We are working to understand what the dynamics of sex work are so we can implement programs
that really address people's needs for an intervention that is as appropriate as possible.
A growing coalition of sex workers, women's rights advocates, and LGBT groups are opposing
the new rules and the general agenda of the administration.
For Free Speech Radio News, I'm Darby Hickey.
You've been listening to Free Speech Radio News.
I'm Aura Bogado.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York, where the time is just about 7 o'clock.
Time once again for Off the Hook.
Okay, well, as you can see, maintenance is not at the top of our list here.
That machine's been broken down for about a month and I don't think it's, I feel like
smashing it into little bits.
I really do.
It's not going to work any less if I do that.
Just imagine that you're hearing the theme.
This is Off the Hook.
May you go stand here with us.
We're trying to call Bernie, but we're having trouble reaching him as well.
So, we also wanted to play various phone things, but of course the computer's not working
either.
So, you know, we're just going to have to resolve to rely on our own voices to entertain
you with information and news and that kind of a thing.
Redbird, how are you doing?
How's it going?
Okay.
Arseny's here.
And Jim and Mike is trying to reach Bernie on the phone.
Sorry for all the craziness.
That's a code if you need a code.
Yes or no?
You don't need one?
Okay.
Okay.
Let's talk about some of the things that are happening in the news today.
Actually, you know what?
Why don't we start with a challenge.
We were walking around the city earlier today and we looked at this.
Bernie there?
Bernie, are you there?
In Philadelphia.
Ah, good.
Okay.
Well, hopefully things are working better down there than they are here.
Thanks, Mike, for hooking that up.
We were walking around New York City earlier today and you know that big clock over by
Union Square.
You've seen it, right?
The big countdown clock?
Oh, yeah.
And count up?
Basically what it does is it counts down and it counts up at the same time and many people
have spent entire college careers trying to figure out what that's all about.
And what it turned out to be was something that counts down and counts up at the same
time for the hour of midnight.
So it would be like six hours to midnight and 18 hours since midnight.
One would be counting up, one would be counting down.
But that has changed.
What?
Yeah.
That has been changed.
Okay.
In fact, we went by there before because I noticed it the other day actually when I was
with you, Mike.
We noticed it then.
It seems to be just a countdown now.
Now what time were we by there?
We wrote down the numbers.
We were there at 5.51.
5.51 p.m.
Yes.
Today.
All right.
And what were the numbers there?
And tell us what they were separated by and all that kind of thing.
Okay.
Well, all right.
They're a series of two-digit numbers.
Okay.
So the first one at that time was 76, 13, 0, 8, and 55.
And these were separated by a space each.
Right.
And then there was one at the end that was counting too quickly to be written down.
Okay.
So that tells us that the last one is probably seconds.
The last one is probably like fractions of a second.
Fractions of a second.
Now we went back there in five minutes and what had changed?
The third column went down by five.
So that's probably a minute column.
Okay.
So the third column is a minute column and the one after that is seconds and hundreds
of seconds, that kind of thing.
So then that leaves days, I guess.
Days and hours.
Hours and days.
Yes.
Okay.
So what are those first two numbers?
76 and 13 as of, you know, five o'clock.
Okay.
Thirteen as of five o'clock.
So let's do some calculations here.
Maybe our listeners can join us with this.
Let's make it simple for not only me, who's notoriously simple, but also for our listeners.
What were the readings at the start?
All the readings.
All the readings.
76, 13, 08, 55.
And then there were the partial seconds following that, correct?
Yes.
The ones going so fast.
And how many digits was that?
That was two digits.
Two digits.
All two digits.
No human can read those.
Okay.
You came back five minutes later and what were all the readings five minutes later?
76, 13, 03, you know, 55 at that exact, you know, exactly five minutes later and then,
you know, again, it was going.
Okay.
So you're saying that the 55, in this case, was the seconds and that the.
All right.
Let's do this the easy way right now.
Let's figure out the hour part of this.
Okay.
We can figure out what hour of a day this is going to stop, right?
It's got 13 hours left, right?
13 hours.
At 5 p.m.
13 hours at 5 p.m.
Exactly 13 hours?
Well, at exactly 5 p.m. it would have been 14, I guess.
14?
Wouldn't it be counting down?
What time was it that you went and looked at this?
This was at 5.51.
Okay.
So at 6 o'clock.
At 6 o'clock it would be how many hours?
At exactly 6 o'clock there would be 13 hours left.
Okay.
So that means 7 a.m. is the time that whatever happens happens, right?
So all we need to do now is figure out the days.
How many days are there?
Okay.
So at 7 a.m. April 21st, which is tomorrow, it should read 76 and everything else should
be zero.
Right.
So all we have to do is figure out what 76 days from April 21st is and then we can say
at 7 a.m. that is the important period.
It's April 97th, obviously.
It's April what?
97th, I mean.
No, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
This is two months and 16 days, roughly.
Yes, I know that days are different lengths.
April has 30 days.
May has 31.
I know this.
I studied it in school.
June has 30.
July has 31.
August has 31.
I'm not sure how far I have to go for this.
No, no.
You're fine.
Do that again.
April has how many?
30 days.
30 days have September, April, May, no, April, June and November.
Okay.
All the rest have 31 except for February, which nobody understands.
Okay.
May has 31 and June has how many?
June has 30.
June has 30.
Okay.
We're getting really technical tonight, aren't we?
We're going to get emails explaining February to us, I think.
I think so.
Yeah, the February club or something.
Okay.
So we really just need to know tomorrow it's going to be 76 days from 7 a.m., right?
Right.
All right.
So you have to figure this out somehow.
Now, can somebody do this and figure out how many-
I'll try.
You subtract, I guess, subtract 30, right?
And then you'll be, today's what, April 20th?
Yeah.
So it'll be May 20th in 30 days.
So take 30 days off the 76.
Actually, wait, wait, wait.
I just messed up because it's tomorrow we're counting from, which would be April 21st.
So May 21st, the number will be 46, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Who wants to do May?
Tim looks like he has it under control.
Yeah.
All right.
Maybe we should do this while we talk about other things and come up with a date in a
moment.
I'm not sure how well this is translating on radio.
Bernie, are you able to follow this over the phone?
I gave up.
Yeah.
It's really complexing.
I got it.
What do you got?
July 4th.
July 4th?
I don't think that's right.
Why?
I don't know.
I just don't think that's right.
But everybody double check.
Everybody do this independently and see if we all come up with the same date, except
for me because I have to read stories and things like that.
I'm sure many of our listeners have already figured it out.
All right.
Somebody call in then.
We have a very bright listenership.
Brighter than us.
Actually, Redbird, you're good with the numbers.
I want to see you write this down and figure it all out.
And Mike, I know you're very good with numbers, too.
No, no, no.
Only up to two.
Okay.
We went to the Trenton Computer, was it again, Festival or Fair?
Festival.
Festival.
I'll get it right someday.
Trenton Computer Festival.
We did a radio show down there.
I didn't know how festive it was.
Sort of a radio show.
It was pretty festive.
It was cool.
We hung out by the old computers, the retro computers, CPM, haven't used CPM in ages.
And it was just kind of fun to realize how little that operating system could do.
It didn't even have dates or times on the files and you had to load diskettes and all
that kind of thing.
But it really brought back memories.
So that was one of the things.
There was a flea market.
There were all kinds of talks and we kind of gave one of them in the form of a radio
show, which I understand was taped.
I just have one more thing on the CPM.
Everyone who ever used CPM remembers PIP, but very few people remember what exactly
PIP does.
So if you happen to know, let us know.
I know what PIP does.
PIP is an editor.
No, no, no.
Is it?
Yeah.
You could use it as an editor?
Oh, wait.
No, no, no.
Wait, hold on.
I'm sorry.
No, PIP is not.
PIP is for copying.
Copying files.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
I totally forgot about that.
So you had to load in a different floppy for every command you wanted to run and you just
had to really know what you were doing and be prepared to wait a very long time.
So yeah, well, it was fun.
And the show was well received.
I want to thank everybody who showed up down there.
Special thanks to Kevin and his dad for showing up and taping the thing so that we can actually
air this at some time in the future, maybe on the shortwave station or something like
that.
Well, yeah.
Next time WBAI preempts Off the Hook, which we normally simulcast on shortwave 7415 kilocycles,
which is heard through most of the Western Hemisphere.
Next time we are preempted, at least we can broadcast the live version of Off the Hook
from the Trenton Computer Festival on shortwave that day.
We just have a surprise guest who wandered into the studio.
Del Chai is here.
How are you doing?
Hey.
I'm good.
Sue, what date have we agreed on?
7 a.m.
What is it, Wednesday?
July.
July 6th.
Okay.
So let's let our listeners see if they can help us with this.
The countdown clock in Union Square seems to be going towards 7 a.m.
July 6th.
Something is going to happen at that time and date and –
Possibly location.
And possibly location.
So if you have a theory as to what that is, give us a call, 212-209-2900, and see if you
Or even better, if you go online and figure out what that is, that would be greatly appreciated.
We don't know what it is.
We have no idea if the answer is online.
Yeah, I don't think it is, because I looked online and couldn't find anything.
But anyway, we have other bits of news as well.
Sorry, Bernie.
What?
Speaking of timing, yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City federal building
explosion.
And today's the anniversary of Columbine.
How about that?
And it's also 4-2-0, which means smoke pot.
And Hitler's birthday.
And Waco was yesterday, too, I think.
And the Pope was.
You knew the Pope was yesterday.
I think there's a grand conspiracy here.
But I always take notice, on April 19th every year, since that happened 10 years ago, I
always take notice that the security measures, the extra security measures that are taken
around all federal buildings, it's really interesting to see they really pulled out
the stops this year.
Because it was the 10th anniversary.
On top of the Philadelphia federal building and courthouse here, there were snipers walking
around on the roof, as there were last year, but there were more snipers this year than
last year, as we talked about on last year's show.
And around the U.S. Mint and the Federal Reserve Bank, there was a much greater-than-normal
contingent of Federal Protective Service officers armed to the teeth with black flak jackets
looking for anyone looking to celebrate the anniversary with a replay of 10 years ago.
What can someone actually do to the U.S. Mint that would require sharpshooters?
You know?
Can they run in there and steal money and run out again?
What exactly?
If they blow the place up, who are they going to shoot?
There's not going to be anybody left.
So I don't get what the-
This place is so heavily secured already from a standpoint of you just can't get in the
place, just where the vehicles have to exit.
And the U.S. Mint in Philly is just all coins.
It's not like you could even carry enough to make it worthwhile.
That's right.
It'd be too heavy.
Those big phone company vans that look like Entenmann trucks, those were for carrying
coins out of pay phones, because that's what you needed to carry that kind of weight, that
kind of volume.
So yeah, if you're thinking of doing something like that, think again, because it's very
difficult to carry that amount of coins.
It would be like, although if that building were blown up, it would be like pennies from
heaven.
Well, they'd probably wind up penetrating a lot of skulls, too, as they landed, but-
That's a myth.
That's a myth.
I don't think the sharpshooters would help that either.
Some of those sharpshooters are so good, they could shoot the pennies out of the sky.
Yeah, if they want to do that, they're welcome to, but keep it away from me.
They could stand a good chance of stopping somebody from driving up.
I think I wouldn't want to be a person making a delivery there with a Ryder truck.
If you blow past the checkpoint, they could probably take you out at like 300 yards before
you got to the building, stop the truck from rolling in.
Well, why don't they just stand at street level then?
Why are they on top of the roof?
Better vantage point.
More coverage of area.
Yeah, and if they had a nuclear weapon, they could probably really make sure they got their
guy, right?
Yeah, but they sort of lose the building, too.
Well, you know, you have to make sacrifices.
This is something I think we're going to be seeing a bit more of.
Police have arrested 16 people in Western India for allegedly cheating four Citibank
customers out of nearly $350,000.
This happened, the police said this on Saturday.
Three former Citibank employees at a call center in the western city of Pune and 13
associates were charged with misusing financial data and illegally withdrawing money from
the accounts of the New York-based customers.
So if you yell at people in India, they may get even with you in all kinds of ways you
never imagined because we're all connected now.
Identity theft, I think, is going to be a really big problem because more and more of
these services are being farmed out.
Banking services, financial services for American citizens are being farmed out to third world
countries and I don't know if India is necessarily a third world country.
But in any case, the privacy controls over there from a legal standpoint are less than
we have here, which are already inadequate.
So I predict identity theft is going to be a bigger and bigger problem with this outsourcing
of financial data to third world nations.
We got a number of pieces of mail from people who were answering our questions about seeing
a statue of Lenin on Houston Street.
And yes, in fact, it appears that we did see Lenin on Houston Street with his hand
raised.
Which one?
Which one?
Not John Lenin.
Okay.
The other one.
It's New York.
It is New York.
Apparently, this very helpful listener writes in, the building on Houston Street in Manhattan
with the statue of Lenin and the giant clock facing all directions is named Red Square.
Yes.
Did you know there was a Red Square right here in New York?
I lived there from 1992 to 1994.
At that time, there were several artists in residence who had cut a deal with management
in exchange for a cut in their monthly rent.
They agreed to beautify the building with their work.
Several of these artists were sculptors and welders.
When I moved in, there were only a few pieces on display in the lobby.
And now when you walk by the front door, go upstairs, everywhere you look, there are tile
mosaics, wrought iron, and all kinds of other things as well, which is pretty cool.
The clock, by the way, it still doesn't tell the right time, but I noticed or I was told
something else about this.
All the numbers on the clock are in the wrong area.
It goes like 1, 5, 6, 3 or something like that.
I guess that's an artistic statement, but I still think they can make the clock work
even with the numbers in the wrong place.
Whether or not the hands have to move to match the numbers doesn't matter.
It's a huge clock.
The whole city can see it practically.
So it would be nice to fix the clock.
This person writes in saying that they have a statue of Lenin in Seattle as well.
It's in a district called Fremont, which also has an actual 1955 Russian rocket bolted to
one of the buildings.
So there's all kinds of little treasures hidden out there.
You just have to know where to look for them.
This person writes in, an employee for Delta Airlines, there's an American flag on all
the planes.
We were talking about American flags and the direction that they face.
Some have the stars on the left, some on the right.
I've been with Delta since the late 1980s and the flags have been there since.
I think it is a direction thing, as you said on your show.
The plane is flying forward and you are on the right.
The stars would be on the left, signed Simon from Atlanta.
Thanks, Simon, for that letter.
Again, you can write to us here at OffTheHook, O-T-H at 2600.com, or you can send us paper
mail at OffTheHook, care of WBAI, 120 Wall Street, New York, New York, 1-0-0-0-5.
Very good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I had to make up for Walter's letter.
You definitely have talent.
We tried a new guy last week and it just didn't work out.
You notice he's not even here this week.
Well, no.
How could he be?
It's the shame.
You have to sort of take a course in order to get the lines just right, and you've studied
this for a number of years.
I plan to move on from numbers to letters.
Well, I hope when you do that your ego doesn't become so big inside your head that you won't
stop by and give us a few letters.
Well, I figured I could do letters for the show as well.
That would be nice.
Speaking of which, I got a quickie.
The Motion Picture Association of America is suing, or at least threatening, over letters
G, PG, PG-13.
Oh, no.
Not this.
Not this.
We were talking about this weeks ago.
Someone actually went and did it?
They are sending emails, nasty emails, to people who are doing online fan fiction who
are also trying to be good to the readers and rating it because those are trademarks
that they use for the ratings, and the trademarks belong to the Motion Picture Association of
America.
Wait.
Are they rating them themselves?
They're saying, this is my R rating?
Readers and or editors of online fiction are, yes, rating the fan fiction themselves.
Oh, they're rating fiction.
They're not rating movies.
No.
Written fiction.
Have you ever read any of the online fan fiction?
Yeah.
The best way to possibly protect people from that would be to just remove it because some
of this stuff is like some of the worst things you would ever think of.
What if these two male characters in Harry Potter started kissing and what would happen?
It's 25 pages of that written by someone who probably, you know, the worst five years
of their life with a third grade.
But think of what that person is not doing while he's writing that story.
Right.
You know?
There are federal buildings all over the country that are intact because of fan fiction.
You'll never know.
A couple of interesting things our listeners have written in to share with us.
This person writes in, you might be interested to see a Dutch TV advertisement that includes
a Hackers on Planet Earth poster.
Ooh.
Yeah, it's true.
And they give out this incredibly long URL which we converted to a nice tiny URL thanks
to tinyurl.com.
Go to tinyurl.com slash six V as in Victor, P as in Paul, eight as in the number and P
again as in Paul.
And then once you do that, click on the word commercial at the bottom of the screen.
By the way, I should point out this tends not to work in a lot of browsers.
It does work in Explorer.
I know that much.
It doesn't work in Mozilla and I don't think it works in Firefox.
On the next screen, click on Hackman and then choose your connection speed.
Three or four seconds into the commercial, you'll see a Hope poster in the middle of
the screen.
It's a commercial for an insurance company and that's from Erwin.
Thanks very much for that contribution.
It's kind of a funny commercial sort of saying that hackers are evil but not in a kind of
a funny way.
You know, they can control everything in the world.
There's a free Kevin sticker in that too.
Oh, I didn't see the free Kevin sticker.
It's right there sort of just to the lower left of the H2K2 poster.
Oh, and something else too.
Mike and I, we saw a film the other night called, was it Walk on Water?
Yes.
And this was kind of cool and it's very obscure.
But there's a scene in that movie where they're in Berlin by the Alexanderplatz Plaza area
and they're going down into the U-Bahn, into the subway system.
And it's the scene where the trannies get beaten up by the skinheads.
But right before that happens, you see a ticket machine on the subway platform.
And Redbird, we've seen that ticket machine, right?
What's special about that particular ticket machine that they showed in that film?
Well, it has a very unique serial number.
It happens to be the same as the title of the magazine.
2600.
And it's also the other side of it is 2601.
I just thought it was cool that I recognized that particular, you couldn't see the numbers,
but the location was very specific.
Right there at Alexanderplatz, just go downstairs and if you happen to be in Berlin, look at
the serial number on there and you'll see it's 2600.
All the other people in the theater were wondering why all the screaming for a ticket machine.
You know, I'm sorry if they don't understand when people get excited by things that mean
a lot to them.
And it was only during that scene that I was jumping up and down.
And of course you couldn't see it.
It was blurry in the distance, but I knew what it was.
And that's all that matters.
Okay.
212.
209.
2900.
Again, we're trying to figure out what the clock in Union Square is counting down to.
We figured out it's July 6th, 7 a.m.
Let's see if anybody out there has a theory or an explanation or an answer.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey.
I know what it is.
You know what it is.
Let's see if the first caller can get it.
Go ahead.
It's a countdown clock to the day that the IOC will release their decision for the Olympics,
whether they'll be in New York or not.
You, my friend, are absolutely correct.
Yes.
I did sort of know this beforehand because I looked online, but I wanted to have the
fun of doing the countdown and figuring it out and just double checking it.
But, you know, I don't know for sure, but it makes sense.
And what I think this means is that the city is going to use that as a big propaganda tool
and they're going to try to fill Union Square of all places with people supporting the Olympics,
going to New York.
And at 7 a.m. on July 6th, that's where people are going to be filmed worldwide, either cheering
or starting to throw stones.
Wait, wait.
So not only do we not get the Olympics, we get stones thrown at these, like, big ugly
merchants?
This is sounding better and better.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Maybe.
You know, I hate to say this as a Republican, but you know me.
I'm a devil's advocate.
You have to go to all your left-wing friends and pack the square with them on that day.
Win or lose, that's the perfect opportunity for an anti-Bloomberg demonstration.
But it's 7 a.m. in the morning.
Oh, OK.
Tell me right now that you're not serious.
It's what I believe all the time.
You're just a thief liberal.
Well, I'll have to stay up late at night.
That's the only way to do this.
Any other insight, caller?
Well, it's like the fifth down on Google.
That's all I have to say.
Oh, OK.
Well, then you really, you worked hard to figure that out.
Thanks for your info.
So you lied to us.
I looked it up on Google.
I looked it up on Google and I had to.
I had to.
So you made us do all this work.
You knew the date.
You knew the time.
And you lied.
Well, no.
I had a theory.
Oh, OK.
And, you know, it's still only a theory.
I'm assuming that you guys figured it out because I asked three different people and
everybody came up with different dates.
All right.
So some people said the 5th.
Some people said the 7th.
And so if it is the 6th, if it is 7 a.m., that makes sense.
That does make sense.
It's kind of a shame, though, that a nice piece of art is being used to promote something,
you know, for the city government.
And God knows how much money is being put into this.
Paris is a very nice city.
I mean, that's, you know, they deserve the Olympics, don't they?
I think they do.
I think most people there want it anyway.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, hey.
So you're talking about the giant clock in Union Square on the south side there.
I think we know what it is.
Yeah.
Well, I heard the prior caller.
But something else to consider is have you seen that piece of art blowing off steam?
The one next to it.
Nobody knows when that happens.
It just does it every now and then.
No.
See, but I think they're one installation.
And they might be related.
And then that might be the time that it kind of does its whole, like, magic steam thing.
I don't know.
I'm guessing.
But it's 76 days away.
Well, I've seen it occasionally.
It does the magic steam thing regularly.
Yeah.
I saw the magic steam today.
Oh, OK.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I'm just speculating.
OK.
The hand is supposed to be the hand of Washington, incidentally.
What hand?
There's a hand up above.
Oh, I didn't notice that.
No.
That's Washington's hand.
But it's supposed to be Washington's hand.
Not Washington Square Park.
Interesting.
All right.
Thanks.
All right.
Thanks for sharing that information.
212-209-2900.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah.
I found one holiday and some dates in history for July 6th from the Autonomedia calendar
of Jubilee Saints.
In Ceylon, I guess Sri Lanka now, Festival of Buddha's Eye Tooth continues for days.
Most processions are at night.
Painted jeweled elephants, leaping dancers, costumes, drumming, spinning prayer wheel.
See, you've just described Union Square.
You know, that makes a lot more sense.
All right.
Anything else for that date?
In this date in history, 14-15 July 6th, Jan Hus burned at stake.
Oh, dear.
In 1535, Sir Thomas More beheaded by order of Henry VIII.
That's a violent day, isn't it?
In 1699, Captain Kidd, pirate, captured in Boston and deported to England.
Oh, that's even worse.
Wait, wait.
Maybe it's an anti-piracy thing about all the people who are copying CDs.
In 1907, the birthday of Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo.
Oh.
I saw that movie.
Born in Mexico City, Mexico.
And in 1962, novelist William Faulkner dies, age 64, by Halifax, Mississippi.
Well, for the most part, it's a kind of a sad day.
But hopefully it'll be a happy day when they give the Olympics to Paris.
But thanks very much for that info.
202-209-2900.
Or Madrid.
They give it to Madrid.
Or even Moscow.
All, I hear, very nice places.
And London.
All those cities, you know, want the Olympics.
I think we should celebrate Buddha's eye tooth there that day.
Thing is, you know, if the Olympics don't come to New York,
then, you know, a lot of the steam for that stadium they want to build on the west side
will be lost as well.
They can use it in the artwork.
Yeah.
Maybe.
The steam.
Maybe.
202-209-2900.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey.
You do want to turn down your radio.
Otherwise, you'll get all kinds of crazy effects.
You might have problems with your smart car.
Oh, tell me.
Yeah.
This United States government, there's been some BMW had the same problem.
Lobbying.
I think smart car was Mercedes, right?
Yes.
It's half Mercedes, half Swatch.
Right.
Half Mercedes, half Swatch.
And BMW had some problems, too, with their C1 scooter.
Okay.
Which is a nice scooter that has a crowbar on the top.
Oval shaped crowbar that's replaceable.
Which allows the rider not to wear a helmet.
Oh.
It's the fashion in Europe, Italy, all of Europe, in England for the past five, seven
years.
Really?
And the BMW, I suggest anyone get the BMW C1 scooter.
Mercedes might do the same thing with BMW.
Spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress to allow the scooter to be imported into the
United States and get a clear registration.
So once you get your smart car in, you have to register it.
And if it's not recognized as a car, then you're kind of screwed.
Well, not true because what if you're visiting from Canada?
I talked to some dealers in Canada.
They said that's no problem going over the border.
People drive the things to Florida.
As long as it has a Canadian license plate, it's recognized as a valid vehicle in the
United States.
True, you cannot register it in the United States.
But if you're a Canadian owner, you should not have a problem.
That's what I've been told.
That's the next step.
To actually get it registered, hopefully in Quebec, I think.
Also the BMW C1 because they investigated both automobiles.
And you can actually drive it in without being stopped.
But then again, the registration is in Canada, not in the United States.
So you drive around New York City, police officers will be kind of suspicious.
Believe me, I already have that covered.
That's not a problem.
I know, but you definitely have your driving or riding experience.
Driving a car with an out-of-state or even out-of-country plate, that's not an issue
so much for me.
The real problem is finding somebody who is willing to actually do this, quote unquote
lend me the car.
I guess it's a matter of trust on both ends because technically I'm driving somebody
else's car.
I've already brought the car from them, but not officially.
I was just trying on the websites and see if someone is willing to unload it on you
and sell it to you.
That might be a next step.
Some of the websites are looking to sell the car.
I would predict like Quebec, someplace close to the border.
Yeah, but if you buy the car, you still have to somehow register it.
You can't register it in Canada if you're an American citizen.
Exactly.
And you can't register it all in America.
There lies the problem.
Unless you have a residence in Quebec, temporarily.
I looked into that.
If I have a residence in Quebec, I still have to give up my United States driver's license
in order to get a Quebec driver's license, which I need to get the insurance.
Oh my God, you can't keep both.
You cannot keep both licenses, no.
You have to give one up.
Oh, I see.
It's a real nightmare.
Yes, Jim.
I remember an article in the Times a few months ago.
Sally Jessie Raphael managed to get one into the country, but between fees and such, it
doubled the cost of the car.
She aged 20 years trying to do that.
You saw this article?
I did, yes.
Thanks very much for your call, sir.
You're welcome.
I have a feeling, though, if they come out with this SUV, that our country-
No, the SUV, by the way, the small car is called the 4.2.
They have a four-seater called the 4.4.
They were going to introduce something next year in the United States called the 4More,
which was going to be an SUV, which was the stupidest marketing move.
It's a small car.
What's the point of bringing out an SUV and only that?
But they canceled that plan with the latest cutbacks.
Well, our country seems to like those.
It's a sports car, too.
They have a sports car, too.
Our country seems to like those.
Yeah, but if you want an SUV, why would you buy an SUV from a maker of tiny cars?
Well, it might help to get the other models.
I don't know.
I want the tiny car, all right?
I'm going to keep bitching about it until I get one.
It's crazy, though.
Everything I want these days, I seem to have to jump through hoops to get it, whether it's
broadcasting of particular networks from foreign countries or reading material or the cars
I drive or where I go.
I have to do something to get around the system.
It's really kind of silly.
212-209-2900.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah.
How's your Republican guy there?
He looks healthy.
He looks just fine.
Is he down with John Bolton and the new pope, the grand inquisitor?
Well, I'm Greek Orthodox.
I think that the Catholics are just way too liberal anyway.
You're Greek Orthodox?
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
My grandfather was a priest.
Wow.
You've kept that quiet.
That's something that you could usually use to pick up girls.
I mean, hey, my grandfather was a priest.
All right.
Well, he seems to be fascinated with the fact that you're a Republican, but we're going
to move on to something a little bit more controversial than that.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
I'd like to know what you think about speakeasy.
I've been getting a lot of mailings about some sort of proprietary DSL system where
you don't need a phone connection and you can get up to six megabytes, but it's still
768 upload.
But if you have any information, I would appreciate it.
Okay.
Mike, do you know anything about this?
It's very hard to get.
Yeah.
He's been trying to get it.
Is speakeasy the company you're using?
Yes.
Okay.
Are you in New York, sir?
Yeah.
Okay.
What do you look forward to going through?
Well, I don't know what you do, but if you are able to stay home all day and stalk the
Verizon employee until it's usually he fixes your phone line or whatever, then maybe you'll
get the service.
But for those of us who have other things to do, it's very hard.
Wait, Mike, I'm confused here.
You said Verizon guy, and he specifically said speakeasy.
Why do you need to have a Verizon guy come to your house if you want to use speakeasy?
Because Verizon owns all of the copper wiring that goes to your house in New York, and they
do not let other people touch it.
And they don't like touching it on behalf of anyone else.
Well, that hardly seems fair.
It hardly is fair.
I had speakeasy when I lived back here, and I had to go through about 12 attempts to get
Verizon to come out and do things.
And in the end, I ended up doing it myself.
It was just a matter of going downstairs and going jumper, jumper, jumper, jumper.
And then I called speakeasy, and I said, oh, it's working.
Great.
Here you go.
I just thought of a solution.
Delchai will go over to Mike's house and fix his DSL, and Verizon will be out of the equation
completely.
News tip.
Hopefully it might help someone.
I had called perhaps earlier in the year when I had found out that Verizon was going to
allow people who had DSL lines from them when it was only 700 plus, they were going to allow
everyone to have a free upgrade to 1.5, but they were told specifically by their administrators
that no one was supposed to mention that, only if the customer called and asked for
it.
And finding that out, it only took three hours later, I was up to 1.5.
Now I just found out when I called the service person that you can now get free upgrade to
3.0.
I got my free upgrade, and it's working fine.
I noticed an astounding difference.
So hopefully that might help people because, again, she verified that they were told by
their administrators not to volunteer that information, only if you asked and you requested
the free upgrade.
So I hope that helps other people.
Thank you.
All right.
Thanks for your call.
Comcast did the same thing recently.
All right.
You're talking about voiceover IP.
One thing I found out about recently when I was digging around is I run my own voiceover
IP system.
I run Asterisk out of a co-location, and certain friends of mine are allowed into it.
Linksys is making a voiceover IP box, and you can see them in almost any store, but
they come bundled with some companies, you know, you must use this company.
They make a second one.
It's the identical part number with the letters NC added to it, and it's unlocked.
So you can use it for anything you'd like.
All it is, it's just an interface where, you know, your Ethernet goes into one plug, and
your phone goes into the other, and you're done.
And you can program it yourself, and you can use it.
You can buy some of these things.
They cost $200 to $150 to $200.
The Linksys ones are somewhere in the $50 range.
They're really, really hard to get.
From what I heard, they made them for a little while, and then they got slapped and said
stop, so they stopped making them, but you can still get them if you dig around a lot.
And private voice over IP networks, I think, is going to be the next big fun thing to do at home.
Fascinating.
Yeah, I have phones using Asterisk, and it seems to be a lot of fun, very versatile.
Let's see if we can squeeze in one or two more phone calls.
And good evening, you're on Off The Hook.
Oh, thank you so much for taking my call, folks.
Could you talk about the medical effects of having a Wi-Fi city?
There's a controversy among a lot of different people around just having the cell towers
all over the joint, and I was wondering whether anybody there has done any investigation
on the various studies that have been done about health effects of the microwave?
That's a good question.
Wi-Fi is very low power.
It works at about 150 feet per transmitter.
Is that about the distance?
When you have antennas up on buildings, you can get a little bit further than that.
But compared to the power that's being put out by all the other transmitters,
especially in this area, Wi-Fi is going to be negligible.
But if you have a Wi-Fi transmitter in your bedroom, for instance,
that's something that's always there, maybe next to your head or something like that.
Have there been safety studies done on this?
There's been no studies that...
It is noteworthy to note that the frequency band that Wi-Fi, 802.11 Wi-Fi uses,
is the same as microwave ovens in a house, still 2.4 gigahertz.
Look it up.
Obviously, the power level with Wi-Fi is much less.
But the commercial Wi-Fi repeaters that you see out on light poles here in Philadelphia
and the few parks where it exists,
those things look like pretty beefy transmitters, antennas.
I don't know what the power output is.
I wouldn't want to put my head right near one,
I'd rather be up on a pole or up in a building somewhere, hopefully not near your head.
The reason I was bringing it up is because the ecological show that is on on Tuesday
also brought it up, you know, was bringing it up from the other point of view.
And so since you guys are really technical,
I wanted to know whether you all had any concern around it.
Gosh, what's the other piece, real quick?
I was really interested in the conversation that you all had just before this
about doing voice over IP yourself and also getting,
did someone say six megabits?
Free.
Yeah, is there some place on the web
or some place where you can get more information about all that?
Just call them and ask for it.
Call who, I'm sorry?
Whoever your provider.
They're talking about the speed upgrade.
Just call them and say, hey, I'd like my free speed upgrade and see what they say.
Well, I know Verizon only has three, but you gave the name of another company?
That wasn't me.
Well, we were talking about Speakeasy, we were talking about...
Okay, so...
There's lots of different ones.
I talked about Comcast, but that's a cable company, it's not really DSL.
You just have to look around.
They're out there.
Go on the internet, do some little surveys of your own.
Things will be getting faster, no question about that.
Whatever happened to Ricochet?
I used to have Ricochet here when I lived in the city,
and that was almost as good as Wi-Fi and you could get it anywhere.
I used to tell them I didn't read my email in the back of a cab while riding around.
Well, those days will be back, I'm sure, at much faster speeds.
The network apparently still exists, but it's just been turned down.
We're out of time, and I want to thank everybody for calling in,
sending their questions and replies and things like that.
And yes, I think we solved the problem, the question of the Union Square mystery.
We have yet to solve the problem.
Yeah, the problem. We've solved the question, I guess, for now.
It's counting down to the date the Olympics are announced, July 6th, 7 a.m.,
so I guess now's the time to organize a big, loud demonstration against it
in Union Square for that time.
We'll see you next week. Good night.
We'll see you next week. Good night.
Don't you rise.
Don't you fall down.
Beauty love.
Beauty love.
Beauty love.
Looking for my true love.
Beauty love.
Hey!