Housing Notebook has in fact moved to Monday evenings at 7. WBAI continues to keep tenants
abreast and informed on the latest housing issues. Make note, now heard Monday evenings
at 7, be sure to tune in for Housing Notebook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call. It could be that much worse, but if I could they would.
I hope that's understood.
And good evening to everybody. The program is off the hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this, the 4th of July.
And I don't think Isaac made it. I think he's there in the other studio.
Some people don't know this, but we don't actually sit in the same studio.
I haven't actually seen Isaac in a year.
It's those nasty corridors, you know.
But it doesn't look like he made it past the police barricade, which is outside BAI right now.
Apparently word got out that we were planning to set off some fireworks after the show tonight.
I only told a couple of people, but if you look outside, this mob and everybody seems to want it.
It's just a couple of things I got in South Carolina, so it's nothing big.
But apparently we're so starved for fireworks out here that thousands and thousands of people are out there crowding the streets.
We'll do the best we can, but you have to wait until the show's over.
Probably about 9, 9.15 or so. We'll do our best.
Some very sad news here at WBAI.
For those of you who listen, you may have known that our film critic, Paul Wonder, has passed away as of last week.
Paul was one of the first people I ever met coming into the station back in 1988.
Seems like such a long time ago, probably because it was such a long time ago.
But for those who don't know, BAI has all kinds of different programs.
And the film review programs that Paul did, I think, were among the best.
He did a program called Soundtrack. He did a program called The Screening Room.
If you ever saw a major motion picture, no matter where you might happen to be, this might have jumped out at you.
You're looking at the big poster for Terminator 2 and you see the people from Newsweek and the people from Entertainment Today, whatever it's called.
And then you'll see WBAI in there, just thrown in.
Well, that's the kind of thing Paul did.
His reviews were of such a caliber that even though we're just one radio station here in New York City, just one radio station,
it still carried the weight, carried the gravity of a review from a network, a big magazine dealing with nothing but film reviews.
And that's one of the reasons why it's a real loss for us.
And it's something that I don't think has really hit yet.
I'm still getting over Samori.
It's really sad to see people who are such an important part of the station go.
What I'd like to do is, I'm also very upset that he won't get to see our film, which will be debuting in another week and a half.
A review from Paul would have been the ultimate compliment, I think, even if it was a bad review.
Bad review, any kind of review.
When you have a critic who really knows what he's talking about, it's just, it's an honor to be criticized, I guess.
So in memory of Paul, I'd like to dedicate this song, which is actually done by the same person who does our intro,
and a band called Screaming Target.
And of course, it's about the movies.
We'll be back in a minute.
You know, I should also point out that nothing would be complete at WBAI if the CD player didn't malfunction.
Every time you try to do something.
So hold on while I...
They say these are the best CD players that money can buy.
I don't know what kind of money they're using, but these CD players are the worst I've ever dealt with.
They're professional, yes.
They're not consumer CD players.
They're professional, but I think that might have something...
That might be a comment on the professional world.
Okay.
This song is dedicated to memory of Paul Winder.
Okay.
I have a feeling...
You know, Paul is our operations director, too.
So I'm sure he's having a good laugh, wherever he might be right now, because the equipment just isn't working.
Okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take it out of that CD player and put it in the other CD player.
How do you like that?
Wait for it to queue up.
Select the right song.
And this is the last time I'm going to try this.
Okay.
The West was one.
They rode by moonlight.
Both white they wore.
With guns and bobbles.
And a pesto store.
Black and white and solid.
Legend went to war.
Black and white and solid.
Clocked to 84.
It's like a courthouse.
I'm hungry.
There's times of dinner.
Where it used to be.
We're making a smoothie.
We're hanging a hot gun.
In between the eyes.
The West was one.
Black and white and solid.
Legend went to war.
Black and white and solid.
Clocked to 84.
And a pesto store.
Black and white and solid.
Legend went to war.
Black and white and solid.
Clocked to 84.
It's like a courthouse.
We're making a smoothie.
We're hanging a hot gun.
Black and white and solid.
Legend went to war.
Black and white and solid.
Clocked to 84.
The cost of thousands and view of some
Millions of tickets, the West is one
The legend of Tinseltown, paper, blood, and star
Works from the high and treacherous cinema
Black and white and solid, a nation made to fall
Black and white and solid, a country made to fall
Black and white and solid, a nation made to fall
Black and white and solid, a country made to fall
In a moment you're gonna look like me
You're the perfect skin of everybody
African, Indian, with the apathy
Even when you're really young like me
In a cartoon, some skin of cherry
Pure black legs, kiss all you can see
She look like the meanest if you have to agree
Battle shots, put them outside me
A nation made to fall
A country made to fall
A nation made to fall
Black and white and solid
A country made to fall
Black and white and solid
A country made to fall
Black and white and solid
A country made to fall
Black and white and solid
You know, maybe they are.
Entirely possible.
Those numbers are not for public consumption.
Thank you for calling OSI Collection Services.
Please press 1 now if you know your party's extension.
Press 2 to hold for the next available representative.
Or press 3 to leave a message.
I think I won't press anything because I'm poor.
I can't pay my $25.04. I don't even have a touch-tone phone.
Yeah, I'm going to change my mind about paying.
Are you listening, AT&T?
These are the people that collect your money.
Letting a little thing like Independence Day
get in the way of that.
I have it in cash right here in my hands.
$25.00.
Look at this.
Another piece of mail from AT&T.
This is a check.
This is a check.
Recently, you decided to switch your service from AT&T.
Well, you know, I didn't decide to switch.
I didn't use it, and I decided not to use it anymore.
So now they send me a check.
You decided to switch your service from AT&T,
and because you've always been a valued customer,
it didn't go unnoticed.
Don't you love when computers just don't pay any attention to what's going on?
That's why I'm writing to you today
to ask you to reconsider your decision
and give us an opportunity to reestablish our relationship with you.
Well, we've already got a relationship here.
It's not one based on trust, I might say that.
I know your time is valuable, so I'll get right to the point.
You don't know how valuable it is.
We've developed a plan that makes calling easier for you.
AT&T Local 1-Rate New York.
Actually, you know, that's a plan that makes things easier for them
because it gives a lot of money to them
for things that you can pay a lot less for.
Basically, Local 1-Rate New York
is virtually, they have to change this,
they have to call it virtually unlimited calling.
First was unlimited, but virtually unlimited,
which means only 75 hours.
After that, you pay 2 cents a minute.
On the other side,
Val Atlantic, soon to be known as Verizon,
if not already, their merger was approved, and oh boy.
They offer a service now.
Call as often as you like for one low monthly rate.
It's kind of similar to what they offered several years ago,
except it's now being offered to a lot more people.
You know, I'm starting to think they're not going to answer at all.
Yeah.
You know, I think I've waited long enough.
We'll keep it in background just in case.
It's still ringing there.
We'll check every now and then, like now.
Yeah, it's still ringing.
So Val Atlantic offers simplicity, choice,
unlimited calling, New Yorkers can get it all.
That's right, Val Atlantic's personal unlimited plan
for a monthly rate.
Now, that monthly rate would change
depending on what your local calling usage was in the past.
I've seen it go all the way up to 50 bucks.
I've seen it go as low as 15.
So basically, if you have,
and this might actually be worth it
for a lot of people out there,
if, say, you have a line that only gets faxes
or a line that you use just for incoming calls
or a line you use for the computer and you only call locally,
if you have a line where you have not called, say,
a different area code in the same region,
516, 914, 212, 718,
if you haven't gone outside your local area very much
and your regional calls are minimal,
signing up for this, you'll probably get a very cheap rate,
and then all you have to do is simply switch your phone lines around.
For instance, you would start using your fax line
as your primary calling line,
and then you switch your other line to your fax line.
You may have to tell a few people you're changing your number,
but you'll save a lot of money this way.
It's not the way they want you to do it.
They want you to pay through the nose
for the line that you use the most.
But if you already are paying for more than one line,
you might as well use it to your advantage
and make it as economical as possible.
So that's what's going on in that particular realm.
There's something else that Bell Atlantic sent out,
which is really annoying me, because it's very frustrating.
And I wish they were open now, because I wish...
They never open past 8 o'clock, unfortunately.
I've been trying to get an answer to this question for ages.
Now, they're pushing their little voicemail.
I don't know what they call it this month.
It's part of the call package.
Basically, it allows you to...
Actually, I'm not even sure this is the right...
This is the wrong bill.
Maybe I don't even have it on me.
Oh, well.
There is one of these little extra newsletter things
that they send out where they talk about voicemail.
They talk about how convenient it is,
because you can call people and leave them messages
without letting their phone ring.
Yeah, it's that simple.
You simply call a number, enter their phone number,
and you can leave them a message, and their phone never rings.
Well, that's the number I was trying to get for ages.
Every single central office has a different phone number for voicemail.
Now, it's impossible to get this information from the phone company.
They brag about it. They say, yeah, you can do this.
But try finding out how to do it.
Let's say I want to call somebody. It's 4 in the morning.
I don't want to wake them up. I want to leave a message.
I don't know what the voicemail number to call to enter their phone number is.
They do, because that's the number you call to check your messages.
But for you to find out that phone number for everybody's central office
in the New York area, it would take forever.
So there must be a list someplace.
And that's what I've been trying to get is that list.
And they act like it's some kind of military secret.
Well, if it's a military secret, why are they boasting about it in the phone bill?
That's what I want to know.
So if anyone out there can help us in that quest,
that would certainly be a public service.
It's the Atlantic or Verizon, whatever they call these days.
It's unbelievable.
I heard a rumor that Verizon was going to be changing again afterwards
to Southwestern Bell or something, SBC.
I don't know. There's all kinds of rumors out there.
But it just goes to show the phone company never stays around for very long.
You have to wonder why.
You have to wonder what they're thinking.
All right, here's some listener mail.
And you can send your listener mail to oth at 2600.com.
I just registered verizonsucksmorethanbefore.com.
Bless your heart.
Yeah, and it was registered at namezero.com,
where apparently you can register free .com, .net, and .org domains.
I'm not sure what the payoff for that is.
Obviously, they've got to get something out of it someplace,
but probably advertisements.
Advertisements is always what it's all about.
But, yeah, Verizon has not said anything to us lately.
I don't know what's going on with that.
If they're going to let us keep VerizonReallySucks.com, who knows?
Also, some people have been writing in with more words that 1-800-VERIZON spells out.
Let's see what some of these are.
1-800-837-HIM, H-Y-M-M.
1-800-837-I-1.
1-800-836-NO.
Okay, they're not very good.
They're reaches, to say the least.
All right, we have a couple other bits of email people send us.
Please excuse my crappy English. I'm from Sweden.
I don't know if you found this out when I was listening to the off-the-hook show aired on the 13th of June
about the Serbian Batman Trojan.
Well, the Trojan is just the old Sub-7 Trojan in a new dress-up.
It's posted on newsgroups rather poorly, disguised as an AVI movie
by renaming it to something.exe.avi.
So I hope I shed some light on it.
Yeah, well, it's no surprise to me that a lot of these things going around aren't very original or imaginative.
They just rely on people's ignorance.
And there's no shortage of that on the net.
What's most amazing to me is the attention it gets in the media
and how they make it sound like there's this organized conspiracy to completely destroy everything.
And there's a real doozy of a story that's coming up on that I'll get to in a second.
Here's another letter. I just wanted you to know that you have a fantastic show.
Thank you very much.
I think you should talk a little more on IRC and talk to people.
If you mean during the show, we do bring a computer in here sometimes and we do go on IRC.
But try to think of it from the point of view of people listening to the radio
and how obnoxious, boring, and just overall bad it would be
to be talking to a little screen while you're talking to people on the radio.
See, radio is a really unique medium.
And what I like to think is that we can combine the technologies.
But you've got to pay attention to what you're saying.
Otherwise, if you sound all distracted...
Have you ever talked to somebody who's talking to somebody on the computer?
It's the most annoying thing in the world.
You know when you're talking on the phone when someone else is talking on the computer.
And you ask them, are you talking to somebody else on the computer?
Are you typing something?
They always say no.
But you know they are.
I don't want that kind of relationship here.
Anyway, getting back to this letter.
Yesterday I had two seconds of fame.
I called into the show.
I sat there for about an hour calling from my cell phone in Norway.
And when you answered the phone, you said,
Oh, we hear ourselves. We don't need that.
Yeah, I remember. I remember. We just heard an echo.
I wasn't paying attention because I was listening.
And there's about a five second delay on the streaming radio.
This makes me feel miserable.
I sat for a long time and thought about it.
I don't mean to destroy people's lives out there.
Especially all the way over in Norway.
Wow.
Someday you should realize
that you aren't just the ordinary guy you meet on the street.
I don't know what that even means.
But listen.
The best way to get around such misery and heartache
is to simply stay on the phone.
Don't listen to the radio.
If you're calling in, that is.
If you don't want to call in,
then you have the luxury of listening to the radio
or the streaming that goes on on the internet.
Thanks to all the dedicated people who even today
have forsaken Fourth of July festivities
to sit at home and babysit these machines
that bring our signal out all over the net.
Now keep in mind WBAI is also simulcast 24 hours a day now.
On just about every WBAI website there is.
WBAIfree.org, WBAI.org, Pacifica.org.
You can always listen to BAI now.
But what we do on this particular show
is link a lot of them together so the capacity goes way up.
And we're talking well into the hundreds of listeners
which I don't care what kind of radio station you listen to,
what kind of commercial station, that is a high number.
They may try to make you think like thousands of people
listen to a particular radio station on the net.
It doesn't happen. It does not happen.
To get into double numbers is a rarity.
So for us to get into triple numbers, that's unbelievable
and it's technically something that I think is a real accomplishment.
Anyway, continuing with this sad saga here.
Yesterday I blew my chance with you and Mitnick
and I have a friend that has been hanging out on 2600 IRC server for about a year
and had managed to talk to you once.
Blah, blah, blah.
Okay, and your idle time is 68 hours.
Okay, well yeah, that's because I'm here and because I'm doing other things.
Anyway, thanks for a great show and magazine.
Listen, call back. Keep calling.
I know you have to sit on the phone sometimes for an hour,
but it's a real pain.
There are tricks. You know, if Rebel can get on just about every time,
I'm sure there's other people out there that have tricks too.
So just, you know, keep playing around.
We'll be here. We'll be here forever.
And we'll always be taking calls.
We'll do that in just a couple of moments.
Now, for that crazy story I was mentioning before.
You probably saw this in the news. It's been all over the place.
Computer hacker endangered NASA astronauts.
That's right.
A computer hacker endangered shuttle astronauts in 1997
by overloading NASA's communications system,
according to the British Broadcasting Corporation yesterday.
As the shuttle docked at the Russian space station Mir,
a hacker tapped into the NASA computer system
that monitors the heartbeat, pulse, and medical condition of astronauts
aboard the spacecraft.
Yeah, it's just sitting out there on the net.
You know, go telnet to it.
That'll monitor the heartbeats of the people on the...
I mean, kindergarten kids wouldn't believe this.
It's so ridiculous.
First of all, if they were doing something like that,
they're incredibly stupid,
and I think they should be the ones that get brought up on charges
for putting such vital stuff on the net.
There's no reason to have it on the net.
Certainly nothing publicly accessible.
We had an activity at NASA's center
where a hacker was overloading our system
to such an extent that it interfered with communications
between the NASA center,
some medical communications, and the astronaut aboard the shuttle.
Okay, now that's slightly different.
They're saying that another system was overloaded,
and that caused problems.
You see how the story can change.
From the headline,
Computer Hacker Endangered NASA Astronauts,
I saw on Fox News before,
computer terrorist targeting astronauts.
Anyway, NASA was forced to switch systems
and talk to the astronauts via the Russian station Mir.
I also like to know how they know it's a hacker, too, that did this.
This could be net congestion.
It could be all kinds of things.
It could be artificially created.
It could be something that we all face every day.
I'm not belittling it,
but it's something that you need to know the facts
before you go screaming with headlines like this.
The report was released ahead of the premiere of Cyber Attack.
Now, maybe that has something to do with the tone of this,
the fact that they just happened to have a program
called Cyber Attack airing that night.
It looks at how hackers are able to penetrate
the defense systems of such countries
as the United States and Britain.
Gross said NASA has numerous fail-safe measures
to ensure communications,
but it shows the potential hackers have
been doing some real damage to NASA's mission
and astronauts' safety.
Now, get this.
In the past year, NASA has experienced
more than 500,000 cyber attacks.
Where do they get these numbers from?
The last time, it was 250,000, I think,
and that was based on the military testing themselves.
So, 500,000 cyber attacks?
Please, send me e-mail, okay?
I'd like to see just a summary of every one of those.
It sounds like something lawyers do.
I've been in court last week,
and boy, what a nightmare that was.
We talked about the deposition last Tuesday.
It went on into Wednesday as well.
So, all these questions,
all these papers being passed around.
So, yeah, it would be a request a lawyer would make.
Please, forward me details of every single one
of those 500,000 cyber attacks.
I'd like to know.
Anyway, that was an interesting story,
but then it was followed very soon afterwards.
Actually, it was followed a mere eight hours afterwards
by another story.
NASA disputes report that hacker endangered astronauts.
NASA denied a British report Monday
that a computer hacker endangered space shuttle astronauts
during a cyber attack on the space agency in 1997.
NASA acknowledged the hacking attack at the time,
slowed down communication with the shuttle,
but said at no time did it threaten the lives of the crew.
The transmission of routine medical information
was slightly delayed due to a computer hacker.
I'd still like to know how they know a hacker did this
and if they found the person
and what exactly it is that they accessed.
However, the transmission was successfully completed.
As the shuttle docked at the Russian space station Mir,
a hacker tapped into the NASA computer system
that monitors the heartbeat, pulse, and medical condition
of astronauts aboard the spacecraft, according to the BBC.
NASA denied there was a communication problem in the sky,
and the rest is pretty much a rehash of everything else.
But this goes to show how nonsensical these stories are.
Jim is here. Jim, you have something to say.
Yeah, I'm really suspicious of this,
because this is a when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife story.
The BBC, like you said, has a documentary that night
They issue this shocking claim, and NASA is stuck.
If they say, yes, it happened, the BBC looks like,
oh, wow, they're on top of the news.
And if they say what they said, which is probably the truth,
it's like, ooh, what is NASA hiding?
They're hiding the fact that hackers have gotten into their system.
I think based on that, it's pretty much definitely bull.
Yeah, I'd like to know some more facts about just what exactly happened.
If, in fact, we are talking about a problem, let's know what it is.
Let's not go around just making these wild accusations.
I don't think there's anything to hide here.
If the systems are open, then let's close them.
Let's make it so that people can't do this.
Very simple.
Anyway, we're taking phone calls.
2-1-2, 2-0-9, 2-9-100.
The program is off the hook. It's the 4th of July,
and there's all kinds of mayhem outside.
We don't know where Isaac is.
I think, you know, you just have to know how to talk to the cops.
And Isaac just, you know, he keeps getting in trouble.
You know, I saw a guy that looked like Isaac being taken by some cops onto that barge.
Yeah, it was...
The fireworks barge.
Yeah.
Isaac may not come back.
Well, he may come back in a different form.
Just when you look up at the sky tonight and see the pretty lights, think of Isaac.
All right, let's take some phone calls.
2-1-2, 2-0-9, 2-9-100.
If you're calling from Norway, of course, country code 1.
And, well, actually, if you're calling from any country, country code 1.
You know, I guess this is an easy way to remember.
Just always put country code 1 since you have to dial the 1 anyway,
but you're not really calling another country if you're in this country.
Yeah, it's all numbering zone 1.
Let's take a phone call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
You okay?
Sorry about that.
I didn't expect to be first.
I am gifted.
Verizon is real, I guess, as real as it gets.
I got a little letter since I work for those folks.
You work for Verizon?
Well, let's put that in quotations, Emmanuel.
I get a check from them, and I go in there and try the best I can
not to be totally frustrated by how they throw away money.
But the reason I'm calling is that I believe you all had a story
about the older Bell Atlantic, I guess it would be Bell Atlantic Federal,
doing work at Air Force bases and contracting out work to an Israeli firm.
This may have been a while back.
Only about three weeks.
Okay. That's beyond the scope of my memory.
That's okay.
See, we're in contract negotiations right now.
And any dirt you can pull up on a nasty company like Bell Atlantic
would really be helpful at crippling them in their current negotiations.
Well, do you want to give us an address to forward such crippling news?
Sure. I'll give you my home address.
Well, I'm saying in case there are probably people out there
that have all kinds of dirt.
Oh, yeah. Just bring it on.
Yeah. So do you want to give out an address?
I mean, keep in mind, if you work for them, I could get you in a lot of trouble there.
I have no problem.
The only thing that's keeping my job currently is the Family Medical Evac.
So that gives you some kind of indication of where I am in the game.
See, my problem with, well, New York Tele, 9X, Bell Atlantic, Verizon,
and whoever else may be coming along,
and I don't think that they're going to be taken over anytime soon,
A, because they have more money than, ooh,
and two, because they have their hands in everybody else's pockets,
is that if they were very serious,
and I'm not talking about the average worker
or even going up to, let's say, fourth-line management.
Well, they did away with fourth-line. I'm sorry. Third-line management.
They're not allowed to do what they need to do in New York in order to manage it.
They're currently managing New York out of Maryland, Boston, someplace really strange.
Yeah.
And that's primarily because they don't care what kind of service you all get
because they want to bust the union first.
That's the primary thing that Bell Atlantic was interested in.
Now, theoretically, with GTE and the 9X forces coming together,
there's supposed to be a different picture coming across.
I imagine they tell you all kinds of propaganda that they send out.
I mean, in what kind of fashion?
As far as telling you what the main goal of this new company will be,
how it will make everybody happier and make everyone's lives easier.
Anybody who names their company after, what is it, Greek for truth?
Truth and horizon?
Yeah.
Hello. Nobody can even pronounce this damn name.
85,000 names and you come up with this?
Yeah. You know, in fact, it came up in the hearing last week,
and I was proofreading the deposition.
And, of course, the stenographer didn't get Verizon.
They got horizon out of it because there's no such word anywhere,
and I don't think there's a stenography key for it.
Oh, right. I never thought of that.
That's true.
So I have to make that correction.
But anyway, on the 6th, in case you all want to come out,
you come down to 140 West Street.
There should be, in all the big 1095, there are all the big buildings.
There are going to be celebration, celebration, celebration,
trying out the new imprint.
But that's not what I called about.
Hold on one second because I never like to miss a good party here.
1095 what?
Avenue of the Americas.
Avenue of the Americas?
That's the headquarters.
For Bell Atlantic?
Well, actually, I believe they cut the same deal
with the Public Service Commission of New York
that they cut when they did the last takeover piece,
is that the headquarters has to stay in New York.
Okay, so if you go to 1095 Avenue of the Americas on what day?
The 6th.
Which is what day?
I believe that's Friday.
It's Thursday.
Oh, it's Thursday.
If it was Friday, that would be great.
That would be a 2600 meeting day.
Hold on a second.
Give me a second to look for my official letter.
Yeah, it may be Thursday because that's traditional.
Well, it won't be payday this week, but whatever.
Okay, well.
Oh, here it is.
Yes.
This is the official letter that the employees received.
Dear colleague.
Now, come on, gang.
That's almost as good as calling you.
The phrase is you're no longer an employee.
You are a, what is that word?
No, it's not worker.
What it actually means is you're an independent contractor,
but they don't really want to call you that.
Right, that way you don't have to be part of the union.
Right.
You don't have to have any rights.
But they can't do that up here.
I'm trying to think of that phrase that started sweeping the labor market,
and if anybody can think of the phrase that they stopped calling,
they call people now associate.
Associate.
Yeah, you're an associate now.
You're not a worker, and you're not an employee.
You're an associate, and what that came from was when Sam Walmart,
yeah, that's his name, Sam Walmart, right.
His name was actually Walmart?
I think it was.
Is it Walton?
Walton.
Walton, okay.
Okay.
That's a strange name to have if you have to run a market.
More than likely.
Yeah.
I believe he was one of the originators of that particular line of employment,
whereas you don't give your employees anything other than the opportunity
to work yourself to death.
And you allow them to participate in the company in some fashion.
Well, it's like they call it in North Carolina where there's no unions,
the right to work state.
Yeah.
I always wondered exactly what they meant by that.
Well, they meant the same thing that they meant in 1620.
You have a right to work.
You just don't have a right to be paid.
And that's the piece that people sort of miss out on.
People hate unions with a passion because they don't understand
that it's in their best interest.
At most points, to be represented by someone other than yourself
when you go up against a multi-trillion dollar company.
That's too bad Isaac's not here.
We could have such a debate right now.
But never mind.
Does he really love that stuff?
I mean, he hates unions?
Well, I'm not going to crawl inside his head.
No, I'm sorry.
Not hate.
Hate is too strong a term.
There are people who believe that the individual will always triumph
and that the individual has, I mean,
because I've had young workers come on the job and say,
look at that old, he sits around, he doesn't do anything.
Well, I've never been at a job, and I'm 51 now,
I've never been at a job in which if there was enlightened management
or any kind of management, that people didn't bust their hump.
The only time people get to sit around is when managers doesn't do their job.
And oftentimes the manager doesn't get their job, get the job done,
because they can't.
But let me give you this quick, Chuck Lee from GTE,
you remember Chuck, and Ivan Seidenberg,
first man in New York City that I know who had ADSL.
We'd like to officially welcome you and your family to Verizon.
With the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE now complete,
we can move forward and set the standard for communications companies
and making Verizon the most respected brand in the global marketplace.
Clearly Verizon is positioned to prepare to lead our industry
into the 21st century as it goes about not implementing 21st century technology.
That's just where it is, and then it goes on and on and on.
Keep your eyes on Verizon.
We think you're going to like what you see.
Best wishes, Chuck Lee and Ivan Seidenberg.
We're definitely going to keep our eyes on Verizon,
but I don't know if we're going to like what we see.
It's going to be everywhere.
This company is so all-encompassing, the biggest phone company in the world.
Right, and two quick things.
One, what company in their right mind would want to resurrect the peace sign
as sensitive as that is to, quote-unquote, Americana?
I just find it offensive that they're using a symbol of activism
to promote a corporate product.
Even worse than using Jimi Hendrix's, well, okay, we won't go there.
That'll get me all into the recording industry of America
and how they rape the artists of the rights to their own music
and then try to disguise it.
But MP3 is incorrect.
Yeah, MP3, that's the real threat.
Okay, let me give you one more thing, right?
Pay, pay, pay, talk, or talk, pay, pay.
Oh, I saw that ad.
How is it that IDT can offer that same program
for over three years for 4.9 cents,
and you're getting a great rate at 8 cents?
Yeah, I don't get it either.
There's all kinds of people that will go for that, not knowing it better.
But what I'm saying to you is that it's not the average worker
who even begins to understand to address these kinds of issues,
let alone the average customer who is barraged with nonsense like this.
And then it gets confusing for people who, me personally,
I just started dealing with the Internet,
and I was never so confused.
I mean, I thought it was relatively simple.
You put in the URL, and then you get the information.
Not if you've got the wrong search engine.
Not if you're not familiar with what you're doing.
And I've never seen advertisements like that in my whole life.
You need to play around a lot and don't listen to any corporate speak
that tells you exactly how to do it, because obviously they have an agenda.
Well, anyway, last thing is,
if anybody has any information about this Israeli firm
that was contracted out by Bell Atlantic to do work on Air Force bases
and then was found to have been transmitting information back to the Mossad,
I really would like to get information on that.
And how can people get that to you?
I give the snail mail address,
which is 120-24 Elgar, E-L-G-A-R place,
apartment 24, H is in Henry, Bronx, New York, 10475,
last name McPherson, M-C, P is in Paul, H-E-R-S-O-N.
Okay, that's pretty specific, so I guess y'all...
When they come for me, Emmanuel, your name will be on my list because I read the book.
My name's on everyone's list, but thanks for the call. Good luck.
But I won't have my hands in your pocket, nor will I send a lawyer with a subpoena.
All right, well, they'll just have to wait in line. Thanks very much.
It's nothing like having multiple court appointments.
Our trial, by the way, is still scheduled for the 17th of July,
which is Monday, federal court here in New York,
the day after H2K, Hackers on Planet Earth conference,
which takes place the 14th through the 16th.
An update on that, we have the final schedule pretty much done.
We're just verifying with people to make sure that's okay with them,
and we'll be announcing it within the next couple of days,
and that way you'll know when everything is.
There's a lot of new panels as well that we haven't announced.
But the fun starts on the 14th at the Hotel Pennsylvania right here in New York.
It's across the street from Penn Station on 7th Avenue.
And all the information that you could possibly want will be on www.h2k.net.
In fact, there's a lot up there right now.
And we're planning a lot of fun.
We have one show before this begins next week,
and that should be quite a lot of announcements
and people coming in from all over the world.
I see where people are coming from, and I don't think there's a single continent,
except maybe Antarctica, that's not included with the attendees.
We expect this to be bigger than either of the previous two,
and bigger maybe than anything else that has been in the hacker world.
So we hope it will be worth their while.
We hope it will be interesting.
We have two floors this time, so we expect to have quite a lot of activities.
We have a mock trial of 2600,
which originally we scheduled to be months in advance of our original trial.
Then they went and moved the trial up to the day after Hope.
So it's going to be mock trial, real trial, very quickly, one after the other.
On the 14th, on that Friday,
we have the premiere of our film, Freedom Downtime,
which is a documentary we've been working on for the last two years.
I've got to tell you, I've been looking at the footage,
and really, it makes me cry.
It really does, looking at it. It's unbelievable.
To think that I've spent two years on this,
while the rest of the world has gone on,
and I've given away two years of my life to this.
But in any event, that film will be premiering next Friday.
A week from this Friday, coming up.
Porkchop would be here now, except he's busy in the studio,
putting finishing touches on it.
Hopefully we'll have something.
By the time next week comes around, it should be completely finished.
Let's keep our fingers crossed on that.
There will be all kinds of other things that we'll be announcing.
Check the webpage. Let's take some more phone calls.
Hi Emmanuel, it's Mark. I'm calling to mention two things.
One regarding Verizon, and one regarding MP3 streams.
Actually, right now, there are no streams.
Because for some reason,
the people who run the servers, who actually relay it to the public,
are gone.
No one showed up for today.
You're saying nobody's streaming?
No. The only thing that's left is the official one, the BAI one.
You mean after I went on a great length saying how people were
sacrificing the 4th of July to do all this, you're saying they're not doing it?
No. There's no one here.
There's no one with the server who can do it right now.
We're going to have a meeting afterwards.
Secondly, I have another Verizon horror story.
I know someone who's an employee.
This person obviously has a cell phone,
and this person uses Bellionic as their service.
Her phone wasn't working properly.
She was pretty sure it wasn't the battery that was dead,
so she took it to one of the Bellionic offices.
She showed it to the technical support type person.
He just looked at the phone, and it's an old model phone,
a little bit over a year, and they don't produce it anymore.
He just looked at the phone and said,
this phone's broken. It's an old model. You're going to have to buy a new one.
I'm sorry. You can just go right and buy a new phone.
He's like, oh, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't handle that type of thing.
She even showed him her employee ID, and he said, oh, I don't know.
Go talk to customer service, and he expected her to wait in line two hours
from the customer service line just to be able to...
Just like anybody else, just like any normal person that's here as an employee.
Exactly.
What's even more funny is she came home and plugged it in,
and it turns out it was just the battery had for some reason died.
He didn't even bother to test the simplest thing.
He just immediately said, this is the phone. No, it's an old model. It's broken.
So he kind of said that their technical support staff
doesn't really seem to really care.
Well, it's more of a sales staff, really.
No, but she actually went to the guys who were like repairmen and stuff like that.
So that's really their job,
but yet they didn't take care of it as they should have.
That's a horror story.
I can probably think of worse horror stories than that.
Yeah.
That's sad. Well, I'm glad it had a happy ending.
All right. Thanks for the call. Let's move on to another call,
which I guess won't be coming from out of the area then.
There's really no way to announce to people to go to WBAI.org
if they can't hear the show to do that, unfortunately.
Oh, well.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Where are you calling from?
I'm calling from Michigan, actually.
Now, if you're calling from Michigan, that means you must be listening to the show.
Yeah, I am. Well, actually, I want to call because the real audio stream,
the real audio stream, not the MP3, is working.
A real audio is working, but MP3 is not?
One of them is.
One of the MP3s is working?
No, one of the real audio streams is working, just one of them.
I haven't tried the WBAI one,
but the one way at the bottom, server number five,
that one's working.
Okay. Well, that's some good news anyway.
Yeah. I actually had a question, too.
Yes.
What's the deal with Isaac and you not being able to be in the same studio?
Well, I don't want to spend a lot of time on it,
but basically it was felt by station management as well as, of course, the NYPD
that it was just best for everyone concerned
if we not be together in the same room,
especially with electronic objects around
because it gets expensive when things get hurled
and glass gets broken. What's that, Jim?
After the knife fight, I mean, when you both nearly got fried.
That didn't happen.
That didn't happen because that's the six-month thing.
Arcing all over.
$300,000.
Do you have any other points to make?
No. That's all I wanted to say.
Okay. Well, thanks very much for bringing that up.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Okay. That number you're looking for for the voice mailbox?
Ah, yes.
It's not an actual number.
You have to access that through your voice dialing.
Because more options, you know, you ask for more options.
You're talking about voice dialing. Right.
I'm talking about voice mail. Right.
Well, you access it through your voice dialing.
Okay. You can do that, but let's say you're away.
Let's say you're in Michigan, for instance,
and you want to call to get your messages. How do you do that?
I really don't know. I don't think the people at Della Atlantic know either
because when I asked them what that voice dialing thing was,
as a matter of fact, it just clicked into my head when you just mentioned it right now.
I was like, oh, that's what that thing is.
I didn't want to play with it because I didn't know if it cost anything.
Do you know what it costs?
It depends on your calling plan.
I know some people wind up being charged every time somebody calls them
and gets transferred to voicemail.
So it depends if you pay for every local call.
It's a local call, so if you get those for free, it doesn't cost you anything.
If you use Star 69, they charge you like 75 cents per use.
Do they charge you per use as you're using this thing?
I don't think they charge per use. I think they charge for the service.
So it's not a per use thing.
You can also subscribe to services for Star 66 and Star 69.
Those are the only things that they charge per use.
But you can have like, say, if you do it more than three times,
it pays to subscribe to the service where it's unlimited.
Right. Another question.
A couple of weeks ago, you mentioned something.
Somebody registered a webpage that said something like,
Verizon should spend less time on lawyers.
What was the name of that page?
Hang on, I've got an issue there.
We've got the brand new 2600 issue, which has...
I don't even remember what we called it.
When they threatened us with the lawsuit, we made up our own little...
It was something like, Verizon should spend less money on lawyers.
I'm getting it.
What is it?
Verizon should spend more time fixing its network
and less money on lawyers.com.
Thank you very much.
And that, of course, is, I believe, the longest website you can possibly have.
We thought this out very carefully.
Does it mean something in Welsh?
I don't know about that, but it basically makes use of every single letter that's possible.
And I know some browsers won't accept it.
But if you turn to page 16 of the brand new 2600, Summer 2000,
we printed every single one of the Verizon websites
that they have registered.
We counted 706.
Now, if you multiply that, they might have calculated 706 times 70 bucks
because they went through NSI on these.
Yeah, they went through NSI. How much was that, Jim?
Something in the order of 49,000.
They're putting up websites and plugging things in, whatever else they do.
A lot of these websites, too, if you have small children,
you probably shouldn't show them these pages
because they register some pretty foul language things.
And I don't know why they did that.
I think that's something that you should write to Verizon and say,
Why? Why did you register Verizon XXXX.com?
What were you thinking?
Yeah, say it just like the lawyers that were questioning me
a couple of days last week. It's unbelievable.
What were you thinking? It's like the McCarthy hearings.
Oh, and by the way, I know we mentioned that we were putting those up right away.
It's a legal thing where they just have to be proofread
and gone over time and time again.
I want to get them up as soon as possible, and hopefully they'll be up sometime this week
as well as the audio.
So we'll be happy to let you know when that happens.
Keep checking the site, www.2600.com.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Am I on the air?
Yes, you are.
Okay, I had a problem Saturday morning with Verizon making a 911 call.
I got woken up by a loud car crash around the corner.
And sure enough, a car crashed.
Well, a truck plowed underneath a low railway overpass.
There was metal all over the road, so I tried to dial 911 on Verizon.
It's a cellular phone.
I bought it from Bell Atlantic, but Verizon took it over.
And it used to work here in this zone.
This cell site would pick up within this area three times out of four.
It was a little bit weak.
But I tried four times, and I got nothing.
So I went to a pay phone.
But the point is, if it had been a car hitting the overpass or the bridge abutment
and somebody was trapped, it would have been a serious situation.
When you say you got nothing, what exactly happened?
This is the thing. I did get a busy signal.
Now, if they're sending me a busy signal, what does that mean?
Is it a fast busy or a slow busy?
Kind of a fast busy.
That means that it's blocked for some reason, whether it's circuits busy,
whether you don't have access to that particular number.
It should not happen, and it should be reported right away.
Well, I should have access to 911.
In fact, even if you don't pay your bill, you're supposed to have access to 911.
Now, I thought, you know, I brought the phone here.
I tried dialing my mother's number to see what would happen.
Well, I got a busy signal.
So I figured, well, if I can't get through, I'll get a busy signal.
But if I go into town and pick up a different cell site,
I get rings three times, and it says,
Welcome to Bell Verizon.
And I can dial 911 from in town in Locust Valley or Bayville,
but not here.
I have to drive at least a mile before I pick a signal up.
But it used to work when I had Bell Atlantic.
Again, this is something, I'm glad you're reporting this on the radio,
but this is something that absolutely has to be reported both to them immediately
and if they don't fix it to Public Service Commission, FCC, those people.
We had a problem a number of years ago with OmniPoint
where actually we had to report something,
and we had to talk the cops through it
and after something like three minutes, they just cut you off.
Some kind of recycling thing.
But they obviously, they're cutting me off because they're sending me a busy signal.
If I have no signal, I get a beep, beep, beep, beep,
a two-tone fast beeping.
But the busy signal means there's a connection there, right?
It depends.
Without hearing it, it would be really hard for me to say whether or not you connected.
Sometimes it shows up on your bill.
Sometimes you can tell on the phone if you're actually connected.
This whole area worked with Bell Atlantic.
Eventually I'd get through it.
Three out of four times it would work.
The weird thing about that is it is the same network.
The Verizon network is the exact same network as Bell Atlantic.
They didn't change any equipment.
They just changed the name. That's all they did.
Now I have to go three-quarters of a mile further to get a signal.
Thanks for the call.
We can fit one more phone call in.
Let's try and get to that.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Speak.
Is this the guy from Norway?
This is why people get hung up on, because they don't say anything.
You have to say something.
Whether or not you're from Norway or Mars or whatever.
Okay.
I'm told that www.wbai.org is streaming audio just fine.
Yes.
Actually, it was another site that was having trouble, but I'm glad that BAI is up.
You can go to that site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
no matter where you are in the world and hear WBAI.
I suggest you do that.
If you're ever in Paris or something, just put the computer on
and listen to what's going on on this radio station.
In other words, if you're listening to this on a streaming site that we have up for the show,
go to www.bai.org and listen to it for the rest of the week.
See what other kinds of programs are on.
Some of them you'll like, some of them you'll hate,
some of them will really open up your eyes.
That's what radio should be all about.
Let's take one more phone call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Speaking of Bell-Atlantic propaganda,
the Bell-Atlantic Security Quarterly,
which comes out the same time as the Hacker Quarterly,
is full of stories of workers
who abused Bell-Atlantic in some way.
Every single one of these stories ends in the same way.
Employee quit in lieu of dismissal.
So basically, it's to frighten employees
and tell them they can't get away with this stuff.
But it's completely that.
It doesn't have anything to do with protecting yourself.
It's hysterical.
This is the kind of thing that people bring to 2600 meetings
on the first Friday of every month. You know that, right?
Yeah.
Fortunately, there's one coming up this Friday.
Unfortunately, that's going to have to be the last word.
But also, if you have juicy bits of information
that you want to send to us and you want to fax them,
our fax number is now area code 631-474-2677.
Of course, we always like to look at things that are of interest.
Who doesn't?
That's going to do it for this week.
I guess we'll go outside and light some fireworks now.
So if you're in the area, join us.
We're going to light a few things. No big deal.
No need to panic.
If you see Isaac out on the street,
I think the authorities will take care of him.
We'll see you next week. Good night.