Journalists with the Financial Times asked the senior advisor at the White House,
is President Bush still engaged on the issue of genocide in Darfur? After all,
it's been more than a year since the White House publicly stated that genocide was occurring.
And this senior aide at the White House said, oh yes, President Bush was still concerned about
the genocide, but he had more important matters pressing on his agenda.
There will be a rally in Washington DC on April 30th.
For Free Speech Radio News, I'm Rebecca Miles reporting from New York.
And it's one minute, actually two minutes after seven o'clock,
which means it's time for another exciting edition of Off the Hook here on WBAI, New York.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Bundledly bombed for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bundledly bombed.
Bundledly bombed.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook here on WBAI.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, and joined tonight by Jim over there.
Hello.
And also, we have Mike over here. Wait a minute, why is nothing working?
Yeah, I don't hear anything.
I don't hear a thing. Oh, you know why? Someone pressed alt...
Oh, that's weird. Okay, something... I messed up. It's my fault. Hang on, let me just fix that.
I hit the wrong buttons. And now I have to hit the... Oh, these are the buttons I have to hit.
I'm sorry. Go ahead, say hi, Jim.
Hi, Jim.
Okay, I hit the white button instead of the red button. I don't know what's wrong with me.
Mike, you're over...
I'm here and I'm shocked.
Yeah, you're in the left and Jim's in the right.
I can't hear myself, but I think that's okay.
That's because your headphones are defective. Either that or one of your ears is defective.
Maybe both.
But you can't hear yourself at all?
No.
Because you should be coming through partially in the other channel as well.
Ironically, I hear you.
Yeah.
But I don't hear myself.
And I think the listeners hear you as well. All right, well, regardless, Redbird, you're here.
Good evening.
And Arsene, you're here as well.
Hi.
And Slick Joe joins us from the other side of the room.
Hello.
In fact, I guess your mic is not... Okay, try that again.
Hello?
Yeah, there you go.
There we go.
Sorry about that. Okay, so we have an action-packed show for you tonight.
Oh, of course, Bernie joins us from Philadelphia. Sorry, Bernie.
On the South Channel, and I hear all of you.
That's good. That's a good sign. We have a special show tonight because it's fundraising
night here on WBAI. And if we do well, if we do good, we'll be on again next week.
So we want to make sure people call us and pledge. Now, if you just want to call
and pledge whatever is in your pockets or on your bank account and your credit account,
whatever, without even hearing the special things we have to offer,
then feel free. Beat the rush. Call now, 212-209-2950.
But we're going to be spending this hour getting into all kinds of interesting things that we're
offering for people who want to pledge and support the radio station and hence the radio show,
which has been on these airwaves since pretty much since 1988 as a regular series since the
early 90s. First, though, let's take a look at some of the things that have been going on in
the world. And as always, that's a whole lot of fun. Let's see. Where shall we start?
You guys got anything interesting? I have a new weapon that the cops are going to be using.
I can't wait to hear about it.
Is this particularly good for California cops?
Well, that's where they tend to be, most of them. That's where they tend to be chasing cars.
In fact, Los Angeles is known as the car chase capital of the world.
It's good that they finally got a title of some sort.
Their police chief, William Bratton, according to this story,
unveiled a strange new weapon in the police department's strategy to halt high speed pursuits
and I guess technically lower the ratings of local TV stations.
Adhesive darts with a global positioning system that are fired at fleeing cars by police.
I could not make this up. Once fired from a patrol car, the GPS dart is designed to
stick to a fleeing car, allowing squad cars to back off the chase. Instead of us pushing
them doing 70 or 80 miles an hour, he said, this device allows us not to have to pursue
after the car. It allows us to start vectoring where the car is. The U.S. Department of Justice
suggested testing the star chase system. I wonder if it's for chasing stars. Like,
is this for OJ or something when he got loose?
A star chase.
Yeah, but what's it named after? You know, are they chasing the stars in the sky or are
they chasing, like, the stars when they get out of control in L.A.?
It's kind of like dancing with the stars, only it's GPS darts.
Well, anyway, the Department of Justice are the ones that suggested testing this in L.A.
Small number of patrol cars will be equipped with the compressed air launchers,
which fire the miniature GPS receivers in a sticky compound resembling a golf ball.
Now, what I'm trying to figure out here, won't the person know exactly what they did?
You know, you have this golf ball thing hit your car. You got to sort of figure out,
especially those.
Oh, yes, yes. High speed chases are obviously so,
so quiet that you're going to hear one more little ping.
If you have a good car, yes, you should not hear the sounds of the road. In fact,
you might not even hear the sounds of the police cars. If you're listening to a stereo,
OK, possibly. I just think, you know, if the people who engage in high speed chases,
you know, being the ones that are the pursued know about this, they might say, OK, I've just
been tracked by a GPS thing. What do I do now? And I don't know. I guess you park the car and
run away. Right. I mean, what is the strategy? But what the strategy of the person being chased
to get away? What if what if previously was the goal anyway? Yeah, but the goal. But what's this?
But like, how does knowing that you're being GPS tracked help you?
Well, I imagine you want to be a boy. You want to avoid being GPS tracked.
There's no way it can it can help. It can't help if you if you have this
sudden monitoring device on your car. So I'm just I was trying to get to the head of the person
that's being chased. What would they do knowing this? Well, I think the purpose of the device is
to eliminate accidents and whatnot, all the dangers of the high speed chase. Right. So
maybe the person trying to run away from the cops would be a little bit more careful,
slow down, whatever, whatever, not knowing that cops are right on his tail so they can they can
track him from a much further distance or using helicopters with the receivers on it or whatever,
and, you know, eventually he's going to get caught anyway, but hopefully he doesn't kill
someone in the process. And also, one of my concerns is that what if they don't just fire
it at somebody who's driving extremely fast and trying to get away? What if they fire it at
somebody who they just want to, you know, see where they're going? Is there anything to stop
them from doing that? No, but they've had this ability already. So it's not like it's this
in particular is anything new. Well, tell us about the ability they've already had.
Federal agents use this all the time to track vehicles. I mean, it's not it's not a new
technology. The golf ball thing? Well, maybe shooting it from, but it's bound to be noticed
anyway if you do it that way. So what kind of things do they use now? They've put them covertly
in cars and all that. Put what covertly? GPS receivers with a little transmitter that, you
know. And how big are these things? Broadcasts the position of the car. They're very small,
very small transmitters, very small receiver. People can't see your hands. It's a little
remote antenna that you stick somewhere like covertly that has a little bit of a view.
How big? Smaller? How big? I don't know. A couple of inches. Pack of cigarettes,
deck of cards. A couple, a packet of cigarettes, you're saying. Or deck of cards, that size.
So if you see something that looks like a packet of cigarettes or a deck of cards. No,
it would be hidden. Your bumper, the underside of your car. So you should check all those areas.
If they pop your hood or your trunk. Well, how are they going to pop your hood or your trunk?
Oh, like, like keys for automobiles don't generally match a hundred thousand automobiles.
You're being sarcastic, aren't you? No, they, well, yes, of course. Keys for automobiles
generally do match a hundred thousand or more. Bernie, do you think this is a good thing or a
bad thing? Well, I mean, if it's only used in the pursuit of people who have been observed
committing a serious crime that like it risks people or property, I don't have a problem with
it. I have a problem with the police having blanket authority to use this stuff on whoever
they want. And they've been shown to do that to whoever they want in the past. Police and
federal law enforcement officers have used GPS tracking on vehicles without a warrant. And they
don't need a warrant in many cases. There was a case, it was overturned a few months ago,
where a gentleman was at a state it was in, was contesting evidence resulting from his capture
as a result of an unwarranted GPS tracking device used with his on his car. And he lost.
So police generally don't need a warrant to do this.
But Bernie, this device can't really be used covertly. I mean, it's very obvious that it's
on your car. And the only reason it would work is because the person has not gotten out of their car
yet to remove it. That's true. There is a way that these things could be easily defeated.
And that is if you were planning on engaging on being chased by police, I certainly wouldn't.
But if you were, and you were well financed, actually, you wouldn't need that much money.
If you just had a low power, GPS jammer, you could overcome the what these what these darts
are, they're a GPS receiver that pick up a very weak signal from a from a low earth orbiting
satellite. If you had a small transmitter that transmitted some noise on that same frequency,
the dart wouldn't pick up the GPS satellite and would not be able to relay its coordinates to
the police through a cell phone network or whatever. So it could be defeated. But I doubt
many people who are going to get chased are going to have something like that.
I'm just waiting for the first LA cop to fire this at a person
that they can't catch because they're too fat. So they just fire it at somebody and
they have a GPS thing on their on their back. Or their forehead.
Yeah, probably. In a somewhat related story. This, this comes from a letter
from Mitchell, who writes to say that he and his girlfriend just got back from Kansas.
Actually, not he and his girlfriend, a friend of his and that friend's girlfriend
got back from Kansas and called him to say that their rental car had two cameras mounted inside
it, both on the center mirror, one facing front and one facing to the rear. This is
unbelievable. Rental cars with cameras inside the vehicle watching the people who are driving.
Have any of you ever heard of such a thing? No.
Yes. I don't think anyone here has.
It's not necessarily unreasonable. I mean, to protect.
To be spied on while you're driving?
For liability purposes from the rental, from the agency's perspective.
You would, would you drive a car?
I would not rent a car that had these, but that's always a customer's choice.
You know, it's not, it's not like they're hiding it.
But where do you, where do you, where do you put a stop to this? Would you say that an insurance
company has the right to see if you're doing something dangerous inside your house?
What they're going to insure you?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But this is, but this is a company renting you a product and,
you know, if they want to do that, that's fine.
But I have a feeling they'll probably lose customers because of it.
I've actually heard of this, but not in a rental car.
In Las Vegas, a number of casinos that are under the same ownership often run shuttle buses.
Usually in New York, they're the same sort of vehicles that are used for
Handicap, the Access-a-Ride program, as it's called.
They're 12-seaters. They're like little jitneys in Atlantic City.
And they have the same thing, an inside and an exterior camera.
But this is for liability purposes.
They want to make sure that the driver is paying attention to the road and any accident.
The driver is not at fault in an accident.
I remember seeing on the news some months ago a case where
an accident was caused by a belligerent or deranged passenger
distracting and molesting or fighting the driver, which caused the driver to go off the road.
So there are theoretical, reasonable purposes for this.
In a rental car, I don't know if you—
You have the option of allowing for the keeping of your privacy by renting with another
organization, at least so far.
I mean, this is the classic false claim that a lot of people make, that the market will
cure all ills and that if you have the option to rent with another company that doesn't do this,
then all of a sudden the companies that have this will go out of business and blah, blah, blah.
But this doesn't work in practice.
It works very well in economics classes, but that's about the only place.
People aren't informed that they're going to have a camera.
They'll go with the company that has $20 off and they don't know that that's the company with the camera.
And before you know, it just becomes the norm and we get used to it, just like we get used
to going through metal detectors to get into a school or taking drug tests to get to our
jobs or whatever.
I could see a situation where if they chose to do this, it would be reasonable.
I can't rent a car right now because I'm under whatever age companies say you can't rent a car.
It's like 25 or something like that.
And if they said, okay, well, if I'm wherever and we'll allow you to rent this car if we
can monitor you, whatever, if that was my only choice and otherwise I would not have
this ability with any company, then fine.
That's how you lose your rights, by giving in like that.
It's a stepping stone.
Go ahead, Bernie.
I wonder if the rental contract one tells you there's cameras monitoring your performance.
What if you're having sex with your girlfriend in the car or something?
I mean, all kinds of privacy issues come up.
But maybe you get a discount if you sell them the tape.
They probably end up on the internet or something.
But I mean, you could easily defeat this if you knew there were cameras in there just
by putting a piece of black tape over the pinhole lens or something.
But if you're not notified in the rental contract that there's cameras in the car,
then you wouldn't know to stick tape over it.
That's true.
And cameras these days are ever smaller.
So you don't even know when you're being watched.
There are cameras hidden in a smoke detector or also there's a camera looking at us right
now, isn't there somewhere?
We don't know where, but it's out there.
Okay, moving on.
And speaking of orbiting satellites with very low power, we had a bit of an adventure on
Friday.
Actually, apologies to folks.
We gave out bad information last week insofar as the space suit thing that was floating
in outer space.
The suit set.
What basically it was, the fun-loving cosmonauts in the space station took a space suit that
they swear did not have a person in it and kicked it out of the space station.
With a bunch of really cool amateur radio equipment.
I still think it's the perfect hit.
I really do.
But I'm not going to go further with that theory.
And yeah, this thing was supposed to circle the earth and transmit all kinds of things
to ham radio geeks all around the world who are going to bounce up and down with excitement
when they could hear the signal coming from the space suit.
And we told people to get up at four in the morning last, I think, Thursday.
And of course, that was wrong because it didn't even get launched till after that.
But instead, it was due to come over our area, I think at about what, two?
It was like Saturday morning at two something.
And we headed over to Jersey, actually.
After the 2600 meeting, we all piled into a couple of cars.
And I don't know why we had to go to New Jersey to do this.
Well, we had an area where we could get a very nice, clear view of the sky.
And it's hard to find in Manhattan.
Yeah, apparently there's a field there that we know of in New Jersey.
Yes.
So OK, so we drove to New Jersey.
And what happened?
Well, we made a stop at my apartment very quickly and checked the status of Suitsat
because we hadn't been able to check since it was launched.
And there was a status update there.
And basically, the report was, OK, Suitsat's dead.
Sorry, we kind of screwed up.
And we're not accepting any more signal reports at this time.
And so we kind of gave up and whatever, whatever.
But a couple of days later, I checked the site again.
And the report was that, OK, Suitsat's sort of alive.
It's not transmitting with the full power that we expected to.
Or nowhere near that, actually.
But some people with really, really high gain antennas and all these Yagi arrays
pointed at the satellite with very sensitive receivers with preamps and all this blah,
blah, blah.
We're receiving signals.
And so it's not just Mars we're having trouble getting things to land on.
It's also Earth.
Well, not even land.
Just exist.
Yeah, they kind of screwed up a little bit.
But this is how you learn.
And like I said, it's alive.
I don't know if it's still alive.
But it was alive, just not transmitting with as high a power as.
Well, eventually, it's going to come crashing to Earth.
Oh, yeah, it's going to die.
Or land in someone's backyard and have this spacesuit there.
Yeah.
Actually, it'll probably disintegrate long before then.
But if you check suitsat.org, I think someone posted a URL with a couple of WAV files.
And you could actually listen to the voice recording.
We have to get down to business here.
And that involves getting people to call up and support the radio station.
Because we are in our winter.
This is the first day, in fact, of our winter fundraiser.
Now, one of the things that we have to offer people.
Oh, first of all, everybody who calls in and pledges will receive an off-the-hook T-shirt.
These things are not available to anybody in the world unless they pledge to the radio station.
You won't find them on the internet store.
You won't find them in shops.
You'll only find them on the backs of people who have actually donated to the radio station.
And you'll get yours if you donate to the radio station by calling 202-209-2950.
Now, we have a number of interesting items.
One of which is our just newly released.
This is something that we've been working on for a long time.
And it's finally pretty much done.
In fact, most of it is done.
And it's something that is an ongoing project that involves this radio show.
Because this radio show keeps going thanks to the support of people who call in.
It's the high quality, high fidelity, off-the-hook DVD set.
And basically what this is, this is a subscription.
A lifetime subscription to the high quality DVD that we put out.
Which basically is FM quality.
As opposed to what is available on the internet and what we have offered in the past.
This is something that we just started offering.
You can now listen to radio shows from the past as if they were going out over the radio.
And that's for a pledge of how much, Mike?
That's for the pledge of a hundred dollars.
No, I don't think you're right there.
It says right on my piece of paper.
A hundred dollars for that.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
I have it mixed up.
That's for a pledge of a hundred dollars.
It's the lifetime subscription.
Yes.
Okay, but the...
For the rest...
I mean, it's still a pretty good deal for the rest of your life.
The t-shirt.
The t-shirt is 25 and above.
Yes.
Now this is a hundred for lifetime DVD set.
And you get a t-shirt.
Okay.
And how it works.
And you get a t-shirt.
How it works is this.
You, I think at the beginning of every month, you'll get another year.
We've already, we started this in December.
And that was the only one that had three years.
We had 1988, 1989, 1990 on a single DVD.
And this is in high fidelity mode.
So it's not like the previous one, which was what?
16 kbps, 16 megahertz.
Is that what the settings are?
16 kilohertz.
I'm sorry, 16 kilohertz.
Now it's 128 and 44.
So it's quite a bump up.
And it's also stereo.
So that's even higher quality than the files we're making available online now.
In January, we released 1991.
And this month we released 1992.
So in March 1993, we'll be coming out every month.
You'll get another year of off the hook.
And you may ask yourself, why?
Why in God's name would I want to listen to a radio show from the past?
What could be in it for me to do this?
Well, Redbird, you did this.
You got on online.
You actually got one of the shows.
One of the low quality shows.
One of the low quality shows.
It was not pleasant to listen to.
Yeah.
Well, that's because it was low quality.
No, you don't have to do it that way.
This is low audio quality, by the way, we're talking about.
Yeah, low audio quality.
The show was great.
The show was high quality at all times.
But if you had subscribed to this, and I can't fault you for not subscribing to this
because we hadn't offered it up until this point.
But had you subscribed to this using this offer and calling 212-209-2950,
which I see not a single person is doing right now,
pledging 100 bucks, you would be able to listen to this show as the way it aired.
Now, tell us about the show you listened to.
When did it air originally?
Oh, it's interesting.
It aired on my fourth birthday, which is...
Fourth birthday?
How long ago was that?
It was in 1990.
And I think your request was to pick a show and whatever, listen and find something.
Your claim was actually that if you picked any show from the past,
you would find something that was relevant today.
And did you?
I...
You know what?
I did find that.
I was actually shocked.
I didn't believe it.
You were shocked.
But this was the first show.
I just copied it to a portable audio device and played it in the car.
And it was very interesting because I heard you talking about
trying to get BBC World onto cable.
I think we just had this discussion.
Wait, BBC World didn't exist then?
You sure it was BBC World?
Oh, yeah.
Really?
I'm pretty sure.
1990, I was talking about this?
Yes.
My God, I know how to beat a dead horse, don't I?
My goodness.
Okay, well, that's something.
That's an example.
And what show is this?
This was...
This was...
It was one of the shows where you were covering something, but it was...
I was filling in for somebody.
You were filling in for somebody.
We also have a few shows like that,
non-off-the-hook shows that are included in this package.
But it's included, yeah.
Now, Arseniy, you did the same thing.
Yep.
When...
What year did you pick?
Oh, I picked completely at random.
I just basically spun my mouse around and clicked on it, yeah.
So I got October 26, 1994.
I actually asked someone to pick a number from 1 to 30,
and she picked 26, and that happened to actually be a show.
Okay.
So yeah, just like Redbird mentioned,
there was a lot of stuff that is relevant today.
And this was one of the shows where Fiber called from prison.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Back in those days when Fiber was in prison in 1994, he would call us...
No, he wouldn't call us collect.
The way it worked then was he had a certain amount of money allocated.
He'd be able to make phone calls to selected numbers.
And we, using call forwarding and being kind of ingenious,
were able to forward a number that he was able to call to the radio station.
And he'd call in and we'd be able to talk to him for, I think,
five minutes at a spell or something.
And then there'd be a warning and he'd have to call back.
They'd disconnect him.
He'd have to call back again.
It really was horrible having to talk to somebody like that.
And of course, Bernie, we also experienced similar things with him.
That's all on the radio show.
That's all the history that we go through.
Is there something specific?
I know we have a clip from that show that we...
Yeah, there's a clip that I'm not going to discuss.
We'll let the listeners listen to it.
But the show just mentioned all this stuff that we're familiar with now.
Like there was something about PGP and how they weren't sure
whether the U.S. could handle encryption.
So there were going to be two versions of PGP,
one for U.S. and one for everyone else.
There was also a lot of stuff with the first online newspapers
where you would pay like $6 or something
and you get a subscription to this online newspaper.
So it's all pretty interesting and kind of makes you feel warm inside.
Okay, let's play a little bit of this clip.
And then when we come back, we'll have a special guest.
And hopefully we'll get some phone calls in the interim.
Remember, a pledge of 100 bucks, you'll get a lifetime subscription.
That means until we go off the air,
until you beg us to stop sending it to you,
we will send you once a month.
Well, actually, up until the time we catch up to 2006,
we'll be sending it once a month.
And from that point on, once every year after that,
you'll get the last year of shows in full fidelity.
And they sound even better now because we record them onto CD.
So it sounds as good as it can possibly sound.
Anyway, here's the show from...
What was the date again?
October 26, 1994.
A very, very dramatic story.
And that calls for dramatic music.
Well, it's as dramatic as we could find on short notice.
The White House confirmed today that the FCC
will become the federal agency to assume responsibility
for regulating the so-called information superhighway.
Today, this consists of an autonomous network of computers
known collectively as the Internet.
Usually, reliable sources revealed
that the government is becoming increasingly apprehensive
about the Internet's uncontrolled growth
and the potential for damage to national security.
A highly placed government source was quoted as saying,
now anyone with $1,000 can obtain the computer hardware
and software necessary to communicate on the Internet.
Irresponsible individuals can easily transmit messages worldwide.
Clearly, there is a need for government regulation.
In response to these concerns,
the FCC is rumored to be preparing restrictive regulations
to assure responsible use of the Internet.
The FCC is reportedly cooperating with other national
and international agencies to coordinate these regulations.
Several former Eastern Bloc countries and Italy
are reportedly coordinating their internal regulation,
their internal regulation planning with the FCC.
Although details are sketchy at this time,
these new regulations are likely to take the form
of some sort of license examination.
Okay, I got to step in here and interrupt myself from 12 years ago.
12 years ago.
What in the world am I talking about?
Government regulation, it sounds very familiar to today,
but licenses, license fees or examinations.
It was what?
It was a joke.
It was a big joke.
Yeah, and you said that it was floating around on the Internet
and that a lot of people had read it.
And I just thought it was really funny because it was all true.
And it would be really scary if the FCC really regulated the Internet.
Oh, gosh.
It's something to listen to a show back then
and just hear how things are different.
How even talking to people on the phone is a bit different.
The sounds of the rings, the way that operators would communicate with you.
And of course, the technology that we are dealing with.
We started in 1988.
You know, any semblance of the Internet then
was radically different than what we have today.
Radically different.
And you can hear all that.
Again, 212-209-2950 is our pledge line.
For a pledge of 100 bucks, you get a lifetime subscription to that.
Every show we've ever done in high-fidelity sound
for the rest of either yours or our lives.
I should also mention that this show was actually longer than the show.
It was 86 minutes because it had a clip of the news.
And it was some really significant thing.
So I have a feeling that those little bits of news
are still going to be left for listeners listening to this.
Yeah, we do include bits of other programs sometimes when they surround us.
That does happen.
You hear promos for various events that are coming up.
Okay, so in addition, we have a couple of calls on the line, which is great.
212-209-2950.
And of course, people calling in will get the Off The Hook t-shirt,
which is really snazzy.
Tells you what time the show is on, what station it's on, all that kind of thing.
You'll get the Off The Hook DVD collection,
high-quality DVD collection for the rest of our time on the air
or the rest of your time on Earth.
And we have something else too.
There's this neat little device that we've been playing with
for a number of years now.
Bernie, maybe you'd be best off
introducing just what this is all about,
this little device that we've messed with.
We've talked about this a few times on the show.
It's called the TV Be Gone.
And for radio listeners, what could be better than
turning off the TV and listening to your radio instead?
It's this little key fob kind of thing.
It looks like a car alarm remote.
It hangs in your key chain.
But it'll turn off televisions in its vicinity.
So if you're at an airport or a restaurant
or someplace where there's a TV on that's annoying you,
you can just push a button and the TV goes off.
You're saying, Bernie, that any TV can be turned off with this one device.
I don't have to have a remote for that particular TV.
I can simply walk in with this thing and press a button
and the TV of my choice will be turned off.
It's pretty astounding.
It scrolls through.
I think we're lucky enough to have the designer and developer
here on the show tonight.
But it cleverly scrolls.
Well, you know what?
I'm going to let the designer talk about how this thing works
because it's truly an amazing device.
And we have had loads of fun with it.
And it serves a valuable social purpose, too,
because there's just too much television, period.
But do we have our engineer on the line?
He should be on the line.
Why don't you introduce him properly?
Mitch, are you with us?
I'm here.
Okay, great.
Mitch, where are you talking to us from?
I'm in San Francisco.
Okay, amazing.
Now, first of all, congratulations on developing this thing.
It sounds really cool.
I mean, I've played with it myself and I've had a lot of fun with it.
And, well, I got to say, I've annoyed a number of people with it as well.
Like I was in a bar once and there was this basketball game on.
And, you know, I just thought the people would be better off talking to each other
than watching some overpaid athletes running around making fools of themselves.
Did they start talking to one another?
Well, they started conferring with one another.
It's just wasn't God's name was going on.
And then it got sort of a lot louder after that.
So I figured maybe I should go to a different bar.
And I did.
Unfortunately, you just missed this opportunity with the Super Bowl.
Oh, yeah, I did, didn't I?
That would have been, I'm sure they've been used in many instances.
But now, Mitch, tell us, how did the idea come to you to develop something like this?
Well, I was sitting in a restaurant with some friends who I hadn't seen in a long time.
And a TV happened to be there.
And we found ourselves paying attention to the TV rather than to each other,
which is why we went there to pay attention to each other.
But we found we couldn't really help but pay attention to the TV.
It has that kind of effect on many people.
Certainly, it does on me.
I'm almost powerless when a TV is on.
I'm glued to it.
And so we started talking about that.
And I thought, wouldn't it be really cool if anywhere I went, I could just take care of that?
And instantly, I knew I could.
Wow.
So what we have is this little tiny device that basically cycles through all the frequencies.
And in most cases, is able to find the frequency of the TV set that's nearby.
And we'll just shut it off, send a shutoff signal.
Yeah, that's basically it.
It just knows how to say the word for power in every TV remote control language out there.
Fascinating.
Yeah, it works really well.
How many different codes are there in there, Mitch?
I believe it's 224 different codes that work on thousands of different kinds of TVs.
Wow.
The most popular ones are first.
So most TVs, you push the button, point at the TV, and the most popular TVs are spit out first.
So it'll turn off almost instantly to a few seconds.
Some off-brands could take maybe up to about a minute.
But the longest I've ever had to wait is 45 seconds.
Wow.
That's pretty cool.
And I imagine a lot of people have had fun with these things who have been lucky enough to have
them in the past.
As you may suspect, we are offering these items tonight.
Mitch has been kind enough to donate a whole bunch to us.
And basically, the joy of TV-B-Gone can be yours for a pledge of 75 bucks.
If you call us at 212-209-2950, you'll get not only the off-the-hook T-shirt, but
a brand-spanking-new TV-B-Gone that you can use to basically turn off the TV of your choice.
I'm sure so many of us have been in the position that Mitch was describing,
where they're just sort of captivated by this object in front of them that really
has nothing to do with them, but just imposes its way.
It's so annoying.
It's so annoying whether you're in a checkout line, or in a restaurant, or in a bar, or even
in your own house.
It can be annoying.
Just pressing this button can bring you instant satisfaction.
$75 pledge, 212-209-2950.
You'll get that.
You'll get the off-the-hook T-shirt as well.
Now, our listeners don't know this, but everyone in the studio does.
We have this television in the radio station, which is very distracting.
It is.
And always, when I come into the studio, the first thing I have to do is go turn it off.
This television does not have a remote control at all.
But if it did, I wouldn't have to climb all over people.
It could just be off remotely.
Yeah.
So it can save us time in many ways.
And something else which is kind of interesting, a side note to the whole TV-be-gone thing,
and Mitch, you must know about this as well, when it sends the power signal, in many sets,
the power signal, it can go either way.
If the set is on, it'll turn it off.
But if the set is off, it'll turn it on.
So it could be a TV-be-on as well for one that's not already turned on, right?
Yeah.
It's a remote control like any other in a lot of ways.
But it only has, you know, all other remote controls have all these extraneous buttons
for TV, you know, like channel up, down.
TV-be-on has only the most important button, which is power.
And like other remote controls, the power button will turn it on or off.
Of course, I intended it to turn the TV off.
But sometimes it is kind of fun to turn the TV off and then on and then off and then on
and just kind of watch.
We had fun with this, actually, in Dayton.
I guess the statute of limitations has passed.
It's been, what, more than six months?
We had fun with it in Zurich, too, didn't we?
Well, I wasn't in Zurich, but I imagine people have fun with these all around the world.
But in Dayton, we were walking around the streets.
And I know I went up to a pawn shop that just had TVs.
I didn't think they were plugged in.
I really didn't.
But I pointed it.
And all of a sudden, I see the TV coming on inside the pawn shop.
And I couldn't bring myself to turn it off again.
I just thought it was so funny leaving it there like that.
We were also walking down this nice, quiet suburban street where everybody has their
TV sets up by the front window so they could show off the big color display.
And I don't know.
I don't know if we succeeded in doing this.
But what we wound up trying to do anyway was turning some of those sets on as we were walking
by.
And I could just imagine what might have happened when someone comes downstairs in the morning
and the TV set's on in the living room.
It might lead to all sorts of misunderstandings.
Anyway, for a pledge of $75, you'll get a TV-B-Gone as well as the Off the Hook t-shirt.
For a pledge of $100, you can get the Off the Hook DVD collection and the Off the Hook
t-shirt.
Now, if you want everything, if you want the whole mess, you want the TV-B-Gone, and you
want the high-quality DVD, lifetime subscription, and you want the Off the Hook t-shirts, a
pledge of $150 will do that.
212-209-2950.
We just had a flurry of calls.
But the lines are open now.
There's one call on.
Please join that caller, 212-209-2950.
Basically, your pledge is what keeps the radio station going, what keeps this radio show
on the air.
And ask yourself how many stations you know of that would carry a program like this.
Look at what we're doing.
We're encouraging people to be mischievous and turn off corporate TV sets that are there
to program information into your head.
And I don't think, Mitch, have you ever tried to advertise this thing on, say, commercial
TV?
That would be ironic, wouldn't it?
You know, I just self-funded this whole thing, so I don't have, really, a marketing budget.
The whole thing blew up in a tremendous, fabulous frenzy of media the first day of sales.
So I've had a lot of free publicity, including on TV.
And so it's been amazing that I've been on TV just because I made a device that turns
TVs off.
Yeah, it's a remarkable thing when you're a revolutionary for figuring out how to turn
a TV off.
But that's the world we live in now, I guess.
There's an interesting fact about the TV be gone.
Mitch has had people on every continent order one of these things.
One of these exists in every continent except Antarctica.
And our long-time listeners may remember, in fact, it might have been on a previous
fundraiser or sometime a few months ago, we had a caller from a base in Antarctica.
And that was a pretty amazing show, just to listen to that guy.
But we got in touch with him, and he gave us the address in Antarctica.
And Mitch was kind enough to send one of those down there.
So now, I guess, TV be gone can be claimed to have conquered all continents.
Is that right, Mitch?
Yes, every continent, including Antarctica.
I don't believe we've hit the non-continent of North Pole, but we have had over half the
countries in the world.
Wow.
What kind of feedback do you get from people after they've actually used the thing?
You know, it's interesting that it has such a broad appeal.
When I first made it, I thought I would sell maybe 10,000 or 20,000, and it would be people
like me who are just really annoyed with TVs popping up everywhere in public.
But I guess there are a lot of people that really want to turn TVs off, and some people
even to turn them on.
So there's been even professional use of it, like nurses and bartenders have to turn off
lots of TVs for their job or turn them back on.
And so that was a surprising one.
I never really thought of that when I invented it.
And of course, there's a huge market of not only kids, which I expected, but adults of
all ages who I guess have kids inside of themselves with a very mischievous streak.
Yeah, and mischief is sort of what keeps us going as well.
So if you want to embark in a world of mischief, first of all, you can do this surreptitiously.
You don't have to hold it out in the open for everybody to see.
You can do it under your jacket or something and basically just have people running around
saying, who did that?
Who turned the TV off?
And they'll have to turn it back on again.
And of course, you can turn it off a second time and just have all sorts of fun.
I remember we were in a Japanese restaurant.
I think it was also in Dayton.
Is that right, Bernie, where we kept turning the thing off and they kept turning it back
on?
After a while, they forgot about the food that they were supposed to be making, and
it just turned into this battle of let's get the TV to stay on.
And nobody in the place wanted to see the TV in the first place.
This huge, big color TV set that was showing MacGyver or something.
Nobody was there to do that.
And it was so stupid.
I was very proud.
I was very proud of this device, being able to hit it and turn the thing off.
And it was almost like the rest of the patrons of the place really appreciated that.
So you'll be doing a service to humanity if you go around turning sets off, I think, with
this thing.
212-209-2950.
We have four calls on the line.
Let's fill up those banks.
We have a room full of volunteers here at the radio station.
In fact, if you want to be a volunteer, please come on by the radio station during the marathon,
which is taking place starting today and going through the entire month.
We're at 120 Wall Street, 10th floor.
Come on.
Bring photo ID, because that's how it works now down on Wall Street.
212-209-2950.
We have three different pledge levels.
But every pledge is, of course, welcome.
212-209-2950.
Bernie, do you have any, maybe a story that you went through turning sets off with this
thing?
Yes, well, I've walked past many sidewalks where there's audio video stores where they
have a lot of big windows with TVs in them, or there's a hair salon near here.
It has all these TVs in the window.
It's really annoying.
And they have them on all night long with videos of people getting their hair cut.
It's very strange.
And it's a tremendous waste of energy, because nobody's really standing there watching them.
So I can't resist walking by every time I go by there every day, just pointing through
the window.
And you can stand 10 feet away or even farther and just press a button, and they all go off.
It's so empowering.
It's really an amazing feeling.
And you're doing them a favor, too.
You're saving them the power bill of keeping all those TV sets on.
They must have forgotten to turn them off.
So you're turning them off for them.
And it's kind of cool.
I'm wondering what they think in the morning when they come in and all the sets are off.
So I don't know.
They probably think somebody didn't follow instructions and turn all the sets on.
And someone gets yelled at.
And it's kind of cool, because it looks like it belongs on your keychain.
It looks like a car remote or something that you would generally find on the keychain.
So you could kind of just stand in an area where you wouldn't normally be able to hold
the remote control and just hold this thing and shoot your photons at the television.
Hey, Mitch, has this been tested on those SUV TVs that I'm really increasingly annoyed
by?
People in front of me driving an SUV.
They got a big TV set on in the back.
Have they been tested on those?
I haven't done it myself.
But I have emails from fans all over the country who have told me they have tried that with
great success.
Oh, great.
Now, can you make something to make the SUVs disappear?
Oh, that would be so amazing.
The only thing I can think of there would be illegal.
I want to know why you need a remote for the backseat of your car.
Because these people are huge, fat, and lazy.
And they can't move themselves.
They have to have everything brought to them.
I'm not going to get into that.
It's a whole other show.
212-209-2950.
We still have four calls on the line.
And we can't see the tally screen for the people down there.
Yeah, we'd like to be able to see how much we're actually bringing in.
Maybe you could let them know that.
Interesting, interesting stuff.
TV Be Gone for a $75 pledge.
212-209-2950.
And Off the Hook DVD set for a pledge of 100 bucks.
And again, you get the Off the Hook T-shirt, which nobody can turn off.
Because it's something that will be worn on your back proudly.
To say that you're a contributor to this radio station.
Yes.
I've just had an interesting vision of many of our listeners
walking around town or wherever they are with an Off the Hook T-shirt.
Listening to past really interesting episodes of Off the Hook on their MP3 player.
While they're stalking public televisions and shutting them off as they're walking around.
So you can be fully equipped Off the Hook listener by calling 212-209-2950.
And I just remembered the time I was in P.C. Richards.
You know, they had a whole wall of TV sets on there.
And let me just say, the amount of, I guess,
commotion that you can cause with a single push of a button.
It simply is staggering.
It simply makes you realize the power of the individual.
I think that's sort of what this TV-B-Gone device helps to bring out.
I think we should have a contest for modifications for the TV-B-Gone.
Me and Bernie came up with a good idea when we were discussing this.
I think it was even in Dayton, Bernie mentioned this to me.
And that was to modify it and interface it with this huge array of infrared LEDs.
Which I think Ramsey Electronics sells, is that right?
Yeah, it's a big array of like 50 super bright infrared LEDs.
Ultimately, it would be an infrared flamethrower that would
blow a TV off signal about a thousand feet.
And I never got a chance to try this and do it.
But it wouldn't be a hard mod, and it'd be cool if some of our listeners
gave this a shot and let us know how well it worked.
Okay.
You gotta do it.
202-209-2950.
I'd like to play another excerpt from the radio show.
Is Mitch going to be able to stick with us for a couple more minutes?
Sure.
All right, great.
We're just going to play an excerpt from an old Off The Hook.
This is one that I actually picked at random.
Actually, no, to be honest, I was on IRC last night.
And I just asked, hey, can someone help me out here?
I didn't tell them what it was all about.
And this guy named Cora responded.
I think he's from Virginia.
And I think it's pronounced Cora.
I'm sorry it's pronounced differently.
The E is capitalized.
How would you pronounce that?
Cora E?
That sounds silly.
I don't think that's how you pronounce it.
It's Cora with a capital E.
And it begins with a K, not a C.
Anyway, thanks very much for answering the question.
I simply asked someone to pick a number at random from, I think, 88 to 104.
I didn't want a show from last year or this year.
And he picked, I believe, he picked 97, right?
Yes, 97.
And then I asked for a number between 1 and 12.
He picked 3.
Then I asked for a number between 1 and 4, indicating the week of March 1997.
He picked 2.
So that means the show was March 11, 1997.
And I had great fun listening to this show, hearing all kinds of interesting things.
This piece right here is towards the opening of the show,
where it's FiberOptic, who used to be on this show back then,
and myself talking about the confusion of area codes.
Take a listen.
is in worse shape than we are.
They split so many times.
I mean, it's, you can't even see the city anymore on the area code map.
312 split to 708.
There's a 630 there now.
There's the 847.
And there's also a 773, I think.
And, you know, I asked many different people where the demarcations are for all these area codes.
And I didn't get the same answer twice.
Nobody seems to know where the boundaries are.
And everybody, when they're giving out their phone numbers,
they just give all 10 digits out to everybody.
You know, even if you're...
I mean, the most shocking example of this was when I saw somebody ordering a pizza
and they gave us their callback number, a number with the area code in it.
They were so unsure.
They didn't even know if the pizza place down the block was in a different area code.
Do we want to live like this?
No, I don't think so.
I do not think so.
I think someone could get elected to office just on the basis that he will preserve 212.
Clean up the area code mess.
So if anyone out there is still thinking of running for mayor,
this could be a good platform to run.
Okay, that was back in 1997 on these very airwaves.
And interesting, because now there are so many people who do use
all 10 digits of their phone numbers for everything.
Who here does not have to dial 10 digits to make a phone call across the street?
I'm raising my hand.
Am I the only one?
Yes.
Bernie, you're not raising your hand.
No, in Philadelphia, we have to have what Verizon calls,
well, Bell Atlantic before that,
dubbed, and they trademarked this term, a 10 number number.
Yes, as featured in Freedom Downtime, the 10 number number.
Now, Mitch, how about you out there in the Bay Area?
Same.
Yeah, we got to dial a one and then all those numbers.
Even if you're dialing in your own house to another phone.
That's true.
Wow.
Well, out in Long Island, for some reason, we can still dial seven digits
if we want to call within 516 or 631.
Backwards pupils.
No, it's actually way back, way back before our show was on the air.
You could even leave off the exchange if you were local.
You could just dial the last four digits.
How cool was that?
Back in the old step offices.
Yeah, I'm sure there are people who can phone in and tell us about that someday.
Jim, are you one of them?
In the real good old days, you didn't even have to dial at all.
You could just pick up the hook and say, operator, give me Sadie McGee.
Well, you can still do that.
They'll just laugh at you.
Actually, they won't.
Well, no, the NSA doesn't transfer you.
I want to play one more clip from that same show because, Bernie,
this is something special for you.
And it's interesting because it is true.
If you pick a show at random, you'll find things that apply to today.
But just listen to this.
This is basically the connection that you had back then.
It was, I don't know what you were using back in 1997,
but I think you'll notice that the voice quality is actually better
back when you were talking to us in 1997.
Here, take a listen to this.
Bernie S., are you with us?
I'm here.
Ah, isn't it great how we just sort of pulled him out of the sky?
Yes, Bernie, have you heard us talking about Sprint Total Voice?
Yeah, I did.
Hello, Fiber.
Hi, how are you?
I'm pretty good.
And, of course, hello, Manuel.
I was just reading in one of the telephony industry magazines just a couple days ago,
coincidentally, about these voice dialing features that RBOX had been offering.
And the RBOX are generally very unhappy with how well this particular
service has been doing, less than, I think it was, I think we're talking about 9x in this case.
Okay, that's pretty much an example of some of the discussions we have.
But, Bernie, you sounded much better back then.
Well, I think Sprint has throttled back their vocoders and bandwidth so that
they could squeeze more customers into the limited space they have on the public airwaves.
So that's why I probably sound more shallowy than I did back then.
What do you think you were using back then?
I was using a Sprint PCS phone, I'm sure.
In 1997, in March of 1997?
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
I thought you said, all right, all right, not 97.
No, I was in 1997 using an analog cell phone.
Ah, so that is a very marked difference there.
Very marked.
Analog.
It was a Novotel, I forget the model.
I think it was a Novotel 8210.
It was about the size of a brick.
And it was my primary phone even back then.
Now, you would not be able to tell this if you listened on the old versions of
Off The Hook that were previously available and still on the internet.
This is an example of some of the little subtle differences that you can hear.
So in the last few minutes of our show, we're up to $1,420, $1,420 so far.
Be nice to hit $2,000, wouldn't it?
And then I think we'd be assured of coming back here next week and
having another edition during this fundraiser of ours.
212-209-2950, a pledge of $75 gets you the amazing TV Begone device in addition to
an Off The Hook t-shirt, which you can get for a pledge of $25.
$100, you'll get the lifetime DVD set of Off The Hook.
And for $150, you get everything.
Now, Mike, you have some people to thank, I believe.
I was just back in the pledge room.
And you can, as you walk down, the phones are ringing because people are really
wanting these TV Begones.
So if you care to join them, the number is-
They have six minutes left.
That's not enough time.
Well, it's enough time for people to dial, pull off to the side of the road,
make a safe cell phone call.
We better say the number, 212-209-2950.
Among the people who've already dialed that number are Bob from Water Street.
Wait, you're not giving people's street addresses?
It says right on the card that I'm supposed to say Bob from Water Street.
Is that the name of the town?
He actually is saying his street name.
It's kind of bizarre.
Bob wanted us to say Water Street, so I said-
You had it said.
Your street is now out there.
Daniel from Albany, we will not say his street.
Is that the same Water Street that's like a block away from here?
I imagine so.
There only one could be.
Well, that could be a Water Street anyway.
He didn't say the city.
You've now given it away.
Oh, you didn't say New York.
Okay, well then I guess it is the same Water Street.
Well, now Bob is a target.
Satyajit, who's from New York.
And Michael, who's from Bloomington, Illinois.
All right.
So we're getting-
And always people want to be anonymous when they pledge.
I imagine there's a lot more people down there that still have yet to come in.
And if we don't get to you this week thanking you,
we'll certainly thank you next week, assuming we're on next week.
We're up to 1695 in pledges.
And I just want to say thank you to all those people who have called in so far.
But please keep the phones ringing.
We have volunteers down there.
What's-
Excuse me.
What's the scene like in the tally room?
There's actually a fair number of people, but they're a little overwhelmed.
As you can see, the people are just-
The lines are filling up right now.
Look at that.
People really want those TV beacons.
Now, if a light-
Well, how do you know they don't want the DVDs?
Maybe they want both.
You can't read from the light what they want.
Maybe they-
I can read from asking the volunteers.
Maybe they just want to donate as much money as they have,
just to keep this place going, because they realize how valuable it is.
And folks, it really is valuable.
I mean, we kid around a lot.
And we say the same things over and over again,
as far as please call, please pledge, please donate.
But what it boils down to in the end is we are so lucky to have this place here.
And we're also so lucky to have people like I see in the room with me
and are on the phone with me right now to talk about these things.
And of course, the listeners complete the package.
We make history here.
We talk about all sorts of amazing, interesting things.
And the fact that they stay amazing after all these years
tells me that we're really doing something worthwhile.
212-209-2950.
Only have a couple of minutes left, so please keep those calls coming in.
We have-
Wow, looks like almost 10 calls lit up there.
Mitch, any final words from you?
Any plans for a sequel to TV Begone, perhaps?
You know, I get a lot of requests for other things, like Bush Begone.
And we have a system in place that's kind of faulty.
It's called voting.
But if people actually used it, maybe it would work.
Oh, I like the way you think.
That's awesome.
Well, Mitch, I want to thank you so much, not only for being so generous tonight,
but also just for coming up with an interesting idea.
And I think making society better by giving people the power
to sort of control the environment they're in, in the public world.
Mitch is coming to the 6th Hope Conference, I understand.
Yes, Hope No. 6, taking place July 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, right here in New York City.
Guys, we're out of time, and we're creeping in on the 2000 mark.
We'll announce the total figure, I guess, next week, assuming we'll be here.
But again, if you want to call up and get either the TV Begone,
the Lifetime DVD set of Off The Hook, a Off The Hook t-shirt, or everything,
or you just want to donate, call now, 212-209-2950.
You have about three minutes.
Hopefully, we'll see you next week.
You know, so many people wrote us to ask what we played last week on the outro
that we decided to play it again and tell you what it is.
This is from a band called Death in Vegas, and the song is called Dirth.
So enjoy, and we'll see you again next week.
Thanks, everybody, who called up.
Again, 212-209-2950.
Take care.
So
Got questions about your computer?
Mm-hmm.
Want to know about the latest electronics?
Yeah.
Are you confused by high-definition TV?
A little.
Well, tune into WBAI every Wednesday at 8 p.m. for The Personal Computer Show.
Yeah?
Yeah, that's every Wednesday on WBAI 99.5 FM.
Oh.
So why don't you tell a friend?
Oh, okay.
And tell your boss.
Well.
Call your mom, and tell them about The Personal Computer Show every Wednesday at 8 p.m. on WBAI 99.5 FM.
Oh, okay.
What about questions about my computer?
Any thought questions about your computer?
Not my coffee over in my keyboard.
Do you think that's a problem?
No, not for me.
What does it mean by working right, Jimmy?
I'd buy a new one.
You know what I mean?
Okay.
They've really got to be there.
It's like the best.
It's The Personal Computer Show.