In the coming weeks, school officials will meet with reps from Students Against War to
discuss the future of military recruitment at UCSC.
Judy Jedlicka is a grad student at the school.
This is just UCSC.
There are still military recruiters in many high schools, community colleges, so it's
an ongoing struggle.
Vinnie Lombardo, FSRN, Santa Cruz.
You've been listening to Free Speech Radio News.
I'm Aura Bogado.
And you're listening to your radio station WBAI in New York.
It's seven o'clock on a Wednesday night.
Time for Off the Hook.
I swear I pressed that button, I really did.
Everything in this studio, you press the button and weird things happen, you don't know what's
going to happen next.
Are you sure you pressed the button?
I did.
I know I did.
This is Off the Hook, the program about technology and its many failings, especially when compared
to human beings and their many failings.
The potential is simply unlimited, or very limited, depending on how you look at it.
We don't have Bernie S. this week.
He is ill, and he felt doing the show would make him even more ill, so he's recuperating.
And we'll hear from him next week, hopefully.
But we have a full cast of characters here.
We've got Jim, we've got Mike, we've got Redbird, we've got Arseny, and is that Walter over
there in the corner?
Hey.
How you doing?
And we have all kinds of things to talk about, and we'll be hearing from you, our faithful
listeners out there in Radioland, either by email, regular mail, or telephonically.
For future reference, our phone number is 212-209-2900, or email address oth at 2600.com.
We might as well get the regular address out of the way.
It's off the hook here at WBAI, 120 Wall Street, New York, New York.
1-0-0-0-5.
Okay.
Well then, what have we to talk about this week?
All kinds of interesting things.
Actually, I'd like to start off with some annoyances that happened to me.
For the last several months, the cable company that is lovingly known as Cablevision has
been pressuring me to upgrade to digital, because they don't like the fact that I still
have analog cable.
So they're saying, you know, if you don't switch to digital cable, we're going to start
getting rid of some channels, and you won't be able to get as much as you would get if
you had digital, and people are going to laugh at you in your neighborhood, and we can't
guarantee your safety or anything like that.
And really, it got to me, and after a while, I finally yielded, and I said, okay, you know
what?
Shut up.
Send me the damn cable boxes, which you say you're going to send me free of charge, and
let's be done with this thing.
And so as I'm having the thing sent to me, the guy tells me about the $35 shipping charge,
and I inform him that free of charge means free of charge, and you can't include a shipping
charge, and he sort of agreed.
But it was kind of sleazy that they tried to slip that in.
They never showed up.
They got lost, in fact, and they couldn't send me another set of cable boxes, because
I already had some that were lost, and apparently I was the problem.
So I had to go down with my old cable boxes, get the new ones, and plug them in, and guess
what?
They don't work, because the signal isn't strong enough.
Yeah, the signal's not strong, and a digital cable apparently needs a different kind of
signal, so now they have to send people out in trucks and cherry pickers and things like
that to figure out why the signal isn't strong enough, and I don't even care, because I don't
even use their cable system all that much, but I just was kind of curious as to what
it was like, and it was cheaper after all.
But in the interim, while I was doing all of this, I had the good fortune to call them
on many occasions, and I found something.
I found the most annoying voice response system I think I have ever found in my life, and
believe me, I've talked to a lot of voice response systems and a lot of people as well.
Nothing seems to match this, so I'm going to demonstrate this on the airwaves here,
if I can just get a damn dial tone.
Okay, there we go.
We're going to call their number.
All right, now we're going to hear the nice greeting from the Cablevision people.
Eventually.
Welcome to Cablevision, home of the Optimum family of products.
Please listen carefully to all of the following options before making a selection to ensure
your call is routed appropriately.
And you can't make a selection before he finishes talking anyway.
Dramatic effect.
Okay, I have to wait for that.
Okay, I'm going to enter my phone number.
Oh, did that go off the air?
Oh, boy, silly me.
See, this isn't the annoying part.
You think this is annoying.
This is nothing.
That's me.
Any other calls.
That's me too.
That's me.
Thank you for calling Cablevision.
Due to technical difficulties, we are currently experiencing service interruptions in Belmont,
Plainview.
Please be assured we are working to have services restored as quickly as possible.
We apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience.
We are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your convenience.
This is the inserted recording they put in because there's always something broken someplace.
Okay, I'm going to press 2 and here's where the fun begins.
Before we go further, I just need to double check that you're in the right place.
You are calling about a technical problem with your cable TV.
Is that right?
I understand you want to speak to a real person.
I just need to collect some information about the problem in your equipment.
And then I can transfer you to an agent.
Okay, let me check if an agent is available.
I'm sorry, but all the lines are still busy.
Please continue working with me since we're doing the same things an agent would.
I'll still be able to transfer information about everything we do together.
I don't think so. I don't think so. I want the damn agent.
One moment, please.
Alright, that's what you have to do.
But that can go on for a very long time and you can get into this big argument and fight.
And eventually, if you agree to her terms, you get to record your problem
and then they transmit that to the real human who spends their time listening.
And it's really funny too because one of the times I called them,
I got the recording saying due to excessively high call volumes
and right in the middle of the word volume, a representative got on.
So that's like, it's obvious that they don't even mean that recording.
They just play it all the time.
I've never encountered a voice response system that tries to convince you not to transfer to the operator.
I've encountered some that say zero is not a valid response.
They kind of lock you out.
But this one actually tries to fight with you
and convince you to keep using the computer instead of the human.
These are the people that want to build housing on the west side.
I don't know.
Cablevision. Boy, what a joke.
You have cablevision out in Jersey, don't you, Redbird?
Time Warner.
You have Time Warner?
There's some cablevision.
Oh, you have cablevision, Arsony.
Yeah, their online service is pretty good though.
Online service is always different.
Like Time Warner cable, the online people seem to know what they're doing.
God help you if you ever have to talk to the people who do the programming though.
The on-demand things.
I have cablevision also.
You have cablevision, Redhect, up in Westchester?
Yeah.
It's fun, isn't it?
Yeah.
Well, as I said, the online service is pretty good.
They don't put...
Their cap is at 10 megabits, which no one's ever going to hit on cable anyway.
Which is nice.
It's fast.
Yeah, well, I'll keep you updated as to the saga of these digital cable boxes,
which I think are a big waste of time.
The only good thing about them is they give you the time of day,
whereas the other ones just gave you the channel number.
But that's really not worth all the hassle.
You can get dedicated devices that do nothing but give you the time of day.
I keep hearing about those, but I can't seem to find them.
Actually, you know, this last weekend was Daylight Savings Time,
and actually I only had to change one clock.
Only one little round clock that I had to change in my entire life.
Everything else new to change to Daylight Savings Time.
See what the world's technology is good.
Yeah, yeah.
God help us if we ever have to change that date.
My cell phone actually took a while to update.
I wasn't looking at it when it updated, but it did.
No, I mean it did eventually.
Did my T-Mobile phone update?
I think it did.
Yeah, it did.
T-Mobile didn't use to update, but I think the phones now,
the GSM phones actually have some kind of time thing in them in addition to.
Yeah, well, I mean the Verizon phones use a network time protocol kind of thing,
but it didn't do it right away.
It took a while before it figured it out.
I guess it doesn't poll all the time.
My Verizon phone did it right away because it seems to always be in touch with the tower,
but the GSM phones usually you would set the time yourself,
but there seems to be something involved in the phones now
where it kind of updates depending on where you are.
But that's some other marvel of technology that I don't quite understand.
Let's see.
We have some subway news, which is kind of interesting too.
Jim, do you hear about this?
The transit officials are backing off of a controversial plan
to close dozens of subway fare booths, but the clerks won't remain inside.
Under the latest plan, all 164 booths that are slated for closure would remain in place,
but the clerks will still be out in the station acting more as customer service representatives.
MetroCards won't be sold from the booths,
so strap hangers will still have to use the vending machines instead.
But the clerks will still have access to the booths to use the phone to call police
and solve problems with riders' MetroCards.
Does that make any sense to you?
Barely.
It seems to me that they're just on the, you know, one more step they added to phasing them out.
Yeah.
There was an incident some month or so ago where someone was shot by a jealous husband on a station,
and when this was reported to the police, the police had trouble responding
because there was no manned booth on the downtown side of that station where the body was.
It wasn't a body yet. He was still alive at that point.
There's some argument. Maybe you're right.
But anyway, so that's why there was a big to-do, and they haven't immediately closed this.
Of course, now the question remains, if someone is going to commit some act of malfeasance,
well, now you just take out the clerk first.
They're all in uniform and easy to find.
I don't think this is that much of an improvement.
It was, you know, backlash from people who wanted the police and fire to respond,
from handicapped people who wanted to be able to exit the gate rather than through the high turnstile
or Iron Maiden, as it's been nicknamed for years.
I just don't understand the need for all these closings.
These people are needed, you know.
They're always being asked questions.
There's always somebody having problems with something, and plus it's good to know somebody is there.
Somebody is at the station, hopefully keeping an eye out for things.
Or, for example, the other day I was on the subway going uptown,
and at 96th Street there was some problem with the subway,
so all the subways going uptown were locked.
There was no moving.
So, you know, I had to get out, and I had already used a bus transfer to get onto the subway,
so I had no way to get onto a bus to finish my route.
And so because the clerk was there, she called and she got permission to give out bus transfers,
and I was able to get to where I had to go.
Good luck doing that with a machine.
I had an incident a couple of weeks ago heading over here.
Actually, no, I wasn't heading over here.
I was heading away from here.
It was a different time of the day, and I was waiting at a bus stop
to take the M9 at the corner of Water Street and Maiden Lane.
And an M9 just passed by, and I was really upset,
so upset that I called the MTA to complain about it.
And they went through this whole big thing where they were trying to figure out
who was the driver in charge and all that kind of a thing.
I didn't feel especially good getting the guy in trouble,
but it had to be done because, you know, it's very annoying.
It was raining, and the bus just passed me by.
Then after I got off the phone with the MTA, a second bus passed by.
Yeah, even though I was waving and saying all kinds of things, the bus just passed right by.
Then I realized that this wasn't really a bus stop even though it was labeled as a bus stop.
It didn't have the little M9 thing on the top.
It had it just at the bottom.
So they have mislabeled a bus stop, but that didn't stop them from investigating my complaint.
They sent me this letter.
Dear Emanuel, this is in response to your March 23 telephone call to MTA, New York City Transit,
reporting that an M9 bus, that's what they say,
bypassed your bus stop at the corner of Water Street and Maiden Lane.
Apparently they don't know that it's not really a bus stop.
We truly regret the incident you described as having occurred while trying to use our bus service.
Please know that our bus operators are expected to comply with all New York City transit regulations
and are held accountable when they do not abide by these guidelines.
Unless otherwise instructed, they are required to ensure that all intending customers
have entered or exited the bus at all designated bus stops.
Consequently, the type of behavior you reported is not indicative of the high standards of professionalism,
courtesy, and customer service set forth in our guidelines.
Unfortunately, in the absence of a bus or badge number,
we are unable to positively identify the bus operator for questioning and appropriate further action.
However, in response to your call,
we have taken the liberty of forwarding a copy of your complaint to supervision in our Department of Buses
with a request that the bus operators assigned to the M9 route
be reminded of their responsibility to board all intending customers.
In addition, the above route will be monitored to ensure reliable quality service for our customers.
You know, all I wanted was my damn transfer back because this cost me a transfer.
That's all I wanted.
Instead, they're having this whole big investigation they're launching,
and they're not even aware that it's not a bus stop.
They don't even know this.
Can't they look at a map or something and realize that Maiden Lane is not a bus stop on the M9,
even though it's labeled that way at the stop itself?
Why is it labeled that way?
It's now incumbent on you to tell them,
oh, by the way, I now realize this isn't a bus stop on the M9, even though it's labeled that way.
Take care of that, too.
Yeah, now I've got to either make another phone call or write another letter.
You know, it's going to cost me another transfer if I have to do that.
It really is.
Make them pay.
I will. I will.
Yeah.
All right, speaking of making people pay,
United States citizens are going to have to pay if they want to go into Canada,
and Canadian citizens are going to have to deal with more hassles coming into here.
Mike, what do you know about this?
Yes, the U.S. government has—you're holding the article while you're asking me,
but the U.S. government has apparently unilaterally decided that all Canadians entering the country
will have to have a passport as of the end of 2007,
and by 2008, Americans who visit Canada have to have a passport to get back into the United States.
Canada, the Canadian government at least, is kind of pissed off, I guess,
and they're thinking of instituting reciprocal provisions,
which means that Americans would need a passport to go to Canada.
I always thought they did.
In fact, Red Hat, when we went to Canada,
they concluded that they, in fact, were sort of saying that,
that they needed passports from American citizens.
Yeah.
It says it on websites, I believe.
You need enough forms of identification.
I actually went to Canada a couple weeks ago,
and most of us had passports, which was fine to get in,
but one of us, he had lost his some time ago,
and so he had a birth certificate and a driver's license,
which was enough to identify him.
I heard on the news that you needed proof of citizenship, but what is that?
Is that a birth certificate?
Well, the birth certificate would be proof of citizenship since he was born in the States.
But people would rather carry passports, wouldn't they?
Right.
We just didn't have one.
So in lieu of a passport, we used...
Well, so basically this means that we'll have to carry passports no matter where we go
if we want to leave the country.
We can't just take a day trip to Canada or something like that
and expect to come back without having to already have this kind of document on us, right?
What strikes me as kind of amusing about this
is that they didn't apparently tell the Canadian government in advance.
They just kind of made this announcement,
and Canadians seem to be a bit pissed off.
What does it say that Canadians didn't know about this?
I watched this report on the CBC's website.
There's a little video clip.
And the Canadian, like, they were having a meeting,
and then the next day the USA came out with this announcement.
The Canadians were having a meeting amongst themselves,
and they had to, you know, totally change what they were doing.
Speaking of the CBC, thank you very much, Al Gore.
Thanks very much for ruining everything, all right?
There is one outlet in this country where Americans can actually watch CBC News.
That's News World International, the channel that you bought last year.
Well, it's going to be renamed Current or something silly like that,
and they're going to gear it more towards the MTV crowd rather than people that want news.
So that means in this country you will have no opportunity to see Canadian news.
They aired a program called The National.
It's a great news program.
It's on once a day.
How hard is it to just simply look at what another country is saying?
They speak the same language, after all.
It's something that I think should be aired everywhere.
It should be easy to see this.
Instead, you have to jump through hoops, go to the website,
or somehow pirate a signal from another country in order to see what another country is saying.
And you laughed at me when I voted against Gore.
I knew.
Well, I don't think Bush would put this on the top of his agenda either.
Yeah, but I'm sure he wouldn't have bought a TV station to put news on.
It's just sad.
Now we also have this other story about photo IDs.
Some people are saying that photo IDs are going to be required for people to vote.
Legislation that would require voters to show photo identification before casting ballots
has touched off fierce debate in three different states, Georgia and Indiana and Wisconsin.
Now, what is the controversy here?
Why is it such a big deal that people have to produce ID to vote?
Does it not cut back on electoral fraud?
That's the argument of conservatives and small-c conservatives and Republicans, big R.
It has to do with the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
which I wrote that classic article for 2600 some years back.
Essentially, the Voting Rights Act says that in certain areas where there's minority underrepresentation in voting,
you need less ID to register to vote because all these go-through-the-hoops sort of maneuvers on ID,
the now illegal and unconstitutional poll tax, literacy tests, etc.
were deemed, and rightly so, to be disenfranchising minorities, predominantly blacks in the South.
So consequently, you could register to vote very easily.
You would get a form from various civic organizations, government organizations,
and essentially mail it in to your voting board and not have to show ID when you went to vote.
But of course, as I wrote in that article, it's very easy to hack the vote.
It seems like it's very easy to lie and simply say that you're not.
That's how you do it.
Is that a problem? Are people doing that?
I will say, now that the Statue of Limitations has gone, that I've done it way in the past and relatively easily.
The way it works in my district, you have to sign something, and the signature has to match the previous signature.
But you've already entered a fake form.
You've already mailed it in that you signed.
Oh, I see. Okay.
So of course it matches.
So it's not so much filling in for somebody else as it is creating a fake person in the first place.
Exactly.
The highly ironically named Help America Vote Act, which was passed under the Bush presidency.
Which one?
What?
Which Bush?
The current Bush.
Okay.
The first term of the current Bush.
Okay.
Requires that first-time voters nationwide show photo ID.
So this is not the first time that photo ID is being required to vote.
But there are ways around that.
If with your registration you enclosed a photocopy of a phone bill, gee, that's an easy thing to Photoshop.
Or something similar.
Jim, you have to show photo ID.
I didn't show photo ID.
I didn't either.
I didn't either.
I don't know when it was passed.
Exactly.
If you're a first-time voter.
I know of people who have registered pretending to be first-time voters after this.
You know a lot of unsavory types.
It's what happens when you're a convicted felon.
Oh, where did I go wrong?
Well, we don't have enough time in this hour to go over that.
So is this something that we should just get used to, presenting photo ID when we vote?
Is it something we should get upset at?
We should be upset, but it's a little late.
Well, it doesn't seem to be late for these people.
They're fighting about it right now.
We should continue to be upset, but we should also realize that we're losing this battle.
Nineteen states require voters to show identification, but only five of those request photo ID.
And those states are Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and South Dakota.
I don't think you're a resident of any of those states, Mike.
No, I'm not.
But I was watching poll workers demand photo ID here in New York State.
Well, maybe they were a little too eager at their job.
Exactly.
If you tell them, you know, no, the Voting Rights Act says I don't have to, they back down.
All right.
Well, since we're having to show photo ID for virtually everything these days, it's not really a surprise,
but it's something that, you know, if we're going to fight, we better start doing it soon
and know why we're doing it as well.
Speaking of criticizing things, a man can disparage a hair restoration company on a website
using the company's name without violating copyright law.
That's according to an appeals court that ruled this on Monday.
Sure makes me feel happy.
Bosley Medical Institute in Seattle sued former client Michael Kramer after he created a website in 2000
in a, quote, bald-faced effort to get even, unquote, with the company.
That's his words, not mine.
Now, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that he has every right to run this site
known as www.BosleyMedical.com.
Now, the actual site is called Bosley.com,
and I guess that's the site where people go for hair restoration treatment or whatever.
But this guy has had some problems with them and started his own site.
I find this to be very positive, obviously, but what's interesting about this,
unlike the cases that we've been threatened with lawsuits and the case where we actually were sued
for running parody sites or critical sites or whatever,
it doesn't have a disparaging word in the title.
It doesn't say BosleySucks.com or something like that.
This is something a step further where basically it's a name, BosleyMedical.com.
I don't even know if that's the name of the company at all, if that's in there in any sense.
But since it's obvious that it's not the site that is being criticized, it's okay.
And that's what we've been saying for years.
It would be kind of interesting to see how WIPO responds
because they have a sort of separate judicial system almost.
It's like WIPO process.
It will be interesting to see how they respond to the conflict between what WIPO says
and what the U.S. courts say.
Isn't this sort of the same thing that WTO laws trump any nation's laws?
The same kind of conflict that they're going to be running into here.
These WIPO laws, they make it kind of irrelevant, whatever your country decides.
Maybe the Bush administration, which is never a fan of following international agreements,
will actually come in handy.
I don't think they're going to come in on the side of criticizing a company's website.
It would be interesting.
Yeah.
Ethiopia, one of the poorest nations on earth,
will be spreading Internet coverage from a handful of users to the entire country in three years.
That's according to the prime minister.
He said this yesterday.
Premier Mele Zenawi said information technology
lay at the heart of transforming the impoverished country where millions are depending on foreign aid.
But they'll be able to go to Amazon.com and see all the things that they can't afford to buy.
We are fully committed to ensuring that as many of our poor as possible have this weapon
that they need to fight poverty at the earliest possible time.
I've never heard the web referred to as a weapon before.
I think de-weaponizing the country would help development all the more.
We plan to ensure universal access and Internet connectivity
to all the tens of thousands of rural districts of our country over the next two to three years.
It would be nice to see that here, wouldn't it?
Do they have computers to use this access?
Well, according to this, there are 30,000 Internet lines in the country of 71 million people,
making it one of the lowest users of information technology in the world.
Within six months, though, that figure will be expanded to 500 billion lines.
That's what it says here.
That's a lot of lines.
That's more than...
And nothing to plug in.
That's got to be wrong.
I don't know.
I'm going to stop reading this story now because I think the AP might have been a little late with an April Fool's joke.
Sometimes things get a little out of hand.
500 billion lines.
You don't need that for the entire world.
In Colombia, the president's house has 300 Ethernet jacks for two people.
So, I don't know.
Maybe.
Okay.
Well, let's look at some other news that's going on.
RFID is going to be used at the World Cup next year.
If you're planning to attend the World Cup tournament in Germany but you oppose the use of RFID, radio frequency identification,
you won't get past the front gate.
All 2.9 million tickets currently on sale will include an embedded RFID chip, which will entitle entry to the games.
The use of RFID technology offers a high degree of security, so they say,
Not only the Football Association but also the German Interior Ministry have required and should also help speed up entry at the gates.
The tags will contain no personal data, just a number that identifies each cardholder.
Fans applying for a ticket must submit various personal data in the registration form.
Dutch electronics giant Konig – I can't possibly pronounce it.
Well, it's Philips, actually.
Yeah.
Let's just say Philips.
A World Cup sponsor, they have been rumored to be one of the main suppliers of RFID chips.
You know, RFID chips or things can actually contain a lot of information.
They can actually hold up to like 1K on them because I saw this interesting hack online a couple weeks ago where using an RFID reader and writer,
they'd write this kind of music data file onto the RFID tags, and then if they put it on top of the reader, it would start playing.
I thought that generally they just had, say, a string of numbers, an identifier.
I think that was just a link to the file, though, like a pointer to a file on a network share.
No, no.
This was actually – they were talking about reading and writing the RFID tags to actually contain the information.
I didn't hear about that one yet.
1K?
That's all that fits on an RFID tag?
That's a lot.
As far as text goes, that's a lot.
I mean, you could put a lot of information in there.
It's going to be a meg inside of 10 years.
Mark my words.
It will be.
And God knows what they're going to put on the things.
I'm just saying if you want to put a lot of information as far as – think about how much information is on a ticket.
You could fit 10 times that, more even.
Yeah.
There's a lot of talk about information on RFID tags, and there's a new site, RFIDkills.com.
RFIDkills.
RFIDkills.
Not yet.
You don't say.
The potential is there.
Yesterday's Times mentioned this first that I saw, but there's plenty of interesting stuff on the site.
Radio-free passports.
Corporate travel managers are uneasy about the State Department's plan to introduce passports later this year with tiny radio tags for transmitting personal and facial biometric information to expedite processing of travelers through border controls and customs checkpoints.
Get to the part about kills.
These RFID tags could be broadcast, as somebody on the site puts it, the presence of U.S. citizens in crowds in hotel lobbies, on trains, or even on the street to those in possession of a fairly unsophisticated receiver.
The main concern is about politically motivated attacks on U.S. citizens abroad, but the device could also be pinpointing likely targets to pickpockets and thieves that really catch the group's president.
So it would kill us because it would be identifying us as Americans to people that hate Americans.
Is that how it works?
That's the theory behind this.
You can identify us anyway.
We're the ones talking loudly on cell phones.
We often pretend to be Canadians, which has saved some of our behinds more than once.
So is this a website, RFIDkills?
It is a real website, RFIDkills.com.
Now, if I understand it, the fear is not that they would read the information, because I assume it's going to be encrypted in some form.
No, it's not going to be encrypted.
Really?
Yeah.
You're really surprised?
I mean, they encrypted the RFID tags for, you know, those mobile speed passes and things like that.
And there's another thing I saw.
It was broken a while ago.
Right.
It was broken, but it took quite a deal of parallel systems to do it.
So it wasn't something trivial to break.
They had precomputed hashes, I think, at one point to finally do it real time.
Right.
So it was difficult.
It wasn't something that a pickpocket would use, but I was just, you know, wondering.
Okay.
Well, we've reported on this story in the past, and here's an update on it.
The House has voted unanimously, with three absences, to ban hunting by remote control in the state of West Virginia.
House Bill 2890, which now goes to the Senate, takes aim at an online promotion begun by a Texas game farm.
The farm offers a website which allows people for a fee to control a camera and rifle with a computer mouse to sight and shoot.
The system is currently set up for target shooting,
but the operators of live-shot.com say they are currently building a hunting blind that will accommodate disabled and handicapped hunters.
They're a very vocal minority.
As a hunter, it's a disgrace to the sport, said delicate Joe DeLong.
We feel that it should never be considered here.
We're just being proactive.
It's pretty amazing.
But this is just West Virginia that's banning this so far.
Is that just for shooting at animals or shooting at anything?
Well, I guess the idea is to shoot at animals, but, of course, you probably could go crazy and start shooting at anything you wanted.
No, I meant the bill.
Does it block shooting at targets also or just shooting at live animals?
I think the bill is only for shooting at animals.
They can still shoot at targets if they really want to.
State of Texas, meanwhile, anything with guns that harms animals is still A-OK.
Wow.
All right.
I'll be taking phone calls in just a moment.
212-209-2900.
There's a scandal up in Manchester, New Hampshire, where people apparently are using devices known as skimmers.
Have you ever heard about this?
At ATMs, they install a little device that skims your information when you put your card into it.
Now, I don't know what these look like.
I'd like to see one.
But apparently, you stick your card in, and the card goes into the machine, and you get your money.
But it goes into another device first, and that device records your account number.
And somebody watching over your shoulder or perhaps filming you at a distance is able to capture your PIN.
And then people are able to make fake cards.
What they're doing is they're using surveillance to film people that are doing this,
and they're trying to track down the actual people responsible for it.
And they think they're from out of state.
Are these private ATMs or bank ATMs?
I believe these are – it might be both.
Because there's been a lot of scams with private ATMs for a long while now.
No, I feel like this is actually a device they put on top of the bank slot that will be on the way in.
Yeah, this is nothing new.
Yeah, skimmers just – they basically – they usually just –
Actually, because it's a Bank of New Hampshire ATM, so that's probably not a private ATM.
The skimmers usually have just a ROM in them that can store several hundred cards.
And they were also used – people, if you went to a restaurant to buy dinner,
and you gave your credit card sometimes, like the waiter or someone there would –
before they swipe the card to charge you, they'd also swipe it through a skimmer.
There's really no way to prevent that, is there?
Not really.
I mean if you have a waiter who's going to rip you off, and you're giving him your credit card, what can you possibly do?
There's really nothing.
He's going to rip you off.
He's going to – well, he's not going to rip you off if you know you're right.
But it's easier to just swipe the number through something and then dump it later
than have to spend time writing down the number, which is more obvious.
True.
Just swipe it.
Put it in your pocket and swipe it for a second.
Right.
Arsene.
I was recently the victim of fraud actually.
Ooh.
And someone sent $260 worth of flowers to Serbia for my account.
Why wouldn't you want to do that?
Well, I don't know anyone in Serbia.
Well, if you had followed up on it, you would have.
I had to call Australia because that's where they bought the flowers.
And the people in Australia are very nice actually.
I didn't have to –
Why did you have to call Australia?
I was curious.
I wanted to do some self-investigating.
But there was no computer to talk to.
I was surprised.
I called this pretty large store, and I spoke to a human, and he helped me in about 15 minutes.
He called me back on my cell phone.
But anyway, people use cell phone cameras, according to the bank, to take pictures of the credit card numbers.
Waiters would do that.
He told me when I called the bank, they told me to watch out for that and to call them right away if I lose sight of my cards at any time.
Now, the rights that you have, you are not liable for these charges, assuming that you catch them on your bill.
If you don't catch them on your bill, obviously, you're going to pay them merrily and then there won't be anything you can do about it if you don't catch them in the near future.
But you're not liable if somebody just uses your number.
Now, if they steal your card, you're also not liable if you report it.
If you don't report it, then it's a different story.
One other thing I'd like to note, you mentioned that someone would have to be observing for the PIN.
A lot of debit cards these days also function as credit cards, so they wouldn't even need your PIN to use it.
But if you're using it at an ATM, you're probably going to have to use your PIN.
There are ATMs where you can withdraw money with a credit card and without having it an actual debit card.
Do you know that little magic number on the back of credit cards, that little three-digit number?
The verification number.
Yeah, the verification number.
That's supposed to be something that is kept fairly quiet.
I had to use that the other day for an online sale and wouldn't you know it, they sent me email and right there in the email was your three-digit code sent in clear text.
I could not believe it.
It's a violation of the merchant agreement almost certainly.
It was Yahoo stores and it looked like it was a default setting.
You should report this to the Visa and MasterCard.
More letters, more phone calls.
You know, you don't have enough today.
It gives you a purpose in your life.
I have one more technical thing.
All right, what's that?
I saw this on CBS and I unfortunately didn't get the name of the actual product.
I don't think they mentioned it.
Apparently there's a camera that New Haven and Arlington County, Virginia as well as other municipalities are using.
They mount it in a car.
They go driving up and down the street.
It reads your license plate number and when it hits a match, it alerts the driver and essentially they boot your car, tow it or something similar.
But what this does is it essentially compiles all sorts of fines that you have, delinquent taxes, library books, everything and puts it up against your automobile.
You know, in a way, you sort of have to drive under false identification these days just to not be harassed for everything you've ever done in your life.
They interviewed a woman in New Haven who was towed for $37 in library fines.
Boy, that must have been a confusing day for her.
Okay, let's read some listener mail.
Again, you can write to us, oth at 2600.com.
And right afterwards, we'll be taking phone calls, 212-209-2900.
Country code 1.
I work for a company out of Utah that provides Internet service.
We do this wirelessly at truck stops all over the country.
Because of this new law, the law we discussed a couple of weeks ago in Utah, we are trying to understand if we have to provide filtering at the truck stops because we are based in Utah or if we only have to filter locations in Utah.
The company has already started to comply with the law.
I discovered this by trying to go to a website to find the name of a piece of freeware.
Because the search brought up unrelated porn sites, which I copied down for later use, I couldn't see the info I needed.
The solution is quite simple.
Most browsers allow you to list a proxy server, typically under options.
I just browsed for a public proxy server that was available and went through that.
The Utah law does not include a list of proxy servers, so it would be unlawful to require them to be blocked, and it would be a nightmare for businesses.
Be careful when using a proxy you don't personally know, however.
It would be foolish to send sensitive information through it.
I can't believe my tax dollars are going to fund something that takes two seconds and literally no resources to get around.
Thanks very much for that letter out of Utah.
Dear OffTheHook, it seems like every time I listen to this show, one of you guys are always traveling around the world.
It seems like it would be very costly to travel that much.
Are you guys independently wealthy or just seek and find cheap travel tickets?
Signed, Dave.
Well, Dave, I guess it's just a question of priorities.
Some of us like to eat.
Some of us like to travel.
It's a choice between the two sometimes.
Some of us are very good at finding cheap fares.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, a lot of us are able to find ways over to other countries, other continents for what some people would pay for lunch.
I'm not kidding because people pay ridiculous amounts for things that they shouldn't have to pay ridiculous amounts for.
So conversely, you can find expensive things for cheap or you can pay a lot for something that doesn't cost much for most people.
It's all a question of priorities and, of course, you also have to find time.
You have to shape your schedule around it.
But most people I talk to, they hear about us going overseas, going to various conferences and adventures and things like that, and they say, boy, I wish I could do that.
Well, you can.
You just have to prioritize your life and figure out a way and it depends on how important it is to you.
There's always a way somehow.
Boy, this summer, though, is going to be the champion of these kinds of trips for all of us because I think most of us are going to be overseas somehow doing this radio show.
I'm going to be going all the way around the world by land and by sea and somehow connecting every week.
I might have to get a satellite phone.
Some people have written in with suggestions on that.
That will be an interesting use of technology right there.
One thing, though, and boy, I got to tell people this is a real ripoff.
I've always wanted to take one of these ocean liner things and they have this QM2, the huge boat, the biggest boat in the world.
Do you know they charge you double if you're traveling by yourself?
Yeah, it's a big, big ripoff.
No.
There's no way.
They charge you X dollars for a cabin and they charge you the same whether it's one or two people in there, right?
Well, yeah, I guess so.
But other boats.
You're looking at it the wrong way.
Well, do you have the option of getting a random roommate?
I don't want a random roommate.
Well, do you have the option of getting a fixed roommate?
Yeah, I guess I could do that.
But the whole point is to sort of set my mind at ease and get away from people for a while.
I'll be with some of the most annoying people in the world, rich people that travel on cruise lines and do this as a habit.
But, you know, it's annoying because other liners have accommodations for single travelers.
This one specifically does not, and they just charge 200 percent for—
The sort of people that travel on the Queen Mary probably don't mind.
Yeah, I guess not.
But the thing is the way I look at it, I'm entitled to double whatever most people get.
So somehow I'm going to get double.
Just eat a lot.
I don't want to eat that much, but I will take food off the boat.
Do what?
Throw it to the seagulls?
Take it with me on the Trans-Siberian Express.
I don't know.
I'll just save it.
Maybe I will throw it to the seagulls.
You know, Jim, that's not a bad idea.
Thank you.
All right.
But I'm going to get even somehow.
In fact, I might even get ahead.
Okay.
You might consider use of a program such as DBAN from dban.sourceforge.net when overwriting data on your hard drive.
We were talking about this last week, how to really erase hard drives.
How do you spell DBAN?
D-B-A-N.
Thank you.
There are also utilities on a CD called the Ultimate Boot CD, www.ultimatebootcd.com, that can be used to wipe your information out.
Signed, Wolf.
Thanks very much for that information.
Alternatively, if you have a Linux boot disk, you just –
DD.
Well, yeah.
DD and if equals slash dev slash random.
If you're running Linux.
Well, you can get a live CD.
No problem.
You basically say the input file is random source.
Output file or pseudorandom source.
Output file is the hard drive.
You can do that like eight times.
Will that work on a Mac?
Yes.
Okay.
You just plug it in and run that command on a boot disk, and it will wipe everything.
It will take a while because you're generating random data.
It should take a while.
It should take a while.
Okay.
And you should do it a couple of times.
And this comes from the webmaster of the radio show that follows us, The Personal Computer Show, from Michael Horowitz.
I heard you discuss securely deleting files in the show last week.
This page on my personal site, www.michaelhorowitz.com slash newcomputer.html, has links to many programs that wipe a hard disk clean.
There's a web page for a class that teaches how to set up a new computer.
Disposing of an old machine is one of the class topics.
All right.
Again, write to us, oth at 2600.com, or call us now, 212-209-2900, and spout out whatever it is that you have to say on various topics.
Let's take a phone call over here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Good evening.
I have a question for you.
Maybe you could help.
I understand that on the Fox network, some gentleman came on and said that you don't need high-definition TVs anymore,
that they have some type of devices now that you can plug into your television, and they make it a high-definition TV.
I believe there are converters that will – you don't have to go out and buy a high-definition television in the next couple of years
just because the federal government wants to change the technology around.
But you will have to get some sort of a converter in order for it to work.
That's my understanding.
So it's just a matter of having a converter and then plugging it into your TV?
You're not going to be able – if you're saying that you want to make the TV high-definition, as in that it will look better,
you're not going to be able to do that with some sort of converter because it's basically the technology that the TV is based on is low-resolution.
I think probably what you're hearing about is a way of being able to watch the high-definition signal at a normal television resolution.
But you're not going to be able to make the TV better with some sort of box.
Right. Are you interested in just receiving the signal or actually getting HDTV?
Well, from what I understand, the gentleman said that – he said he came in on the tail end of the program.
But he said the gentleman that was discussing this on some program said that you actually don't need to buy these new plasma
or high-definition TV, that the technology is already there to boost your TV in order to get a high-definition picture.
To simply receive the signal, you can get a converter.
But to actually see it in high-definition, you actually –
Your picture is not going to get any better through any converter.
But you will be able to get the signal that you would not ordinarily be able to get.
Yeah, we're talking about two different things, high-definition and digital television, are we not?
Okay. At this point –
Digital television, the government is going to change it so that the signals are no longer analog,
sent through the airwaves and receivable by any sort of TV.
Okay.
You're going to need the new generation of TV or one of these converters that you buy.
High-definition just refers to the visual quality and works with digital because there's more information being sent and processed by the TV.
What many broadcasters are doing is instead of delivering a single high-definition channel as the agreement initially was,
they're delivering four or five lower quality channels.
And then you have such things as WNBC now has a weather channel as if that's what we needed.
And WABC has a channel that just replays their newscast and things like that.
You're going to have – every TV channel is going to basically have four versions of itself where you'll be able to watch Oprah any time of the day.
It's a nightmare of the worst kind, I think.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks for your call.
212-209-2900. And good evening. You're on the air.
Hello. Is this off the hook?
This is off the hook. You're on the air.
Oh, thanks. The reason why I'm calling is because I have a couple of telephone-related questions.
Okay.
The first question is I noticed like especially with like a lot of these like tech support companies
or even like say technical support for like a Dell computer, if I go and I dial and say,
press 1 for technical support, press 2 for this, does it really matter what selection I enter?
Or if I hit operator, if I hit 0 for an operator, does it really matter like what selection I make?
It depends on the company, how they have their system set up.
For instance, the company I called before, Cablevision, I entered a fake number just then.
And I got all of these – yeah, believe it or not.
I got all of these choices that made me think that it was actually looking up my account
and guiding my call to the right place.
Now, obviously, if I didn't enter the right phone number, by the time I get to a person,
they're not going to have any information about me.
I'm going to have to start from scratch.
And it's funny because the way I discovered this before the show, I wanted to make sure that, you know,
I was doing this properly and that I would get the same response.
I entered a number at random just to see what would happen if I entered what I thought was a wrong number.
And I got the full account information, how much they owed, what the last bill was, when they paid,
all kinds of things like that without having to enter any more information other than the phone number.
Now, the funny thing was the phone number that I had been giving them apparently was the wrong number the whole time.
I'm giving them a different line.
And I've been entering that number like a jerk each time I call them thinking that it makes a difference.
It doesn't.
And most of the times, the things you enter on these systems makes no difference at all.
Just with something like the Dell system though, I think the idea would be that it narrows down
or at least when you get to the actual person, you can just go to them and talk to them.
But as you were saying, it kind of helps narrow down what they get or what they know about you.
And so a lot of times, the Dell system will say enter like a service code number,
which would be mean but by the time you get to them, they'll have your information there or the specs of your system.
But, you know, every time and maybe listeners can tell me if I'm wrong here.
Every time you call a credit card company and they ask you for your 16-digit number
and you enter the 16-digit number, then you enter the expiration date, then you enter your zip code.
By the time you get to a human, they ask you to enter all of that again or give it to them all over again.
I always ask them, don't you have this information?
And they never do.
And it's the most annoying thing in the world.
That's odd because back when I could still afford credit cards, I had just the opposite experience.
They always knew after I had punched this in.
It always came up on their screen.
Different companies are different as far as credit cards.
In fact, I discovered something really interesting with credit cards over the past couple of days
because I was calling to find out why I was getting billed on a credit card that I hadn't been using.
Now, there are all kinds of different agreements and you have to be careful.
Citibank, for instance, I discovered this quite by accident.
They have a system where there is no grace period at all.
So that means if you pay your balance, which I always thought was a good thing.
You pay your balance in full before the due date.
Guess what?
Because they start calculating a finance charge from the day of purchase.
And since you don't get the bill until after the day of purchase, there's a finance charge on that that does not reflect on the bill.
So when you pay the bill, then the next bill, you have a finance charge from before when you paid the bill.
And I imagine the same thing happens again if you try to pay that and it just never seems to end.
Now, Citibank is the only credit card company I've seen that does this.
But I imagine there are probably others.
I have a Citibank credit card.
Do you pay your balance in full?
I even paid it a day late and I didn't get a charge.
That's impossible.
No, no.
They had a day grace before.
Like I called them and they said, oh, you're fine.
You're within 24 hours of when you were supposed to pay it.
So it's okay.
But I'm like a platinum or silver.
I don't know.
Well, I'm just a lowly gold.
But all right.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Good evening.
How are you doing?
I just wanted to talk about that photo ID for voting.
I've been running it through my head and I'm thinking it's really difficult for me to really make a good argument against it,
even considering the Voting Rights Act, simply because I believe, and I might be wrong,
that every state allows you to get a photo ID, a driver's license, say, but a non-driver's ID, which doesn't require any test.
Right.
And, in essence, is that not mandating that everybody has to have a photo identification,
which is something that I think we're getting used to in this day and age, but, say, 20 years ago, we never would have tolerated that.
Well, I think, though, the thing is, I would say to the Republicans who support this, okay, you know,
we'll give you this one because I could see that if you do pass something like this, that along with voter registration, of course,
you would have, you know, a drive to get people to have a photo ID, which, you know, they should have anyway, really.
And so I don't think it's really considered a big burden.
But at the same time that we should say, okay, then we want a paper trail.
If you're so concerned about voting being, you know, legal and there's less, you know, fraud,
then you have to support that on the other side.
And I think that would be something that most people would agree with.
Let me guess.
You're not involved in politics at all, are you?
No.
Okay.
Because it would be great if that worked.
It would be great if the system worked that way.
But, boy.
I just can't seem to make a really strong argument against it.
You know, I'm trying to think of it.
And I really, you know, aside from the, you know, like you're saying, it's a principle.
It's something that we're not used to.
But as far as the Voting Rights Act, you're really having a hard time seeing how that violates it.
That's all.
Okay.
Thanks for your call.
Sure.
Good.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, good evening.
It's funny that you bring up the cable company today because I had a deal with them the other day.
And I got that exact same woman on that tape recording.
Isn't she annoying?
Oh, I started cursing at her.
And my wife said, what's the problem?
And I said, it's this damn recording.
And to make matters worse, she makes it sound like she's real.
And she'll say, oh, and by the way.
And I just start hitting operator.
And finally somebody does come on.
I think they understand cuss words now, too.
Well, I was saying all sorts of words.
My wife just couldn't understand who I was cursing at.
And it's that damn answering thing.
It's horrible.
It does get you to interact, though, doesn't it?
It does.
It does.
That other thing you want to know about, that scanner that scans a license plate, it's called the Snoop.
And it does just what one of the other gentlemen there in the studio said, that it'll check your license plate.
And it will check your record.
And, yes, you will get towed away for $35.
Terrible name.
Yes.
And one last thing.
No, it's a good name.
It's Truth in Advertising for a change.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I work for CBS News, so I know about the story.
The other thing I wanted to ask you about was I'd heard on the Internet or read on the Internet that you can unlock your car using your cell phone.
Well, if somebody's at home, you've lost your key, they can press the button at home through the cell phone, and it'll unlock your door.
You can do that through OnStar.
Yeah, if you have OnStar or something like that, you can unlock anybody's door.
Uh-huh.
Well, you can if you know the road.
Red Hat is proposing an alternate method of unlocking.
Taking the phone, throwing it at the car, breaking the window.
Yeah, you could break it with the phone, I suppose, but you'd have to have a pretty fragile window and a pretty strong phone.
Right, right.
Well, there are ways.
There's always ways to do these things.
And, yeah, you can start your car remotely.
This is the thing that I can never understand why people would want a service like this.
But you can actually use a device on your keychain to start your car when you're nowhere near it.
And, God forbid, you have a standard, and you leave it in first gear.
Right, right.
Jump ahead, and you'll hit the car in front of you.
That's right.
Or roll down a hill.
There's all kinds of problems.
Okay.
Thanks for your call.
If you're an Iraqi politician or in the waste management business locally in Brooklyn, I think starting your car remotely is a great idea.
We'll leave the audience to interpret that.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Okay.
You've got to talk a little faster than that.
Good evening.
All right.
That person left too quickly.
And you're on the air.
Go ahead.
Oh, hey.
Good show.
Thank you.
All that stuff.
You're talking about HDTV.
I just want to remind your listeners that we all have until July 1st to buy HDTV decoder cards for our computers before they become illegal.
Now, tell us something about that.
You're not the first person to tell me this.
There's a dire threat of something.
Some new legislation.
It's called the broadcast flag.
And you can find out information about it on EFF.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
And after July 1st, what happens?
They're going to start putting new, they call them broadcast flags, on all the HDTV broadcasts.
And it's going to essentially make it so that if you don't have one of their TVs, then you can't get it or something.
Or if you have a regular decoder, then you can't get the HD signal.
I think it's mostly you can't record things or play them back at certain times or watch them more than a certain amount of times.
This sort of thing is a big risk for other very, very cool projects, such as Software Defined Radio, where everything is decoded in software.
And they want to restrict the sort of devices that you can get.
For example, very high frequency digital converters.
So you can sample the radio spectrum very quickly and decode it real time in software.
Placing a restriction on this is horrible because the open source community is really developing very cool techniques for different sorts of modulation that can be used with this sort of device.
And this is just taking a step further into restricting the sale of that sort of DAC converters.
Is there a website you can direct us to, Caller?
Oh, just EFF.org.
Okay. And they have information on this July 1st deadline for getting this.
I think it will be – we've spoken about the broadcast flag before and about how basically it's just like a bit that's been flipped saying you can't record this.
And it will be interesting to see if anyone comes up with a way to filter that out from the signal so that the equipment that's meant to ignore anything with the bit on would be able to record it anyway.
But that's something to see.
Well, it's in the same spirit as the whole DVD region code restriction, which I don't think has gone over very well in general.
I'd like to know how many people out there are bypassing it one way or another, seeing DVDs from other countries or getting a region-free player.
Hopefully, people will look at this in the same way.
All right. We're pretty much out of time.
And we'll be back again next week at 7 o'clock with another edition of Off the Hook.
Until then, stay awake and let us know if you hear anything interesting.
Again, oth at 2600.com is our address.