7 p.m. so you guys driving home tell all your friends you know mainstream media is certainly
not covering the show so we're going to be on starting this is going to be an incredible
show it's going to be a bit it's one of the books one of the 10 best-sold books in the
Amazon bookstores on the internet George W. Bush hopes those nagging questions will blow
over when he comes to New York for a thousand dollar a plate luncheon with Governor George
Pataki but that may be just a pipe dream when the families of more than 30,000 Rockefeller
drug law prisoners mostly black Latino and poor gather to protest the mandatory 15-year-to-life
sentences low-level offenders are serving for their youthful indiscretions Governor Pataki
along with legislative leaders in Albany have jointly stalled meaningful reform of the outdated
Rockefeller laws and that's the last straw according to the William Moses Kunstler Fund
for racial justice which invites you to join the two governors for lunch at 430 on October 5th at
the Sheraton Hotel on 7th Avenue and 53rd Street for further information call the Kunstler Fund
at 212-539-8441 or visit the kunstler.org website that's Tuesday October 5th at the Sheraton for a
protest lunch with the two Governor George's sponsored by the Kunstler Fund at 212-539-8441
it's about time.
Okay it's a little late but if you hurry you can still grab those Republicans and annoy them as
they're coming out the leave the cocaine home it's eight o'clock time for off the hook
and good evening everybody this is off the hook the program that deals with technological issues
from a hacker perspective we come your way every Tuesday night from 8 to 9 p.m. right here on
listener sponsored WBAI in New York my name is Manuel Goldstein joined tonight with Isaac
by Isaac actually is the proper way to say it have you been oh I'm fine yourself pretty good
pretty good dodging these spraying trucks and helicopters and things like that of course it's
it's not just insecticide spray that's that's true yeah and you've been dodging helicopters
most of your life so that's also already well well trained as far as that goes this actually
this a lot of interesting things have happened in the past seven days not the least of which
is the introduction of a new area code one that affects you but I'm sure you don't know
anything about it because you live in with your head in the sand right as do most New Yorkers
very true what is this new area does anybody know what the new area code is introduced in
New York this this past week well there's nobody knows well mine 631 will be introduced on November
1st oh well in Suffolk County yes okay so that that does not that does not count but there is
one right here in the metropolitan area and I can see that our call is 646 the Manhattan 646 is
Manhattan but that's been here I think since since since July even though I've never seen a
646 number and I don't know anybody who has a 646 number so it was an act of legislation yeah yeah
I suppose that's what it was but no there's another area code that's introduced just on
October 1st well there's that Westchester thing with the 914 and the other yeah but we talked
about that you know that's got nothing to do with this it hasn't even been decided yet how
I'm just trying to cover all the bases all right well what I'll do is I'll go directly to the Bell
Atlantic web page here bring in with me October 1st 1999 the Bronx Brooklyn Queens and Staten
Island will be getting new a new area code known as 347 what three four seven that's right this is
old news Isaac it's an overlay or clearly you're not paying attention I've known about this for
over a year current customers keep the same area code okay good unless you don't pay your bill
well yeah but that's yeah but any customers who order new service add an additional line or move
may be assigned the new 347 area code when 718 numbers are unavailable most important do I now
have to dial 10 ah well here's important information to help you beginning October
1st all calls between area code 718 and 347 must be dialed with 10 digits 718 customers again you
keep your regular phone numbers all right to reach someone another area code you dial 1 plus
area code as you normally do to reach someone in the same area code simply dial the seven digit
telephone number as you do today well that's reassuring calling rates will not change a local
call remain I wonder if we can hold them to that they say here calling we're all in a chain that
means it can never change calling rates now that's not bad I like that as long as the other
area code exists they can't go down so we need to have somebody with three four seven like stay
something you have to wonder you know how thick people are though that they have to say these
things there is no change in the way customers reach 9-1-1 why would that be a change yeah if
you're in three four seven you have to dial 9-1-2 it's like that we can't handle 9-1-1 no it's
1718 9-1-1 I mean don't don't you get the impression they're speaking down to us like we
really don't understand anything what I don't understand is why they have to come up with a
stupid system in the first place where they come up with an area code like three four seven which
you don't even know about I don't know about four digit area cuz man it wouldn't resolve so many
problems anyway yeah but you can't go back in time to say let's use four digits you have to
deal with what we have right yeah but I was back in time and I was talking about it then so that's
that's just the way it was here's another tip for morons when giving a telephone number be sure it
includes the area code and this is of course an overlay area code it basically okay there's
something that is not geographical within the old area code so I keep my seven one eight and I'm a
very happy client yeah but what's unusual is that in most cases overlays do require 10-digit
dialing even within your area code but because here in New York we bitch about things so much
they made special exceptions both for six four six and three four seven so that's that's a good
thing it's good to be in New York let's see if there's any three four seven numbers out there
let's see what will we dial well you could test five five five one two one two and see if it
works on the exchange we pay a good amount of money for that well yes let's just see if there's
any exchanges whatsoever okay Dalton all right let's see if we can actually call three four
seven in the first place it might not even allow us to get there one three four seven let's let's
dial our own phone number okay two zero nine two nine hundred three I'm sorry your call cannot
be completed as dialed please check the number and try your call again or ask your operator
thank you hmm that's very generic message there yes but I did go through it went somewhere right
one somewhere so it's at least being right so you remember we can think of it might work you
know a number that always works no matter where you call what about the well no no
oh we knew an exchange we could just dial the info 9901 uh-huh yeah we don't know the exchange
that's that's the problem what's the first exchange they would assign now two two two
no two two one yeah let's try that ready
same error message
yep same error message long delay I'm sorry well now here's the thing nobody is
being cut over to this area code so there's nobody that we can say hey call us from this
area code or you know call the 2600 voice BBS and hear your number given with the with the area code
but if you got a phone number in Brooklyn after Brooklyn Queens Staten Island or the Bronx after
October 1st you may very well have a three four seven area code so if that's the case we'd like
to hear from you all right that's pretty exciting news right there but not nearly as exciting as
uh you hear this this piece of trash yesterday in the news MCI is buying sprint oh that little
thing yeah that little thing 129 billion dollar deal what what gives here's the biggest every
week we talk about the biggest corporate takeover in history you know every week there's a new one
I mean I don't know how much more you can you can you can get after this Microsoft acquires the
United States government well that's not gonna be worth that much but this is this is really
troubling I mean there's no more competition you know MCI was always number two sprint was always
number three now there's no more number three who's gonna be number three this is gonna be a
number one and a number two and no one's gonna know who number three is sorry it was number four
I don't know they kind of bounce up you know I think that was Worldcon before they were taken
over by MCI I don't know I don't know there was US tell but I got taken over by sprint they're all
being taken over and turned into one big mega corporation like in the beginning the only hope
is the natural progression of how things are supposed to be yeah it's a natural progression
and just like whole breakup of an AT&T was a very big mistake I mean the natural progression of life
is death so it's like you know I don't necessarily hold that as a as an optimistic thing MCI Worldcom
early Tuesday struck a 129 billion dollar pack to take over sprint in a much rumored deal in fact
somebody called us last week and rumored it right over the air and there were rumors before that
even and that that would be the world's largest corporate takeover the all stock transaction
linking the second and third largest US long-distance carriers include Sprint's PCS cellular
business what are they going to call it now MCI PCS no actually I know that's too long an acronym
you know the new company's going to be called right what you don't know Sprint Worldcom no
just Worldcom just Worldcom no MCI just Sprint that's what I that's what I'm told they take the
smallest company in the merger's name and they apply it to all three I don't know well I mean
it does sound pretty all enveloping Worldcom I understand yeah so it's a good name you got
Sprint you have MCI which were two like enormous ones and you had Worldcom which was comparatively
small but you got to take that name and apply it to the other two at the new company to be called
Worldcom will control about 32 percent of the US long-distance telephone market in the rapidly
consolidating telecom sector Sprint was seen as an attractive target because of its broadband
internet connection network and its cellular business so right away all that's being taken
over by a huge mega corporation and uh you know what really sucks about this someone already
registered Worldcom sucks.com oh but I got the other one the obscene one the oh using one of
F Worldcom.com off the other uh off the other uh uh registrar there I see by the way did you check
out F Giuliani.com recently oh I received a couple of emails about that is that is that is a piece of
work right there so if you know what I'm talking about if you know the the four-letter word
beginning with F that we can't say over the air and you know how to spell Giuliani after that
uh and know how to affix a dot com to that and stick a www in front of it go there for a real
piece of artwork uh I happen to be uh take keeping an eye on that I know that it's getting a lot of
hits like over a thousand just by word of mouth I mean wow yeah so if you didn't make it to the
museum uh this is the next best thing as far as um hard appreciation um we have other bits of news
in fact um I'd like to uh to read some mail some mail um concerning the Kevin Mitnick case
now every once in a while we send out Kevin's mail every couple of weeks or so usually um people
email to Kevin and we send it to him in prison we print it out we print it out so yeah obviously
it'd be kind of nasty to send a disk which obviously he can't make any use of but uh
we we go through it we weed out all the spam it's a lot of spam people people send pictures I mean
come on people send gifs and jpegs in email to Kevin in prison I mean what how is he supposed
to read that so um we we filter that kind of garbage out but uh some of this some of this
mail is just priceless you know we we look at it on the way out and he gets it all but some of it
is just unbelievable like the American Express you know well the shoes $29.95 yeah I'm not talking
about I'm not talking about the the advertisements I'm talking about the people oh the people are
just unbelievable now you too can send mail to Kevin in prison by the way he'll be in prison
until January 21st 2000 and uh he told me the other day that uh he even has a time when he'll
be released and that is 9 a.m pacific time wow so uh we're not sure what's going to happen out
there yet if there's going to be a big celebration keep uh tuned we'll let people know about that
better question is there going to be somebody there to pick him up oh of course okay and
probably carry him all over the place like you know a football star but we'll see as long as it's
not a cross-state one keep checking the website www.freekevin.com or 2600.com uh and listen to
this show of course we won't be on next week or the week after that because of fundraising but
we'll be on in force after that okay here's some mail and this is really uh some funny stuff
hi my name is christen she misspelled her own name my name is christen brady and i do not know
if any other kid can do this but i can stretch my skin really far i can stretch my neck a little
and i can also stretch the skin on my knee and on my elbow i can stretch my skin i do not know how
far but all the kid in my school thing i am so weird that all of my friends call me stretch
well i figured this out when my friend wanted me to go over to where she was and she pulled
my elbow and i like stretch and my friends was like ew and i was like cool and since then i like
and stretch my skin so can you please email me back soon all my friends are going to be waiting
for an answer yeah i'm 12 years old i was born in jersey city i am 12 right now going to be 13 in
november and i am a girl um that's really christine brady i mean come on this is this is this is mail
here this is this is this is america speaking uh we have this mail from from gerard all caps
he was very good but it is my time now
that's all it was all in caps all caps
i'll be hearing from him in prison at some point i guess um probably you know what the
same person yeah the same person sent another piece of mail right after that this one uh in
lowercase oh hello mr mitnick first i want to say that i understand you that makes one of us
because we don't understand you uh second why did you give them to catch you
you had discovered that this is not you you never steal anything
you never still anything still sdill yeah don't mail or email me i know you don't have time
please when you're back from prison do not do that again i count on you
one uh-huh one what he counts on kevin one never mind yeah hello this is daniel edmund mcdonnell
connor connor franklin jonas brad dean jonas and regal cantaris bricken emailing you to tell you
that we think that we beat a guinness book of world records first of all
brad invented a paper airplane that we flew farthest and longest time in the air
at least we think it beat the record because it flew over the trees at 1 000 feet in the air
and 1500 feet away from us please send us back send this back to what we'll send them back all
right why are they telling kevin mitnick this i don't you know we have the guinness records.com
site but that's true i guess we should put a little link up yeah we take people's word for
things like this paper airplane flying a thousand feet up in the air what are you gonna do send
somebody out to verify it well you gotta verify you can't just take some some kid's word about it
i don't know i don't know they took the press's word on what kevin did you know
now here's another all caps uh letter which uh beats out these ones in intelligence you're a
screw-up and have been since you were a kid you were messing around with other people's computers
and stealing software and services you knew what you were doing was illegal and you did it anyway
you were caught and you did it quit your whining and pay the piper jesus christ just grow up you
have a brain and some talent and you've been pissing it away on stupid bull s for years grow
up and do something productive i have zero sympathy for you stop wasting your life on stupid antics
while you still have life left to live sincerely annoyed robert m whitney senior 32 year old father
of three painter at uh state dot i swear it looks like a five-year-old wrote this and and it's just
unbelievable sometimes or an aoler now we send this to kevin because he gets a big kick out of
it as well you know the the so-called critics but you know it's it's very rare that you actually get
to talk to somebody who's a critic who who phrases things in a rational way instead it's like you
should be locked up for the rest of your life you know we don't mind if you're getting raped in
prison you should die there you know those aren't exactly rational arguments to to pose to people
that are in prison for accessing a computer you know maybe someone who who killed your mother you
might you know phrase things in that way and have that kind of passion but this is somebody who
simply looked at software i don't know you have to wonder what's up with these people what are they
so upset about what are they afraid of okay continuing uh i've read the facts presented
on your website and have to say that the entire world is against you that is what they would have
us believe rewritten history do you think possibly that you might be free if you did not hack into
systems illegally and with malicious intent but you did nothing wrong correct yeah i hope you rot
in prison and that if you get out sometime that you learn not to blame others for what you brought
on yourself and that your spin meisters who like waving web after web of lies distortion and half
truths get what is coming to them karma it is called karma brother what goes around comes around
well gotta go play outside a nice day today too bad you cannot join in but what do i know i use
web tv right ha ha toss a salad for me now put on a dress and dance like a nice little cell mate
that uh piece of wisdom coming from chuck anderson of dayton
oh it gets worse you know we're only reading the ones that are somewhat clean but uh for people
that think it's all it's all fun and games out there that everybody's uh joining hands and
singing kumbaya it's not quite like that there's a lot of uh well a lot of naysayers but i have to
say a lot of a lot of horses would show more intelligence than this um finally this is the
last one we're going to read i find it incomprehensible that anyone with kevin's record
and attitude can continue to be supported and even revered by the number of people who
who do it just proves what i have known for a long time that a large number of the disassociated
youth of this culture who are the technology experts and programmers upon whom the society
must come to rely are misanthropes and in some cases outright sociopaths i don't see what is
funny about hacking into important systems and damaging or destroying them it's this american
myth that the government and big business are automatically bad and individuals with cunning
and creativity are good no matter how destructive they are and kevin's repeated history of violating
the terms of parole indicate that he has no particular desire to stop again there's no
history of violating parole and in fact it was proven in court that he did not violate parole
simply did not come when they called him though that gentleman does make some other good points
okay go ahead uh he mentioned that the government is automatically assumed to be demonized i'll
agree with that well i don't see i'm not right i don't see how destruction of very important
systems for no apparent reason is also not right but what does that have to do with this case first
of all the government is not automatically assumed to be bad all right otherwise if they were
automatically assumed to be bad we'd be breaking him out of prison right now instead we respect
the laws we don't encourage people to break laws uh the the destruction of computer systems has
got nothing to do with kevin mitnick's case whatsoever so i mean why don't you just throw
in and you know murdering and torturing people and and and having sex with their torsos afterwards
is a very bad thing because it's got about as much to do with this case as as that i didn't
say it was appropriate for the uh the particular person this person sending the email to but i
you're saying he's making good points but the points make absolutely have nothing to do with
the case well my point kind of fringe we'll leave it at that all right okay um there is no cause
here no greater good this is just run-of-the-mill vandalism and destruction just with a new face on
it criminals are still criminals no matter how many people put up a website to deify them our
society depends upon information systems for survival what he has done here comes the good
analogies here is the equivalent of blowing up tracks along the transcontinental railroad in
1870 or poisoning the horses for the pony express these are analogies that are being said for the
first time uh there was nothing funny or novel about it gee whiz nobody gets hurt when you poison
a horse you blow up railroad tracks hey that's just free expression come on guys uh it's terrorism
plain and simple yeah he defines terrorism and then decides to uh blanketly encompass
other things his weapons of choice are a keyboard and a modem instead of a gun or a bomb
do you see a similarity between between guns and bombs and keyboards and and modems
i don't the potential effects on society are no less serious a lot of people say the same thing
about words you know words that carry a lot of weight but you know we don't outlaw words
nor should we ever outlaw words nor do we outlaw guns nor should we ever outlaw guns
oh don't get me started on that don't get me started on guns
for those reasons i don't think it's a stretch to call his deeds crimes against humanity
this is especially true if his hero or cult-like status encourages a number of others to follow
in his footsteps he's a common criminal and needs to be sentenced as such for his acts okay great
a common criminal would be out maybe four years ago he was not sentenced like a common criminal
with you there as for the misleading information on your website government conspiracies overly
harsh sentences etc you're either sadly naive or just outright liars first of all as a former
law clerk in federal district court oh boy i can tell you that sentencing in u.s government
courts is governed 100 by sentencing guidelines written by congress and there is little
discretion left to individual judges okay that's arguable well there is some truth in that but what
does that have to do with with saying the sentence is overly harsh the sentence is still overly
harsh no matter if it's congress saying it a judge or or whoever what was kevin finally sentenced
what was kevin finally sentenced to he was sentenced to uh i guess it's uh four four years
and uh and 11 months or something total now is that because they had to chew up the years that
he spent in prison waiting to be sentenced or was it because that was the reasonable there was there
was no there was no mandate saying they had to sentence him to that i mean he did sign a
sentencing agreement so it was convenient to say all right well we'll just take all the time you've
spent in prison we'll add six months to it let's put it this way if he went another five years
before he made an agreement of any sort they would not be offering him this deal they'd be
offering him a deal saying that he had to spend 10 years in prison okay all right that's that's
how it works they always time served yeah but they always they always bring it up to whatever
it is that you served if he had made this agreement two years ago then possibly he'd be out then okay
but of course they didn't offer the agreement i'm just trying to clarify that yeah um there are
certain minimums and those can be added on by objective factors that are brought up by prosecutors
during trial or sentencing um goes on and on and on and on about various things like that
i love the fact that kevin is now complaining about the estimate for his restitution
actually i didn't see kevin complaining about that anywhere but um this person says you don't
punch someone in the nose and then complain that you thought it would cost less for the plastic
surgery these analogies are just you know off the wall here if life in prison were possible
for these crimes i'd like to see him get it former law clerk as it is i hope the combination
of prison time and restitution will put to rest any question of this guy ever doing anything like
this again i don't know well at least he was sensible in most cases sensible saying someone
should go to prison for life compared to looking at software christenton or whatever well yeah
you're always going to find people who are a little crazier than the next person okay
um speaking of which uh david schindler the prosecutor um assistant u.s attorney david
schindler's drab 11th floor office at the federal courthouse belies his status as the man who put
the most notorious hackers of the 90s behind bars well he's now uh he's now moving on up
where is this article from this is from zd tv or zd net actually um this month schindler 37
is leaving his wife as a sorry it's life i really didn't mean to say that let's retract that one
pretty quickly i've seen that phrase so many times it just sort of fell off my tongue leaving his
life as a prosecutor leaving his wife obviously if she has any brain she'll be leaving him first
settling into a swank new workplace as partner at the law firm of latham and watkins behind him he
leaves a legacy that includes not only bringing down a governor but also locking up the most
high-profile hackers yet to hit the computer industry at latham's offices housed in a sleek
glass building that towers over the rest of downtown la schindler will tackle intellectual
property internal investigation and other computer-related cases schindler says he's
leaving because after 10 years in the federal prosecutor's office it was time to do something
different it sort of got to the point where i realized i wanted some new challenges and a change
of venue uh-huh yeah well at least he won't be putting people in prison probably trying to keep
people out of prison i guess as a lawyer no he'll just be trying to make them pay lots and lots of
money yeah that too all right we'll be taking phone calls two and two two zero nine two nine
hundred some um do you hear about this uh get the buzz from sam donaldson abc trumpets and ads for
its first internet news broadcast live only on the web as it turns out donaldson isn't the only
one live on the web according to a report from ap viewers who email messages to donaldson and his
guests are getting a lot more exposure than they bargained for chatters who posted comments on the
news program's website following monday's debut show had their four-digit internet address posted
too i guess they mean four digits well this is this is not a quad or yeah this is uh this uh
where'd i get this from i'm not sure this is the standard that's what it is the standard.com
i think they mean ip address okay yeah that address is an id that anyone can use to track
down real world identities uh take mark from dc he wondered when monday's program guest fcc chairman
william canard would take a greater role in bridging the digital economic divide uh using
the four-digit ip address that abcnews.com published ap was able to identify him as a
justice department employee so uh or he was just working from the justice department network
thing is you have to realize if you send mail over the internet in any regards unless you really
go to some trouble your your computer is identified well i find it interesting that they
say they're the first news broadcast to deal with interviews and things when cnn talkback live has
been doing this for how many years yeah and and there's many more too so i'm not exactly sure
well i what the big deal is i was at cnn talkback live once so i was down in atlanta yeah they have
that right in the mall yeah it's kind of cool i gotta take it uh russian internet company
resistance wins for now the former kgb lost a round to a local internet service provider
in volgograd that challenged its swarm 2 regulations that attempt to put all internet
communications in russia in the hands of the secret police bayard slavia managed to score
because it was the first isp who took trouble to litigate itself out of the fsb grip according to
gist newsflash an industry newsletter other telecoms prefer to resort to the traditional
russian means of informal negotiations which fsb almost always wins uh saint petersburg freedom
advocate boris post tensev says the moscow tells the moscow times this doesn't mean that the
pressure is off they'll try to tackle him from another angle gist reports that bayard slavia
remains unplugged so the battles for freedom of speech go on all kinds of different places
our researchers from france's national center for scientific research warned in a newsletter
last week that french buyers of apple's new iBook notebook computer could be in for a nasty
surprise if they use the machine's airport wireless transmitter for accessing the internet
the device uses the same 2.4 gigahertz waveband reserved by the french military
meaning an iBook user surfing the web near an army unit could end up scrambling defense force
communications and thus risk a thirty thousand dollar fine and six months in jail it's kind of
fun when they pull out the df gear and you have 14 guys in bdu show up with m16s at your small
little happy looking iBook a clearly irked rear admiral jacques bizard head of the national
military bureau for frequency use told agents france press unlike other countries in europe
this waveband is allocated for military use in france he added apple probably didn't think about
it and the problem wasn't resolved in time but we're not going to scrap all our communications
equipment simply because iBook has suddenly shown up so it should be an interesting uh it should be
easy enough to filter i mean i doubt very much that the transmitters within the iBook themselves
are strong enough to really do much of anything the justice department is trying to save children
before they turn into hackers with its three hundred thousand dollar funding of the cyber
citizen partnership and awareness campaign coordinated by the information technology
association of america the justice department assumes the unusual role of helping to educate
budding web users about how to be responsible law-abiding surfers the cyber citizen partnership
announced in march is a joint justice ita effort aimed at protecting the country's internet
infrastructure from outlaw hackers and other criminals faced with a security breach law
enforcement officials don't know at first if they're confronting a foreign terrorist a college
student or a couple of sixth graders who are having some fun with dad's computer
yes um that's uh
that's inspiring don't you think well i've been debating that uh with a somebody who emails
oth recently uh-huh and uh well i i it could be good and bad
i'm trying to find the uh the actual website here i imagine if you wander around the justice
department you'll you'll find it um i don't know it basically oversimplifies things and
demonizes people in unnecessary uh ways again i'll find them at 212-209-2900 a couple more pieces
of mail then we'll get right to the phone calls uh this is from a listener uh you had a guy on one
time talking about uh the ontario real estate online services oreos.com uh discussing back to
me discussing that nabisco was fighting for the domain name well not only that he let the domain
name go really yeah and uh it was it was lying around this this person bob from new york city
did a uh mailed us saying that uh he found out that it was available to the public well guess
who grabbed it you grabbed it we grabbed it yes well i offered to host his site in the states
well now you can do it because okay now it's our site so if anyone has any suggestions for what we
should put on oreos.com please uh please let us know oth at 2600.com just email us um this is
regarding the gentleman with the mouse cursor pointer problem if you recall uh there are two
things it could be to my knowledge having had it happen once or twice with my machine it happens
when you get the combination of a browser running and the windows swap file system being totally
screwy as it is becoming overloaded when this happens windows is unable to render both the
browser content and the pointer other than that there is supposedly unverified a small virus
that affects windows swap system effectively shutting down windows use of your system ram
so uh i don't think uh he offered a solution to this point about the problem so uh now now
we really have something to worry about okay i know that this friday october 1st uh being the
first friday of the month 2600 will be holding the monthly meeting at the city corp center by
the pay phones the problem is i don't know what time it is could you reply to me and let me know
what the time is well obviously we can't get to this person in time well i but it's five ish for
next month yeah it's basically the way it works this is why we do this because it's it's it's
simple to remember all meetings take place the first friday of every month and most times they
start at 5 p.m uh in the magazine on the website we uh we give different times it starts at 6 p.m
or if it starts at 4 p.m uh we mentioned that and um whenever you get out of work yeah basically
just get down there whenever you whenever you can uh first friday of the month seems to be
working with uh with most people i know there are some people that can't make it the first friday of
the month thing is you know if you have it on the first friday of the month and the second tuesday
of the month then someone's going to want to have it on the third wednesday of the month before you
know it nobody knows when 2600 meeting day is so um we're open to suggestion for those people i know
there are also smaller towns that want to have meetings too and if you have a close-knit community
go ahead what i was thinking of doing just every shopping mall every shopping mall in the world
has a hacker time a time where hackers can come to the food court yes and let's say it's friday
at 5 p.m every friday 5 p.m if you're in a food court that's when the hackers you know get together
because we can't possibly list every single town with a mall in the magazine well this is the
general idea behind the monthly meetings as we've structured them though yeah but the thing is there
are so many people want to have meetings so many people from so many towns who can't travel to big
cities so again we're open to suggestion on that oth at 2600.com is our email address um dear off
the hook just wanted to let you know that i tried dialing 700 x x x x and 700 555 4141 on my cell
phone and they worked identifying the regional carrier as 9x yes they do still live and the
long distance as sprint which is my cellular carrier i also tried this on my office phone
and it did not work we don't have a sophisticated pbx it's an old 18t merlin system when you dial
nine you get an honest to god outside dial tone i do know however that my employer is not using
bell atlantic for a carrier though i can't remember what the name of the carrier is
merlin's cool from albany yeah merlin's okay but um i like merlin i think uh there are some cos
that don't have the 700 exchange working quite properly yet so that might be the problem in that
particular situation again 700 plus four digits will tell you your uh your regional carrier
1 700 555 plus just about any four digits before 141 is usually what people use
that will tell you your long distance company uh and finally this in response to the uh master
card that i was forcefully sent a few weeks ago i know of at&t's ucs master cards firsthand because
i got one as well though mine was actually asked for they love giving credit cards to us stupid
college kids to max out and pay 200 a month in fees for anyway if you haven't verified yours
yet they do ask you to touch tone in your social security number as a supposed security measurement
to make sure it's really you activating your card and not some guy who picked it up out of
the mail or something i found ucs to be one of the worst financial organizations ever they have
held payments before to get late fees out of me uh the bill was due on the 15th i mailed a check
out to them on the second and it just so happens to get posted the day after the due date uh they
hawk their cards to naive college students just out of high school recruiting heavily on campuses
hoping to lure kids into purchasing all sorts of stuff and getting interest from them for years to
come several uses for a non-activated ucs at&t master card should include but not be limited to
a burning b shredding c lock picking d rather odd square frisbees e burning again a drastic
campaign attempting to discredit and otherwise cripple at&t and city bank for unethical business
practices i like that one yeah it's a good one uh g burning some more oh it has to melt before it
burns yes and that uh that mail comes from jason thanks jason for all the uh helpful suggestions
there all right two one two two zero nine two nine hundred let's see uh who's out there oh you
know in addition to the uh to the merger of sprint and mci which i believe still can be defeated by
either the fcc or the shareholders um the largest radio gathering you know they own something like
500 stations am fm was uh taken over by clear channel so now we have an entity that owns 900
radio stations it's amazing where are we going what is going to happen i i just it's like a
science fiction story really is all right two and two two zero nine two nine hundred good evening
hello yes speak up please yes emmanuel i don't know what that sound was but
that sound was a sound of your voice and you'll have about 10 seconds more to listen to it
anyway um you were talking about corporate mergers with mci and sprint and all that you know i just
um uh got you know my phone bill with of course the three dollar monthly service charge minimum
thing where i don't uh use a long distance where i don't when i don't your time is a dollar and
four cents put a comment on your sentence and make a question quick and then when i
disconnect the long distance and have no one different company they have the audacity
to call me and say oh well you're not using sprint or mci or whatever what did you why is that
that you're not using and i just tell them what's your question rebel okay um my question is is that
how are we going to avoid these charges these three dollar monthly and then if you dial a
carrier access code if you don't have a long distance company right they charge you for that
too of course well there if you list yourself without long distance you'll get charged a buck
four each month for not having long distance carrier and then you use one of those 10 10
numbers and it'll just sit on your bill it's what i do which 10 10 number do you use uh 10 10 660
they sent me something in the mail and they don't charge you per per usage i think they do i mean
they don't charge you like a three dollar fee if you if you start using it no no no i don't think
a lot of these companies do i've never checked i don't i've only called long distance like once or
twice actually actually i think the one time i used 10 10 220 so uh regardless i don't it's
it's it's a ripoff and they they get you every way you face and it's uh it's an unfortunate
thing i suggest going back to smoke signals or flares good evening you're in the air
speak up please yes go ahead hey i just wanted to tell you about uh pc weeks having a
hack pc week thousand dollar prize thing they're trying to find linux and nt security holes didn't
didn't they do that a couple of weeks ago or is this a new one i was just i just heard about it a
couple days ago i figured i'd call and ask okay do you have any information like websites or
anything like that that's hackpcweek.com i think okay well straightforward yeah that's pretty
straightforward and uh hopefully somebody will win that challenge i heard a rumor somebody did
win that challenge actually yes but i have serious problems with that entire yeah i do too because
you know when someone says hack this site you don't know if there's even a site attached to it
you know you have no idea exactly what it is that they're doing it's a big publicity stunt for them
precisely yeah and they you know you don't really get anything out of it and you know if you stick
if you stick like a dead site up there with just a name on it and say hack this site you know we
had 30 000 attempts in 24 hours and nobody got in you don't tell people hey there wasn't a system
there to hack into in the first place which is why nobody got in even if there is a system that's
there do you think that the people who are actually talented enough to do something are
going to waste their time throwing themselves at this site for even a thousand bucks the thousand
bucks is kind of interesting it's somewhat new but i've seen a lot of these companies who just
throw up a website and say hack us at which point when they don't get hacked in two weeks they say
oh our wonderful product is so completely secure nobody can possibly get into it then they market
on on that uh little platform that they've created for themselves artificially and then sometime down
the line their product is going to fail miserably when somebody with talent is right going to attack
it so you know i i believe and this is something we came up with a couple years ago on the show
if if they really are that uh you know uh in love with their product they really think it's secure
then give us a list of the people currently using it and we'll try to hack them because we know
they're using systems if it's really that secure then they're fine you know and and and then you
have some some motivation to actually like learn something people aren't motivated by a thousand
dollars and i'm motivated by the money aspect that's not what hacking is certain people are
certain people are but they're usually not the hacking type in the first place so the profit
oriented people that give everybody a bad name correct and that's what they're trying to to draw
out by by putting these financial incentives on things hackers do it for the for the love of
knowledge and just for uh for the sake of wasting a whole lot of time and staying up all night all
right 202-209-2900 good evening you're on the air hello yes go ahead um
okay you're gonna have to talk a lot faster than that good evening you're on the air
hi how you doing pretty good i try calling into the uh new overlay area codes uh-huh when i try
calling from um the number you want to try dialing is the business office for bell atlantic 890
2700 it exists in all bell atlantic area codes thank you including 646 and um 347 however yeah
when i try dialing it from my at&t cell phone uh-huh at&t blocks it really so at&t doesn't
yet know about 347 right but if you try from a landline phone uh you try dialing well about
landing landline phone you dial into it you go through right to the business office and you go
into their voicemail prompt which of course tells you that it's closed right okay that's a winner
thank you sir thanks for the information okay um you know it's interesting at&t doesn't yet know
about this you know how they charge us they try to charge us to tell us about area codes you think
we can get some money out of them for telling them about an area code you know give it a try i'm not
gonna not this time but i will try the um i will try calling the number and see if it works
8900 right
uh-oh i'm sorry your call cannot be didn't work from here so it's it's not programmed
everywhere apparently well who do we use as a carrier um we don't use bell atlantic i think
yeah that's if it's just bell atlantic they're they're obviously on top of it but it might take
a little longer to propagate through everywhere else right which is kind of silly they did start
using it already so it's yeah it's kind of uh kind of annoying a little bit of a problem all
right let's take another phone call good evening you're on the air hello yeah speak up please uh
yeah i just want to let you know i found another uh dictaphone thing you did yeah and is it as as
bad as the one we found a couple of uh weeks ago yeah really yep well that's uh that's certainly
something what kind of organization is it uh another hospital it's another another hospital
um well i'll leave this up to you if you want to email us the information or um i i don't advise
giving out the information on the air only because it could you know really mess things up for people
who are in hospitals how about i talk to you later that sounds good that sounds good when are you the
person who found the first one yes oh well tell us something about that i didn't recognize your
voice i'm sorry uh um you actually just found this by by dialing randomly yeah that's what i
did that's uh that's pretty that's pretty amazing yeah um you've come across a lot of stuff that way
uh-huh um yeah it's another they don't have passwords set up it's the same same deal okay well
for those people interested uh we'll we'll look into this and if it does pan out you can count on
another story on our web page and uh maybe some other news organizations will take an interest
this time but um yeah you know i i have to say it um it was a very um responsible thing the way
that that you released the information you know you didn't um use it for any bad purposes or uh
you know right i mean what what could you have done uh i don't know i just basically had enough
information about people i couldn't you know terrorize people if i wanted to you know well
yeah you can always terrorize people but i think you can actually you can also add information
uh to their to their charts uh you can delete information yeah um but it didn't even occur to
you to do these right and hopefully i'm not inspiring you to do that now exactly um but
that's that's what a lot of people seem to fail to realize uh when when they hear about things like
this hackers could have done this but uh we don't all have bad intentions right right so basically
for people who are looking for interesting things what kind of uh advice would you give them
uh if you're really bored one day just pick up the phone start dialing and you know total
free numbers uh-huh uh come across a lot of nifty little things um voicemail systems that have a
whole bunch of stuff in them like uh cellular phone companies that have you know their passwords
set up to default uh all kinds of stuff they talk about passwords to switches and wow you come across
a lot of stuff do you uh do you dial sequentially or randomly uh sequentially if i find if i find a
couple good things in that same area sometimes i'll just bounce around like different numbers
or you know i'll start from zero zero zero zero and work my way up uh there are three um total
free uh area cuts now 800-888 and 877 which is your favorite uh 888 why is that uh just find
the needed stuff in 888 really yeah it's probably newer yeah it is newer they do put new things but
you'd think people would would know more you know the the people who put things up more recently
would be aware of security well they're not maybe they don't care you know maybe they think nobody
is ever going to find out about it yeah well we're here to tell them different some of us don't have
lives we scan all day all right hey thanks for the information and i guess i'll be in touch with
you later right all right take care all right bye sir anonymous uh contributor there there's
nothing wrong with not having a life no no that's true you know that better than anything at all
right all right good evening you're in the air um yeah i'm calling about the you know earlier
you said about the how stupid it is that you know there's all these new area codes coming up in new
york city and the whole area um but you said you know a long time ago that you said there was an
alternative solution instead of the three-digit area code right what do you what do you mean by
that the alternative solution that that i i came up with and i know a number of other people came
up with was to have a four-digit area code where basically you keep the unique three-digit area
code say in our case it was two one two and you simply add a digit so uh instead of having two
one two and and six four six and three four seven and even seven one eight you could have had two
one two one two one two two two one two three and that way anybody calling you would know where
they're calling they'd recognize the two one two area code yeah it wouldn't be two one two anymore
it'd be two on two x but i think that's a whole lot better than introducing area codes where even
the people who live there don't know about them right random numbers generated yeah i mean you
know we're going to run out of those two anyway so eventually we will have to expand the number
of digits in the in the in the phone number wait a second yeah you're now calling for people to dial
11 digits and you absolutely have to dial 11 digits because even the people in 2-1-2 have
their numbers changed well i'm sure you could figure out a way around that where uh you just
you don't dial the 2-1-2 you just dial the the the fourth digit i mean so it would have to be
something aside from a one or a zero right well if there was a universal system it wouldn't matter
you would need a doctor's office at one two three four five six seven right i'm uh the i don't know
mcdonald's at one two three four five six seven you have 2-1-2 i'm a brand new mcdonald's i have
2-1-2-1 no no i have 2-1-2-1 you have 2-1-2-2 oh so you everybody has four digits so you lose
your 2-1-2 exactly everybody loses there are no more three digit area codes that's how the plan
works so now you're not only four now you're not only uh forced to go to a 10 digit code like
even everybody but new yorkers who gripe are like being forced to do where you have to dial
10 digits now you have to dial with no possible exceptions 11 digits not necessarily because
let's say we keep the one plus plan you know where you dial one in front of an area code and
we don't use one as a first digit after the new four digit area code you could still actually you
don't use one as the fourth digit of the area code if you dial say two one two three four five
six uh you would be getting the equivalent of 2-1-2-2-1-2-3 whatever i can i can write
it out for you later on paper but basically you don't have to dial an area code every single time
with that plan you definitely don't questionable but okay all right thanks uh thanks for the call
let's go on to another call here good evening you're on the air good evening hi hello yes go
ahead isn't bell atlantic bitching that it's running out of phone numbers in new york city
or is this is just in manhattan um i think uh they're bitching about running out of phone
numbers everywhere because i just got something in the mail and they just contacted me on the phone
that they're offering um phone numbers that people can call me on right but i can't call
out on and they're like additional phone numbers in my prefix yeah and they ring differently when
they when i call you it rings two short rings and one long one or something crazy like that
yeah they're giving away these things you know for virtually nothing phone numbers how is this
possible because that's why they're running out of phone numbers because they're giving away all
these all these other numbers and encouraging people to use them and not only that you know
they for for large corporations it's even worse they give them away in in blocks of 10 000 when
only you know a handful are used well here's something else that you're always calling that
you can't get the time for free uh-huh if you're an at&t customer yeah and you're calling outside
of your yes time area that you get a little recording that says it's seven or whatever
time it is in the area where you were calling that's right you do get that only for those
minutes uh no because what that happens while the phone is ringing sometimes it even gets cut
off by the person answering it only happens okay then it only happens when you're calling within
the united states would be nice if it happened if you're calling all different parts of the world
and it doesn't happen in the same area because you have to call somebody out of the area and
hope that they don't pick up you have to call somebody out of your time region right like you
have to call like like out of the time zone and it happens before it starts ringing no actually
yeah i have to disagree with that because i've had people pick up in the middle of that recording
so uh it it might take a little longer for some exchanges to start ringing it might take a little
long for people to actually pick up but uh otherwise people would be complaining that
it takes longer to connect a call now and i don't think they want that another thing yes
bill atlantic doesn't bill atlantic take care of all of what new york state uh they take care of
most of new york state there are some parts of rochester that have independent phone companies
well i mean like they take care of what the 516 like yes ireland suffolk with the exception of
fisher's island 788 exchange okay so if i'm calling within the bell atlantic region shouldn't
i be charged for a local call uh if you're calling within a particular ladder yes if you're calling
say up to buffalo then that's considered a long distance call even though it's within the same
phone company maybe a regional call uh that is not a regional call that's a long distance call
really what if i'm calling from let's say brooklyn to let's say nassau county is that's a regional
call but but again like you know it's like what decides what's regional what's local and what's
long distance regional is is within your ladder but not within your local calling area for instance
brooklyn and brooklyn is local brooklyn to nassau is regional brooklyn to uh to the bronx is also
local uh nassau to suffolk is regional so now you can have a choice of regional companies uh now if
you go outside the ladder like say north of 914 uh say suffolk county to albany that's a long
distance call even though both companies even though the company is the same on both ends you
need a long distance carrier to get there it's it's confusing as hell the best guide is like
the front of your white pages where they list the tables for uh the different rates for calling
various prefixes and different area codes uh-huh yeah they're running out of space you ever see
the area code maps now they're scary you can't you need to like zoom in on all of them now
chicago alone has something like eight area codes all right see if we can fit in a couple more phone
calls good evening you're on the air oh that's an interesting call right there let's try this one
good evening you're on the air hello yes go ahead yeah are you aware of the uh new marketing uh
scheme by bell atlantic about uh local calling packages uh why don't you tell us okay uh about
a month ago i got a little thing in my in with my bill that uh said now you don't have to pay for
every local call and which i thought was great because my local calls were more than my long
distance usually and they tried for like 10.6 cents a call or something like that so the packages
were i think 200 free 200 calls for 1995 a month 300 for 29.95 and 400 for 49.95 so none of those
packages really suited me so i called them up they didn't mention any other packages or any
unlimited options or anything like that okay when i called them they were very reluctant to tell me
that for 26 bucks you can have unlimited calling they don't mention any of their advertisements in
their bill so there's a lot of people i would assume who aren't calling them up or you know
or they're calling up and asking for one of these packages we're paying uh 40 bucks for 400 calls
when i could make 800 calls and pay 26 bucks they don't advertise their unlimited package for 26
dollars yeah i mean there are a couple of different unlimited type of packages they have
one involves calling everything within your region say uh the metropolitan area nassau county western
suffolk or eastern suffolk if you call within one of those zones uh you you pay for each call but
it's not timed or you could have another service where you you can call as many times as you want
and not pay anything but to a smaller region like say your central office and a couple of the
surrounding ones right and then you pay per minute for every call inside your region outside of that
right so there's that those are the two basic rates i don't i don't know about this new one
that they're introducing it sounds like a scam though what i'm trying to bring up here is the
fact that they are you know they they close this mailer and it gives you these three options
and then when i called them and asked them if there are any more options they said no at first
and then they finally with a little prodding told me yeah for 26 bucks i can have unlimited
to the same areas you know i'm saying to the same right regions right all i'm trying to bring to
your attention is the fact that you know why spend 40 bucks to get 400 calls when you can get unlimited
calls for 26 there's no need to pay any more than 26 yeah that's true and uh you know i think it's
uh i tried to leave a voicemail for asa aaron's about this because i think a lot of people are
getting these bills and a lot of people don't question these things about bell atlantic yeah
or they have so many phone numbers they don't even look at the bills anymore exactly yeah and it's
like you know there's people now who you don't know about that 26 unlimited we're paying 40 bucks for
400 calls well the the two the two phrases to remember are flat rate calling and message rate
calling those are the two services offered simply ask what does it cost to use this what does it
cost to use that and uh don't accept any any any more hype thanks uh thanks for the call
uh i guess we have time for one more quick one good evening you're on the air
hi what are you guys rating lately as the best all around uh cell service in terms of service
not price but uh continuous service in the area well i'll tell you this it's not spring pcs it
depends on where you want to go and i've never heard anyone really complain about bell atlantic
yeah that's that's that's true though i don't really know anybody who uses bell atlantic i
know a couple of people but they're usually very happy about it uh-huh i'll say this about
omnipoint i was talking to somebody on the phone the other day from new jersey all the way out to
the island i was driving and i didn't lose signal once and it sounded good the whole time the
disadvantage is that i'm gonna have to put my house up for sale to pay for that call because
you know that they're very expensive sprint pcs is cheap but the service is really you know
questionable at best uh speaking of questionable things and uh then we're out of here um driving
in tonight i have to see this little blue xerox mimeograph piece of paper on the toll booth i
don't know whose idea it is to put that there but you know i had to stop to read it because
obviously it's going to do with easy pass i mean you know this is a really stupid way to get word
out you're going to cause an accident by making people stop to read this thing uh apparently now
it's against the law for you not to have your easy pass on your window you can't hold it in
your hand anymore you'll get a fine a ten dollar fine if they catch you doing it isn't that amazing
how they how the city is just like slowly changing the rules first it's like oh you can
keep in this little aluminum bag and uh you know use whenever you want be charged or well i know
people who have two easy passes one for their company and one for their personal use and you
have to like put the one that you don't want charged into your silly little bag yeah well
now you would have to mount it on your window before you actually go through the toll booth
if you if you're caught holding it in your hand you're subject to a fine no reason for this it
doesn't uh work any differently it's going to work if you hold it in your hand as well as put it on
your window uh i think it's it's in keeping with the the other recent change which says that it's
not legal anymore to to swap the tags to use it for one car this day one car another day you have
to it has to match can you say tracking device oh i can say it all right okay good i knew you
could i think a lot of people are starting to believe it we'll see how that transpires hey we
won't be back next week or the week after that because of fundraising but uh you can catch a
brand new edition of off the hook in uh three weeks at the usual time from 8 to 9 p.m thanks
everybody for calling in thanks for all those people listening over the internet and various
other places and you can write to us oth at 2600.com on the internet or if you have pencil
and paper write to off the hook care of wbai 120 wall street new york new york 1 0 0 0 5
until three weeks from now this is emmanuel goldstein have yourselves a good night
and good night from isaac as well we'll see you in three weeks
now
so
emergency alert on october 4th the supreme court rejected death row journalist mumia abu jamal's
writ of satuary and pennsylvania governor thomas ridge said he will hold a press conference this
week to announce the signing of a new death warrant this is a very serious situation please
come to the mumia coalition meeting this wednesday october 6 39 west 14th street second floor between
5th and 6th avenues 7 p.m if you cannot attend but want to do work leave your name and number on our