
But still, I mean, it's ridiculous
how the average person who has a regular,
you know, $25 to $50 phone bill,
I mean, a good $20 is taxed on.
I don't know.
I just have to fend. Thanks for letting me know.
And good luck to the Yankees up there.
I would debate the shuffle it off to the business lines,
but we only have ten minutes.
Well, I think big business
should pay a lot more than small business,
for instance, because small business
is basically the same thing as human beings.
The flaw in that is what's the threshold
for becoming a big business?
Well, I'm not sure, but right now,
the way it works is big business
doesn't pay as much in taxes as little business.
There's all kinds of discrepancies
where they get all kinds of write-offs
because they supposedly provide jobs and things like that.
So these line charges
are going to be like the, you know,
the little guy shafting it...
Let's ask ourselves why a lot of these things are necessary.
We're running out of phone numbers.
Why are we running out of phone numbers?
Do we have twice as many people in our country?
No, we have all these companies
getting blocks of 10,000 numbers for their PBXs.
That's why the phone numbers are being taken up.
Now, someone's got to pay for all the changes
that take place with area codes and exchanges
and things like that.
They have installation fees.
Well, no, but I'm saying a lot of those charges
are being shouldered by people, too,
because they have to change their phone numbers, for instance.
They've got to change everything that they do,
and it's a result of not them, but big businesses
with huge amounts of phone numbers
and tying up all the exchanges.
That's one thing.
I'd actually like to hear from somebody
who lost their home telephone number
because some large business decided to get a PBX.
Well, I'm going to be losing my phone number because of that.
Well, no, you're getting a new area code.
That's my phone number.
Those are three digits of my phone number I'm losing.
That's my identity.
Anybody who's also in Suffolk County can call you.
Listen, listen, listen.
516, that says who I am.
That is who I've been all my life, okay?
And now you expect me to suddenly change my name to 631.
I'm sorry, it's not going to work.
It's not going to work.
I will never be a 631 in my heart.
I will always be a 516.
You can't take that from me.
So move.
They tried that.
They tried displacing people all over the world.
Say, oh yeah, just live over here instead.
It doesn't work.
I'm all red-faced now.
You know, this is a sore topic for me.
I'm sorry for upsetting you.
It's my area code.
Damn it, I'm proud of it.
I'm not going to give it up without a fight,
although there's not much I can do either.
All right, let me compose myself,
take another phone call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
I'm looking for a version of Linux.
I bought the Red Hat 6.0 last week
and I was really unsatisfied
because I'm looking for a version
that would really run fine on my laptop.
Do you have any suggestions?
Abandon Linux, go BSD.
Why do you say that?
Why do I say that? It's just better.
Yeah, but what's better about it?
I hear everybody saying that, but I never hear why.
It's cleaner.
It's cleaner?
It's cleaner.
Utilities and knickknacks floating around.
Let me ask our caller, what is your main complaint?
Video.
It would just...
When I put it on Linux,
it would have some problem.
It would go on to 1024
and my screen is on 800
and after a while you would see
green lines in the background
and it would just have the whole thing
and you can't pop up a menu
without it...
It's on the whole background
of the screen already.
That's X, it's not Linux,
so you're going to have that problem just about anywhere you go.
See, it wasn't Linux.
That's X Configurator, that's the problem.
How can I run
X Configurator?
Your best bet
is to
go to a couple of news groups,
get on a couple of mailing lists
and ask the people who are
more in tune to that.
Alright, good luck. Thanks for calling.
Let's take another phone call.
You might also try the Personal Computer Show tomorrow night
because they tend to deal with things like that a little more than we do.
They're on Wednesday nights at 8pm
right here in this very same radio station.
To be safe, leave the radio on until then.
That way, nobody will
knock against the radio and turn it off.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, speak up please.
Yeah, I have two short questions and then a comment
about the Explorer world.
Okay, make it as quick as possible.
I read in one of the newspapers
that this thing is capable of also
acting on people that are not using
Microsoft Outlook but instead using Eudora.
Do you know if that's true?
I think it's capable of hitting anybody who's using Windows or NT.
Not necessarily those programs because
if you just unzip the file, I think that's
what makes it spread into action.
The action that you have to avoid
is executing any program
that you do not know what it is that gets
sent to you via email.
That's a good point, but it leads to my comment.
You guys seem very unsympathetic
to the idea that many of the people
who use computers these days aren't really
geeky kind of people. They're not very sophisticated.
It doesn't make them bad
and it doesn't make it okay to victimize them.
No, that's true, but you do have to go into
something. For instance, you don't drive a car
without realizing the risks. You've got to know something
about what this thing is capable
of doing and what some of the hazards are
in doing this. I think too many people
are jumping into things with an
assumption of how it works and with
an expectation that everything's going to be okay.
It's not entirely their fault.
In fact, it's mostly not their fault.
It's the fault of the people selling them these things
and teaching them how they
work without mentioning some very important things.
For instance, you could lose everything
on your hard drive tomorrow for no reason
at all. They crash all the time.
Make sure you keep a backup. For people
that don't know to do that, they lose
a lot. There's nothing worse
than that feeling of losing everything you've been working on.
Who's going to tell them that? The large companies that
produce the operating systems?
Please, take our product, but
it doesn't quite work.
You've got to look out for things, and you can't
trust us. No large company
is going... For Pete's sake,
Microsoft doesn't even admit that they have bugs.
They don't have patches. They have service
packs.
You can't expect
them to just come out and do that. The thing is,
with other products, the
Better Business Bureau, Consumer Affairs,
they mandate that you must
tell consumers if there are problems.
You must have recalls if there are major
safety issues. I think we have the equivalent
of this with operating systems. People
should be told the truth. Not necessarily,
because you can go open-source and have people
who know what they're doing, and you can actually inspect
the entire thing and
see where it breaks and how to fix it. But that's if you
know what you're doing. There's a lot of people out there that want to use
computers that don't know all these little things.
I don't think it's fair to expect them to have to know
every source code, every line
of code there. Anyway, we're running out of time.
Let's let our listener say what he has to say.
I agree with you that
part of the problem here is Microsoft
Windows, Microsoft NT, whatever.
Because this business about people being able
to email you a macro file
or whatever, and then all you have to do is click on it
and it causes all this trouble, it seems
to me that's part of the problem.
At least they should ship you Windows
with that feature turned off
or something. I don't know.
Anyway, that's my comment. But one more question.
If this guy turns out to be from Israel,
do you have any idea what kind of legal
remedy there is? They're going to pat him on the back and say
wow, you're really talented again.
Take Israel off the net. I mean, they're causing
too much trouble over there. I don't know.
It goes to show you that
there is no regulation on the net. There never will be.
There never should be. Because there's
always a way around whatever stupid
regulations you come up with. Someone could be in a foreign
country and you know what? We don't have jurisdiction over there.
That's how it is. That's how it always will be.
Well, how is your Better Business Bureau going to work?
Well, no. That's
for selling you things that you run
in your home. Okay, so how about some
like Egyptian companies? The Egyptian
Better Business Bureau has to take care of that.
It's basically up to them.
You can't regulate speech.
Certainly not speech
that's going over international networks.
That's never going to happen.
I seem to think that it's the point of the
consumer to know what they're buying and to actually
investigate these things. Right. And I think
consumers do to a degree, but if the truth
is hidden from them, if it's not easy to
find out that, hey, there are problems here,
they're not going to find out.
That's what people like us are here for, to let them know.
So that's what we're going to do.
That's a really nice little bow for the discussion.
It is. And we're out of time, so we
will have to continue this discussion next
week. Until then, stay
abreast of the situation. We'll update you on the Mitnick
case next week. Again, the hearing
postponed, the sentencing postponed for another month,
July 12th. Keep
checking out our websites, www.2600.com.
If you want to email us,
www.2600.com. If you want some real funny laughs,
www.gwbush.com.
And of course, GiulianiForSenate.net.
What's the voicemail number again?
Oh, 212-209-2967
is our new voicemail number, so you can leave us.
I'm sure it's filling up now already with messages,
so we'll have to listen to that later.
Again, Emmanuel Goldstein for Isaac.
Have yourselves a good night.
I ripped it off the wall
I cut myself while shaving
Now I can't make a
cough
It couldn't get much worse
But if they could, they would
Bon dilly bon for the best
expect the worst
I hope that's understood
Bon dilly bon
Bon dilly bon
Bon dilly bon
Bon dilly bon
The consciousness of the nation
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