people to understand that feeling and with that Jerry Kelly thank you so much
I yeah let's see if I can get this stuff to work this is pretty wild
Jerry again ladies and gentlemen this is Mike Levine the expert witness
triangle of death is out there you gotta tune in next week and I hope you guys
are tape recording this and I hope you're gonna tape record this next week
in the week after because this is a classic you're not just not gonna hear
it anywhere else of course I'm engineering myself that's the rough
spots right here and I apologize for that but yeah I mean hentai be cool
last time I said Monica Vianney until next week and you do Los Angelenos
Mira, que no te lo pierdas. Don't miss this show, okay?
you are writing very slowly this morning well that's because I don't always
remember how to spell certain words you mean potato no I can spell potato oh yeah
spell it don't ask me to spell potato why not because I'm trying to remember
how to spell WBAI WBAI? I made a membership pledge and I want to fulfill
it you haven't fulfilled your pledge yet I'm trying not to make any spelling
errors are you trying to be the last person to pay why is there a prize for
that maybe a potato I just want the spelling to be correct it's WBAI
Pacifica I know how to spell Pacifica how do you spell WBAI WBAI oh just like
it sounds now spell potato I'm not writing a check to a potato no you're
writing a check to WBAI fulfill your pledge to WBAI spelled WBAI there is no
prize for being the last to pay no one will win not even a potato
and you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York time for off the hook
now I can't make a cough
it couldn't get much worse
but if they could they would
for Billy Bo
the best expect the worst
I hope that's understood
for Billy Bo
Pop Music
that a very good evening this election day 1999 the program is
Off the hook, Emanuel Goldstein here with you this Tuesday night.
And Isaac's here too.
Yes, I am.
Good morning, Isaac.
Did you go to vote?
Oh yeah, I sure did.
I was actually pretty amazed by the whole system.
I'm always amazed by the system.
I'm amazed by stupid things.
I'm amazed by intelligent things.
Intelligence being the actual machine, you know, the actual voting machine.
That is a mechanical marvel, that thing.
Because sometimes you have to vote for nine people on one particular area
and, you know, only one person will be here.
But it knows how many you voted for, no matter which levers you pull.
There's something going on in there that's really pretty amazing.
And all it does is basically just punch a hole for a ballot or whatever it does.
On the other side, yeah.
But you've got to use the really big lever.
Yeah, you use the really big lever and you just feel like you've accomplished something.
But, yeah, it's something I never cease marveling at.
There's a lot of things I never cease marveling at.
So there's one hour left in New York to vote.
Did you vote?
I voted.
That's good.
I don't advise people going outside now.
I really don't.
I almost died just now walking into the building.
Yeah, you look a little damp there.
Well, just walking into the building from a few feet away,
first of all, I almost didn't make it into the building.
We have winds of, I think, over 60.
Actually, I think they're around 80 miles an hour.
We're right on the water here, so maybe that's got something to do with it.
Yeah, a little wind tunnel at the end of Wall Street.
I've never seen anything like this, and I've been out in hurricanes.
The door to my car snapped right off.
It didn't fall off, but it went snap, and I think it's really broken now.
I don't know what that is.
Is that insurance or is that an accident?
I don't know.
It's an act of God.
An act of God.
Well, I've got some things to say to God after the show.
You know, I never could figure this out either.
I was going through the polls on the voting machine.
I'm a little flushed, and I'm also soaking wet.
I'm sitting on a stool so I won't get the chair wet.
It's a traumatic experience.
And I almost risked my life putting the quarters into the meter.
Everyone was laughing at me standing on the sidewalk
because I'm trying to put quarters in the meter.
Anyone's going to check now during a monsoon to see if there are quarters.
Think about that.
I didn't even know if the machine worked this time because you can't see the display.
It's pretty silly.
But I was wondering, you know, I'm there voting for the town highway clerk, right,
the person in charge of highways,
and this one running on the right-to-life party.
Now, what does the highway clerk have anything to do with abortion?
You know, it's really kind of silly when you think about it.
I mean, if this person's going to be thinking about issues like that
when they're supposed to be thinking about potholes,
maybe they won't make a very good highway clerk.
I don't know.
Those little things run through my mind in the 20 or so minutes I stood in the voting machine.
You were standing in the machine for 20 minutes?
Well, yeah.
I had to think over every decision.
This is important, Isaac.
This is elections.
So you're that guy that I, like, have to stand behind forever waiting for them to make up their minds.
Well, I got right in.
I didn't have to wait at all.
Okay.
Yeah.
I did hear some muttering as I was leaving about having to wait a long time.
People don't seem very friendly in polling places.
This is why you look at the people who are running before you enter the actual machine.
It kind of speeds the process.
Yeah, I know, but you don't really feel like you're voting unless you're inside the actual booth.
Anyway, those of you in other parts of the country where there aren't monsoons and where it's different time zones, I'm sure you still have time to vote.
Of course, this isn't a major election.
This is a minor election as far as candidates go, local candidates, things like that,
although they are voting on things like changing the city constitution.
So it is kind of important to get out there and voice your opinion on that.
What else happened this week?
We have a new area code.
Uh-oh.
I'm in a new area code now.
Oh, that's right.
Even though nowhere is it reflected, I do believe it works if you dial it.
Let's see if we can get a dial tone here.
Okay.
I'm now in the 631 area code, which thrills me no end.
Let's see what happens when we call up the 2600 voicemail system using 631 instead of 516.
That little tone means it's going through.
I don't know what that tone means.
Oh, you know what that tone means?
It means it wants a long-distance code.
Because our phone system is so stupid, it thinks that that's long-distance,
even though it was never long-distance.
I'm going to try.
I'll enter a long-distance code and see if that makes it happy.
Of course, 516 still works.
It will work until...
Okay, I think...
Bring it down.
Yeah.
All right.
I wasn't sure what it was waiting for.
Let's see if that works.
516 will still work until April 1st.
We're sorry.
The number you are calling cannot receive calls at this time.
Okay.
Please call again later.
That's interesting.
I never heard that recorded before.
Have you paid your bills, sir?
Cannot receive calls.
Well, I can prove it.
I'll call using the 516.
Okay.
No long-distance code request.
Oh, you know what?
They do request long-distance.
How about that?
Hopefully, I remember what the code I just put in.
I guess I didn't remember it.
I'm still flustered from almost losing my life just a few minutes ago.
Oh, well, that's okay.
We're patient.
Yeah.
I don't think I can remember the code now.
I've been put on the spot, so I thought that was the same thing.
I just...
Okay, wait.
I think I remember it now.
Last I'm going to try.
Okay.
There we go.
That's a winner.
Now, this should go right through.
It shouldn't get you a silly recording.
It should get our silly recording, but not...
Cannot receive calls at this time.
What does that mean?
If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again.
If you need help, stay on the line, and a hacker will assist you shortly.
Welcome.
Hey.
That's us.
That's us.
So, we have to change all the stationary now?
All the stationary, all the billboards, everything that has a phone number in it must be changed.
We got a subsidy for this, right?
Until the next time they decide to change an area code on us.
It's really annoying.
I heard Westchester got to keep 914, and all the other counties are really upset that they have to switch their area code sometime in the future.
So, that's the latest as far as that goes.
If you make a call from 631, it still shows up as 516 on caller ID devices, and I believe calling 800 number.
So, actually, it's as if it doesn't exist.
And here's the other weird thing.
I'm in 631.
If I dial 1631 and a number, it goes through.
Now, that doesn't make sense.
It shouldn't go through because that's my area code.
It shouldn't allow that to go through because most times when you dial your own area code, it tells you not to do that.
And I know this is an overlay, but this is an exceptional overlay where you don't have to dial your own area code.
Maybe it's an optional thing.
For people who want to dial their area code, I guess they let that stay.
It's a just-in-case sort of thing.
Or it could be preparing for the future when they force us to dial our own area codes.
And we have 10-digit numbers.
All right.
You hear about this hacker attacking Kentucky County's weather sirens?
No, I did not.
Oh, this comes from APBnews.com.
The Boone County early warning weather system that alerts residents to a threatening storm or a tornado has been sabotaged by someone who has cloned the tones needed to trigger the alarm.
Over the last few weeks, 29 sirens scattered across this rural Kentucky County have gone off, prompting a flood of phone calls to the police.
Our outdoor emergency sirens have been activated at odd hours, such as 1 a.m. and at 7 a.m. on a recent Saturday.
You never get a storm then.
It's an odd hour.
These did not come from our central dispatch.
It had to come from a remote location, either a fixed site or a mobile site.
And we believe at this point that it came from a mobile site.
Ooh.
Yeah.
It's according to Bill Appleby, the county's emergency management director and county detective.
Oh, so he's got a dual role there?
Figure out how things go just by the sound of the sirens, I guess.
Officials believe that someone is driving around the county with the electronic equipment and activating the warning system.
Officials don't know whether this is the work of a former employee or just someone using electronic gear to pluck the tones out of the air.
You notice how the headline said the hacker did this, and there's absolutely no indication that there's anything having to do with hacking here.
They would probably not be able to do it through a personal computer.
It's a radio wave transmission, so they would have to have access to our radio frequencies.
What does that mean?
Well, gee, that's difficult.
Have access.
Do you realize everybody listening to this show now has access to our frequency?
I mean, what kind of nonsense is this?
They make it sound as if listening to a radio means getting access.
Same stupidity that led to cellular phones being illegal to listen to.
What we think at this point is that someone has taped or copied our tones in some manner.
In some manner.
Like a tape recorder, perhaps, would be the manner we're thinking of here.
Whoa, there's a high piece of technology there.
They're baffled down there in Kentucky.
They can't figure out how this could have happened.
Tones being sent clear across the airwaves, somebody somehow managed to duplicate them.
In some manner.
All right.
We think it's a mobile unit where someone has a handheld radio and travels around.
Adding that sirens in neighboring Kenton County also have been set off.
He said that when dispatchers would try to turn off the sirens,
another series of tones would then reactivate them.
Gee whiz, the sirens have blared for more than 20 minutes,
but are only supposed to go off in three to five minute bursts.
Appleby fears the sirens may get damaged since they are not designed to run longer than a few minutes at a time.
The sirens sit atop poles.
Well, gee, that's a good place to put them.
Those underground sirens didn't quite work out, did they?
And they include an antenna so they can receive the activation tones from dispatchers.
Well, I would be more worried about the boy who cried wolf syndrome here.
That's true.
That's true.
Than if the sirens suddenly become damaged.
Well, there's also the stupidity factor here, but I'll get into that in just a moment.
This reminds me, though, of something we used to have out on the island when we almost had a nuclear power plant.
Oh, yeah.
And they installed sirens all over the place until people started looking and saying,
what are these sirens doing here, what do they mean?
This could be bad.
Yeah, and that's when the opposition really started to mount.
But I noticed on those sirens as many years ago that they had antennas like that.
And I was trying to find out the frequencies.
I wanted to know how it worked.
I really did.
In Holland, through a POGSAC monitoring system,
it's been figured out that the air raid sirens, which they still test on a particular day of the month,
they're activated by a pager tone.
And if you get that information, then you have the ability to do it.
You can do it yourself.
Anyway, the Boone County police are investigating the incidents,
and the Federal Communications Commission has been notified.
Appleby said that since the sirens are meant to alert residents to some kind of danger,
their random activation is causing anxiety in some people.
He said starting this weekend, they would be trying to track the culprit making the calls.
I don't know what they waited for.
As of December 1st, we will start tracking the person down, so be warned.
We are hoping to get an electronic footprint from someone who may be activating a radio,
either a base or mobile, see which one of our towers activates first,
and then we would know at least the general vicinity.
He said that sirens are tested on a monthly basis and the public is notified.
It's then that the tones using the right equipment can be captured.
Steve Mackey, Sr., an emergency coordinator and communications and warning officer
for a Missouri emergency agency, said it's possible to buy or modify a radio
that can be programmed to mimic the correct tones.
But he said that activating an outdoor warning device, or OWD, is not that easy.
It requires some sophistication.
Many of the OWDs have microprocessor filters that require precise activating tone frequencies,
similar to touch tones.
We know how precise those are.
And timing duration.
The difference of one millisecond will not activate the OWD.
Simply tape recording and replaying these will usually not work.
Of course, if you're tape recording and playing them,
you're capturing the tone and you're capturing the timing.
So they fail to explain why a good quality tape recording will not work.
I mean, I know with Redboxes, you could record onto, you know,
one of those little birds that recorded whatever noise you were making in the room and played it back.
You could record your Redbox tones onto one of those and hold that up to the phone and it would work.
But it's not exactly an exact science.
Mackey continued, the act usually involves transmitting on unauthorized radio frequencies,
and most do this on a somewhat frequent basis.
Some agencies have communications specialists or agreements with ham radio operators to track down jammers.
Such an effort usually requires a specialized radio direction-finding apparatus and prior experience using it.
Well, it's not that difficult.
For these people, it is. They're not all like us, all right?
They have problems sometimes.
Boone County's Emergency Management Department is responsible for the planning and coordination
of unified emergency response to any disaster or emergency situation in the county
dealing with severe weather, flooding, fire, explosions, power failures, riots, hazardous material incidents,
and any other natural or man-made emergencies, such as sirens not working properly.
A major project of the office is the expansion of the outdoor warning system.
Funding has been approved to purchase 12 additional outdoor warning sirens to be added to the existing warning sirens.
They're being installed to expand the warning coverage area,
especially in the areas where outdoor activities take place.
Activation of the sirens occurs when an actual sighting of a tornado or frontal cloud is confirmed
or when the National Weather Service issues a warning for the county.
The sirens may also be activated at the discretion of the Emergency Management Office
under certain conditions or for other public emergencies.
Well, it's pretty simple.
If they're simply tone activated using an over-the-air frequency, it seems pretty trivial.
I'm surprised nobody has done this before.
It's something that is of interest to hackers.
I don't think a hacker would go out and do something that socially irresponsible
as far as actually starting evacuations and things like that.
Yeah, there is a definite danger element here.
This is an emergency services device that's supposed to save people's lives.
If you're just setting it off at random, there's a definite Boy Who Cried Wolf kind of thing going on here.
Is that the same story?
No, no.
Different wolves, different stories.
So Peter never cried wolf?
No, no, no.
Peter wasn't the crier.
All right.
Well, you know, I did toy with the idea back in, I guess it was the 80s, early 80s,
of figuring out how those sirens on Long Island worked and making them go off
because nobody would know what they meant.
We don't have storm sirens out there, so all of a sudden this crazy siren starts going off.
Nobody's going to understand it.
In fact, I think that was one of the major problems with the evacuation plan
is that nobody heard the siren, nobody knew what it meant, and as a result, nobody did anything.
Well, they couldn't exactly evacuate anyway.
That's true.
There's really no place to go except out into the water.
That's one of the reasons why the plant never got finished.
There is something else that this reminds me of, though,
and that's the new emergency alert system that the FCC has mandated.
Have you seen this?
Yeah.
Well, yeah, there's one in this room.
There's one over there.
That's true, but have you seen this on actual TV or cable stations?
Yes, I have.
What scares me, first of all, it's different from EBS.
For those people who don't know, EBS is the one that had the single tone.
You might remember it from a couple of years ago.
And that was a voluntary system.
This is mandatory.
And not only is it mandatory, but this system can take over your frequency.
It's designed to do that.
It's designed to actually override you, the broadcaster,
with a signal from some other source.
It's pretty frightening.
And if you watch cable TV occasionally late at night,
like around 3 in the morning sometimes, I think it's like on Thursday nights usually,
they run a test.
And this test is not just on a station.
This test is on every single channel,
even the shopping text channels that they have there that nobody watches.
They all get the test at the same time.
It plays havoc if you're recording something, obviously.
But everybody gets the test at the same time.
Every radio station gets it at different times,
but the cable system, every channel gets it at the same time.
There's no escape from this thing.
There really isn't.
Now, the thing that I find interesting is that there's a burst of tones.
I've never actually recorded it,
because I never was actually lucky enough to be there when it was recording.
But if anyone out there has been playing around with this,
I'd like to know more.
And that's something we'd certainly be willing to do an article about in 2600
or something like that.
I hope it's not as easy as setting off a siren.
I mean, imagine if you called up, you know,
who's that guy that broadcasts out of the desert?
You know, on the radio show late at night.
Oh, Art Bell.
Yeah, imagine if you call up Art Bell and you play an EAS tone.
And several hundred stations around the country go into emergency alert mode.
Is it that easy?
I mean, if it is, then someone needs a severe talking to as far as designing these systems.
I hope not, and I actually doubt it.
I doubt it too, but we won't know until we actually look into it.
All right, let's take a look at some listener mail.
You can write to us, oth at 2600.com,
or you can call us in just a couple of minutes at 212-209-2900.
It's surprisingly quiet outside.
It's like the whole city has been destroyed by the storm.
My car's going to be overturned when I go downstairs, you know that.
If it hasn't floated down Wall Street.
It felt like my car was being lifted off the ground a couple of times.
It really did.
That's how scary this was.
Anyway, dear OffTheHook,
after seeing how concerned you were with the hospital records on a phone system,
I thought you might like to know the following.
Lately, my friends and I have been going dumpster diving looking for old computers.
On an adventurous journey, we came upon what we couldn't believe.
At a normal-looking business' dumpster,
we found thousands of papers containing patient medical history
with dental records, doctor's comments, and tons of personal information.
Being 16-year-old kids on a rush,
we decided to back the car up and start shoveling the papers into the trunk.
When we got home, we started sorting them out.
There were lists of thousands of social security numbers
with names, 20-page pamphlets that included a patient's complete medical history,
and more.
While thinking it was cool, we also found it somewhat disturbing.
This company didn't take the time to shred all this personal information.
There were no signs of the building saying we shouldn't be there,
and the dumpster was in plain sight of the whole parking lot.
Since there were so many papers, we only had time to go through half of it.
There was still another full box in my car.
I don't know if you guys are at all interested in this story,
due to it not having anything to do with anything electronic,
but I feel that people should be aware.
Well, it's definitely of interest,
and this came from three people, Feardos, IO Burn, and Evilboy.
And I want to thank you for bringing this to our attention.
But I think what should be done now...
In fact, they enclosed a printout.
A printout of all these social security numbers there.
Well, I don't think the social security number is the most interesting thing.
No, it's not, but that's what gets people to wake up and say,
hey, that's my social security number.
I shouldn't be lying around out there.
The patient records, obviously.
Yeah, what gets people to wake up is if you were to call these folks at a reasonable hour
and say, hi, my name is, and you give your actual name,
I found this information just sitting outside of your doctor's office,
perhaps you might want to call him and discuss with him their...
Well, the thing is, I don't think that was a doctor's office.
I think it was some sort of corporation.
Corporation or HMO or something?
Yeah, deals with things like this.
Well, I'm sure that if they got about 500 calls from some people who use the corporation...
The other problem with that is that when you tell people something like that,
nine times out of ten, their reaction is to be hostile towards you,
as if you're the person who did it.
True.
As opposed to the real, like, what are we doing in the garbage can anyway?
It's garbage.
People don't realize that this stuff should be destroyed before it's thrown out.
It should not be basically just made public as this was.
But unfortunately, this isn't at all surprising.
No, it's not, but I think when people come across something like this,
immediately go to some sort of media source and start contacting, through them, I would imagine,
or through other channels, the people that are involved.
Get some lawsuits started here because this is definitely...
These people can sue this company.
They can put them out of business, in fact, for this kind of negligence.
I'm recommending, like, actually contacting a handful of them or so.
Yeah.
Well, you know...
All right, if you use the buffer of the media.
Well, certain media.
We've had our problems with different media, but...
That's certainly true.
That's true.
Anyway.
But it's something that you just can't ignore.
Something like this happens, you have to bring it to people's attention.
And I think that's a parallel to hacking right there.
This may not have anything to do with something electronic, even though it is a computer printout.
It's just being responsible.
It's got to do with privacy.
And the continuing lack of respect of privacy in the people that we entrust it to.
Phone company people.
Credit companies.
Medical companies.
You name it.
Of course, hackers get blamed for discovering it.
But maybe we can look beyond that and see what the real problem is.
All right, here's another piece of mail here.
Someone advising us to call an OmniPoint number, which we're going to do.
We haven't done this yet.
This person says, if you try accessing it with a rotary phone...
Unfortunately, I don't have one.
Well, we just won't hit any tones.
Okay.
And if you do that, apparently, it's very rude to you.
Let's see.
Shouldn't ask for a long-distance call that's an 800 number.
Welcome to OmniPoint.
To continue in English, please press 1.
Bienvenido a OmniPoint.
Por favor, presione el 2 para continuar en español.
Okay, now, we're not going to hit anything because we have a rotary phone.
That is an invalid entry.
Please try again.
You see?
Welcome to OmniPoint.
But there was no entry.
To continue in English, please press 1.
Bienvenido a OmniPoint.
Por favor, presione el 2 para continuar en español.
Click, click, click.
You think so?
Well, no, I'm trying to do the clicks.
That is an invalid entry.
Please try again.
Welcome to OmniPoint.
To continue in English, please press 1.
She sounds more upset every time she says it.
Bienvenido a OmniPoint.
Por favor, presione el 2 para continuar en español.
Now, right about now, they should be figuring out we don't have a touch-tone phone.
Thank you for calling OmniPoint.
Goodbye.
Hey.
Wow.
They were right about this.
They certainly don't want to do business if you don't have a touch-tone phone, apparently.
I wonder if they're equally curved in Spanish.
Well, how can they be?
You don't select Spanish.
Well, that's true.
You can't choose number two.
The default is English.
That's right.
I guess if you choose number two and then don't do anything, they might get upset, too.
They might get upset, yeah.
Well, okay, just to even it out, though, I've got to gripe about Sprint now, Sprint PCS.
Oh, don't get me started.
Well, no, now this time it's going to get personal, okay?
Because it goes beyond the corporation of Sprint PCS.
It goes right down to the people at that Flatiron building, you know, which is where their headquarters are, their Sprint store.
Well, it's a Sprint store.
It's a Sprint store, but it's the biggest one in New York.
It's the one where you go if you want to be seen at a Sprint store.
It's where I've gone, yeah.
So I went there.
I wanted to buy a new phone because this phone I have over here is a piece of garbage.
Don't get me started on that.
We've already had this discussion.
Samsung, Radio Shack, what a bunch of words I can't say.
Anyways, you're at the Flatiron building.
Yeah, so I wanted to buy a new phone because I wanted to replace that phone I have, which really...
I've got to tell you horror stories about this thing.
I've already heard most of them.
I was trying to figure out if I'm going to throw it out the window when I'm done with it or just what exactly.
But anyway, yeah, I wanted to buy a new phone, Qualcomm.
It's a nice phone that has a standby time of supposedly several days, as opposed to my phone that has a standby time of a few minutes.
So I wanted to go there.
I knew exactly what kind to get.
Saw it in the brochure.
All these people in the store, sitting down.
Just there, looking like they were there all day actually.
Crowded.
Probably were.
Yeah, just sitting there.
And there was a counter for sales.
And I walked up to the counter for sales.
And I said, I'd like to buy this phone.
And they looked at me and said, well, you're going to have to go to customer service for that.
To buy the phone.
You have to go to customer service.
And I'm like, okay, where's customer service?
Over on the other side of the store.
But you have to take a number.
Now, keep in mind, I come in here, I know exactly what kind of phone I want to buy.
I'd like for this to be over in a couple of minutes.
And they're telling me I have to take a number.
And they told me, I asked them, how long do I have to wait?
About a half hour.
I have to wait a half hour to buy something that I already know.
And what is the point of the sales desk if they don't sell things?
The point of the sales desk is to entrap more and more people into their services.
You see, they're really nice when you buy your first phone.
Did you tell them that you were a previous customer?
I think eventually I did.
Yeah, but the thing is, I wanted to buy something.
That's a sale.
That's a sales desk.
Have you ever tried to pay your bill there?
No.
Whoa.
No, I never did.
Well, they charge you money to pay the bill there.
That's true.
Even I know that.
So, here I am.
I want to buy a phone.
The phone is there.
Why is it so hard for them to give me the phone?
I'll give them money.
They give me the phone.
Instead, I have to do it this crazy Eastern European way of waiting online for a half hour to get something that we all know is what I want and they have.
And the thing is, everybody there looks so subdued as if they'd already been through this and they had been defeated.
And they were just sitting there knowing they had to wait a half hour just to...
Everyone's will has been broken.
It's so sad.
It really is.
It is.
So, I just, I walked out of the place.
Well, actually, I asked one other question, too.
If you recall, any Sprint PCS customer should know this.
Over the past week, voicemail has been completely broken.
Yes, it has.
You've noticed that, right?
People have said they have left me voicemail or voicemail doesn't even answer.
Voicemail doesn't answer.
I get nothing.
You can't access your voicemail.
The phone rings forever.
It's horrible.
So, I basically just, you know, asked them, well, do you know what the problem is with voicemail?
And right away, without a moment's hesitation, there is no problem with voicemail.
As if they're reading it off a script there.
And that's the official word.
There is no problem with voicemail.
You know, I feel like I'm walking back into the dark ages of humanity here.
But you see, the people's will have already been broken.
So, it's just as possible for them to get to believe that as well.
Well, that's true.
But these are the people behind the counter that...
What you should have done is just, like, dropped the cash on the desk and walked out with the phone.
Was it in your hand?
No, the phone wasn't anywhere.
They hide the phones.
The phones are somewhere in the back stockroom.
They have all the brochures for the phone out there.
And, you know, I knew what I wanted.
So, now, I'm going to have to buy this online and pay for shipping.
I'm paying for their stupidity.
I mean, that sure does.
And, plus, I wanted to hold it in my hand and see what it felt like.
And, you know, put the extra battery on and see what that was like.
And I can't do any of that now.
Why don't you go out to a Sprint PCS store?
I just don't understand.
How did they come up with this way of doing business?
Who said this is a good idea?
Well, it's not a good idea, but they get away with it because people are cheap.
Anything that makes a radio shack look efficient has got to be the most incredibly dumb thing ever to be invented.
So, yes, I don't have my new phone yet.
We're going to have to wait until a couple of weeks, however long it takes.
Okay.
Real Networks.
You've heard about this.
Yes.
I.e., you run a sniffer.
Yeah.
And that's something anybody can do.
Yeah.
Copy music to a user's hard drive and download music from the Internet.
Dave Richards, Real Networks Vice President for Consumer Products, told The Times that the company gathered the information to customize service for individual users.
Richards and other company officials said the practice did not violate consumer privacy because data was not stored by the company or released to other companies.
So why were they collecting it?
How could it not have been stored?
Gathering it and looking at it as it went by and not storing it in any place.
That's fascinating.
But privacy advocates and security experts agreed that it was a violation of the privacy of the 13.5 million registered users of Real Jukebox,
particularly because Real Networks has not informed consumers they are being identified and monitored.
How familiar is this kind of a story where you discover this kind of thing because somebody else blows the whistle on it?
The fact that Real Networks gathers the information is not mentioned in the privacy policy posted on its website or the licensing agreement users must approve when installing Real Jukebox.
I smell a class action suit there.
Ooh, there's an idea.
Dear OffTheHook, I hate RealPlayer.
This is the RealPlayer hate hour.
Even though a lot of our listeners are listening to us right now on RealPlayer.
Hello out there.
I hate RealPlayer.
I despise it.
I despise it.
You say on your site that you have live distribution methods, but there aren't any MP3s on your site.
I realize that a 60-minute long MP3 would be roughly 70 megs, but I really...
Well, no, it would be about 36, I think.
Smaller than that.
Not much smaller.
For our show?
Well, yeah, for our show.
Or 12.
12?
Yeah.
I don't know what you've been smoking, but don't smoke in here.
Well, we'll talk about that later.
I'd like to know if that's true.
I don't think it is.
I really hate RealPlayer.
You mentioned this again.
And I would download a 70-megabyte file any day because I have DSL, and it's like nothing.
Well, hi, our side for the server.
Yeah, our side.
It's definitely something.
It would definitely be a big thing.
Yeah, so here's the thing.
We're looking at alternative ways to get the signal out there, including QuickTime streaming, which...
I still like the two-paper cup and the string.
No, that doesn't work very well.
We're looking for a QuickTime streamer, in fact.
So if there are people out there that would like to get involved in that, email us, oth2600.com,
and that's a possibility for an alternative to real audio.
QuickTime is cool.
Yeah, it is.
It sounds really good, too.
All right, let's see if we have any other pieces of mail.
We do have to take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
Let's read this one more letter, and then we'll move on to the phones.
Dear OffTheHook, I'm not what you would call a phone freak,
but I've been into computers since my dad brought home a MITS Altair 8800?
Yes.
About 1974.
Yes.
And I once met Captain Crunch, John Draper, at an early microcomputer convention.
I've done a little bit of exploring with the telephone system in my time,
and not too long ago I had an experience that I think might interest you.
I was working as a long-haul trucker.
I'm back in the computer industry now, thank God.
Back then I found myself in Indianapolis with a load heading west.
Not far outside of Indy there's a well-maintained rest area with indoor payphones,
and I was in the habit of stopping there whenever I was in the area.
I had a girlfriend in Canada at the time.
I would often call her from these payphones
because they were shielded from the wind and situated inside a heated building.
Normally I would drop my change into the slot, dial the number,
funnel another 5 or 10 pounds of change into the phone
in order to comply with the computerized voice's demands,
and my call would be completed.
On this particular occasion, however,
I was kind of punchy from lack of sleep,
and I forgot to put money in the phone before dialing the number.
The phone made the usual noises,
then the handset went dead for about a half second,
and my call was connected.
Hmm...
At first I thought it was just a fluke,
but I did a little experimenting just to see what would happen,
and found that I was able to dial calls anywhere in the world
on any payphone in the building.
And if I didn't put change in before dialing,
the handset would go dead for half a second,
and then the call would be connected.
Well, he stumbled upon the secret.
That's true, every payphone in the world does that.
You see what patience will grant you?
That's true.
This situation did not change over the course of about 6 months.
Every time I went through Indianapolis,
I stopped at that rest area and checked the phones,
and every time they connected me, no problem.
I checked some other rest areas in the vicinity,
but none of them had free phones.
The phone company never called my girlfriend
to inquire about the free long distance call I inadvertently made,
so I have to assume that they never found out about it.
Until now.
I never told anyone about this before,
so it's possible that I was the only person who knew about it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the phones at that rest area
still operated in this abnormal fashion.
Have you ever heard of anything like this?
Do you know what might have been the cause?
Well, I can guess what the cause was for no call going through.
When you basically...
When you make a phone call from a regular bell-operated telephone,
they're looking to have the money in there
that reflects the number of calls that are made,
but I don't think any real record is kept of money to call.
For instance, if they're short 20 bucks or something like that,
they're not going to know which call didn't put in the money.
I don't think there's any way to really tell that.
I might be wrong about this.
I haven't really studied pay phones that much,
and we're talking about pay phones from the 70s,
so if anyone has knowledge of that, please let us know.
But I imagine that's probably the reason why it wasn't seen as...
Plus, I don't think people get calls if they red-box calls on pay phones.
I don't think they call back the people that you call
and say, hey, somebody red-boxed this call.
I don't think they can tell.
They can't tell the difference between a coin and a tone.
You know, just like the sirens.
They can't tell the difference between a real thing and just an imitation.
I'd like to hear more stories from the past,
from the 60s, 70s, even the 80s,
of phone flukes, things like this.
So please, by all means, send them in to us.
You can write to us, oth at 2600.com,
or, off the hook, care of WBAI, 120 Wall Street, New York, New York, 10005.
All right, we have a full switchboard, so let's get right to it.
212-209-2900.
Hi, Rebel.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Yes, Manuel, I have some phone stories from the past.
Of course, as you know, I am a very...
I guess you could say I used to be a very hardcore phone freak.
And, you know, I used to...
The way I used to write boxes, I used to take three payphones
and put the quarters in one payphone
and hold the receiver to the other payphone.
Do you know that?
Hello?
Manuel?
Are you there?
Hello?
Hello?
Hello?
I think I'm hearing an echo here.
I don't know what this is.
A public service announcement.
Hello?
Hello?
Manuel?
Manuel?
Hello?
Hello?
Manuel?
Hello?
We have a clean system that makes it difficult.
Please stand by.
Okay, I think we're back.
Don't you just hate when you're on Greyhound and you, you know...
They say that, you know, if you use Greyhound a certain amount of times,
you get a free round-trip ticket.
But guess what?
It costs $20.
That's right.
It costs $20.
What kind of a discount costs $20?
I mean, that's not a discount if you have to pay for it.
In other words, if you use...
If you go on...
If you make three round-trips on the bus,
they'll give you one free.
Okay, if each round-trip costs like maybe $20 or something like that,
they'll give you one free.
But guess what?
You have to pay $20 a year for it.
You have to pay $20...
$20 a year for it.
I mean, that's not a discount.
That's not a discount.
I mean, $20 a year for a discount?
I mean, the airline, when you go on the airline,
you get frequent flyer miles.
You fly a certain amount of times.
And you get a discount.
Not on Greyhound, though.
Not on Greyhound.
You use Greyhound a certain amount of times.
You know, you get a discount.
Yeah, you get a free round-trip.
But guess what?
No, you have to pay for that.
And just like when you want a student discount,
no, you don't.
You can't use the student ID card.
Guess what?
You have to use the student advantage card
that you have to pay $20 a year for.
And also, even if you're a senior citizen,
you have to use a senior citizen club card.
I mean, you have to pay for that, too.
I mean, 5% and 10% discount for senior citizens
only if you have that card.
I mean, that's not a discount.
$20 a year?
I mean, or however much they charge?
It's just like the wholesale club thing.
You know, like, you know, those stores that say,
well, $50 a year or whatever membership,
and then, you know, you get all these discounts.
Well, I don't think it's a discount
if you're, you know, doing this membership thing.
$50 a year?
I mean, yeah, if you use it a certain amount of times,
yeah, fine.
It's like when they ask you for touchstones.
In other words, you're doing the thing with the rotary phone.
Let me just say one thing.
If you're calling from a touchstone phone, press 1.
I mean, what other phone would I be calling from?
I mean, I mean, this is like the year 2000.
I think everybody basically has touchstone phones.
And also, I think that when you call certain things
and when you press 0, like when you call for information,
like, you know, like travel information,
press 0, and they say,
sorry, we don't understand what you pressed.
You press 0 again.
Sorry, we don't understand what you pressed.
And then you press 0 a third time.
Sorry, we don't understand what you pressed.
Well, I mean, then they connect you with the representative.
Welcome home, me and our breakfast.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've heard that before.
Well, my wife would mind.
Hello?
What?
Hello?
Emmanuel?
Nope.
We did it.
We got him to hang up.
I can't believe it.
Oh, wow.
How long did that take?
I have no idea.
This is a milestone.
It is a milestone.
It's the moment we've been waiting for for many years now.
Rebel hung up on us.
I apologize to everybody that had to go through all of this
with us to get to this stage.
But I think you'll find it's like, you know,
it's like reaching the world's highest level.
I don't know what that tone means.
That's interesting.
Yeah, I never got that one before.
Okay, let's hang up on this.
It was worth it.
It was worth all the aggravation.
All right.
I want to thank everybody for their help,
for refraining from hitting the buttons.
I want to thank the listeners out there for their great patience
in putting up with that and standing by waiting for a control
to be returned to us here at the radio station.
All right.
Thank you.