For Free Speech Radio News in New York, I'm Simba Rousseau.
Free Speech Radio News is produced at WBAI by Cutter Mester.
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Our DC editor is Josh Chaffin.
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It's seven o'clock in New York on WBAI-FM.
It's time for Off The Hook.
Good evening, and welcome to Off The Hook.
We're wondering, where in this country is Emanuel Goldstein?
Well, Emanuel Goldstein is on the telephone right now, and geographically, I'm perched
atop a canyon in the lovely town of Bisbee, Arizona.
Actually, I'm not perched on the canyon.
I'm parked in a car overlooking a scenic view.
I'm doing that because that way I can have a laptop on, I can be on a cellular phone
that's running out of battery, and it's plugged into an inverter, which is in the car.
I actually have AC power that I'm able to use here, and I have the never-lost GPS system,
which I'd like to demonstrate live on the air, which has been a ton of fun throughout
this entire voyage.
Bisbee, Arizona, is an amazing place.
It's kind of like an artist's enclave, where people just come and do all kinds of interesting
things.
You wouldn't expect, in the middle of the desert, to find a thriving community like
this.
I'd like to say, if there's any listeners in Bisbee, which is entirely possible, please
feel free to meet up with us.
We're on the Kevin Mitnick Liberation Tour, which has taken us through quite a few places
in the country, and we'll wind up in California next week, as Kevin Mitnick celebrates his
true taste of freedom.
As of January 20th, he will no longer have to ask permissions to travel outside of his
area.
He will no longer be using the Internet, and it's going to be a great time to actually
see this saga come to an end.
I'm sure everybody will share in that, no matter how you feel about the case.
It's good to think.
That's where I am right now.
I have lots of experiences and things to share, as far as what's been going on, as I'm sure
people back there in New York do as well.
Do you still have daylight out there?
Daylight is still here, yeah.
In fact, the sun has just disappeared over this little mountain ridge.
It's funny, because a whole busload of tourists have pulled up, and they're all taking pictures
over the fence of the giant canyon that exists.
Actually, I think this is a man-made canyon.
It looks like they were doing some mining here or something at some point.
Yeah, the sun is still here.
It's still very bright.
I imagine it will get dark rather fast.
You're getting pictures, right?
Yes, we're shooting video.
We're not just going across the country, wasting a lot of time here.
This is for the DVD of the Freedom Downtime project.
We're going around shooting some video for that, and we'll be shooting video in California
with Kevin as well, as the infamous day of liberation approaches.
Basically, we're just sharing a lot of interesting experiences with a lot of people.
It's funny.
Every time we talk to somebody about this, their name happens to be Kevin, so of course
we have to give them a free Kevin sticker, because everybody named Kevin likes to have.
But we've met a lot of people who have heard of the case.
We've met a lot of people who are learning about what happened and are just interested
in things like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the ECSS case, the John Johansson case.
They've heard about all of this.
A lot of people have become educated over the years to the various issues facing the
hacker community and the hacker community at large, just knowing what hackers are, what
they stand for, what they do, what they don't do, how the media gets it wrong.
It's amazing to see how many people are enlightened as far as that goes.
So that's pretty much where I am right now here in Bisbee.
I'm not sure how long we'll be here, but we'll be hitting some other places as well.
Again, the email address if you'd like to meet up with us.
It's funny because we did the show last week from Atlanta.
We were right in front of the CNN Center.
We actually had a listener come and join us at the end of the show, which I thought was
really cool.
So there's people out there no matter where you are listening in some form or another.
But if you want to email us and have us stop in your neighborhood or community along the
way, the address is downtime, as in freedom downtime without the freedom, downtime at
2600.com.
Sounds good.
Yes, and I can hear by that voice that Mike is here.
Mike, you have some news as far as an important case today.
I think Bernie S. also joined us, right?
Good evening.
Yes.
Bernie S. in Philadelphia.
How are you doing, Bernie?
Pretty good.
It's freezing here.
It is freezing.
It's very warm here where I am.
That's the other thing.
The temperature changes have been unbelievable.
It was raining in Texas, chilly in Mexico, and it's very hot right here in Arizona.
Mexico or New Mexico?
Mexico and New Mexico, both.
Okay.
I have an interesting story to tell about that.
But let's go into this interesting case that transpired today.
Sure.
Last week we had some good news on the legal front, and of course we can't continue that
for two weeks in a row.
So we have Eldred versus Ashcroft, which is the case of Eric Eldred and friends who sued
to overturn the Copyright Term Extension Act, the Sunny Bono Act passed by Congress a few
years ago, under which now in the United States, if you write a book or create a movie or anything,
it will be copyrighted for your entire life, followed by 70 years.
So that's quite a long time.
If you're a corporation and you create a work, it's 95 years.
So they sued to overturn that, represented by Larry Lessig, and today the Supreme Court
ruled they lose, the Act stays, Walt Disney wins.
So what does that actually mean for the average person?
Well, what it means is that if there's a book created or a movie, for example, Casablanca
is the example they give in the AP article, and you would like to take that work and create
something based on it.
For example, all of the Hollywood adaptations of Shakespeare were done, obviously, without
Shakespeare's permission or his agent's permission or any of that, because he died long enough
ago that his work is in the public domain now.
But basically what they're doing is his work will never enter the public domain, it seems,
because they keep extending it.
Just when you think something's about to enter the public domain, they retroactively extend
it for 20 more years in this case.
And hasn't this been extended by Congress several times now?
What the Constitution said should just be a limited period of time?
Right.
Someone called it perpetual copyright on the installment plan.
So it's illegal to create a perpetual copyright, but they can just apparently keep extending
it as much as they want.
I've got a good quote from our friend Jack Valenti about the decision today.
I don't know, do you have that, Mike?
I don't have it.
Would the listeners be interested in hearing it?
It's such a short quote.
I'm interested in hearing it.
Well, okay.
Jack Valenti said, we're pleased that the court has reaffirmed the absolute authority
of Congress to set copyright terms.
We have always maintained that the law has long recognized that copyright, whose aim
it is to provide incentive for the creation and preservation of creative works, is in
the public interest.
That is why this ruling is a victory, not solely for the rights of holders, but also
for consumers everywhere.
Now, I've been trying to figure out the last part of that.
How is this a victory for consumers?
I think Mr. Valenti went a little farther.
It's already enough of a reach for him to be claiming that this in some way is something
supporting artists or creativity.
He got greedy.
He went even further than that and said that all the consumers also benefit from this when
there's no possible way that consumers can benefit from this kind of a thing.
This is purely for the industry.
Make no mistakes about that.
That's what they're interested in maintaining their grip on.
It's all about maintaining control forever, as long as they possibly can hold on to it.
The only way I could see consumers could have benefited...
Obviously, consumers would have benefited had the decision gone the other way.
If old copyrighted works that had expired, maybe when the copyright holder had died,
those works would have become public domain and all kinds of interesting things could
have been done with that now copyright-released work once it's in the public domain.
But the public doesn't have access to things that would have been in the public domain
by now because of this decision.
It's unfortunate.
I think 1920 is the cutoff date.
Something like that, yeah.
For example, the earliest portrayals of Mickey Mouse, Wizard of Oz.
If you sing Happy Birthday, that is not in the public domain, so don't do it in public.
I saw somebody do that in a restaurant back in New Mexico earlier.
Oh, my God.
You shouldn't say that on the radio.
What?
Oh, my God?
No, no.
Is that copyrighted now, too?
It could be.
The people could go to New Mexico and hunt down this restaurant if we're not careful.
No, I'll turn them in.
I mean, I want to be a good citizen here, but who do I tell?
Who do I give the information to?
A lot of people had been planning on putting a lot of books that the copyright would have
expired up on the Internet for fair use, public access, and as a result, there's a lot of
worthwhile books and works that can't be put up on the Internet because of this decision.
Is there any indication how this is going to be enforced internationally?
Well, this Copyright Term Extension Act, we're told it's the same length as in the European Union.
So basically, there's kind of a quid pro quo, right, where if the U.S. has this 95-year term,
then the EU also has it.
In Canada, I understand it's a shorter term, but I'm not sure of the details.
It's amazing how the EU has come to be at just this time, and it's so agreeable to all these things
the United States is suggesting to them.
So what's good for American corporations is good for the world.
Well, American corporations are all over the world.
In fact, I was just in Mexico, and it's amazing to see down there all these new plants that have popped up.
People, for the most part, are living in poverty.
It's really sad to see the structures that people call home.
Cardboard boxes would be more secure in some areas.
And then you have this nice, new, modern factory a few miles down the road where, I guess,
all of them work for pennies a day.
It's horrible to see how one-sided it is.
The American corporations benefit by moving their workers down there,
moving their factories down there and hiring workers at slave wages.
But the people there don't benefit in that they don't get to live in a decent community
as far as cleanliness, as far as sanitation, that kind of a thing.
It's amazing, too, because the people there are so nice.
The people there are very open to outsiders, very friendly.
But I really feel they're being taken advantage of horribly.
Did you go and try and fill out a job application just to see what the wages were and benefits and things?
I'm not sure how exactly it would work.
That would have been a good idea.
Next time, Jeff, we've got to bring you along on these things
because you always get into trouble in ways that I could never think of getting into trouble.
We don't have to go there right now.
No, that's a good thing.
Getting into trouble sometimes is necessary.
But, yeah, it was an eye-opener just wandering around there.
I went to a city for the first time called Monterey,
which if you've ever driven in Monterey, boy, you've earned a medal.
Let's just put it that way.
It's craziness.
They have these non-reflective stop signs.
Get this.
They have a stop sign at an intersection and a traffic light.
Now, what would you do at an intersection that has a traffic light and a stop sign?
Hmm.
I'd stop if it were green.
See, you're not supposed to do that.
And, first, it's not a stop sign either.
It's an alto sign, which is stop in Spanish.
But it's non-reflective.
You can't see it at night.
I think they just left there from before they had traffic lights there.
They didn't even put the sign up.
Everybody seems to know how to get around, though,
and eventually you sort of fall into the mood of driving.
But it's mayhem.
It's utter mayhem,
and especially when you're just trying to navigate and figure things out.
Now, the GPS system we have here, it's great.
Certain cars come with this, and I think you can get it in consumer cars now.
You have this speaking system.
I'm going to demonstrate a little bit of it here,
where you can actually plug in an address.
I'm going to select something on the menu here.
Let me know if you can hear this.
Address or intersection.
That come across okay?
Yeah.
Okay.
We'll listen to the rest of it.
Street address.
I'm going to enter a street address.
Let's try San Francisco.
Yes.
That yes was in answer to a question, do you know the city?
I'm going to hit the enter button.
And now it's asking me to spell the city.
So what you're going to hear me doing now is moving the cursor around
and spelling out the city.
M-L-S-N-A-C-A-N space M-S.
Okay.
Now I have four choices on the screen.
I have San Felipe, Texas, San Fernando, California, San Francisco, California,
in parentheses San Francisco, and San Francisco, California, San Mateo,
in parentheses.
Click down to San Francisco.
Okay.
Now it's asking me to spell the street name.
I'm going to spell Market Street.
M-M-O-E-A-N-R-N-A.
Okay.
Now I have three choices, Mark Lane, Mark Twain Plaza, and Market Street.
Should you be doing this while you're driving, Emmanuel?
I'm sorry?
Should you be doing this while you're driving now?
Well, you're not supposed to.
In fact, you get a little warning saying do not do this if you're driving.
Hit enter if you're not driving.
Well, you know, it's a method of security.
It's not really that secure.
Now I'm going to enter the number.
The amazing thing about this system is it knows the numbering scheme.
So if every number on a street begins with one,
the one will already be there for you regardless of where the street is.
So right now it's asking for numbers on Market Street.
So I'm going to just enter random numbers.
Okay.
I'm just entering 55.
Okay.
I have three choices now, shortest time, most use of freeways, or least use of freeways.
I'm going to select shortest time.
And right now it's calculating the route.
And that's the part that takes the longest where you have a little progress bar.
It has the address.
It figures out all the roads between here and Arizona right now.
It will figure everything out until California, local roads, everything.
I was on a dirt road earlier today going to the town of Tombstone, Arizona,
which if you've never been there, that's a trip in itself.
That's where the gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place,
and they do a dramatic reenactment of it every half hour,
and it's straight out of The Simpsons.
Did you try the pizza?
No, I did not, and I was thinking about that, but decided not to pursue it.
Okay, the route is practically done calculating.
I have three more little dots to fill in.
I have a question.
Yeah.
It seems to us that we hear the system guessing the next letter as you spell out the street.
Is that correct?
That's very good, Jim.
Yes, it's true.
As you're spelling words out, some letters are there and some letters are not there.
So if a certain city doesn't exist with a certain spelling,
you won't be able to spell something that is not already there.
That goes for streets as well, and it goes all the way down to the numbering scheme.
So this thing is very intelligent.
It's on two CDs.
We haven't yet figured out how to read the CDs outside of the system.
We're experimenting with all kinds of things with this system.
The dividing line is Mississippi, or the Mississippi River.
When you cross over, the screen, literally the road ends.
You see the little arrow.
You're on a map the whole time.
You see the arrow continue into blackness.
Uh-oh.
Hang on.
It's the highlighted route.
Okay, it just told me to proceed to the highlighted route.
So it's given me directions all the way to Market Street now.
It's 964 miles from here,
and as soon as I start moving, it will tell me exactly how long it will take me to get there.
But when we—
Is the basis estimate on your arrival time on your current speed or on speed limit
or as fast as you really drive?
That's an interesting point, Bernie, because when I was driving into Bisbee,
I was driving at a good clip above the speed limit, and everybody was.
It wasn't just me causing problems here.
It was basically everybody was driving at that speed.
But the number on the screen was too high.
It said it would take a half hour when we were about three miles away,
and then all of a sudden it just kind of erased that part of the screen
and said, you have arrived, and tracked it back out of it without admitting it made a mistake.
But we've confused it a few times.
I think when we went into Mexico, it lost all of its self-confidence
because that was just complete blackness.
There were no roads at all.
Mexico is not on the system.
And after a while, you just get a message saying, you're too far from the road.
I cannot pinpoint an accurate road from here.
Please go back to a road.
All the time, though, you can see the latitude and longitude.
So that information is always being given to it.
But once we got back into the states, it kept second-guessing itself.
It kept saying, you know, get back onto the highway when we were already on the highway.
It took a little bit of reassurance for it to get back into its confident mode
of telling us exactly what to do.
When we went into Mississippi, though, when we crossed over,
it had to switch to a second CD.
So what happened was after it went for a little while,
with no roads at all, it just kind of rebooted the system
and rebooted onto the western United States CD, and that's what we're on right now.
Does it hold both CDs at the same time, or do you have to physically put the other disc in?
No, you don't have to physically put it in.
It's there to start with.
But you can't have both CDs loaded at the same time.
You can't, for instance, right now, give directions to New York.
So are both discs then, is it reading off the disc, or is it reading from memory?
How does that work?
Well, let me expand on that.
It reads off the disc, from what I understand,
because there seems to be some accessing going on as it's figuring out the exact route to go,
as it's giving you map information.
So I imagine it's actually physically reading the disc as you're asking it questions.
So there's no hard drive in this thing, then.
It's probably just the CD and memory, no hard drive.
I would imagine if there was a hard drive,
that it could load both parts of the country at the same time.
I look forward to the day when you are able to have everything loaded.
I look forward to the day when it has different countries loaded,
and you can just simply go all over the place.
You could drive to France.
You could drive to France, literally.
I think Canada is already in here.
And you can pretty much drive along various streets up there as well.
I've seen it make mistakes a few times, but I've got to tell you, this thing is really good.
You're driving along.
It tells you when to make a left turn.
It tells you when to merge right.
And when you arrive, we've gone to a few people's houses in the middle of suburbia,
and we pull into their driveway, and their little voice says,
You have arrived.
It's so cool that it knows exactly where every house is.
Of course, it's also very scary when you consider that
all you have to do is load the white pages into this somehow,
maybe load some unlisted phone numbers into this as well,
and it's a process server's dream.
You can track down anybody really quickly and easily.
I'm going to mention that I noticed that Garmin Corporation,
that makes a lot of GPS receivers,
in about a month or so will be introducing a POM operating system based at PDA,
which has their auto route calculating GPS receiver built into it.
So not only is it a POM pilot type of device, but it's also a GPS receiver.
I don't know how much it will cost, but you can stick this thing in your pocket
and use it as your PDA and as your navigator.
It's really something how far technology has gone.
I mean, the last time that I traveled cross-country was in 98
when we were filming Freedom Downtime, and it was cool.
We had GPS then, but it was a handheld unit.
It didn't talk to you.
And music, just playing music was something that we thought was cool.
We could play CDs in a car.
Now, and Bernie, you might want to go into detail on this a little bit.
We have a really cool system set up involving an iPod and an FM transmitter,
which permits us to listen to 20 gigs of music,
randomized, that we downloaded from various computers.
Actually, these are all CDs that I own that I put onto my iMac, my Macintosh iMac.
And then from there, I took about 20 gigs of selected music,
stuck that onto the iPod.
For those who don't know, an iPod is basically a handheld hard drive
that has music on it and can play albums or randomize or whatnot.
The only problem is with this car, we had a CD player.
We didn't have a cassette player, so we weren't able to do that thing
where you put the cassette in and have a converter and simply play it that way.
We had no way to actually make the iPod speak to the car radio system.
So, Bernie, maybe you could give us some details as to what we did then.
Well, after a while, you made your way to Philadelphia.
On the way to your, I guess it was Baltimore you were heading down.
So, I happened to have this little FM radio transmitter with me.
So, I found you, and we hooked it up to the iPod.
It's a device about the same size as the iPod, which is about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
It's made by a company called C-Crane, which you can find at C-Crane.com.
And what this thing does is it has a little LCD display on it and an on-off button,
and you can digitally select the frequency that it's going to transmit the external audio input to.
For instance, you plug it into the iPod headphone jack,
and you can tune to a radio frequency that's not in use by a local radio station.
And I imagine you have to change this as you're driving around, don't you, Emanuel, as you find...
Yeah, you know, and it's interesting because we select a frequency that's completely blank.
And during the first part of the trip, it would last about maybe 20 minutes, and something would start to interfere.
And I've got to tell you, when I get back, I'm going to play some of the stuff that we recorded on the radio.
One time we heard interference, and we decided to check out and see what it was.
And on the next frequency over, I heard a religious radio station like I've never heard before.
There were these people, they must have been sitting around in a circle, just chanting Hail Marys for a half hour.
It sounded so demonic and scary.
We immediately called all our friends with cell phones and voicemail systems so we could record this thing and capture it.
This was, where was this? It had to have been in Mississippi or it might have been Texas.
No, it was crossing over into Texas is what it was.
Was Trent Lott anywhere near there?
I'm not sure. It was actually Louisiana-Texas border, so I'm not sure where the station was coming from.
But I've got to tell you, I've heard some things.
It's very annoying to me when I hear religious stations below 92 on the dial because they're taking up a non-commercial spot.
And that means a community station doesn't get it, a college station doesn't get it.
It's something that I think belongs in the commercial dial, not below 92, which is only non-commercial radio
and there's such limited spectrum out there.
There is so much religion.
You would not believe it.
Most of the stations that I heard below 92 are religious stations and occasionally NPR stations.
I have strong feelings about NPR, how they've taken over lots of frequencies in the New York area.
Down in the south and in most parts of the country, they really are a bastion of just alternative thought,
which tells you something about the other thoughts being expressed on the radio.
So I would imagine as you're driving alongside other vehicles in the annual,
that if they happen to be tuned to the same frequency that this little FM transmitter was broadcasting on
and being picked up by your car radio, that the cars near you could also pick up this same audio, couldn't they?
Yeah, well we tested it and it goes for, you know, maybe a quarter of a block you can pick up a signal.
So yeah, if you're passing by somebody, it just happens to be...
But you see, they wouldn't really be listening to a station unless there was a frequency there.
Couldn't you hold a sign up in your window saying, hey, tune to this radio frequency?
Well, yeah, usually people are pointing at us as we pass by anyway, so it might be a good idea just to hold a sign up
and then they can tune to that frequency and we can even speak to them if we get a microphone.
There you go.
But yeah, you know, we'll try that. That's a good idea.
When we were in Mexico, though, we were able to keep the same signal for a long time
because there were a lot of gaps on the FM dial and we were able to listen to music for a good long time.
Wow, that's pretty interesting.
The system, I've got to tell you, Bernie, the system really does work. It's really cool.
There's a little hack I discovered today that you can increase the power output of this thing.
It's no longer going to be FCC-type accepted.
I promised the person I wouldn't mention this on the air,
but if anyone wants to email me privately at BernieS at 2600,
if they want to modify this little transmitter, I can tell them how to do it in about 10 seconds
so that it would have a little more range than it's supposed to.
How much of a little more range, Bernie?
Probably about double or triple the range.
Okay. Well, I mean, should I be concerned at all this RF output being aimed at my head?
Well, your cell phone is a lot more – it makes a lot more energy,
probably a few hundred milliwatts your cell phone puts out.
And this thing puts out more like 10, 20 milliwatts.
You could probably adjust it, if they want to contact me directly, to closer to 100 milliwatts.
Interesting.
Emmanuel.
Yes.
Would you mind terribly if I mentioned that we're listening right now to WBAI-FM in New York?
No, I wouldn't mind. Go right ahead and mention it.
Oh, thank you. We're in stereo.
Okay.
I just want to get out of the way.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Well, again, we're playing with technology in all different ways.
In Mexico, I was very surprised to see that there was GSM coverage.
Maybe in Tijuana and Baja, where I was before, there is no GSM.
I'm not sure about that. I'll try to find out that later in this voyage.
But I was able to pick up company – I think my phone identified it as 33402,
which would indicate – there's always somebody.
There's always somebody that forgets to turn their phone off in that studio.
This is the studio phone. It's – I don't know what it is.
Oh, they got a new ringer on it, eh?
Well, anyway, so there does seem to be at least one GSM phone carrier in Mexico now.
I guess two, since I saw 33402.
That would indicate that there's a 01.
So I was able to actually make some phone calls and receive phone calls.
God knows how much it's going to cost, but that's part of the whole experimental thing.
Now, Sprint is interesting because when I was in Monterey –
and maybe, Bernie, you can help me figure this out –
Sprint, I believe, receives its time from the transmitter.
It does not receive the time from the phone, correct?
That's right.
I've had three different Sprint PCS handsets over the past five or six years
since I've been a Sprint subscriber,
and none of the handsets had a real-time clock built in.
The clock display was synchronized with the network clock.
So that's kind of interesting.
I don't like that, actually.
I like when I go out of range to be able to know what time it is with my phone,
but I can't do that with Sprint PCS phones.
Well, the interesting thing is when I was in Monterey,
my Sprint phone received absolutely no coverage,
but it was telling me what time and date it was.
It's really contingent upon the model of the phone,
but all the models I've had have relied on the network to tell you what time it is.
But I'm glad yours doesn't.
Well, let me just also add to that that when I was in New Mexico,
I also was receiving no signal at all,
and my phone was not telling me what time and date it was.
And the person I was with was getting analog roaming with their Sprint PCS phone.
I don't have an analog digital phone.
I only have a digital phone.
So I suspect something is going on down there where the time signal is being transmitted anyway,
even though you're not getting a phone signal.
Well, your phone said no signal, but it still said an accurate time?
It said a completely accurate time, an accurate date, and it was consistent over there.
I received no service, so I was not able to make a phone call,
and there were no bars on the little transmitter string.
Well, that's very puzzling, but I'll look into that.
Yeah, and if anybody out there might know more about that, by all means let us know.
Are you going to be near Los Angeles during your Kevin Mitnick Liberation Tour?
Well, that is the plan.
Basically, Kevin is going to be in the Bay Area on Liberation Day,
and I'm hoping to make it down to that area as well after that.
The plan originally was to go there beforehand,
but since he's going to be in the Bay Area on the 20th,
that's obviously where we want to be as well.
If you're in L.A., you might want to check out this new intelligent billboard that I've heard about
that other listeners have probably heard about by now.
It's been in the news the past few weeks.
You've probably heard about it too, Emmanuel.
It's an intelligent billboard.
It's like a big video billboard by some highway in L.A.
made by a company called Alaris Media,
and what it does is it intersects the local oscillator frequency of your FM car radio,
assuming you have it on,
and determines from that local oscillator frequency in your radio,
which is really emitting a weak transmission itself,
what station you're tuned to.
It does a quick demographic analysis of the driver of the car
and then displays a message on the billboard appropriate to your demographics.
That's freaky.
Yes.
But here's my question.
Can it possibly do that for every car that passes by?
Well, no.
It probably does some sort of averaging based on, you know,
you're probably going to get 10 cars every 30 seconds that are tuned to the same station.
It probably does a moving average of the most frequently tuned station
that's going by for that 10-second block of time
or however often the commercial message changes on the billboard.
But I thought some enterprising person could build a little radio transmitter
about the size of a pack of cigarettes with a solar cell powering it
and just sort of toss it out the window near this thing
and, you know, basically jam this billboard on one particular message
and see if that works.
Well, that's dangerous thinking, Bernie,
and that's exactly the kind of thinking we like to promote here at Off The Hook.
I've got something on these lines from a strange source.
About eight years ago, I was listening to the Howard Stern Show,
and he had a company working for him in Canada
that essentially picked up the oscillations from the cars going by
to determine how many of them were listening to the Howard Stern Show.
But the Canadian government shut this company down
because it was an invasion of Canadians' privacy.
Wow.
Well, here in the States, we have no privacy, so that's just okay.
No, it doesn't seem to predict.
That's the same technique that the British have used for decades
to enforce their radio licensing.
Yeah. Illegal watching of TV and listening of radio.
They send those radio trucks that you see in the old war movies.
I'm sorry.
What was that?
It's speaking Dutch now.
Okay, I'm trying to cancel it.
Okay, I did it. Sorry.
I forgot to mention that this thing speaks multiple languages,
and just hitting the wrong button, it lapsed into demo mode
and talked for a long time.
Sorry about that.
You can be a foreigner coming to this country
and actually get around the country using one of these little units.
You can be a foreigner.
In fact, two of the first people that I know who used this system
did come from Holland, in fact.
Rob and Barry were here during H2K2,
and they were using this system and driving all around New York
and figuring out ways to confuse it.
The manual?
Anyway, yes.
What languages does it offer?
Let's see. I'll go to the options menu and tell you that.
English, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Italian, and Spanish right now.
Wow.
You can also select your destinations to be in miles or kilometers,
which I think is pretty cool.
I can't wait for the Arabic version.
You know, that brings me to mind of something else,
which maybe a listener out there can help me with.
But we're going to be journeying into Mexico again in a different part
and then heading back up.
And there is an interstate in Arizona.
I'm looking up the map right now.
It's called I-15.
I'm sorry, I-19.
And on the map it says I-19 uses metric mileposts.
Exit numbers are in kilometers,
and on the map they show everything in miles like they do everywhere else.
But I'm just wondering, this goes from Nogales to Tucson.
It's not a very long stretch.
But for some reason that seems to be the only interstate stretch in the United States
that's in the metric system.
And I'm just wondering why that is.
Is there a gas station there that serves gas in liters?
Well, I'll have to check.
I'll probably be checking that out sometime tomorrow.
But, you know, I also wonder when I'm traveling to other countries,
every country in the world uses a 24-hour clock.
Every country in the world uses the metric system.
You know, I'm not saying our system is terrible.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea.
I'm not saying that we're stuck in the past
and we don't have the motivation or will to move forward.
I just want to know why.
Why are we using this system instead?
If someone can explain to me what's better about Fahrenheit,
what's better about feet versus meters,
I just want to know the reason.
When I was a kid, I remember there was a big deal about converting to the metric system.
All of a sudden, it just seems to have been forgotten.
And it's like the rest of the world is doing one thing and we're doing another.
And I'm just wondering, is that the idea?
Is that the plan for us just to be isolated from everybody else?
Because if that's the plan, at least, you know, I'd like to know it.
If it's not the plan, maybe it's a good idea to get with what the rest of the world is doing
because the metric system really does make a lot of sense.
The latest I heard, Emanuel, is the U.S. government was trying to impose
and enforce the English measurement system we're using on other countries now,
especially in Afghanistan.
How in the world?
I don't want to know what these people are smoking.
How in the world do we expect people to use an old system that has already been used and put aside?
Well, that was a joke, but I just thought.
Oh, it was a joke.
Okay, I'm sorry.
It's hard to tell these days.
When you travel this much, you kind of get a little jaded, you know,
and lose your sense of humor.
But thanks.
Thanks for the humor.
That was appreciated.
Again, I'm in Disney, Arizona at a rest stop.
Not really a rest stop, but a scenic overlook by a place called Bisbee Blue.
And I'll be traveling into town later after this show going to like a big coffeehouse
at the bottom of the hill.
I'm going to hang out there for a little while.
While you're in the coffeehouse, you might want to bring your iPod
and your little portable transmitter with you into the coffeehouse
and add them to their stereo to your frequency.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Okay, I thought maybe somebody would steal it while I was in the car.
But, yeah, that's a good idea.
I will try to do that.
The only reason I'm mentioning this, I don't expect mass throngs of people
to surround us or anything like that,
but because we did have people show up last week in Atlanta,
and I do know people throughout the world listen to the radio station,
radio show as well.
So it's fun to kind of connect with people along the way.
Speaking of which, do we have any more information we want to give to people
or do you want to take some phone calls?
Well, we can take some phone calls.
Okay, then let's take some phone calls.
All right, here we go.
The number here, of course, is 212-209-2900.
Hello, you're on the air.
That's Delta.
Could have been worse.
Could have been Rebel.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
Hello, you're on the air.
Okay, I'm on the air.
I've given some thought to this, about the Fahrenheit Celsius stuff.
It sounds like Claude.
Yeah, Claude, that's who I am.
Wow.
I can barely hear you, but it doesn't matter.
I can hear you a little.
You don't need to hear me.
Go right ahead.
In the Celsius system, 0 to 100 is freezing to boiling.
In the Fahrenheit system, I don't know if it was planned this way,
but 0 to 100 is just about the range of temperatures in the temperate zone.
It rarely gets below 0.
It rarely goes above 100.
You know, in the Fahrenheit, I mean the Celsius system,
the numbers are, by our standards, arbitrary.
You know, unless you're doing stuff with beakers and titrates and whatever,
it doesn't matter.
Unless you're boiling up your food, it's not useful for weather.
And that, to me, is what a temperature system is most useful for.
There's one thing I like about the system we use is it's more accurate as far as increments go.
There are more increments between temperature of water freezing or boiling.
There's 100 different divisions with centigrade.
Yeah, 212 with us.
Well, 212 minus 32, so it's like 100.
It's almost twice as accurate as far as its increments go.
But, you know, so what?
But on that same token, Bernie,
you can tell the difference between 13 degrees Celsius and 14 degrees Celsius,
and I don't think you can tell the difference between 1 degree and Fahrenheit.
I think it's a bit more accurate as far as knowing what temperature it's likely to be today.
I can barely hear you.
I'm going to sign off and listen.
All right.
Thanks for calling.
Okay.
The other thing I like about it is the fact that water boils at 212 degrees in Fahrenheit,
and that's our area cup, 215.
I don't know if that was planned either.
What's the temperature?
Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature that books burn in.
What's the centigrade temperature at which books burn?
That's something I'd have to look up.
Or convert.
I'm not sure.
Is that the same temperature magazines burn at or just books?
It's book paper, so some magazines would burn at that temperature.
It depends on the magazine.
Yeah, most magazine paper is treated with kaolin, the clay.
Yeah.
What temperature does 2600 magazine burn at?
Well, that's something I'd like to find out.
I'd like to also know at what temperature does the Internet burn?
Well, when it's closed for cleaning next April 1st, maybe we'll burn a small part.
Next call.
All right.
The one thing I have to say, though, is I don't know if I could ever get used to saying it's 13 o'clock.
You know, it's funny because people don't say that.
They say 1 or 2 o'clock, and that's what it means.
I heard, while we were in Berlin, someone say, oh, it's 13 o'clock.
Really?
Yes.
They say 1300 hours sometimes.
I never heard 13 o'clock.
I heard it.
I promise.
But did they say it in English?
Yes, it was in English.
Oh, so it was probably tourists.
Yeah, it was probably tourists trying to be cool.
You know, at the beginning of 1994, the clocks were striking 13.
They don't do that either.
True.
All right.
Here we go.
One more.
Hello.
You're on the air.
Oh, hi.
Regarding metrics and U.S. government, the Department of Transportation
and perhaps other agencies is requiring all contracts be let in metric units.
So that could be why that highway was marked in kilometers or, you know,
that's kind of the movement that's happening now in the federal government at least.
Do you think it starts with I-19?
It's starting with I-19,
and maybe it will move through the entire interstate system.
We'll see.
Or at least, you know, I guess there's a difference necessarily between the contracting
and the building and actually where they mark the mile markers.
You know, you could still have the contract be all in centimeters and stuff
and still put down mile markers, but, you know, I don't know.
You know what?
I intend when I go out journeying in the next couple of days,
what I'll do is I'll find somebody on that interstate that knows the answer,
and I'm going to report back next week with the facts.
You go, Emmanuel.
Take it easy.
How about all these new exit numbers?
They're changing all around the country.
You know, it used to be just arbitrary exit numbers.
Now the exit numbers are by a certain mile marker.
If they were to change the metric system,
they'd have to change all the exit signs across the country.
Yeah, that's going to be a hassle if they ever do that,
but no one told them to go up the miles anyway in the first place.
If they're going to change them,
it would have been a perfect opportunity to do them in metric right when they're,
you know, right when they started this last year or whatever.
Yeah, you know, they wouldn't even have to tell us it was metric.
They could have just changed it to another arbitrary system,
and then one day they would say on the morning news,
oh, by the way, it's all metric system, and those are kilometers.
And then we'd say, oh, okay,
so this is how many kilometers it is from one exit to another,
and we'd learn without knowing it.
What a lost opportunity.
Emmanuel, that is actually a brilliant idea.
Yeah, well, it was an opportunity lost is what it was.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
Could you repeat the name of that FM transmitter and the e-mail to e-mail you about tweaking it?
Ccrane.com.
That says in Charlie, Charlie, Romeo, Alpha, November, Echo, Ccrane.com.
And you can e-mail me directly, BernieS at 2600.com,
and I'll tell you how to boost its power output.
BernieS at 2600.com?
That's right.
Okay, great.
Thanks a lot.
You're welcome.
Glad to be of help.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hi.
I think one of the reasons the metric system failed to take hold
is because when they did that campaign to try to get people to switch,
they foolishly focused on trying to alert people to the correspondence
between metric and the traditional way.
You know, a liter compares this way to a quart.
As people who are buying sodas have found out,
you don't really need to know how much of a quart a liter is.
Everybody knows what a one-liter soda is, and everybody knows what a two-liter soda is.
So if instead of just trying to tell people the correspondence to the old system,
they would have said, here's a liter, and they show a liter bottle.
Here's a meter, and they show something that's a meter long.
I think people would have adopted the system more readily.
Yeah, but if you're building a house,
you're definitely going to need to know the corresponding measurement changes and things
when you're buying your lumber.
Why is that?
Well, if they're selling it to you in meters and you don't know your feet,
or you know your feet, you're going to lose.
You're going to wind up short.
But instead of telling you it's this much of a foot,
why don't they just show you a stick that's a meter long?
Do you want two of these? Do you want three of these long?
Do you want four of these long? Do you want five of these long?
Well, yeah, but I don't go to the lumber yard now
with a stick that happens to be the same size as the plank that I want.
I actually get a tape measure and measure it.
Now, what you would propose and would be a good idea
is that we get tape measures marked off in meters and centimeters and measure that.
That makes sense, but you're misstating the idea of what could be done or should be done.
You've got to do this cold turkey or the pain is just too long.
You've got to do it quickly, and by the end of the year people will be all over it.
I remember when we were starting to switch over to the metric system,
I think it was the early 70s maybe, Emanuel,
there was a lot of paranoia because gas prices were going up,
I think it was around the time of the first Arab oil embargo kind of thing,
before the one that's coming up soon.
And there was a lot of paranoia that people were getting overcharged for gasoline
because they didn't know exactly how many gallons, dollars per gallon they were really getting
or gallons per dollar they were actually getting
because they didn't know the conversion off the top of their head.
And I think that was one of the resistances, one of the reasons people resisted
is they weren't really sure if they were getting their money's worth.
Right, but I'm saying that when they go cold turkey,
instead of trying to teach you an equivalence,
they should just teach you what a meter is.
Yeah, I think a good project for listeners for maybe the next week
is just try to do everything metrically.
Speak metrically, think metrically,
and see how easy it is for you to work it out
and how much resistance you get from the people around you
to express yourself in a different way.
I don't know, maybe when we start being a little more aggressive about using the system,
it might start to catch on.
Myself included, I've just been accepting the fact that the metric system in this country is dead.
It really shouldn't be that way.
I think we lost that caller.
I still think it's a good idea.
Yeah, but just imagine if we start talking to one another
and we start talking about kilos.
I think we're talking about drugs.
See?
Oh yeah, you know, if someone tells me how many kilos they weigh,
I have to admit I don't know what they're talking about.
In England, they use stones.
That's right.
I don't know what kind of system that is.
I've lost four stones.
And it was very painful, wasn't it?
All right, here we go.
You're on the air.
Yeah.
Good evening, guys.
How are you doing?
I'm all right.
Interesting alternative radio.
When I tune in, that's what I heard.
You might be holding something too close to something.
But my question to you guys, I want to know,
in terms of the metric system, about the human body temperature,
I was asked about what is the normal body temperature.
Nobody could have said in school, and it was a problem.
I know it, but I was afraid to say it because everybody is a different metric
because I'm from a different background.
One student actually said in Fahrenheit, the teacher didn't accept it.
And when I said it in centigrade, he said,
yeah, that's the right one.
What do you think about that?
Well, tell us what it is.
No, I know it's 37 centigrade,
and the other student was saying it in Fahrenheit,
but the teacher didn't have approval of it.
Listen, turn off your radio, please.
Yes, my radio is off.
Well, we don't know what's going on.
Something's making a horrible screech.
Your voice is resonating with the phone, man.
Oh, how about now?
That's much better.
Okay.
Why they would accept the centigrade here in school,
and they wouldn't have approval of the Fahrenheit when it's the one that's legal?
I have no idea what the question is, let alone the answer.
Normal human temperature in Fahrenheit is 98.6 degrees.
In centigrade, it's roughly 37 degrees.
37, yeah, and that's what I said,
and the teacher said I was right.
He had to approve the other one.
So, like you're right.
Maybe they simply didn't know.
Maybe your teacher learned metric and didn't learn Fahrenheit.
Probably.
All right, guys, good, good.
Is this program on every week or every day?
Every week.
Every week?
Unless we're preempted for fundraising or heaven knows what else.
What is your time frame?
One hour, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard or Daylight Time,
depending on whether it's Standard or Daylight Time, Wednesdays.
WBIIFM, 99.5.
Great, great, great.
Thank you, guys.
You're welcome.
It's a few minutes to 6 where I am,
so that gives you an idea of how far off the mark I am,
but the show is on from 7 to 8 in New York,
and people listen to it all around the world.
We welcome people writing to us as well online,
OTH at 2600.com.
They can send us mail also at 120 Wall Street here in New York,
and I don't know the zip code, 10005?
Yes, but please make sure that the mail you send us meets postal regulations.
Those are those little notices on every mailbox in the world,
or in the United States.
It tells you how big something has to be into the mailbox.
Okay, here's another one.
Hello, you're on the air.
Hey, how are you doing?
Good, how are you?
Not too bad.
You are correct.
I was about to say about 98.6 and 37,
but you know it can be anywhere from at least Fahrenheit from as low as 97 to 100.5
and still be considered normal.
So I'm not sure if that is Celsius wise, but in any case.
105 is a bad fever, though.
100.5.
Oh, I'm sorry, okay.
That's still considered okay, although you probably won't feel so great.
In any case, the second reason I think people will not let go of the old English system,
except ironically the English, is because I think intuitively it's correct.
The other gentleman made the point that, and he wasn't sure,
but I think I'm pretty sure that the reason why the Fahrenheit system got into use
was 100 was considered a very hot day in England
and zero was considered a very cold day in England.
Well, actually, Fahrenheit started the system.
I'm not sure how he got the 100,
but he got zero because it was the coldest temperature he could replicate.
I can't remember exactly how he did it, but it was the coldest.
The salt water, I think it was.
Yeah, I think you are right.
That was the lowest he could go with water that was mixed with salt.
So that's number one.
So he considered that kind of absolute zero.
Well, not absolute zero, but it was the lowest.
It was the lowest consistent number he could replicate on the low end.
Right.
And then 100, I kind of think, I could be wrong,
but he felt that was a very hot day in England.
So in any case, for purposes of weather, it's a good system.
It's a zero to 100.
And I think even though it does make sense to do everything in hundreds
like the metric system does,
I think you can extend that to measurements in any other way.
A gallon is good use of a particular amount of liquid,
and the foot is a good distance for a person
or things that you normally measure on a day-to-day.
Now, I'm not saying that this doesn't mean that we shouldn't change to a more,
I guess the word is a more scientific system,
because we should be past points of convenience,
but people want to die with what they use.
No, I'm not so sure about that.
But I think the advantages of an anthropomorphic-friendly system
are obvious once you start analyzing it.
I mean, yeah, if you're measuring parsecs and light years,
the metric system is fine.
But if you want something on a human scale,
something actually based on a human scale has its usefulness.
You can make seat-of-the-pants calculations immediately.
Exactly. I agree.
Well, homo sapiens just coincidentally have 10 fingers and 10 toes,
which is why we have a base 10 system based on metric.
That sort of thing.
Just think, if homo sapiens evolved with 12 fingers instead of 10 fingers,
we'd have like a base 12 mathematics system.
But we'd be comfortable with it.
Exactly. That's interesting.
And a lot of people actually say that's the best system
because you can divide it into a lot of times.
Now, if we were born with 16 fingers,
we could all be really good programmers
because we'd already be thinking in hexadecimal.
This is true, although that would be probably very hard to live.
But in any case, thanks a lot, guys.
You're welcome.
I've got to say, you know,
I went into this program with a lot of things to talk about,
and the metric thing was just something that I just mentioned off the top of my head.
I just went into a little rant about that,
and that turns out to be the thing that everybody is interested in.
See what you're starting?
Well, I mean, you know, I guess it is a very fascinating type of a thing
because it affects everybody,
and there are some interesting questions as to why we do certain things a certain way,
and does that relate to us as a culture?
And I guess, you know, in a way, we can learn from that.
And technologically, certainly, there are all kinds of implications.
So I don't know.
We'll continue with this.
All right.
Emmanuel, we've got to wrap it up a little bit here.
I didn't get a chance to talk about the article on the EFF,
Unintended Consequences Four Years Under the DMCA.
So I'd recommend that everyone go to their web page and read the article.
It's quite interesting.
And while you're there, maybe join and become a part of that.
And next week at this time, Kevin Mitnick will be free, finally, of his supervised release.
There will be no more restrictions on him.
We'll be passing through the states of Arizona, Nevada, and going into the Bay Area.
So if you're somewhere along that stretch, feel free to send us mail,
downtime at 2600.com, and we'll try to hook up.
Jeff mentioned the EFF's website.
What is it?
It's EFF.org.
Okay, thanks, and we'll talk to you again next week.
Take care.
♪♪♪
When I was young, I fought for freedom.
When I was young, I fought the Klan.
Who would have thought I'd still be fighting 30 or 40 years down the line?
Yes, this is Matt Jones.
I've been fighting 30 or 40 years down the line.
And every year on Martin Luther King's birthday, this year will be January 20th,
we have a program.
This year we'll have Bob Zellner, recruited in the Civil Rights Movement by Dr. Martin Luther King.
He was the first white field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
was arrested some 29 times, and was an unsung hero of the Civil Rights Movement.
And he will talk to us about his experiences.
That's at the Advent Lutheran Church, Monday, January 20th at 7 p.m.
at West 93rd Street in Broadway.
See you there.
I fought for freedom when I was young.
I fought the Klan.
Who would have thought?