This is a production of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, the Center for Autism
and Related Disorders.
visit our website at www.fsrn.org, www.fsrn.org.
In Berkeley, I'm Aaron Glantz, sitting in for Aldo Bogato.
Hello, this is the SMS text delivery system from BT.
Message from 0-7-8-5-5-5-5-5-5-5.
To listen to the message, press 1 to save it.
It's 7 p.m. in New York.
This is WBRI.
Time for off the hook.
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.
Von Diddley Bond for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Von Diddley Bond!
For more information, visit www.fsrn.org.
And a very special thank you to the listener who sent that in.
Did we even know who the listener was who sent that in?
Did we write down that information? Probably didn't.
I could probably find out.
Can you find out? Well, yeah, go ahead.
Launch an investigation. Find out who sent us that.
And in case it wasn't clear, the station was WBAI, New York.
The A didn't really sound that clear, but that's a demonstration of what you get
if you send an SMS message to somebody in England at a landline.
If you use your cell phone and text a message to someone's home,
you get something like that.
This is Off the Hook.
Manuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
Joined tonight by Mike.
Hello.
Redbird.
Good evening.
Walter.
Hello.
Kevin over there.
Hello.
Bernie down in Philadelphia.
And Jim's not here tonight.
Aww.
Yeah, he's out sick.
So, yeah, that was kind of cool.
I guess that's – was that a famous actress or something?
You can be replaced.
Yeah, I know.
I'm looking forward to it.
But was that a famous voice in England?
I didn't recognize the voice.
I don't think so.
Well, I understand you can get Dr. Who to call you as well.
But regardless.
Now, okay, we have something interesting
because we've been told on numerous occasions by many of our listeners
that since we've been talking about this over the last couple of weeks
that there is, in fact, one service in this country
where you can send an SMS message to a landline
and that will be delivered in a voice.
I'm not quite sure what voice it is.
Now, the only carrier that we're aware of that does this is Sprint PCS.
Bernie down in Philadelphia happens to have Sprint PCS.
So what I'd like to ask you to do, Bernie, at some point in the next few minutes
is go into text mode on your phone
and send a message to the phone line that you call into,
and we'll see if it actually gets to us.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
You assume too much for Sprint PCS.
Well, I assume you know how to use your phone.
Is that too much of an assumption?
Oh, that's not the issue.
The problem is, and I've been talking to Sprint about this for the past week,
trying to get them to fix their problem.
Right now their SMS messaging is down, according to them.
They said 80% of their SMS messages are not going through at all.
They've been having this problem since yesterday.
But for the past five days I've been trying to send an SMS message to a landline,
and it's not working, and they can't figure out why.
They think it possibly might have something to do with my phone being a 2G handset
as opposed to a 3G handset, but I kind of doubt that explanation
because it really is a network issue.
It has nothing really to do with a handset.
You're able to send email, right?
I am able to send email from my phone.
I'm able to send SMS messages to my own phone, like loopback kind of messages,
and I get them.
So there's no reason this shouldn't work.
So the SMS to landline text-to-voice thing with Sprint is not reliable.
I would like it to be so I could demonstrate it on the air,
but it's not working.
Okay.
Failing that, then, let's demonstrate their incompetence
by trying it anyway and seeing it not work.
How about that?
Well, you're not going to get anything.
We don't know.
Maybe they're fixing it right now.
Maybe it'll work.
I have tried it more times than I can count on my fingers.
Then trying it one more time should not be a big deal.
You're going to have to hang up on me for me to try it again.
You can't text a message while you're on the phone?
It's not.
It's a Sprint PCS phone.
Okay.
If any of our listeners out there do have reliable Sprint PCS service,
try sending us a text message.
The landline number is 212-209-2900.
And, Bernie, if this does work, we're going to expect you to send one too.
Okay.
All right.
So, yeah, that's the only service that we have in this country.
Do you have an answer, Redbird?
Yes, we have, but we—
We're not sure how to pronounce it.
Well, try.
Because I can't pronounce the back of your computer, so try.
Edocronian?
Okay, good.
Well, that wasn't so bad.
We'll try that.
Sorry for the mix-up.
All right.
Well, thanks to that listener for sending that in.
And, of course, any of our listeners who have bits of information for us
are welcome to send us information at oth2600.com.
O-T-H, of course, standing for off the hook.
Did a bit of research on text messaging to email,
which just about every carrier is able to do, even Sprint.
Even Sprint is able to do this.
And you can send messages back to the cell phone numbers
if you happen to know who the carrier is.
In the case of Sprint, you would attach the 10-digit phone number
at messaging.sprintpcs.com.
Is that right, Bernie?
Yes.
Okay, and that will actually get to you.
Now, in the case of Nextel, it would be messaging.nextel.com.
Now, are these companies running the same now?
Yeah, it's the same company,
but they have different networks under the same corporate umbrella,
and they're trying to merge everything that was Nextel into Sprint.
Okay, but they're using the same basic name here, messaging.domain.
So messaging.nextel.com, messaging.sprintpcs.com.
Also, I'm told that page.nextel.com will work as far as sending a page
if you just want to beep somebody on their phone or something.
So maybe page.sprintpcs.com works as well.
People are calling us.
All these phone lines are lighting up.
There's no way to know if it's people or computer voices.
Okay, let's try one and see what happens.
Hello, who's there?
Sprint customer 6097923057.
I sent you a text-to-landline message.
To hear this message, press 1.
Okay.
Support will be.
To reply by voice, press 1.
To reply by text, press 2.
Next call, press 2.
Please select from the following text reply.
To reply yes, press 1.
To reply no, press 2.
To reply please call back, press 3.
To reply thank you, press 4.
To reply where are you, press 5.
To disconnect call, press the star key.
To repeat your option, press 6.
To return to the previous menu, press 7.
Shut up.
Okay, try 4.
What the hell was that?
It sounded like a picture being taken.
Okay, I guess they're gone.
Well, Bernie, your face must be red now.
It works fine.
All these people are calling us.
They must have a 3G phone.
I have a 2G phone.
Well, again, I think we should try it to see if,
because this is a perfect instance to see if it's working or not
based on your phone type because it's not working for you.
How will you be able to pick out my incoming call
from the raft of other calls that are coming in now?
I guess we'll just have to chance it.
Okay.
I don't know.
Hang up on me and I'll, what's that number again?
You know the number.
If you call in, you know what?
We'll page it to you so you can call in
because we don't give out that number over the air.
Do you want me to write it down for you?
You know what it is, right?
Well, I know what it is, but I also know something he could do,
but, you know, can't be helped.
Well, we all know something he can do,
but I'm not sure how that applies here.
Can't be helped.
All the lines, I think what they do is they try.
Now, we're going to be bombarded with these text messages
throughout the night, I think, because they keep trying.
Who knows how many times they try.
They're not going to stay on the line, obviously,
if we don't pick up, so they're going to call back.
So we're probably going to get a bunch of these things.
Anything could happen.
Okay.
Are you texting him the number?
I got him.
Okay, good.
So hopefully we'll give him about, what, five minutes,
then we'll call him back.
It's too bad you can't do it while you're on the phone.
Really.
I'll say this.
You know, Bernie's phone is old,
but it sounds better than most phones today,
but unfortunately that might limit you,
the number of things that you can actually do.
We were going through the various e-mail domains.
So T-Mobile is a 10-digit number at TMOMail.net.
That's T-M-O-M-A-I-L.net.
That one's kind of hard to figure out, I guess.
Verizon, this is interesting.
Verizon is Vtext.com, 10-digit number at Vtext, V-T-E-X-T.com.
And let's try this one over here.
Good evening.
Sprint customer 917.
Okay, we're going to bring down your number.
One has sent you a text-to-landline message.
Okay.
WBAI, New York, 99.5 FM.
All right.
Okay, well, that's great.
That's great.
Press 2.
To disconnect call, press the star key.
So we know it works.
Text message again, press 3.
Let's try this one over here.
Hey, good evening.
Oh, it's Dalton.
All right.
Well, we learned that there's no real filtering going on here,
and hopefully we learned our delay system works as well.
What was I up to?
Verizon.
Verizon is Vtext.com, V-T-E-X-T.com.
That's preceded by the 10-digit number.
And you can do something interesting with that.
You can send a picture message without sending a picture
by sending to 10-digit number at VZWPIX.com.
That will basically light up the little icon on your phone,
if you have a camera phone, that is,
that says you have a picture phone, a picture message,
and you'll have to go through the –
whatever you have to go through to open a picture message,
and it will say there's no picture here, but here's the message.
So it's kind of, I guess, a backup way of sending a message on Verizon.
Let's see, Singular.
Singular is interesting because there's two different ways to send messages there.
One is SingularMe.com, C-I-N-G-U-L-A-R-M-E.C-O-M.
And the other one is MMS.MySingular.com.
Now, I'm a little unclear here.
The first one, I believe, is for SMS or short messages,
and the second one is for medium.
MMS stands for medium messages?
Media.
Media messages.
Or multimedia.
Multimedia, okay.
So now I'm not sure if there's a limit on the first one.
Can you just send two lines, or can you send more than that?
I don't see how you could.
Well, you guys have Singular, or you have Singular.
I have Singular.
Have you experimented with this at all?
I was doing a little bit of experimenting, and I was sending messages from my phone,
and they came from some wacko domain that wasn't the one you read.
I see them coming from Mobile.MySingular.com.
Mobile.MySingular.com.
That's interesting.
Yeah, I think that's the one.
Okay, let's try to see if this is Bernie here.
And good evening.
Sprint customer 9175868.
All right, I'm not sure if this is.
That's definitely not Bernie's number,
so we're not going to pick that one up because now we have to worry about obscene calls from Sprint.
Great.
All right.
It seems, well, do you have more to read?
I have the AT&T version of Singular, which is known as Singular Blue.
Isn't that you, Mike?
It used to be.
It's me now.
It's you now.
You're Singular Blue.
I was forced to switch from blue to orange due to a whole cavalcade of errors.
It's called orange.
Okay.
Well, your email would come from mmode.com or be sent a 10-digit number at mmode.com, M-M-O-D-E.
And, yeah, does that make sense to you?
I don't know.
I don't actually send emails all that often.
I don't either.
But there's a good solution to this.
We got another email from a listener that gave us a nice domain to use when sending email.
Okay, sorry about that.
And that's teleflip.com.
If you send your 10-digit phone number at teleflip.com, you will automatically receive an email regardless of the carrier.
So it does some auto-detection stuff.
It's a nice gateway to use.
Now, I looked at their website, teleflip.com, and you can register, I think.
But you can also just send to teleflip.com, 10-digit number at teleflip.com.
I tried it with both Verizon and T-Mobile, and it worked.
So, yeah, you realize there's nobody there, Mike.
You called somebody, and I think you hung up on them.
I was supposed to call someone?
What did you come over and do with the phone?
I thought I was supposed to receive a call.
No, call Bernie back.
Oh, oh, oh.
Yes.
Okay, so I think that's just about all the information we have on this.
And hopefully the message that Bernie sends will eventually get to us, but I guess Bernie's phone is cursed.
It's kind of a weird explanation for why it doesn't work for him, though.
Yeah, it is kind of strange, but I'd like to know more about that.
What's wrong?
Voicemail.
You got his voicemail?
Yeah.
You know, I'll bet they disabled his phone because he dared to try this.
Okay, well, that's pretty interesting.
Why are these services useful?
Well, okay, it's kind of interesting because if you send a text message to somebody,
what if you send a text message to a landline?
That's kind of annoying because it doesn't tell you, hey, you just sent a text message to a landline, you idiot.
Oh, but it does.
It does?
Who does?
My phone does.
I sent a text message to a landline to see what would happen, and I think I still have it.
I got a message back saying, error, invalid number.
Please resend using a valid 10-digit mobile number.
Really?
Yeah.
I've never gotten that, and I send text messages to all kinds of people who don't have cell phones.
It may depend on the carrier.
That's true.
Okay, let's see.
You're getting phone calls now?
What's going on here?
We can't establish a communication with Bernie?
It's unbelievable.
And people think we know a lot about phones.
That's the scary thing.
We can't even make a connection.
We can't send text messages.
Come up with some other ideas for things we cannot do.
Let's not.
I'm sure we can spend a whole hour on it.
Okay, news.
All sorts of interesting news items this week.
Let's try and get Bernie back first.
We have him.
Bernie, you back?
I'm back.
I'm sorry.
That sounded really traumatic, the whole thing.
It was quite an ordeal.
I mean, I was down to just typing the period on my message, and then it said I had a new text message.
And I went to see, oh, what's this?
And then I couldn't get back to the sending part of it, so I had to send it all over again, hence the delay.
You're kidding, really?
It's really a brilliant system that Sprint came up with.
Wow.
We had somebody send us an obscene Sprint message.
Was it caught by the 7% delay?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
We're well prepared for that.
But it just goes to show you that these computers can be used for all sorts of purposes, I guess.
But so much for that little experiment.
Well, mine should be coming in, if it's going to come in.
All right.
Well, let's see if this is you.
Good evening.
Speak up, please.
Hello.
Who's this?
This is Greg.
Is this 99.5?
Yes, but you're calling at the wrong time.
You didn't ask a person to call, did you, Bernie?
No.
All right.
That didn't sound like the Sprint computer to me.
When we announce the phone number, folks, that's when we should call in with your voices.
And please, no more Sprint PCS messages.
We know it works, and we know what it sounds like.
But no, Bernie, your message, assuming you sent it to the right phone number, is not coming in.
The main studio line is ringing.
You didn't send it to the right phone number?
You sent it to that number?
Yes.
Well, there's no way to know, then.
We paged you with a different number.
Oh, that was the message that was coming in when I was trying to send you a message.
This is very confusing.
I don't believe this.
Next time we should not do this.
Yeah, let's never do this again.
Next.
Unbelievable.
We have all these computers all calling us, too, from all different area codes.
We apologize to the folks who didn't get on the air.
We cannot communicate amongst ourselves.
That's the problem.
We have no way of communicating.
Okay.
Speaking of communications, we have lots of e-mail of people saying basic things.
Commentary, you know, criticism, critique, that kind of thing.
Let's read a couple of those, and we'll read some bits of news
and hopefully share some other bits of news with other people and take some phone calls later on.
Let's see.
I'd like to thank that listener who called in last week with the URL to AlmanarTV.
I'm curious to see AlmanarTV's perspective on America and to learn about their views.
But frankly, I'm afraid to pull up the URL in my browser.
If I check out their banned TV station, will the FBI be knocking on my door the next morning?
Signed, James.
Well, this is exactly the reason why we did a little simulcast of Almanar last week,
because this is what happens.
Yeah, you know, someone gets arrested for providing the TV station to people,
an illegal TV station, supposedly.
And next thing you know, you're afraid to even read newspapers
because they might be the illegal kind or something, and you might get on a list.
Bernie, what do you think?
Do you think the FBI will come knocking if this guy goes to this website?
It's a very good question.
I mean, because if you visit a website, for instance, the whole argument is,
I think the legal argument was that this person was doing something that provided,
in this legal case that came up recently, providing some sort of material support to a terrorist entity.
So if Almanar has any kind of ads on their website, if you go there,
then that's going to generate revenue for Almanar,
and therefore you have contributed financially to a U.S. government-identified terrorist organization,
and therefore committed a felony.
So it could happen.
It's kind of weird, and this isn't like a realm that the ISPs haven't gone into before,
because they've been doing this in cooperation with the RIAA with file-sharing stuff.
And I know people who have gotten letters from their ISP for using certain peer-to-peer services,
and they did traffic analysis and saw what files they were downloading,
and stuff that the RIAA didn't like, and they got letters in the mail from that.
So it's very possible, technically, that they'll do this,
and they've done it before for other issues, so I don't know.
It's interesting.
You might just get yourself on a list.
Yeah, well, that list is getting pretty big these days.
Now, did we have a URL?
I believe there was a URL that, Bernie, you said was still up before the show.
Yes.
This is one that you can plug into the Windows Media Player.
A listener named Nico C. sent this in.
If you open up Windows Media Player and click on File and then Open URL
and plug in the following, mms://207.210.95.42 live,
you will get the live Almanar video feed.
Okay.
That's only for people running Windows Media.
Yeah.
I don't know if there's otherwise run the ASX playlist,
but that's part of the same thing, I guess.
I don't know what other options there are,
but that's just what one listener sent in.
Okay.
And we got a lot of feedback for what we did last week,
which was, I guess, a bit daring.
We haven't had any major ramifications from airing this beneath us
for the entire hour last week,
except it did come up in the personal computer show
when they turned the phone on temporarily, which was kind of funny.
But this person wrote in, Kareem wrote in, saying,
when you had the last episode of Off the Hook on September 6th,
it wasn't music on that Lebanese TV station.
It was actually religious readings from the Koran.
It's just that when a lot of these Islamic scholarly people read from the Koran,
it sounds like they are singing.
I know this because my dad is Muslim and knows how to read Arabic.
So, great.
And it's good to have that kind of information
to know exactly what it was that we were listening to.
Maybe people can listen to that show, tell us what they were saying.
That would be kind of neat as well.
Here's another opinion.
Typically, I enjoy your broadcast and respect your opinion.
However, in your quest for freedom and free speech,
you have neglected a key component of freedom, responsibility.
You stated yourself that you had no idea
what the contents of the speech meant that was being broadcast.
Didn't your parents teach you not to say anything
when you don't know what it means?
Is that one of the fundamental things you're taught?
I've never been taught that.
I don't think anyone has ever taught me to keep my mouth shut.
I mean, most people just kind of intuitively say sensible things,
or things that they at least themselves think are sensible.
We weren't really saying anything.
Well, I mean, look at it this way.
All the major broadcast networks on Monday broadcast President Bush,
and nobody knew what he was going to say.
We had some idea, but we did it anyway.
And the way the president works is he distributes the speeches in advance.
That's pretty rare.
Doesn't ever stray from the English language a little bit?
Come on, you know he does.
Usually, they're very well written out in advance.
Let me continue with this letter.
In the same manner, you shouldn't rebroadcast speech
when you don't know what is being said.
This is regardless of whether or not you believe
you're spreading a message of hatred against your country.
Signed, Christian.
I'm sorry, Christian has a funny name to have
when you're criticizing a Muslim TV station.
But regardless, no offense on that.
I simply don't agree.
I think this is something that has to be left to the judgment of the listener,
of the viewer, and the airwaves are supposed to be open and free
for people to tune around and find out what it is that is out there.
Now, imagine this logic used against our speech,
which could be seen as hate speech against other places,
our values are in conflict with other cultures.
Is it right for everything to simply be blocked
and for people not to be able to make up their own minds?
I just don't think so.
And I think it's a very dangerous step when we prosecute people
who simply are providing access to something from another place.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
It's interesting that the broadcast that we were playing,
or at least in part, was simply readings from the Koran.
And that in and of itself apparently is a violation of federal law,
according to what we've read recently about this case,
where a guy enabled others to be able to receive Al-Minar on a satellite dish.
That's right.
And the thing is, if you're listening to something,
maybe by hearing what they're saying you might understand what they're thinking
and where the miscommunication is happening,
or worst-case scenario, what they're planning.
That's important to know what people are saying,
not to simply cover your ears and hum really loudly
and pretend it's not there, because it is there.
Even after listening, if you come to the conclusion that they are batty,
at least you've formed that conclusion based on some evidence,
which is kind of nice.
Right.
I had no desire to listen to this station or to watch this station
until I was told that I wasn't allowed to.
And that seems to work with a lot of people.
Okay.
Let's look at some news here.
This is rather interesting, rather foreboding, I think.
Non-lethal weapons, such as high-power microwave devices,
should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations
before they are used on the battlefield.
That's according to the Air Force secretary yesterday.
That's not the woman who answers the phone.
That's somebody pretty high up.
Michael Wynn is the secretary of the Air Force.
Did we all know this?
We should test our weapons on our own citizens.
Well, I'll get to the logic behind this.
We should know who the secretaries are that make these statements
for all the military branches, and it just would be nice.
These are names that we've never heard before.
Yeah, domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions
in the international community over any possible safety concerns.
Get this.
If we're not willing—I know, Walter.
I don't think I've ever seen you laugh quite so hard.
This is for real?
You know, I checked for onion smell on this thing, and this seems real.
Kevin, actually, you found this story, right?
I actually found this story on several news sites.
You did?
I made sure because I thought it was so ridiculous the first time I read it
that I had to do some kind of background check on it.
Well, you know the yes-men do this kind of thing,
and it does make it to multiple sites,
but this says the Associated Press on it.
As you said, it did show up in many places.
But listen to this.
Listen to this quote.
You can't make this up.
If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens,
then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation.
Now, see, I actually agree.
I agree with that statement.
Does that mean we should nuke our citizens?
I agree with the statement.
We should not be shooting people overseas
if we're not willing to shoot people here,
and I think we shouldn't be willing to shoot people here.
But what if they are willing to shoot people here?
I don't agree.
Then they're shooting people everywhere.
They're shooting people here,
and they say, yeah, that works,
and they're going to go overseas and shoot people there.
I think it would reduce the popularity of shooting
if it applied to Americans as well as to overseas people.
Nothing reduces the popularity of shooting.
Sorry.
Anyway, Wynn continues,
because if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon
and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended,
I think that I would be vilified in the world press.
So apparently it's okay to be vilified in the local press.
He's just worried about the world press.
Anyway, the Air Force has funded research into nonlethal weapons,
but he said the service isn't likely to spend more money on development
until injury issues are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.
Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people
if they are hit with the beam.
Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses
that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.
Now they have these devices,
and they had them ready to go at the RNC
and many other demonstrations in the United States.
So I'm sure they want to use them on people.
Yeah, I mean these devices scare me a lot
because I consider the odds of them being used against me
much higher than the odds of me being shot by a policeman
with a conventional gun.
And they're really dangerous, a lot of these taser things.
People have died from tasers,
which are something that's in use in a lot of police departments.
And the police are a lot quicker to use them
because they are perceived as nonlethal.
So it's really worrying.
But, you know, it's interesting when you have to think,
is this a real story because it's so crazy?
This was written by Lolita C. Baldor, B-A-L-D-O-R,
Associated Press writer.
It's appeared all over the place.
So if there's any fakeness to this story,
I'm sure our listeners will tell us.
But I think it's real.
I think it's real.
It's crazy, but it's real.
Okay, something else that's crazy but real
is technology having to do with shoplifting,
not technology that will assist you in shoplifting,
technology designed to combat shoplifting.
Eight million video cameras are mounted in stores across the U.S.,
according to market researcher J.P. Freeman Company.
Their unblinking eyes are everywhere,
watching exits and peering down aisles.
And some of these cameras are really, really smart.
Some Macy's, CVS, and Baby's R Us stores.
Are there as much shoplifting in Baby's R Us?
Probably.
I mean, wouldn't Toy's R Us be a better target for shoplifters?
I know I'd go there first.
Well, you know.
All right.
Anyway, they have installed a system called the Video Investigator,
whose advanced surveillance software can compare a shopper's movements
between video images and recognize unusual activity.
Remove ten items from a shelf at once,
or open up a case that's normally kept closed and locked,
and the system alerts guards sitting in a back room
or pacing the sales floor with a chime or flashing screen.
The system can predict where a shoplifter is likely to hide,
like at the ends of aisles, behind floor displays.
A search function spots sudden movement that might indicate a large spill,
prompting workers to clean up before it leads to a slip-and-fall accident
and a costly lawsuit.
And if someone opens a back door at 2 a.m.,
the system will record who sneaked in
and link it with snapshots of the previous and next people to use the door.
Alerts complete with images can be sent to handheld devices,
keeping retailers informed 24-7.
That's according to a spokesperson from Intellivid Corporation
of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
So yeah, they're called invisible detectives.
They're out there, and they're thinking, and they're searching.
Shopping carts.
Get this.
Shopping carts have been recruited in the war on retail crime.
A surprisingly common and simple scam is the pushout.
You know what the pushout is?
It's where thieves load up carts and just dash out of the store.
Yeah, the solution is Gatekeeper Systems, Inc. from Irvine, California.
They invented an electric fence technology for carts.
The system, called GS2, uses radio frequency identification,
our old friend RFID chips, which are embedded in cart wheels
and antennas around the periphery of the store
that broadcast signals to the chips.
When a cart approaches the store boundary, its wheels lock up.
It can be unlocked only by an employee who activates a remote control device.
Thieves can't push the cart, said Brett Osterfeld,
Gatekeeper's vice president for sales and marketing.
They'd have to pick it up and walk with it.
I've seen this stuff and play with it.
It's actually kind of interesting.
If you want to play with it, go to Target.
Target is using this.
They have this apparently ready for you to demonstrate.
But this is how I would get around this,
not that I'm giving advice to anybody.
You don't want to lift the cart up with all the stuff inside it.
That would be hard, and plus it won't unlock even after you lift it up and put it down.
But if you lift it up when it's empty
and put, say, a helper cart on the outside perimeter,
and then you get your shoplifting cart,
you go up to the perimeter, the wheels freeze up,
then you transfer everything from that cart to the other one that's waiting,
like the getaway cart,
and then you run away down the highway,
whatever it is you do with the stuff.
No, I think the issue is people taking the carts out of the perimeter.
Oh, is that all?
Yeah, because people, depending on the area,
they just kind of walk home with the shopping carts full of their groceries
after they've paid for it legitimately.
But the store, they lose their shopping carts,
and those things are really expensive.
Yeah, go ahead, Bernie.
Is this inside the store building,
or is this around the perimeter of the parking lot?
No, this is around the perimeter of a parking lot.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, this is in the parking lot.
The parking lot's full, and you park next door.
You're not supposed to do that,
because that not only is bad for the shopping cart,
that hurts the merchant next door who thinks he's getting a customer
and then sees you walk away.
I guess I just don't understand car culture.
I guess you just don't think of what the merchants feel like when you do that.
I guess.
But there's all sorts of things you can do.
I'm sure someone can get their hands on that wireless device
and figure out how to unlock carts everywhere.
Or a manual.
Yes.
Interestingly, if you could figure out what the RFID signal is
that jams the wheels and build a portable device
and sort of walk around inside of the Target store
and jam everybody's shopping cart,
that would be interesting, too.
Oh, my goodness.
You could definitely do that.
It's definitely possible.
Okay.
That would be chaos.
That's new project.
Okay, we're going to learn about this.
That would be interesting to watch.
Target, eh?
We have a new Target.
All right.
If this happens, though, don't blame us because anybody can do this.
I'm certain of that.
A little social engineering and contacting the right people,
I'm sure we can get our hands on the frequencies and the codes
and all that business.
Okay, let's read a couple more pieces of e-mail,
then let's take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
And, of course, if you want to send us e-mail or snail mail,
well, here's an announcement to help you with that.
Hello.
This is the SMS text delivery system from BT.
Message from 07.
To listen to the message, press 1.
To save it, press off the hook.
Air of WBRI.
New York.
New York.
10005.
Thank you.
But you left out the address, which is 120 Wall Street.
So 10th floor.
So don't forget that.
I really like the fanfare at the beginning.
Yeah, that's nice.
That's a British thing.
Okay.
We had a lot of feedback on 20 questions.
It's 20q.net, right?
Okay.
Yeah, we were playing with that and having a guess what we were thinking of.
And people wrote in to correct us saying that it was not using a search tree.
It was actually using a neural net.
It's even on the site banner.
That's from Stephen.
Does anybody here want to explain a neural net to our listeners?
Nobody?
Bernie?
I can't explain a neural net,
but I want to know who brought in the fetish to the studio tonight.
No, we were bringing that to the 2600 meeting.
And let's try not to remind people of that, Bernie.
Okay, sorry.
We decided to answer questions randomly and see what we came up with,
and that's what we got.
Okay, here's another correction to something that we were talking about yesterday
concerning radio frequencies.
Here's the explanation why people occasionally pick up airline communications
when listening to WBAI or other FM stations.
It is not harmonics, as somebody mentioned in your last program,
but the so-called image frequencies.
Most FM radios use a super heterodyne circuit
where a local oscillator in the radio operates on a frequency 10.8 MHz higher
than the received frequency, 10.8 MHz.
Thus, for WBAI at 99.5 MHz, the oscillator runs at 99.5 plus 10.8,
which is 110.3 MHz.
Airline communications use 115 to 135 MHz.
When an airline communicates with a tower at 121 MHz,
which is close to Newark departure frequencies,
then the radio will subtract the oscillator frequency of 110.3 from 121.1
and will give the same 10.8 MHz intermediate frequency,
which will mask WBAI.
There is, of course, some filtering in the radio
so that the image frequency has to be quite strong to overpower the regular frequency.
Thank you, Cass, for sending in that marvelous explanation.
That's one of the reasons why BAI listeners are so valuable,
because they always provide us with very specific information.
But, wow, is my reading correctly that our frequency just happens to be
in a very unfortunate spot where we happen to collide with this?
It's kind of a funny coincidence that, yes, I checked the tower frequencies
and everything is correct, and it's actually kind of funny that this is the case.
But good receivers should have filtering that's capable of blocking that stuff out.
Unless you're within a couple of feet of the transmitter.
It depends on a lot of things. It depends on the power level and everything else.
But good receivers do have decent rejection to filter out the image frequency,
because it does work both ways.
212.209.2900 is our phone number.
Give us a call. We'll take phone calls in just a couple of minutes.
Here's another piece of email.
Dear OffTheHook, I was recently in Dublin airport
and logged on to one of the coin-operated Internet terminals to send some email.
I logged into my mail and typed away.
I suddenly discovered that when I typed the F word,
it appeared as four little dots.
Clearly, they had some kind of software which transliterates words into valorizations.
I hope I'm pronouncing that right.
I just thought you'd be interested from Jason.
And, yes, that is very interesting.
And I wonder, who exactly are they protecting here?
You're typing the word, and you can't see the word that you typed.
What is the possible rationale behind that?
They're protecting us from people who text message us with these obscene words.
But you can't even type it yourself.
Anytime anybody types this, it just really is bizarre.
What happens if you, like, type the first letter and then, like, arrow away
and then type the rest of the letters or something?
Is it that smart or how does it work?
How smart do you want it to be?
I don't know.
Maybe the mere inference is enough now.
Okay.
Let's see what else.
I came across this website a few years ago.
I listened to Off the Hook recently.
I was reminded of this site and thought I would pass it along to your listeners.
The site is called Sprint IP Relay, and the URL is www.sprintip.com.
With this service, you choose your language, either English, Spanish, or French,
and you type the number you want to call.
An operator will call the number and tell the recipient that this is a text-to-speech relay courtesy of Sprint.
You can then type text in your web browser,
and the operator will relay the message over the phone
and type the recipient's response back to you.
Bernie, what do you think?
Do you think that's a substitute for what you were trying to do before?
It might work, but I haven't tried it.
Okay.
Who is that service for?
Is that for deaf people?
Oh, this is the TDD thing.
Yeah, that'll work, but it's really nothing like what we've been talking about.
This is a system designed specifically to bridge between people who can hear
and people who are hearing-impaired.
For instance, I could call you, Emmanuel,
and I could call into you with a TDD service into one of these relay services,
or better yet, this is a better analogy, if you're hearing-impaired,
I could call into the system and talk to a relay operator
who would then type her message out,
which could then be displayed on your TDD, telecommunication device for the deaf,
and then you could type your message back,
and then the relay operator would read the message back to me.
But what's interesting is these relay operators are required by federal law
to pass the messages on verbatim.
So you could have some really interesting, hot, steamy conversations
or planning all kinds of schemes or whatever,
and they've got to type it, and they've got to say it.
Interesting.
Well, I guess they won't give you four little dots if you say certain words,
but if you are plotting and scheming something,
I imagine they're required to report you, right?
Oh, yeah, but they've got to pass it on.
Wow, okay.
Very interesting, very interesting stuff here.
Okay, let's...
I don't have very many phone calls.
We have a lot of open lines.
I wonder if the SMS to landlines are clogging it up somehow
and preventing calls from getting through.
I don't know.
I don't want to subscribe to conspiracy theories quite like that.
I hope the next shows don't get them.
Do they have retries?
They're going to be sent forever, yeah, until somebody does something,
I think for 30 days.
I don't know.
All right, we learned a lot.
We'll probably get some next week too.
Okay, here's something that I think is really kind of cool.
This is our final message from this little device.
Hello, this is the SMS text delivery system from BT.
Message from 07.
To listen to the message, press 1.
To save it, press 2.
It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.
Winston Smith his chin knuttled into his breast.
To escape, the vile wind slipped quickly through.
Message sent today at 11.10 p.m.
Oh, yes, and, of course, for those who don't know,
those are the opening words to 1984 read by a computer.
Could you get any better than that?
Okay, 212.209.2900.
Let's see who's out there.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, boy, here we go already.
Here's the problem, folks.
We have phone lines that when they ring, they move.
Okay, so they ring three times,
and they move to line 2, then they move to line 3.
And if you don't get there, and to top everything else off,
when they stop ringing, it doesn't mean that the light stops flashing.
The light continues to flash after the phone moves to the other line.
So when you press a button, you might get something that's been vacated.
It's a silly system.
I don't know why we have it set up this way.
That's my two cents.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up.
Yes, go ahead.
Yes, I'd like to ask about the virus you mentioned last week
that makes 1,000 windows pop up on your screen, on the screen of your computer.
Did we do that?
I don't think that was us.
I think you're confusing us with a personal computer show, which follows us.
No, no, no.
Someone mentioned it briefly.
Okay.
And I think what you said was that, I think it was you,
you said you never saw that before, and I never saw it.
Oh, yes, yes, okay.
Until yesterday when I tried to download Loose Change.
Oh, my God.
So you're saying if you try to download Loose Change,
you'll get all this malware on your machine that will open up 1,000 windows?
That's exactly what happened.
Now, the only question is, who's part of that conspiracy?
I don't know, but I downloaded it at the WMV file,
and as soon as I did that, I knew something was wrong.
My machine started to thrash, you know.
Thrash about?
Well, well, I knew something was up.
Okay.
Oh, okay, and please can you go over that I lost my start menu.
Oh, dear.
So I guess I'm going to have to reset the date on my computer in order for the,
in order for the, what do you call it, semantic or whatever to tell me how to get out of it.
Yeah, I see.
Not having happened to me, I don't know the exact procedure for that.
I know the personal computers people can help you with this for sure,
but can you tell us where you downloaded this from so other people don't make the same mistake?
I went to Loose Change.
I typed in Loose Change, right, and then a bunch of different sites pop up,
like where you can download, like where you can download an excerpt from it,
and that's what got me.
Do you know which one you downloaded from?
No, not right offhand.
Maybe just, I don't know.
Okay.
I don't know.
I can't tell you.
Just be cautious.
Okay, well, I guess.
I was thinking my antivirus software should have protected me.
What kind of a clip were you downloading?
Do you know what format it was in?
It was WMV.
Okay, so Windows Media.
Right, okay.
All right.
Well, we'll look into this and see if there's any particular safety tips we can pass you away,
but I guess the best bit of advice is to know the sites that you're downloading things from
that are executable files or even video files.
I suppose all sorts of things can happen.
It's not good, and I wonder if that means that the 9-11 conspiracy people are doing this,
or is it a conspiracy to stop them from doing what they do?
Clearly, if you watch this.
You're so afraid to offend anybody by what you're going to say, aren't you?
Well, no.
I'm just saying that if you open these windows, you'll see secret explosions and all kinds of things.
In the thousand windows.
Well, were the thousand windows all different conspiracies, maybe?
Maybe this guy was just overwhelmed by all the conspiracies that came at him at once.
That could have happened, too.
Anything could happen.
All right.
212-209-2900.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up.
All right.
You've got to speak up, people.
That's the rule here.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Oh, hi.
Well, I've got a strange sort of problem.
I don't know if you can help me.
You're in the right place for strange kind of problems.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I go on the Internet, and I type in a radio station that I like to listen to some shows on.
You can say our call letters, WBAL.
No.
We know.
I do.
I get BAL.
I'm fine.
No, but sometimes I go.
I'm an Oriole fan, and I go to WBAL and listen to a sports show.
Okay.
And up until about a week ago, it was fine.
Now, for some reason, suddenly, if I type WBAL.com in the address bar, it just makes me lose my Internet connection.
Makes you lose your Internet connection.
Yeah.
Well, you're typing this in what bar?
In the address bar of the browser page.
Well, I don't see how it could be making you lose your Internet connection.
I mean, I type in www.wbal.com, and the page disappears, and I just have my blue screen with all the icons on it.
Any other website I go to, it's fine.
What browser are you using?
Internet Explorer.
Okay.
Well, try using Firefox or something else just to see if the same thing happens.
I would bet that it won't and that maybe your problem is somehow connected with Explorer.
I don't know.
It seems like what's happening is it's crashing your browser.
I mean, this isn't really a technical support show, right?
Yeah.
Somehow, this is another thing to ask the personal computer people, but I think the best advice we can give you right now is try a different browser.
Okay.
All right?
All right.
Thanks.
That's a great suggestion.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
Good luck.
So I think he's losing his browser, like you say, but not necessarily his connection.
The browser closes, and it seems like the connection is gone, or maybe it does close the connection.
I don't know.
Okay.
He's taking another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Same thing.
See?
It's down here now.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
I'm chasing a phone call.
I'm going to go up here instead.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hey, how are you doing?
Okay.
I was wondering how come you guys don't do shows on, like, well, I can't say how come
you don't do shows because I don't listen to the show consistently, but more on hacking
energy.
I know, you know, there's ethical hacking and everything, and, you know, with the changes
that, you know, like hackers and other people do with technology to advance the way we do
our telephones, I was wondering how come, you know, we don't do the same thing with
energy.
How do you think we should be hacking energy?
By giving, you know, like giving the people who do work with energy more of a platform
to speak on your show to talk about some of the new inventions that are happening.
And, you know, because I've been calling, like, the energy companies to find out, you
know, about, like, green energy.
They charge more for the green energy than they do for the traditional coal and gas energy,
which makes no sense because the green energy is, you know, used as, you know, it's gathered
using wind farms and, you know, and hydro, yeah, hydroelectricity from the rivers and
stuff.
So, you know, I mean, we're trying to get off of this gas dependency in the country
or, you know, fossil fuel dependency.
Then how come, you know, these sorts of things aren't being promoted?
And, you know, if you call the energy companies, they'll tell you that it costs more to use
green energy, you know, which makes no sense.
I think the issue is probably that it costs more to produce energy using those means,
like the equipment and everything costs more.
It's all a big scam.
One in which, by the way, I participate, so, you know, other people might want to too.
But it's really, it's totally arbitrary.
They claim that it costs exactly one cent per kilowatt hour more to produce green energy
than, I don't know, brown energy or whatever you want to call it.
And it's, it may or may not help.
I think it does help the environment if more people buy it.
But the pricing is a total scam as far as I can tell.
Yeah, it definitely would help too, you know, as far as like our supply.
Like if we didn't have to buy so much, you know, I mean, that's one thing.
You know, and there's other, that's just for like home energy.
There's so many other, it seems like for every piece of, you know, renewable energy,
they want to charge more.
And it doesn't make any sense.
I'm going to hang up.
I'm going to let you guys get to the next call.
But I just wanted to say I think you guys should, you know,
give more people who create those sorts of energy and stuff like that more of a platform.
Because, you know, like in technology we've seen so many changes, you know,
and it could be the same thing for energy.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Well, they're out there and we're here.
And I think we just approached the subject a bit.
So I'm definitely down for talking about it more.
I think also there are programs on this station that deal with energy issues as well.
Unfortunately, I don't have a schedule.
There should be a schedule in this room.
There's the Ecologic Program on some Tuesday mornings.
Is it Tuesday mornings?
Okay.
I think it's every other Tuesday.
Yeah.
And Exploration Minute, Shoukaku talks about these issues occasionally as well.
It's on Wednesday afternoons, is it, or is it Tuesday afternoons?
We need that schedule in here.
We really do.
212-209-2900.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Customer 34774.
Okay.
I don't know if – no, this is not – enough with the messages already.
Bernie, I don't think that was your number, right?
What number did you give?
The 215 number?
Mine starts with 215.
Okay.
Are you able to set the number?
No.
You're not.
Okay.
So it has to be your number.
Yeah.
All right.
So if we hear one beginning with 215, we'll know it's you.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hi.
How are you doing?
Yes.
I was just talking about IF frequencies before of radio receivers.
Yes.
I was wondering if you guys ever heard of – it was actually a marketing company that
was planning on transmitting around that frequency to take over any car stereo, so it wouldn't
matter what frequency they were tuned to.
It's an interesting idea, and I was actually thinking about playing with this a little
bit, but I never got the chance to.
But yeah, you're talking about actually transmitting on 10.8 megahertz, which is the
IF frequency of most FM receivers, commercial FM receivers that you can buy, and it theoretically
should work because a lot of – as we've seen with the reports coming in from receiving
airline transmissions and stuff like that, they don't have very good filtering, and
I would imagine that if you transmitted at a high enough power level on 10.8 megahertz
that you would actually be able to do that.
But if I ever get any concrete evidence that it actually works in reality, then I'll
definitely let you know, but theoretically it should work.
I have heard about it in talking billboards, but I've never talked to someone that has
actually had their radio taken over.
So it's pretty interesting.
I'd like to pursue this for sure.
Now, if this did work, I mean broadcast at 10.8 megahertz, theoretically, you're saying
every radio, no matter what they're tuned to, would hear us?
Yeah.
For what kind of range?
As much of a range as we could – if we could say get up on top of the Empire State Building,
I'm not saying we could, but if we could, and we just put up a little transmitter there
to broadcast at 10.8 megahertz, are you saying every single FM radio would have us?
It depends on the sensitivity of the receiver, how well they're filtered, a lot of factors,
and antennas at 10.8 megahertz are a lot more difficult to make in a smaller space.
We wouldn't really be able to do it from a place like the Empire State Building.
If, say, the government or perhaps one of the rebel groups that's currently organizing
wanted to broadcast a message to the entire populace, would this be an effective way to do it?
It might work.
What do you think, Bernie?
I think we should try it, although it is illegal because –
Not if you're the government, it's not.
Well, it's true.
It can transmit any frequency they want under federal law.
We could test it within part 15 specs.
That's right.
What does that little phrase you just said mean?
We can test it within limits that are actually legal where it won't be affecting any significant amount of people.
Okay, so like in this room maybe?
Yeah.
All right.
Maybe not this room, but a room.
Interesting.
Okay.
Well, that's something to think about.
I'm sure we'll get letters about that too.
OTH at 2600.com, please.
Okay, we have time for maybe one more.
Let's make it a good one.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, thank you.
I just got a couple of comments to make about some of the subjects that you've touched on.
Okay, make it quick.
Great.
So when I sold a car on cars.com, the winning bidder or purchaser turned out to be a Nigerian scammer.
Now, I say Nigerian scammer, I think many of you are familiar with them.
I'm not making a racist statement here.
They're groups of people in Nigeria that find victims through different means.
They found this person in Massachusetts through the web.
They bid on a car.
And then what they tried to do was say, well, we're going to send you a check for $15,000 for this $5,000 car.
Wow.
So they sent them a bogus check from a bank in Austin.
And what they continued to do was tell them, look, you need to send us the money.
You need to send us the money.
But they were communicating through these relay services.
So I was over his house a couple of times.
I was helping him investigate this thing and contact the FBI for him.
And a couple of times he got these calls.
And it was a person that said, you know, had a little bit of an accent and sounded like maybe they were from Virginia.
Another time they sounded like maybe they were from Jamaica.
And they'd say, please send the money now.
It was a relay.
When I did the search, it turned out to be the relay service.
It was like Verizon.
Another time it was Sprint.
And I did a little research, spoke to some folks at Verizon and Sprint.
They said there's nothing we can do about it.
Just call the FBI.
They didn't care.
Fascinating.
Bernie, don't they identify themselves as relay services?
I thought they did.
If they do, they just say it very quickly.
And you don't really know what they're saying.
They'll say this is a relay call.
Please send the money now.
All right.
Well, we're going to have to leave it at that.
Please send the money now.
Guys, you've got to keep your wits about you and watch out for this kind of thing.
And we'll try to give you details when we learn more about them.
That's it for our show this week.
We'll be back again next week for Off the Hook, Emmanuel Goldstein.
Have yourselves a good night.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show.
Good night.
My, my, the time to fly
When it's in another pair of hands
And a loser I will be
For I've never been a winner in my life
I got used to stress and pain
I used the soccer rules
Pity for the self
Oh, it's the animal in me
But I'd rather be a pegaman on the shelf
Don't be stunned for long
It's just a pileup
It's the rain before the snow
On a better day
I'll take you by the hand
And I'll walk you through the door
Don't be stunned for long
It's just a pileup
It's the rain before the snow
Don't you let my leather get you down
Don't you, don't you, don't you, don't you
Don't you
Don't you
My, my, the time to fly
When it's in another pair of hands
And a loser I will be
For I've never been a sinner
La-di-da
Don't be stunned for long
It's just a pileup
It's the rain before the snow
Don't you let my leather get you down
Don't you, don't you, don't you, don't you
Don't you
Woo!
Don't you
Don't you
Don't you
It's just a pileup
It's the rain before the snow
Don't you let my leather get you down
Down, down, down, down
Don't you, don't you, don't you, don't you
Don't you let my leather get you down
Down, down, down, down
Don't you, don't you, don't you, don't you
Don't you
Don't you
B.A.I. New York 99.5 FM and it is eight o'clock exactly.