And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York, where, uh, wait a minute, it's
not on.
I hear my voice.
I'm on.
Because I've used up the number of things that can go wrong today.
Okay, this is our brand new time slot, and apparently it's a cursed one because, uh,
no matter what, no matter what, things are not going to work out tonight, and I guess
that's sort of the theme of the show.
Off the hook.
Welcome.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving.
Now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
I'm really bound for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
I'm really bound for the best, expect the worst.
And good evening to everybody.
The program is Off the Hook.
Sorry for the lateness of the program, but if so many of you weren't out there driving
right now, I would have gotten here a lot earlier.
I left three hours ago.
Three hours ago.
It's not enough time to get here for this new slot.
It's called rush hour.
It's called rush hour.
I know.
I didn't think about that when they said, hey, Emmanuel, you're on at seven o'clock
in the evening now.
How in the world am I supposed to get here?
Well, I have to leave.
No, four o'clock is not early enough to leave to get here at seven.
Now I have to leave, I guess, at two o'clock in the afternoon.
Isn't that nice?
Isn't that nice?
Three hours of driving is not enough to do a one-hour show.
I have to do more than that.
I guess I can complain to the union.
They took away the producer's right to be in the union about a year or so ago, but we
got it back.
We got it back.
So unpaid producers like myself can be in the union, but somebody else decreed that
you have to have a minimum of 10 hours airtime.
Isn't that something?
So despite the fact that I spent all this time getting here, I have no voice at all
except for the voice I'm using right now.
So that's a little bit of the indignities I've been facing today.
Mike, what have you been up to?
What challenges have you faced on the way down here?
It was very quick to get down here, actually.
Yeah, because you used the subway.
Yeah.
They don't have the subway in Long Island, unfortunately.
Well, they do have railroads.
Yeah.
I remember the last time I took a railroad, what happened?
It took even longer to get in.
I swear, this country has got the worst, both mass transit and road system of...
I mean, any third world country can probably beat us in those departments.
Any one of them.
Try India.
I'm sorry, what?
Try India.
Try India?
Yeah.
I will try India.
I will happily try India.
After going through what I just went through...
You're talking about lanes.
The BQE narrowed down to less than one lane.
Not one lane.
Less than one lane.
Three quarters of a lane.
Because if you move an inch in either direction, you hit a wall.
And it's been like this for months.
It's a crime what's going on out there.
Anyway, I don't want to spend the whole hour complaining about traffic, because there are
plenty of other things to complain about.
Well, first of all, let's do something nice.
At the 2600 meeting last week, someone gave me a song.
Listen to this.
Man, that's a relic.
Your call will now be completed.
Okay, that shouldn't have happened, because this is the kind of day it's been, where things
happen that aren't supposed to...
That's something else I want to play.
But that was a remix of the Off The Hook theme.
I don't even know the person's name.
I forgot to write down their name, but I think it's great when people actually can make music.
That's what we have there.
A remix of the Off The Hook theme, and if that person wants to email me their name or
something like that, I'll say it next time.
Anyway, this recording that I played by accident just now...
Your call will now be completed.
Please note, effective soon, this phone will no longer accept coins for AT&T long distance
calls.
You may wish to begin using a prepaid calling card or other payment method as a substitute.
That is the recording you get at payphones, when you try to put money in them, or when
you actually succeed in putting money in them to make long distance phone calls, AT&T no
longer will be carrying coin phones.
We talked about this about a week or so ago, but that is the actual recording that you
will hear for those people that actually still put money into payphones, outrageous rates
that they charge.
I don't quite know what they expect people to do.
I guess everyone has to go out and get one of those prepaid calling cards or something
like that.
It's kind of sad to be forced into that, a payphone no longer taking coins.
I don't know what the world is coming to.
I guess local calls, though, will still take quarters and things like that.
In fact, I heard a story, and maybe, Mike, you can verify this, that Verizon has lowered
their payphone rates from 50 cents back down to 25 cents.
Have you heard this?
I've heard that.
You've heard that.
Does this count as verification?
Well, I mean, wait to hear it.
Where you hear things are...
I found it online somewhere.
Jim's raising his hand.
Jim has heard it.
Okay, Jim, where did you hear it?
Jim has heard it.
Jim has read it.
Okay.
I read it in the New York City newspapers about a little less than a week ago, I think.
And if it's in the New York City newspapers, it has to be true.
Well, that's where I read the comics.
That's where I get all my news, at least from boondocks.
Yeah, it just didn't catch on.
So they...
What do you mean it didn't catch on?
People complained.
When it was 100% price high, it caught on.
They got too many people.
People finally complained, and from what I also hear is that people actually started
dialing up the coin refund system and asking for their coins back, which upset Verizon
no end.
Just goes to show you what people power can do.
More Verizon news, though.
What's that?
In the New York City papers as well, Verizon had an ad, which even adds more credence.
But this ad was pointing out that soon we are doomed to 10-digit dialing, even for the
same area code in New York City.
That's old news.
I know it's old news, but they never had the ads before.
This is new news to people, as you can tell in the letters to the editor of these newspapers.
Well, it's not new news to anybody listening off the hook.
We've been talking about this for quite a while now.
And in fact, I think that they push this on people by splitting all these area codes so
that you get wrong numbers because people think they're in the different area code,
and they really are.
And then you say, well, you know, if this person had dialed an area code, had been forced
to dial an area code, even if it's his own area code, I never would get all these wrong
numbers.
In fact, for some reason, I get all these calls on my cell phone now for a doctor.
And it's the most ridiculous thing.
People leave long messages detailing all the problems that they're having without even
listening to the message.
The outgoing message has nothing to do with the doctor's office.
God forbid a doctor had that kind of a message on their machine.
What kind of a doctor would that be?
Yet they still leave all this information about what's bothering them, about the accident
they just had.
They're bleeding profusely.
They're lying down.
They're having headaches.
I apply a tourniquet.
That kind of stuff.
Please call me back, doc.
Doc, this is my fifth call.
I'm going to pass out soon.
I get all of them.
And the thing is, I'm not in range where I live.
So I don't get all the messages until it's too late to do something about them.
So, you know, I can pretty much chart the course of people who are calling this doctor
in more frantic states.
People have to listen, you know, when they make phone calls.
They have to know what they're doing.
It's not telling what you're actually reaching.
Well, eventually these people will die and then they'll arrest you for murder, I'm sure,
the way the legal system works.
Well, that's the most passive kind of murder I can possibly think of, not answering a phone.
Speaking of not answering phones, well, Mike, you had a run-in with Sprint PCS this past
week, didn't you?
I had a big run-in.
It happens frequently.
I had a really big run-in.
But let's get to your run-in first as kind of a prelude to my run-in.
I've set up with Sprint automated bill payment by my credit card.
So I don't have to ever, like, deal with their bills.
But recently I got a letter saying my charge had been denied.
Really?
Yeah.
So I called them up asking them to redo the charge, and there's a $5 fee.
There's a $5 fee for what?
If you want a human to process your payment, there's a $5 fee.
Oh, if you go to their store and do that?
No, if you call them up.
If you call them on the phone, they're going to charge you?
And you refuse to deal with this stupid automated thing.
And you want to make a payment, there's a $5 fee.
This is new, apparently.
Wait a minute.
If you call Sprint PCS on the phone, you talk to their operators, you actually get through
to one of their operators.
Which takes half an hour, anyway.
And you ask them to simply apply your payment to a credit card, they charge you $5 for that?
Mm-hmm.
That's interesting.
That's really...
I mean, it's like they can charge you for transferring you, I guess.
There's going to be a fee for this.
What do they do?
They just add it to your bill?
I guess.
I didn't take them up on their kind offer.
How else are you supposed...
You get through the machine.
Yeah.
Which is true, I guess.
There's a stupid machine.
The machine does not tell you how much money you owe, it only asks how much you want to
pay.
Uh-huh.
Well, I had a bit of running with the machine, too.
Let me tell you what happened.
I missed a bill.
Okay?
I've been busy, I've been working on the magazine, I've been working on the conference.
And when that happens, bills sometimes lapse a little bit.
So with the phone bill, and this is how it's always been with Verizon, you don't pay one
month.
No big deal.
You know?
They simply...
They might add on a three cents or something, 1.5% late fee or something like that.
So I figured I'd pay the Sprint bill, you know, the next time it came around.
Because by the time I read the bill, it was past the due date anyway.
So I figured, why not just combine them and save 34 cents?
Well, apparently that's not how they like to do business.
And what they did was, they had their automated...
We played this.
The muffled automated reminder notice.
It's really a bad thing for a cellular phone company to have a muffled recording call you.
But that's what they do.
They say, this is Sprint PCS, please call us because you owe us money or something like
that.
And they filled my mailbox.
As I mentioned, I'm not in range.
So I don't use my phone that much.
So I get in range.
And there's like eight messages.
My voice mailbox is full because they only have a certain amount of voice messages you
can put in there.
It's filled with these messages.
One per day from Sprint PCS reminding me to pay them.
And the bill date wasn't even for another week and a half.
They just playing it safe to make sure that I don't forget this time that I really pay.
Even though there's no usage at all in my account.
I'm not calling Venezuela or anything like that.
So as if that's not enough, I'm at the 2600 meeting on Friday.
This is when I get in range again and I clear out my mailbox.
I haven't been able to receive any messages because these idiots left all these messages
in my box.
What do you think happens?
My phone rings.
I pick it up.
And it's a human from Sprint, you know, saying, hello, this is Sprint PCS.
And I said, look, I've had it.
I'm paying the damn bill.
Leave me alone.
And I hung up because I was in a bad mood, not as bad as tonight, but I was in a bad
mood.
Well, apparently she was in a bad mood, too, because the next thing I know, my phone stopped
working, even though I said I was going to pay, you know, the phone just stopped working.
So this is where the fun begins.
I called a number, any number, really.
And when that happens, you get transferred to a recording saying press one for English,
press two for Spanish.
That's all they say.
They don't say anything else.
I pressed one for English.
I got transferred to a recording saying that I was going to be transferred again to customer
solutions.
Apparently I'm a customer problem, so they need to apply a customer solution.
And so I dance around in voicemail for a while, hitting all these buttons saying, OK, you
know, I want to, even though I'd already sent the check, I wanted to make a promise
to pay.
That's what you're supposed to do.
Make a promise to pay.
You know, it's wrong, wrong phraseology because I already paid, so I sort of want to make
a statement that I did pay, but fine.
Promise to pay.
So I push the button for that.
Transferred all over the place.
Finally, I get to a recording saying we're closed.
We're not even open now.
So you just wasted 10 minutes dancing around in our voicemail hell and you're not going
to get anything done.
What you should do.
What you should do is go to our website and pay on the website.
Oh joy.
So you know, I wasn't, I wasn't near an internet connection, you know, I was, I was on the
phone in the street.
So I finally went home, got on the internet and, and, and dialed up sprintpcs.com on the
internet and it wanted my password.
I don't remember my, I've, I've used this system maybe once in, in, in, in three years.
I don't know what my password is.
I say, look, okay, remind me of my password somehow.
I guess, you know, they send it to your email.
They don't send it to email.
You know what they do?
They send it to your phone.
They send your password to your phone.
Now I mentioned I'm not in range out there, so I had to wait till the next day to actually
go into range to see what the password was that got sent to my phone.
And of course, what do you think happened when I got into range?
It never went to my phone because my phone's turned off.
So there's this big loop of logic here.
I can't get my password because my phone is turned off and I can't turn my phone on because
I don't have my password.
So finally I called a person.
This was in the daytime now.
So I called a person, had to go through the whole thing all over again, finally reached
somebody who didn't understand anything and had a long conversation with them and wound
up basically accomplishing nothing.
Called back after that and got somebody who sort of knew what was going on and was able
to turn my phone on.
But they wanted my password too and I told them, look, I don't have my password.
You know, you can say it to me over my phone, you know, you can send it to my phone, but
I don't have it.
I don't know what it is.
I'm trying to say I'm paying.
You know, I'm paying the bill.
I'm trying to pay and it's just, they're making it so hard.
I don't know if I got charged $5 for that little interaction there, but it's really
frustrating.
It's very frustrating.
Why go to that much trouble just to, you know, keep a phone that has substandard service
in the first place?
Sprint PCS, yeah, all right.
What else has been going on this week?
Well, we have lots of mail.
We want to take phone calls from some of the new listeners in case people are tuning
in thinking they're hearing explorations with Mishukaku.
You missed it.
It was on at 5 o'clock.
I know because I was listening to it while I was sitting in traffic and it was a very
interesting show, but I'll always associate it with sitting in the hot, overheated expressway
with idiots that don't know what they're doing.
Okay.
Let's read a couple of listener letters and we'll take phone calls 202-209-2900.
This person wrote in to say that there's a $7 million project from the U.S. Army, a PC
game series called America's Army.
Have you heard about this?
I've heard of this.
The series will contain two different editions, an FPS with a multiplayer option and a second
game.
These games will be given away free of charge and you can pre-order your copy now.
What I really find funny is that the U.S. government is actually coming out with something
so violent.
Isn't that really so funny?
I mean, I think it's kind of...
The Army, folks who may not be familiar with this, its job is to kill people.
Killing people is violent.
Yeah, that's true, but I don't think they advertise that, you know, so much.
They don't really, you know, say that so blatantly, but some people might not think very much
of this, but imagine, and you should do this, imagine how big of a deal it would be if some
Middle Eastern or Asian government were doing this.
The media would look at them like monsters, training young children to kill.
They're all terrorists.
In all seriousness, I think the multiplayer side of the game series should be looked at
carefully.
Could this act just be an attempt to instill an anti-terrorist attitude into the youth
of America or something more?
Just think of all the studies that could be done checking out different people's tactics
like Chinese versus Cubans, or maybe even using the more skilled players acting as free
competition for training the military.
Anyway, the official site is www.americasarmy.com and it's linked to by the official Army site,
which is goarmy.com.
There seems to be some kind of crazy recruiting tactic, and as with all recruiting tactics,
I'm worried about it.
Video games, unbelievable.
Okay, we had this story about, you heard about this, where somebody in Norway lost a password.
The Norwegian Educational Center for Cultural Preservation lost the password to a historical
cataloging 11,000 original books and manuscripts, but they were able to recover it with help
from the web.
Email messages from more than 100 good Samaritans flooded the Ivar Asen Center for Language
and Culture starting on Thursday afternoon after the organization called for aid in hacking
into one of its own databases to which the password was lost.
Among the messages was the correct password to the locked database, which the center had
posted online.
Now, okay, that's interesting that that person just happened to mail them the password.
It's unknown whether the helpful hackers that provided the correct answer decrypted the
database or guessed the correct password or used a flaw in the database's security to
obtain access to the data.
In its online message, the center said it would post more details on Monday.
Well, today is Wednesday and I don't think we have any more details as of yet.
We have no known information on the person, this is what they said originally.
We have no known information from this person who had died with the password which can help
us solve this problem.
So this is, I guess, something that we're going to be seeing more of in the future as
people with a secret password start dying and not telling people what the passwords
are.
I have a related story.
The Times and other sources reported that post 9-11, a large firm hinting, it seems
to be Cantor Fitzgerald, lost a lot of people who had passwords to their internal systems.
They lost almost their whole company in the World Trade Center.
Yeah, more than half.
So essentially the survivors got together and brainstormed, trying to remember people's
hobbies, wives' names, dogs' names, kids' names.
What if they actually picked a good password?
Where they went on vacation.
Apparently they didn't have a lot of people who picked good passwords.
This company, believed to be Cantor Fitzgerald, managed to get into just about everything
they had.
Interesting.
Of course, brute force is always one option, but I'm not sure how well people will do in
that situation.
What are you pointing at?
There's a television in here for some unknown reason.
Why is there a television in here?
That's a good question, but it just said that Sprint PCS has the highest customer satisfaction.
Oh, is that so?
Well, I think maybe there are some customers out there that might have something to say
about that.
Okay, this person.
Here's an email from somebody who works for a cable company, a major cable company.
And basically this person says, I'm not a big sports person, but the World Cup has always
caught my attention because of different cultures participating in the event.
That's kind of what I was saying last week.
I work for a major cable company, AT&T Broadband, and there was a problem with a channel broadcasting
the World Cup live in Utah.
So the solution that they came up with was broadcasting the World Cup on a TV guide channel,
and that led to all kinds of people complaining about where's the TV guide channel, and why
do you have this soccer thing on the cable?
This person simply replied, well, the World Cup actually involves the entire world, not
just two American teams like the World Series.
The World Cup is an event that happens once every four years, and it's the most watched
event worldwide except here in the U.S. by locals such as yourself.
Thank you for calling AT&T.
That's somebody with a good attitude towards that, I think.
And yeah, it's amazing how we don't pay attention to what's going on in the rest of the world.
I've been pretty much seeing this over the course of the last few days.
I talked about the World Cup last week, and it's fascinating just watching all the different
cultures and watching how people react and their different methods and things like that.
It's less to do with sports and more to do with just how the world gets along with each
other, how they interact.
And it's kind of sad, too, because the United States is doing pretty well, and we're not
getting any attention here that the United States is doing well.
And in fact, if you're over there, you also get the sense that the United States just
somehow doesn't fit in.
Other players from other teams, they help each other up when they fall down.
It doesn't matter if they're on different teams.
They pat each other on the back.
But the United States, it's like we're some invading power, and I guess we are some invading
power, especially in Korea, where the crowd kind of was not really that friendly to us.
And you can sort of understand it, being a military force that is so pervasive everywhere.
But you just get the sense that we're not on the same playing field, literally, as the
rest of the world.
And it's a sad thing, because we miss out on so much.
This is just one of the things we're missing out on.
Okay, what else?
This person wants to say the entire 2600 community seems to be the only real medium I found for
free information about the hacking world.
I was just wondering, as I've been listening to the information on Magic Lantern that you
and some listeners have been talking about, I was wondering if you could send me a link
to some hard information for the actual implementation of this.
Is there a link to Magic Lantern?
I don't think so.
I don't think it's that out in the open.
We've had a lot of people send us mail saying how they think it works, but no one as of
yet has either gotten it themselves or is part of the development team.
We certainly would welcome email from either of those factions of people, oth at 2600.com.
This person from Belgium says they're glad OTH has changed time slots, now it's not quite
so late when I want to listen in from my home in Ghent, Belgium.
Well, I guess it's a little bit simpler for people over there where it's one hour early.
I think it's what o'clock in the morning now?
I think it's half past midnight.
Half past midnight, okay.
Or half past one.
Something like that.
It's an hour earlier than it usually is, just like it is for us, a day later.
Okay.
You know, something unbelievable happened.
Just one more little story before we take some phone calls.
As you know, I'm out on the island where there's no cell phone reception at all.
Occasionally I go through this village known as Port Jefferson, you've heard of it.
It's named after Thomas Jefferson.
In fact, they had a big statue of Thomas Jefferson, kind of the focal point of the town.
Now, I went through there last weekend and you know what?
The statue is gone.
The statue of Thomas Jefferson in the town of Port Jefferson is gone.
And the first thought, of course, is like, well, you know, what happened?
What happened to Thomas Jefferson?
I mean, he's the focal point of democracy, whatever you may think of his past, you know,
he's somebody that, you know, nationwide is revered as, you know, a true spokesperson
for what this nation allegedly stands for.
In its place, in the place of the statue of Thomas Jefferson is a big war-like eagle with
an inscription to the people who died on 9-11 and renaming of the area to Armed Forces Plaza.
And, you know, certainly there's nothing wrong with having a memorial to people who died
from terrorist attacks, but to tear down Thomas Jefferson to do it?
I mean, could the metaphor be any better than that?
You know, all the freedoms that we're giving up now, and literally tearing down statues
of some of the founding fathers of the nation, it's, I don't think people think before they
do these things.
So I guess, you know, a lot of people are very upset.
I've talked to a number of people out there and actually nobody knew this was going to
happen.
It just was a complete surprise, complete surprise.
They just tore down the statue.
I mean, when statues of Lenin were torn down in the Soviet Union and in Mongolia and all
over the world, you know, the rest of the world looked at that and said, wow, this is
symbolic of changing times.
Now, how do you think it's going to look to the rest of the world when they see us tearing
down statues of Thomas Jefferson and God knows who else and replacing them with war statues?
It's really sad.
I would give out phone numbers for people to call the village of Port Jefferson and
voice their outrage, but I think if you really care, you can look it up.
It's on Long Island.
So voice your opinion.
Maybe we can restore something that wasn't so bad.
All right.
Should we take phone calls unless there's any other news?
All right.
Let's do that then.
212-209-2900.
If you're a new listener, we'd like to hear from you.
If you're an old listener, hope you made the time shift a little better than I did.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
How you doing?
Not only...
I haven't just heard or read about these new Verizon 25-cent payphones.
I've seen them and I've actually called for 25 cents.
Uh-huh.
They're there already.
Well, maybe they were there the whole time.
They never changed them to 50 cents.
Well, let me tell you that even before this, there were phones that still said 25 cents.
Uh-huh.
Most of them don't work for 25 cents anymore, even though they say 25 cents.
Oh, really?
Most phones that say 25 cents for 4 minutes, 25 cents is additional 4 minutes.
Interesting.
Right.
I know there were some phones, because I went to a place called City Island, which I didn't
even know existed until I went there, where all the phones were still 25 cents.
And this was about 4 weeks ago.
And they never apparently switched to 50 cents.
I know because I tried to make a phone call and it only cost a quarter and the sign still
said 25 cents.
Right.
So there were some places, I think.
There's one place, and by the way, I'm the first caller, right?
The first caller at the new time slot, yes.
Yeah, there seems to be a problem with the mix.
I'm getting, your voice is low and there's music going through the phone that's loud.
Oh, okay.
Music's going through the phone loud.
That tells me that something, okay.
Any better?
No?
No, no.
Something is playing in a studio someplace and you're hearing music now.
Yes.
Okay, hold on, let me hit this.
How about now?
Ah, you fixed it.
Okay.
There was a CD machine going, but it wasn't potted up, so it shouldn't be going out.
Well, you said this is the theme of tonight, that nothing's really going to work.
And it's holding true so wonderfully, isn't it?
Yeah.
Now, speaking of things that don't work, in Grand Central Station, the place where you
change trains, where all these stairs are, there's a place where there are phones that
say 25 cents.
And you put in 25 cents and it says, no, sorry, hang up and check the instruction on the payphone
for the appropriate rate and try your call again.
But the rate on the phone is 25 cents.
So I once actually tried putting in 50 cents.
And you know what?
The extra coin, the extra quarter, actually went straight through the coin return slot
and it didn't accept it.
And this is why Verizon is one of the leading phone companies in the world.
Unbelievable.
Well, soon they won't take coins at all, so I guess our problems will be over.
Well, there are some payphones now that don't take coins.
That's true.
That's true, there are.
But I think they want to wean us away from coins altogether and just have us use cards.
I know that's the way it is over in Europe.
They don't take coins in a lot of payphones over there.
Will you still pay the same amount with the cards?
Hopefully not, because the coin rate is a complete ripoff.
I mean, it costs something like $4 for the first minute to call anywhere out of state.
Whereas if you call from your home, it's something like 8 cents.
So those rates really should transfer themselves over to payphones as well.
And there's no reason for there to be any more maintenance on payphones,
because there's no physical activity going on with coins having to be collected or deposited or anything like that.
So the rates should be the same, or very close.
Are there going to be like MetroCard, where you get a 10% discount if you put enough on the card?
Well, that would be nice, wouldn't it?
But I don't know if that's going to happen.
I mean, unfortunately, I don't run the phone system.
So I don't know.
I can't dictate how policy will be set.
But I'm telling you what I think would be fair.
Maybe you can get a free transfer from one phone number to another?
That would be nice, too.
Call transferring would be something that I think would be really kind of cool.
Anyway, thanks for the call.
We're going to move on to some more.
By the way, I'm glad with the problems you're having.
What was it?
Spring Peep?
Yes, I'm glad at least you are able to go on the radio and tell people about it.
Well, I like to be a vocal piece for complaining.
And hopefully somebody can kind of sympathize with that
and maybe feel some of their own pain being expressed.
OK, thanks.
All right.
That's what we're here for.
Mouthpieces for pain.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
OK, fine.
Let's try this one.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
I'm not for war statues, but Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner.
OK, yeah.
Let me just stop you right there.
I know.
I know all the problems with Thomas Jefferson.
But the point is, the point is, you know, everybody,
anybody that you find who is a hero of some sort, allegedly,
is going to have a dark past.
I guarantee it.
The point here is what Thomas Jefferson allegedly stands for in our country,
which is freedom and democracy and all that kind of thing.
Whether or not, you know, he was a dictator or whatever he was,
that is what he is alleged to stand for.
And the symbolic act of A, having a statue,
and B, tearing that statue down,
that's the only thing I'm addressing here.
OK?
OK.
That's what you say.
All right.
They won't name schools after him.
They've renamed schools.
It's no longer legal to name public schools after slave owners.
OK.
Well, that's a different issue as far as I'm concerned.
You know, I mean, I'm not going out there saying
we have to name schools after this person or any person.
I'm just saying tearing down a statue of somebody
who supposedly is one of the foundations of a democracy,
that's a symbolic act in itself and it's a stupid symbolic act
and I think it's something that the rest of the world will point at
and, you know, ridicule us for.
One of many things.
Well, you have one opinion and other people have other opinions.
That's right.
All right.
Thanks for pointing out that fact.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hi, Manuel.
This is KNS from Newport News.
How's it going?
How are you doing?
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
How is the signal coming in down there?
It's doing great.
I'm listening to off the hook through Winamp, actually.
It sounds great.
I was the guy that was arrested at H2K for the BB gun.
Ah.
And I just wanted...
You've heard about him?
I just wanted to say that I'm sorry that I had it at the time
and I will be going to H2K too
and I apologize for anything that might have looked bad on 2600 with it.
Well, actually, Matt, you mentioned it.
The people who ran security for us at the time did a really good job
making sure that he didn't get anywhere near the conference
and I think the conference goers never even knew that there was a problem downstairs
and that's why we have these guys because they're good.
Hopefully things have improved for you as well.
They have.
I mean, I don't know if you got my e-mails or not on the issue that happened,
but I was in the Navy at the time and going through some stuff at the time
and it turned out I ended up not getting an OTH discharge,
which stands for others and honorable, not off the hook,
and I got a very good honorable discharge under medical conditions.
I'm doing a lot better.
I'm married now and everything's working out great.
My wife's going to accompany me to H2K too and I look forward to seeing you there.
Okay. Thanks for calling and we'll see you at the conference.
And the conference, of course, is one month away.
Just one month away.
It's unbelievable how time is flying.
But all kinds of preparations are in the works.
In fact, Mr. Ohm is here and you're preparing something with retrocomputing again, right?
Yes.
We're going to try and repeat and make better the retrocomputing panel
and we're going to have a retrocomputing neighborhood.
So now retrocomputing, basically that means bringing in all kinds of old computers,
old working computers, as you might point out,
and setting them up and actually having them there
so people can walk by and see how cool...
Play games.
What kind of systems do you have in mind?
Commodore 64s, Ataris, TRS-80s.
But we're also looking for computers even older than that.
Altairs and hobby computers and stuff like that.
Alright, so if people have computers and they want to come by and set them up,
what should they do? Email you?
Yeah, email me at mr-ohm at 2600.com.
Okay, that's mr-ohm at 2600.com.
You only have to email me if you're bringing in a disproportionately large amount of gear.
Otherwise, just bring it.
Just bring it to the conference.
The conference is July 12th through 14th.
More info at www.h2k2.net
and hopefully we'll see a lot of people there.
We'll have a lot more information posted in the next week,
including additional speakers and additional activities.
Alright, let's take another phone call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Yeah, speak up please.
Hello?
Yes, and don't do that.
Okay, hello?
What's on your mind?
Oh yeah, I just wanted to say I actually bought a phone card
that supposedly is 2.5 cents with no connection charge.
Did you buy this at like a price club or something?
No.
Where'd you buy it?
Bought it in Queens at a little restaurant in,
what is it, not Long Island City, but the one after that.
Uh-huh.
I called up the company just to verify it
and I haven't used it yet, but they gave me an access code
which will reach supposedly the local and regional
and it's simply dialing in about 10 numbers
and then the area code number and it's 2.5
and if you go out of that area code,
you can't use that area code to reach a number.
I believe they said it was 9 cents a minute.
Ah, okay.
That's how they get you then because most,
you're saying if you make a call outside the region,
let's say you call California, you have to pay 9 cents a minute.
I believe that was the figure, yeah.
But there's no connection charge.
Now if you get a phone card through one of these major phone companies,
it's like 25 cents a minute and $4.95 a month
plus a connection charge.
Those are the bad ones, but let me ask you a question here.
You say there's no connection charge.
That's right.
Are you calling an 800 number or are you calling a local number?
I think it's 866 number.
Okay, that's toll free.
I would hasten to guess that they're still going to hit you up
for a connection charge from a pay phone.
No, no.
I asked that quite clearly.
In fact, I called up several times.
Two different people and was told that no,
there is absolutely no connection charge.
Really?
How about you give me the name of this company
and I'll check into it because I've never heard of a company these days
since they started charging 800 number owners for pay phone calls.
They always pass that fee along and they increase it quite a bit
and usually it's like a dollar or something.
Okay, fine.
I don't have it at my fingertips here,
but are you going to be on at this time now regularly?
Yes.
So I will be getting back to you with that.
Okay, let's keep updated on this particular phone card
and see if it's actually a good deal.
Actually, the diamond card, I know that.
USA.
Okay, well if you could just get all the information for us
maybe next week or email it to us.
I think that's about the lowest price I've ever heard of.
I've seen lower.
I have seen lower, but there are always conditions.
Yeah, connection charges.
Exactly, I bought one in Oklahoma City
and most of these damn cards don't even tell you how much they charge.
I mean, it should be a law.
Okay.
He's a terrorist, these companies.
Well, I don't know about that, but they sound very honest.
Capitalist terrorists taking money from me.
A different form, I suppose.
Exactly.
All right, thanks for your call and keep us updated on that
because we do want to see if there are any good deals out there for people
and make sure people don't get ripped off.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up, it's you.
Yes, yes, great.
I'd like to know, may I say hello to you and to Mark?
He's not feeling so well, so it's a shout out to Mark.
And which companies other than Horizon and IT&T
can I subscribe to to get local and non-distant and everything
because the rates are going up and I can't afford it.
Well, basically there's all kinds.
You might want to try something called MCI's The Neighborhood,
which is a local company and a long-distance company.
I think the total rate is $50, $49.99 for everything
and that's all you ever pay no matter how many long-distance calls you make.
That might be something worthwhile.
That might be what you're looking for.
But then again, it might not be.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up, go ahead.
Don't forget to tune in Wednesday, June 26th
for our special 10th anniversary call
and right here on Listener Sponsored,
WBII, New York City's alternative voice.
All right, well get the call letters right.
BAI is our call letters.
Thanks, Rebel, for making the transition over.
That's the one thing about doing radio.
You kind of have to tell everybody that you're on at any time,
not just some people.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi, Manuel.
How's it going?
It's Ed in Brooklyn.
Real dive for the phone there.
Yeah, fast grab.
About that Verizon rollback.
That's only for New Yorkers.
The out-of-towners look at the pay 50 cents
at hotels and airports according to the report
Newsday earlier.
How can they charge different rates
at hotels and airports?
I don't know.
Set them up that way, I guess.
Put the card in the phone that says it's 50 cents
and not a quarter.
I don't know.
I have some advice for anyone staying at a New York hotel
with a pay phone that costs 50 cents.
Walk outside, walk to the corner,
find the pay phone there and pay a quarter.
You know, what I would have preferred, though,
if Verizon's going to roll back anything,
they should roll back the cost to call information
from pay phones because that used to be free.
It used to be a lot easier to call up
and find out the number of something
before you made the phone call.
Now you have to pay, what, 50 cents
to find out what the number is?
I don't make the call.
I just, you know, I visit them or send them a letter
or something like that or I just do something else.
But I'm not going to pay 50 cents and quarters
or however much it costs to, you know,
to find out a phone number that costs less to call than that.
I don't call from pay phones that often,
but I got sticker shock when I was,
when I was just across the border in Pennsylvania
and about to be coming in to my son
who's at Binghamton University
to let him know I'd be a little bit late
and I went to this pay phone
and when I heard it was going to cost me,
either by way of the card or the coins,
I said, forget about it, I'll just be late.
Uh-huh, yeah, that's what you have to do.
All right, thanks for calling.
Welcome, take care.
Take care.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Oh, I had an interesting thing to tell you
about Sprint PCS.
Okay.
Since I've been hearing you lambaste them.
I have a professional office
and I was getting bills and calls from Sprint PCS
and I don't have an account.
Uh-huh.
So what I did was, to protect myself,
I mean, it's very easy to get to their collections department.
I wound up finding out the person's name,
social security number, date of birth, address,
anything you wanted to know about this,
anything that this person ever wrote down
to get the Sprint PCS account.
So it's kind of dangerous.
I think they have morons working for them.
I can verify they do have morons working for them.
I've talked to a few of them.
Well, I mean, just for your listeners to know,
I mean, I'm a new listener to you.
I've heard you on 3 different occasions.
Uh-huh.
But I wouldn't go near a Sprint PCS
with a 10-foot pole.
Yeah.
You know, that person's information.
After they told me that, I said,
listen, guess what?
I could be that person, but I'm not that person.
And what you told me, I think, is just illegal.
They said, but you told me you were him.
I said, well, you called me.
Good point.
Good point.
And then finally, I was able to get them
to stop calling me.
On 3 or 4 different occasions,
they were, you know, they told me
that they would delete, you know,
delete my number from the account,
and they didn't do it.
And finally, I had to speak to a supervisor
to get them to override everything.
And that's my story.
I have this stuff all documented.
It was amazing.
I have a feeling a lot of people have similar stories
of horror from both Sprint PCS and other companies as well.
I don't want to just single them out,
but they're the ones that really got on my nerves
in the last week, and Mike as well.
So I guess this is the feature for them.
Next week, probably, we'll do a Voice Dream
or something like that.
Anyway, thanks for that call.
Let's see if we have time for another one.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Yes.
I would like to know,
is there a way that one can find out?
And I have called so many numbers
to try to find them, the MIS department
at the mayor's office.
Gee whiz, I never tried that.
I don't know.
Have you tried asking for that?
I have called every number that you can find
in the back of those yellow pages,
pretty much, to try to find it.
And I can't find the MIS department.
Uh-huh.
And I would really like to,
if there's any way,
somebody can send me an email
or there's a place I can call.
Someone from the mayor's office might be listening.
Maybe they could send you an email.
Are you looking specifically for information
from the mayor's office
or the city of New York in general?
Well, it would be the city of New York,
and I was trying to go to the mayor's office
because I don't know where else to go
other than going to the top.
Okay, well, there's actually a department
that, a separate department,
that a lot of the agencies outsource
all their information technology to
called DOITT, D-O-I-T-T.
It's the Department of Information,
Technology, and Telecommunications,
something along those lines.
But you should be able to find their website
linked off the main New York City website.
All right, best of luck with that.
Let's take one more phone call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
No, no, no, one call per show.
That's the rule here.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Good evening, and thanks for taking my call.
A couple quick questions.
What's the...
Glad to hear you, by the way,
after tuning in last night
and not hearing your show at the regular time.
Yeah, it's a bit of a shock
for a lot of people I know,
but I'm glad you found us.
I'm glad you're here.
COCOTS and toll-free numbers.
Mm-hmm.
What's up?
What do you mean, what's up?
You can't dial a toll-free number
from a COCOT anymore?
That's not legal, at least
unless they change the law.
You're saying any COCOT
won't let you dial a toll-free number?
No, actually, I was in a state park
in northwestern New Jersey,
and there's two COCOTS,
one at the main office
and one at an ancillary building.
Unless you dial 800 numbers,
the other one just gives you a dial tone
when you dial the, uh...
Well, I would guess
that those phones are not set up
the way they're supposed to be.
There should be a company name on them,
and I would suggest calling that company
and also complaining to the people
who own the phone or host the phone
and tell them that that's a concern.
If that doesn't work, then you can report it
to, you know, Consumer Affairs
or Better Business Bureau or something like that
but all phones are supposed to call toll-free numbers.
Excellent.
That's why they're toll-free numbers.
But thanks for your call,
and that's pretty much going to do it for us
here at this new time slot for Off The Hook.
Any closing words?
Well, if people want to participate
in the show,
they can email us, oth at 2600.com.
If you want to participate
in the conference coming up
in one month at the Hotel Pennsylvania
in New York City, July 12th through 14th,
visit
www.h2k2.net
www.h2k2.net
and we're pretty much
filled up with speakers,
but if you want to be considered for a panel
or an idea for something,
some sort, email speakers
at h2k2.net
and we'll see if we can figure something out.
Until next week,
this is Emanuel Goldstein,
and stay tuned for The Personal Computer Show,
which now follows us just like in the old days.
This is WBAI New York. Have a good night.
I can't go on like this
I need someone
to take me away
to an adventurous place
Oh, I can't go on like this
I can't go on like this
I can't live like this
My heart is breaking in two
I need somebody like you
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