Oh my god, it's 7 o'clock, you're listening to WBAI New York, it's time once again 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, bundledly bombed for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, bundledly bombed.
Oh my god, it's 7 o'clock, you're listening to WBAI New York, it's time once again 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, bundledly bombed for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, bundledly bombed.
Oh my god, it's 7 o'clock, you're listening to WBAI New York, it's time once again 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, bundledly bombed.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
here speeding in a yellow limousine I believe and yes Bernie S joins us on the
phone from Philadelphia. Greetings from Philadelphia the home of flash mobs. Yes
indeed. Well actually just a special aside between those of us in the room
and those of us listening on the radio right now, Redhack is running late. He's
been running late consistently and the problem is I'm not going to be here next
week and he's filling in. So bear with me here I'm basically going to announce
when he comes in that the show is has been moved to 6 p.m. next week. I'm doing
that for our sake that way he'll be here on time actually he'll be here a little
bit late he'll be out here at 6 15 or something and that way as long as
everybody keeps this to themselves the listeners and people in the room that
actually the show is staying where it is at 7 p.m. I'm just going to say that when
he comes in the room that the show is moving to 6 p.m. just let's all keep a
straight face and yeah all right. What choice do I have? I think the secret's safe.
All right good. Why because nobody's listening? Well I think we just have a
very trustworthy audience. Yeah we do we actually do a very dedicated audience as
well and one that we've we valued over the years so I want to thank you for
bearing with us. Okay all kinds of fun things happening. Bernie, Natacon is
coming up this weekend right? Yes I'm hitting the road tomorrow picking up
our friend Ed Piskor in Pittsburgh. We're going to stop by the Hacker Space in
Pittsburgh called the Hacked Pittsburgh and then we're gonna head to Cleveland
for Natacon. Okay well that sounds that sounds great so actually leaving on
Thursday. Well I think it begins on Thursday doesn't it? Well Thursday late
Thursday night so we'll get there in time. Okay I'm heading out to Eastern
Europe next next week for the next three shows. I'll be somewhere in the
former Yugoslavia so any listeners out there please write oth at 2600.com
maybe we can meet up see your Hacker Spaces or just your cities or parts of
the various republics there. I found out something interesting that I'm heading
in via Germany and Austria and hitting every single one of the republics
including Kosovo and also Albania and Italy. This trip I'm hitting more
countries than I hit when I went all around the world. Think about that if you
add up the countries I went England, Holland, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia,
Mongolia, China, Japan, United States again and here all the former Yugoslav
republics and those other countries I mentioned that's it's more. Isn't that
amazing? So you're gonna visit FIROM. Yeah okay as long as you brought that up yes
we're gonna get to the bottom of that controversy. The country being the former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and apparently if you call it Macedonia
people in Greece get very angry at you because they have a Macedonia too that's
older or has more rights to the name something like that so they insist on
you calling it FIROM former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia but you know to me
it seems like you're still calling it Macedonia that way you know it's the
former Yugoslav Republic of what you know Macedonia so it just seems like
they should come up with a different name for it now I'll try to get to the
bottom of that. Well just for politeness's sake call it whatever the people around
you are calling it. Oh you know that's the other thing if you go to to Google
Maps and this is a lot of fun if you go to Google Maps and you look at a map of
the world you'll see that they actually spell out the country not only in the
word that it's spelled out but in the alphabet that it's spelled out so Russia
will be written in Cyrillic but countries like Spain is Espania.
Why don't we do that? Why don't we call the countries the names
that their own people call them? We can say that word. They call us Estados Unidos.
Well yeah if we all agreed to just call ourselves what what the country calls
itself officially I think we'd get along a lot better. Yeah and I'd like to get a
map that has all the countries written in the in the alphabet and language of
the people there. What about countries where there's a brutal argument over
what language to use or over what script to write? You could put a big slash
through that or something. I don't know. There's all kinds of possibilities but
it's got to be better than the system we have now. India's got 12 languages. It
would take up the whole country just to write the name. Yeah okay so anyway that's
what's going to be happening next week and actually when I get back in in mid
May I'm heading straight to Dayton, right Bernie? Yes. You're going straight to
Dayton from Kosovo? Well it's kind of funny because the Dayton Accord was
signed pretty much so everybody there is going to know where Dayton is. I don't
know if people here are going to know where Dayton is but when I go over to former Yugoslavia
and mention Dayton I'll either you know have a boulder hurled at me or a firm
handshake depending on how they thought that worked out. But yes it wasn't
planned that way. Just a big coincidence. Very interesting. Yeah you know I want to
talk about this last week. We had Julian Assange on here last week from Wikileaks
and that was a quite interesting show. Is this the first time that we and Stephen
Colbert have ever had the same guest? Well I was going to mention that. We scooped Colbert
Rapport yet again with another one of our guests and yeah it's he was on
what two days ago? Yesterday? Something like that. Yeah the other day I think.
Okay and yeah so tune to Off the Hook. You'll get the
interesting people before the mainstream finds them. I got to say it was very
interesting watching that Colbert interview because even Colbert like in
character was sort of dropping the shtick and actually doing something
like a straight interview. His Colbert character. What do you mean? Well what do you mean
character? You know like you know like how I'm doing my character right now and
I'm really nothing like this in real life. Oh yeah yeah that's an
understatement. It really is. Boy when that microphones off look out. Okay so we
did that last week and and it's fascinating finding out all that and we
hope to have him back. We hope to have him at Hope and other things like that.
But we didn't get to talk about what we did for April Fool's which is something
I really wanted to focus on because you know we sort of went to a bit
of trouble and we kind of dropped a hint about it. It was the Thursday after this
show previous to last week's. So what happened was if you went to the main
2600 page on April 1st you had this big QR code taking up the entire page.
Anybody know what a QR code is? Mike yes go ahead. It's a big block of black and
white little blocks that is a two-dimensional barcode. Well that's one
way of saying it yeah I guess. Yeah a barcode. One of those modern looking bar
codes I guess. Where do you see it in other places? You see it on UPS and FedEx
packages things like that. True yes you do. You don't see it on products so much.
Not yet. Sometimes some manufacturers use them if they want to store
more individual data about the lot or something but they don't use it at the
supermarket. Now you you can store I think up to 200 characters on these
things which is a lot. I mean for considering it's just as you say this
black and white image. Although that was the one you had was like really big. Well
we sized it to fit. That's a printing tool. It wouldn't fit on my screen. I'm not
gonna comment on your screen but basically how would you read something
like that if you come across a QR code how would you possibly translate that?
Because people were banging their heads against walls trying to figure out what
what our site was up to because that's all it had on it when you went to 2600.com
that day. A lot of mobile phones a lot of smartphones as they're called
have applications you can download that read them. You can also buy a dedicated
scanner but that would be a bit much just to scan one code. They've had these
in Japan for years. In fact there's graffiti and stickers that people put up
on walls and you take pictures with your cell phone over there and you get the
message whatever the message is. But any event if you if you figured out how to
do that you got a message saying congratulations you've decoded the
message. If you feel you're capable of something greater send us an email at
phase1 at 2600.com along with a unique word in the body of your message that
we'll ask you for later if you make it that far. And we put this up in the
evening right after the show actually on March 31st and we started
getting emails almost immediately from people sending us unique words to phase
1. Now what happened when you mailed phase 1 there was an autoresponder that
mailed you back and said congratulations you have successfully sent and received
an email from us. It may sound as if we're mocking you but we're really not.
This actually could be a very significant moment in your life if in
fact you turn out to be a candidate. We suggest you keep this communication in a
safe place you very well could be needing it.
Oh yes. Now go and find the secret message in the hope page. Now there's a
little clue there in that last sentence. It wasn't go and find the secret message
on the hope page it was go and find the secret message in the hope page. And Mike
what would you do in a situation like that? I would visit hope.net. Yeah okay
good. And then then I would inspect it carefully and if I didn't see anything
I'd open up the the source. That's yes you get inside the page by looking at
the source. On your browser you'll see a little thing that says view source and
then you look in the source and you will find the message contained in there
someplace. Congratulations you have just discovered the secret message. Three
congratulations already. Please call plus 1 8 0 1 4 3 6 7 4 4 2. Do not speak,
listen. Can we call it now will it still work? You know what yeah let's do that.
How do we get a line here? Done this a million times. Do we have a dial tone? Okay I'm gonna call
that number. What did I say it was? 4 3 6 7 4 4 2. And I need the secret code which I
think I remember. Let's see what happens.
The phone number you have just called is actually spelling the name of a place.
Spell the capital of the name of that place backwards and add a com. See you
there. Oh how mysterious and strange isn't it? What could that person mean?
It's it's it's the name of a place. What do you mean that person? It's the name of that it's a
name of a place and now we're recording. We have the side benefit of this is that
we have hundreds of recordings of people who have said God knows what. We haven't
listened to them yet and I don't know how long you can talk for. I guess we'll
find out. But yes it's it's the name of the place and I don't know how you would
spell out the name of the place on the telephone dial. Do you have a method of
doing that? Has anybody ever tried that? Sending messages with with with phone
characters? Two is ABC three is DEF. Bernie you've done it? Yeah I've done it.
There's systems that allow you to send messages that way but it's really
awkward. It is. You know back before the days of cell phones and and right at the
beginning of the Bieber era I used to send text messages to people in code. For
instance hi there would be four four because H and I are both on the four key
and then there would be eight four three seven three and then you'd have to figure
it out. You'd have to think in your head what letters go with the touchtone and
and spell out the the message that way and then respond to it in kind. So that
was that was a bit of fun. So people had to do that here and after tearing their
heads apart for a little while eventually a bunch of people got it and
they realized that the phone number spelled out Georgia. It's pretty cool
that we got one 801 Georgia don't you think? Yeah. Is it in Georgia?
What do you mean is it in Georgia? No I don't know where it is it's just a it's a Google
voice number. Well it's 801 it's gotta be somewhere. It could be orbiting the moon for all I
know that nobody knows how those people work but it goes someplace and that
message gets recorded and yes one 801 Georgia. So according to the message that
that person told us it's the name of a place indeed we must spell the name of
the capital backwards. How do you spell it backwards? First of all do we know the
name of the capital? No. No nobody knows? What? You talking about Georgia the
country or Georgia the state? Oh you raise an interesting point Bernie there
are two Georgias. There's a Georgia the state and there's a Georgia the country.
How many places like that exist? Wow the fact that we got that phone number is
simply stupendous. So yeah a lot of false leads. You know in retrospect we didn't
get the website Atlanta.com backwards which was available. We should have done
that. It would have been a nice little false lead but no in fact it is the
country and who knows the capital of Georgia the country anybody? Tbilisi or
something? Tbilisi I think is what you're trying to say. Yes and even if you
know that spelling it is very difficult but it's spelled T-B-I-L-I-S-I. So of
course backwards that's I-S-I-L-I-B-T dot com. So if you went to that website you
basically. Oh sorry Google Voice just said goodbye to us. Okay thank you. I
guess we have a nice long message there. You went to I-S-I-L-I-B-T dot com. You
basically got the entire United Nations Declaration of Human Rights displayed in
front of you with the preface in front of it read every word and if you read
every word eventually you get to the section of it that said article 26 and
article 26 item 4 stated find the secret message in this text and follow
it to the letter. What does the real declaration say in that in that place?
There is no section 4 in article 26. There's only 3. What are 1, 2, and 3?
I don't have it in front of me. It's a long text. This is our way of getting
people to read that document because nobody ever reads that document and it's
it's many pages long but basically there was a hint in that little blurb there
follow it to the letter. Well basically if you look at the letters carefully the
capitalized letters spell a message and those capitalized letters spell the
following message. These are very noble words but they're utterly irrelevant to
your task today. What you need to be doing is following the instructions
spoken in the tweets of Ever Closer. So then you had to go to twitter.com
slash ever closer and when you did that you you got this line-by-line series of
narratives that made it seem like something was was being told to you line
number one you're doing quite well line number two just be very careful
continuing you don't want to make a mistake at this point follow the
instructions and you'll be fine but don't go any further if you don't think
you're a candidate the results could be dot dot dot unpleasant and this is where
we started to learn things about some social networking sites we had three
dots after that and then the words in brackets think it over we want to put
three dots after that again but you can't do that on face on on Twitter they
won't let you say the same thing twice what you can't say the same thing said
you already said that you can't say that again maybe it's within a certain amount
of time I don't know but we had to do two dots after that then think some more
in brackets and then one dot and then after that we said now if you're sure
dot dot dot proceed send an email to phase two use a different word this time
hold on to your two words they will matter await our instructions and so if
you sent mail to phase two at 2600 comm guess what you got another auto response
saying congratulations you have successfully made it to the second phase
of the operation as long as you continue to follow instructions and complete the
mental exams we administer along the way your path to candidacy will proceed
smoothly do not stray remember you are being watched oh yes and be sure to hold
on to this communication as well you almost certainly will need it could the
answer be at gmail.com it can't hurt to explore now a couple of notes here for
one thing we did something very cruel at this stage we told people it can't hurt
to explore but actually it could hurt very severely to explore we basically
told people to email phase 1 at 2600 and phase 2 at 2600 so few people took it
upon themselves to email phase 3 at 2600.com and if you did that you got a
response saying congratulations by thinking outside of the box and emailing
this address before we even mentioned it you have shown the ability to anticipate
a situation before it develops this is indeed a much sought-after skill useful
in a wide variety of applications but not here all we asked you to do is
follow the instructions by emailing us here you have shown that you cannot do
that and that you're the kind of person who will be a royal pain in the ass by
acting like an individual all the time clearly not what we want in a candidate
you have been eliminated yeah well you know it had to be done and and so many
people did that and they were really upset and I'm sorry about that I was a
cruel trick on our on our part certainly but had to be done that will teach
people to count but the other clue the other clue in that in that phase 2
message could the answer be at gmail.com any any theories as to what what that
might actually be no none a webmail provider well yeah it that's what it is
but but no not not not specifically that hang on typing in a URL here's but
Bernie no no theories I I would have been lost at this point I have to hand
yeah well it's funny that you should mention loss because all the references
to candidates of course comes from that from that program but we were just
having we're just having a bit of fun with with that whole thing it was it
really was but yeah well we we basically did was set up a gmail account through
our amazing skills that was the account could the answer be at gmail.com so if
you email could the answer be at gmail.com you got a response saying well
aren't you clever actually that's what the title of it was that took a bit of
intelligence to figure out this email address good for you now if you could
just tell tiny URL the last name of Mauritania's prime minister the real
fun can begin and that's actually what I'm trying to type in right now now
while I'm doing that of course one of you tell us what the real last name of
the prime minister of Mauritania is I have no idea what the first name even of
the first name we only need the last name I thought you were the prime
minister of Mauritania I don't know clearly not ex-prime minister maybe but
you know he's not even in Mauritania right now okay I have I have typed in
I've told tiny URL the last name of the prime minister which of course is Moulay
old Mohammed lagdaf of course so if you spell simply spell out lagdaf on on to
tiny URL l-a-g-h-d-a-f well then you got transferred to YouTube and what I'm
going to try to do now and I say try because this is the BAI computer here
I'm going to play you the YouTube video that shows up obviously you can't see
the video but you can hear it so let's let's take a listen
I will set on our foot software is the one that's not gonna be the worst of
them that's not you oh she was not you said see me more quickly while in the
shit where you freaking at you man hasn't so oh yeah okay so that did you
just say that Paul was dead no not in so many words but if you are looking at at
YouTube and watching that you saw archive footage of North Korea from when
I went over there it basically a film of K song the city K song where I was
basically leaning out of a bus taking video we played it backwards of course
you could see the the cops standing in the middle of the street they have
traffic cops they are male traffic cops Pyongyang has female traffic cops K song
has male traffic cops and it was just basically distorted to make it look like
an old black-and-white film and and the message played backwards was a voice
synthesis automated computerized voices that basically said welcome your destiny
is at last upon you oh wait a minute hold on this is the wrong thing
hang on yeah this is not it I don't think I have the text I don't think I
have the text of basically we told people to do was was basically go to
Facebook and create an account if you didn't already have an account and apply
for a membership to a group known as successful candidates of the next hope
and people who did that basically were put through a verification system where
we look for the words in the email and we made sure that they didn't do things
too fast and we made sure they never emailed phase three and that they went
through all the steps properly and then we sent them the message saying welcome
your destiny is at last upon you while you had time to go a series of tests to
confirm that you were a viable candidate the truth is that you have
always been a part of this group deep inside you've known this for a long time
the others you will find here are the people that you have always been meant
to join forces with as a result you will remain a part of this group for the rest
of your days on this planet the group transcends all other activities this is
now your primary purpose please converse and interact here as you would with any
quote-unquote normal collection of individuals just remember that what is
discussed here and what is discussed between candidates is never to be
disclosed outside of the group we don't have to tell you the consequences of
working against the plan actually you know what I'm I'm on shallow earth or
deep water or whatever I shouldn't be reading this because this is sort of
internal right now so basically do we have the bleeping button ready to go
it's too late for that it really is but basically a number of people did did
pass muster and now they are part of a group they are part of the successful
candidates of the next hope the group is closed no more people can be allowed in
and they're conversing they're talking to each other they're planning things
out and some changes are afoot and this is how it happens by being clever by
figuring out puzzles and and winding up in the same place with the people you
are always meant to work with what do you think about that okay it was kind of
scary I think so yeah that's that's that's what we did and and that was
April Fool's how many people do you think made it any any guesses three
I'm guessing three I you know I was thinking something like that too we had
one person actually get it right around I think midnight of the first day got
that very fast other people say they worked on it all day long at work they
didn't accomplish anything that day they just basically were working on this
puzzle and no in the end we had about 30 or so yeah I was I was very surprised
very amazed we had to be careful that we didn't see any indication of people
telling people the answers but I think the 30 people that we vetted were
qualified and many thanks to them congratulations to them also I want to
thank mark s and David B and dot-ret for their work in putting this all together
because it was a challenge it sounded kind of simple you know I thought it
would be it would be fun to start with the QR code and take it from there and
then sort of encompass all the social networking sites and and do fun things
with that but it sort of got out of hand and we started learning things that
we didn't know about social networking site like for instance when you join
Facebook with a new user and you send more than I think six messages to people
your account gets suspended we didn't know that at the time so we almost got
ourselves locked out of the group so yeah that's that's the story there and
and Voltaire is here did you really take a cab Voltaire because that was the
slowest cab in the world was horse-drawn yes I took the cab to Wall
Street Wall Street New York yes all right because you messaged me must have
been 45 minutes ago from the East Village no I was parking ultimately in
the East Village but at that time I was in the West Village you told me you were
parking in the East Village but you were actually in the West Village when you
sent the message I was going to park future tense this is why he's not a
candidate you see it's also why one should never park well yeah well with
that logic to be driving around permanently yeah all right well let's
let's continue oh I should point out well you did you have the cab driver
listening to the show no oh why not they always listen to the shows all cab
drivers listened off the hook we're telling redhack when he finally gets in
here that the show is rescheduled to 6 p.m. next week that way he'll show up on
time when I'm not here and he engineers the show so just keep that between you
and the listeners don't let him know then you should tell me no why would he
be listening no you told me that at 5 p.m. so that I can tell him but you're
not engineering you can be late it's okay we can't well no it's people aren't
going to be hurt by that but redhack is late then our audience will be deprived
of his wisdom yeah but audience will be deprived of the opening theme and the
archive if someone isn't here to do all that all right mercy me we spent so much
time on on this that well we spent a lot of time on it too beforehand but
speaking of North Korea this is a fun little story that was being passed
around details of a homegrown computer operating system developed by North
Korea have emerged yes at last information about Red Star as it is
known was made public by a Russian bloggers studying in North Korea who
bought the program off the street I don't know how you can buy anything off
the street in North Korea it doesn't really work that way a further analysis
by a government institute in neighboring South Korea said the
operating system is aimed at monitoring user activity however very few North
Koreans own a computer or have internet access almost almost none actually web
content is not surprisingly heavily censored it's designed to control North
Korea's own information security a report by South Korea's Science and
Technology Police Institute said due to a few applicable programs available Red
Star will not even be easily distributed in North Korea it added the
Russian blogger identified only as Mikhail well that shouldn't be too hard
to track down could be bought in Pyongyang for around five US dollars
yeah the operating system represents the determination of North Korea to advance
its own computer technology based on its a touché self-reliance philosophy yes
they injected that into the operating system as well the Red Star operating
system uses a popular Korean folk song as a startup music and numbers years
using a calendar which starts counting from the birth of state founder Kim Il
Sung making 2010 the 99th year which means next year is a year 100 you know
if if you guys want to go to North Korea next year is going to be a blast because
the 100th is basically year 100 you couldn't go to anything in the year 100
for us but you have the opportunity to go there and literally everything in
that country is is renumbered by year based on on the birth date of Kim Il
Sung is this operating system over there is year 100 compliant I hope so
you know that's a good question there might be a hey what do they call that a
wide my 1h yeah I suppose a yh or y1h bug that's something to to consider and
to be worried about but yeah and you know I don't if you noticed on the back
of timeout was a full-page ad for the folks who who do the North Korean tours
that my friends over there that I met and hung out with and really do a great
job so yeah North Korea operating systems tours 100 it's it's pretty
incredible we'd like to give those people a plug do we note the names of
the people Koyo tours okay yes K-O-R-Y-O tours and yeah a lot of fun and in fact
I know a number of people T-Prophet Hanukkah Sasha who have gone over there
not with me but on their own and we've all met the same people and it's really
it's a fun thing to do of course you are going to North Korea so you have to
keep that in mind yes go ahead Bernie have you or any of us on the show seen
this or anyone else we know seen this North Korean computer operating system
right there a place you can download it I have not seen it and I would be rather
hesitant to give people links that might not be actually links to an operating
system who knows what they could be links to but if anybody we trust has a
copy and is able to run it we'd sure like to see it then see what happens to
you maybe and your computer yeah absolutely I wonder how it compares to
Nova the Cuban distribution of Linux that's a good question do we ever get a
copy of that you can download it from from their website now we went to Cuba
and and you spent some time inside the the computer lab yeah Nova had not been
developed at that point really but what were they using mostly mostly Windows
with some some Linux for for propaganda effect propaganda effect okay well I
mean it's interesting because right they don't pay Microsoft for Windows so it's
it's as free as Linux is for them mm-hmm this story Rob you found which is a
story that just sort of makes me smack my head hard apparently there's the
Library of Congress and this is this is not a joke the Library of Congress has
acquired the entire Twitter archive in other words finally in other words every
public tweet ever since Twitter's inception in March of 2006 will be
archived digitally at the Library of Congress now Twitter processes more than
50 million tweets every day the total must be somewhere in the billions I mean
really is this is this a priority is this something that the Library of
Congress really should even be I don't understand why they shouldn't be first
of all it probably fits on like two hard drives at 140 characters each I mean and
for better or worse this is like people are using this to communicate it's an
important record when you say public tweets when I say public tweets does
that mean my tweets or are they public well how do you define public if your
account is not locked here tweets are public really okay what if I what if I
ban certain people can I do that what if I ban the Library of Congress can't do
that now there's no robots.txt for the Library of Congress Wow what if I've
said things that are very like you know anti-Library of Congress and now they
know it doesn't mean that there's a human at the Library of Congress who is
individually reading each one how how do you find old tweet stuff I want to see
what I said a year ago I mean other than hitting more at the bottom and and the
thing keeps giving you the stupid whale every now and then is this gonna be
better actually the Library of Congress thing does not solve this problem but
recently Google has and it hasn't solved this problem for good but it solved it
for anybody that wants to use it for Google because Twitter has a right
they're open about a lot of things but their API doesn't let you search old
things more than like two weeks old but now you can do it through Google but
Google is still paying them basically and it would be better if they had like
a more open source how would I do it through Google how would I do a nice
shirt oh on the left hand side they have like an options then updates and they
just released an update to that feature like a day or two ago and that's made it
like go back until like 2006 interesting okay there are also ways to do it I've
been on Twitter for about a year now before which I was making fun of it
pretty much on a daily basis and you become a Twitter maniac how many how
many if you don't mind my asking how many tweets have you produced in that
year I think around 2,700 2,700 yes I don't know how many I've produced but
it's not anything near that we can find oh my god the level of geekdom here is
unbelievable you're using your phone to find out how many tweets I've had in the
last year it's alright I've I was getting curious about stuff I wrote
early in my Twitter presence so your early Twitter years yeah my early
Twitter you can tell the difference you can see you brought the firefly and when
he was a Twitter novice period of Twitter but but um there are lots of
apps out there that will let you back up your tweets and download a local copy to
like a CSV file or an Excel spreadsheet or anything that you like because why
because I guess if you don't want to depend on like I'm usually really not
one to depend on external systems to maintain any of my own data so like any
external blogs and things like that I tend to back them up and just want to
hold on to a copy because you never know when they'll disappear this is a great
idea for a talk at hope for somebody to to have their entire talk presented as a
series of tweets you know like like on the overhead projector you don't have
any diagrams or graphs anything like that it's all just tweets and that's how
you present the thing you cannot deviate from the script that's what I want to
see speakers at hope.net let's see who's got the guts how many do you think you've
sent oh how many of my sent with tweets in my entire life yeah whole life well
I know how long have I been on can you tell me that at least um maybe no can't
tell me that you see the one bit of information I want I'm on my phone all
right doesn't it say member since or something yeah but not on my phone not
on your phone okay I'm gonna guess maybe maybe how many do you have Rob I'm 2700
2700 I'm gonna guess maybe like two or three hundred 325 there you go see I
know myself okay that means I'm winning at Twitter how about you Mike how many
how many tweets have you had just over a thousand okay all right here's a
letter from oh yes go ahead Bernie I just want to say your story that you
brought up about library of Congress archiving Twitter there the Library of
Congress website also says quote so if you think a Library of Congress is just
books think of this the Library of Congress has been collecting materials
from the web since it began harvesting congressional and presidential campaign
websites in 2000 today we hold more than a hundred and sixty seven terabytes
of web-based information including legal blogs websites of candidates for national
office and websites of members of Congress and it goes on so they they're
archiving a lot of stuff yeah they can't seem to mind their own business that
much like who's archiving my Facebook post that's what I want to know no one
yeah it's a real partnership partner with the Library of Congress if you say
archive.org I think it's gone into the petabytes said that they're a lot larger
actually just with tweets or with everything okay good all right hopefully
some important things are being archived I mean you know I'd like to be able to
find old news stories or things that are out of print that would be kind of
useful I'm just wondering what the Library of Congress is going to do with
these tweets because one one thing about the Twitter's terms of service is that
people retain the rights to their own posts so what if some people have them
licensed restrictively or licensed under Creative Commons or something like
that how will they be reused will it be in line with all these users sort of
wishes interesting interesting times ahead yes Walter well I think I think
that the Library of Congress will do what the Internet Archive also does
which is not release stuff to the public generally unless I mean the only few
things but most of the stuff will be kept private and the stuff that is
released and that you can access like if you go to them physically is public
domain as is of government documents Bernie I was just saying if anybody
wants to get those questions answered they can go to loc.gov to visit the
Library of Congress's website okay let's take a look at some listener mail so we
had a bunch of that come in and I'll be taking phone calls two on two two zero
nine two nine hundred please don't call to ask about the t-shirts you know
they're all being sent that's that's the answer that we always give and they
wrapped you fireflies design them they're really they're really nice but
it is a bit early for the fundraiser that just ended the one before that we
are working on one thing that if you have a Cory Doctorow book coming to you
we actually we kind of messed this up we didn't get him to sign them when he was
here he's coming back in May he's gonna sign them and we're gonna send those out
in May so that's the only thing that's really been delayed significantly as a
result everything else we should be pretty much caught up to yes Walter if
you do want to talk about t-shirts feel free to tweet about it and maybe we'll
when one day when we're looking at the Library of Congress well yeah yeah go to
the Library of Congress with your grapes about that okay dear off the hook I have
been reading the mag for five years now I have recently started listening to the
off the hook podcast yeah that's what we are now we're podcast I like the program
the variety of topics discussed you know if those are you listening on on the pod
or whatever we are also a radio show we broadcast over the air from the Empire
State Building in New York City to four different states you know at ninety nine
point five FM so it's it's it's it's more than just a podcast yes but we are
also remain popular amongst groups of Wales yeah yeah it's true and and and
we're also on on DVD there are archives available people can be listening to
shows from from 20 years ago anything's possible anyway I like the program the
right of topics discussed the show elevates any common person willing to
listen to a whole new level of awareness on how advancing technologies work and
to look at everything from a different point of view the only problem with that
is that our audiences consists of uncommon people mostly that's true but
they become uncommon by listening to WBA oh yeah hats off to you guys on the
interview to the founder of WikiLeaks it is amazing how many crimes and
unjustified behavior goes unpunished because of lack of public information
which obviously not even the mainstream media has access to or if they do are
many times not willing to put themselves in the line of fire because of sponsors
or personal lack of character or many other reasons thanks a system crash from
Puerto Rico for those kind words here's a here's a letter from Mike not you Mike
different Mike I have a question that's been nagging me recently for purely
theoretical reasons in the past you folks in the show as well as speakers at
hope have talked about the ease of tracking mobile phones by authorities
you've mentioned that one has to take the battery out to prevent being tracked
however is this still the case if the phone is an airplane mode should this
not prevent any trackable transmissions can you answer Mike Bernie yes I actually
emailed Mike back and it was a very good question know the airplane mode if
people aren't familiar with it is a mode that a lot of smartphones have where you
can tell it to not transmit so that you won't be subject to I just okay I
thought I lost you I'm not subject to interfere with the avionics but a piece
of malware software spyware could be on your phone it would falsely report your
phone is in airplane mode and still spy on you so the only way to really be sure
your phone is not spying on you at any particular moment is to remove its power
source which is just battery so if you take the battery out you can be sure
that your phone is not spying on you at that moment okay depends on how how
powerful it depends on how powerful your enemies are and how much you want to
from them if you need to do this or not all right this is what makes me miss the
days when a phone was basically a box of three fancy transducers no malware no
infections yeah yeah yet to get a virus on my phone I don't intend to bugs could
actually crawl into them yeah that's true too that's true
but it's time I found when I was opening up a junction box which you know I
legitimately had to to fix something the phone company couldn't fix I found all
kinds of insects in there so how it works sometimes here's another letter do
off the hook crew this is rather interesting story actually about a year
and a half ago I wrote you out of frustration and desperation after
learning of the rather underhanded practices being used by quest and
Verizon the two big telcos in the Portland area to effectively shut out of
the local market the small ISP I work for and all the other small independent
ISP is an area to briefly recap quest has been performing quote equipment
upgrades on quote at their CEOs and neighborhood cans for their new higher
speed DSL products these upgrades generate such intense interference to
older DSL signals that seven megabit a second customers can wind up reduced to
merely 1.5 megabit a second and 1.5 megabit a second customers are often
unable to remain connected at all Verizon has been pushing their file
service which only affects individual residences but still removes any ability
of the residents to choose an internet provider as there is no option to go
back with your advice in hand from that last email exchange I approached the IT
manager at the time and urged him to put together some new company policies such
as providing form letters for customers who had been slammed or had their
service degraded among other things I encouraged the phone support text to
inform customers of their rights and asked them to write their state and
local representatives about such things as well as the State Utilities
Commission I even inquired as to whether we could drum up enough support to file
a class-action suit on behalf of the aforementioned slammed and disrupted
customers it is with great sadness that I must report that all of these efforts
were for naught the IT manager who has since cut and run actively discouraged
the creation of any such form letters or urging of customers to take action as
far as I know not a single customer did so on their own and perhaps most
disappointingly we have pulled all advertising funding for our DSL and
dial-up products with the account the accountant declaring access is dead
this is especially troubling given the recent court decision of Comcast versus
the FCC which more or less seems to have killed any any ability the latter had to
enforce so-called net neutrality at least as far as cable Internet is
concerned on a positive note we do still have several thousand access customers
and have pledged to uphold the principles of net neutrality as long as
we can continue to do so we've also been able to move the company in a slightly
different direction web hosting as opposed to just access ensuring all of
us can keep our jobs sadly it's only a matter of time before we lose the rest
of those DSL customers be it through upgrades by the telcos subsidized
pricing that we can't possibly match or some new legislation that makes it
impossible for a small a person operation to continue providing
internet access the worst part is most folks won't even realize they've lost
the ability to choose an internet provider and that is what I mourn losing
freedom of choice thanks Javier for most most enlightening letter and and rather
sad and and true I think Voltaire I might be mistaken but I think the FCC
has power to regulate even after this decision if they still are able to
regulate DSL they're just not able to regulate cable or fiber optic
connections yeah well this is all related when you make it we've had the
same issues with our DSL connection for four years and it's it's more a state
issue than an FCC issue when when the local phone company is is messing things
up quite a bit but yeah the net neutrality that that's that's a more of
a national thing and that's what the what the recent case was all about so it
gives Comcast more power yes go ahead Bernie I'm sure many of our listeners
remember the days when you could choose from a long list of local internet
service providers it was really great I mean each each service provider had its
own sort of character and and ways of doing things and the freedom of choice
people people it's really diminished greatly it's kind of sad and I don't
know if any of us have had comments about that well I just I just remember
the old days Rob you remember the old days right yeah I miss the old days we
should be saying that a lot I remember my my first you know proper internet
service provider that wasn't out of you know a disc attached to a magazine and
you know it was a little it was a little operation on Long Island and very nice
people working there and every so often we would you know I would call the
support line for some reason and after the after the problem was fixed we'd end
up just chatting about geeky stuff because there was a guy who was in town
and a nice guy yeah good luck doing that with the major phone companies we're
gonna try to take some phone calls now two one two two zero nine two nine
hundred let's see who's out there good evening you're on off the hook I was on
mind okay yeah I had a question let me turn my radio down yes please do okay
I have a question about replacing using satellite dish and taking the horn
taking the I guess the extender the microphone I'm not sure that's what you
call it the LNB the thing that sticks that points to the satellite exactly
taking that and replacing it with a link to router or some sort of no I don't
think that's what we're talking about okay I'm not a satellite expert does
anybody here know anything about this Bernie maybe yes you can you can
actually do that you can use the parabolic reflector of a like a direct
TV or dish network or some other sort of satellite dish you can use that as a
reflector for Wi-Fi you have to make sure that the antenna is properly placed
at the focal point but other people who have done this and the only downside is
is parabolas are very very tricky very specific you have to get them pointed
just right but you can get a lot of gain and gain great distance with your Wi-Fi
connection that way and there's no way to really point it so I would you could
mount it on a an old cable an old TV antenna rotor turn it that way and there
are actually commercial satellite dish antenna pointers you can buy too that's
a little more pricey but you can bring something up if you're a good hardware
hacker all right thanks thanks for that call and see who else is out there good
evening you're on off the hook
comes on the eve of a major concert in the birds nest stadium in Beijing April
17th it's a worldwide TV internet major hello I'm just trying to make you louder
because I don't think you're loud enough I've already been planning to gather
hello yeah no I'm just trying to make you louder because you're not loud
enough yeah I was saying that you speak up maybe just like that occurred in the
past 24 hours comes on the eve of a major April 17th concert live from the
birds nest stadium in Beijing that the original theme was going to be ecology
and peace but now you've had this tragic earthquake I want to alert people who
are interested in China to this event and any comment no I think you pretty
much said it all yeah is he calling us from China I don't know where he's
calling a very loud place but but I got the word out about the concert that's
the important thing I thought he's gonna tell us to go back to China or no it's a
different guy same guy I don't know but yeah much sympathy the people who endure
again another earthquake I don't know what's going on in this world yeah good
evening you're on off the hook good evening this is Bob so I'm from Bulgaria
you called off the wall last night Wow you calling both shows from from
Bulgaria the reason I'm calling today well to actually you were talking about
Twitter for a while we were I was wondering if you heard about the French
person who was who got into trouble last month yes we talked about that we talked
about he supposedly got access to Barack Obama's Twitter account or might have
had access or something like that and I think we concluded that it wasn't that
big a deal when I heard when I first heard about it on some TV station with
they said he got admin access to Twitter yeah he got admin access and he could
basically I guess get access to any Twitter account because apparently they
just have a single password that gives you administrator access which I think
is a fascinating revelation I'm sorry go ahead another thing I wanted you
mentioned you get some you forgot to get Cory Doctorow to sign the books that you
send out yes we basically he came to the States and we somehow didn't get him to
sign I think we didn't know the exact number we needed at the time so we didn't
want him to sign too many or too few and and he lives in England so shipping all
the books over to England to have him sign them and shipping them all the way
back would have been prohibitively expensive because we could have done we
could have faked the signatures and told everybody that was Cory Doctorow's
signature but we don't do things like that we'd rather we'd rather people get
angry at us and hurl all kinds of invective saying that these books have
taken months to get to us what's wrong with you people then do something
untrustworthy like forge someone's signature we could have gotten away with
it but we didn't he's going to be in in the States in May and we'll have him
signed then and then they'll be sent out shortly afterwards well that's what I
wanted to tell you about do you have his phone number in England yeah we'll
broadcast that over the air a little bit later on no I don't I don't I don't have
his phone number absolutely no you don't no no well I don't use the phone
anyway I never have I don't like the phone go ahead Rob Cory Doctorow is an
avid blogger so I'm sure if you go to his website and go to his blog you can
contact him that way if if you wish to contact Cory Doctorow directly yes
listen we're gonna move on I do hope we get to meet up at some point because
your country borders on Serbia and I'll be passing through we can at least make
the train honk or something as we go by okay all right have fun all right and
yeah I hope to hear from a bunch of people over there at any of the former
Yugoslav Republic's OTH at 2600 calm give us a an email a shout of some sort
good evening you're on off the hook speak up oh yes go ahead yeah all right
I think that's that that's a different guy isn't it good evening you're on off
the hook hello yes go ahead hi good evening I'm wondering if you have any
thoughts on a story I just discovered that came out late yesterday Tuesday
about the Yahoo and Google and the Electronic Frontier Foundation among
others challenging a government request for emails to be turned over to them
that are under 180 days old without a Fourth Amendment I did see this earlier
today that that EFF was supporting Yahoo fighting this Yahoo doesn't want to have
to turn this over I don't know much more than that would you like to fill us in
well I don't know too many I I came across it in the online version in wired
they simply the government's position is that the Fourth Amendment does not
protect those emails and let's see of course it the issue is whether they can
access them without probable cause and the exact nature of the messengers was
not even revealed as far as I can tell right now I guess this is going to
unfold a little more before it goes but for the first time we had Yahoo and
Google actually on the same side which which is refreshing I'm sure they've
been on the same side before but it's good to see sometimes everyone making
the right decision here I think thanks thanks for that two into two zero nine
two nine hundred see if we can squeeze in a couple more good evening you're on
off the hook yeah but we did we went to Cuba and we came back you didn't say we
couldn't come back right did we do something wrong apparently we did seem a
little perturbed didn't he well we went to kid you don't to keep ask us go to
Cuba or demanding that we go to Cuba because we did that already that's
Walter not all of us have gone to Cuba I think well you know whose fault is that
I think we need a sponsor like that caller yeah you know as journalists we
can go over there anytime we want I'll go again I don't mind and I have a
European passport now so I can go anytime I want anyway yes I can I will
the tourism board there I think is getting really aggressive oh you think
that's where he's calling from oh maybe expensive to call us from Cuba just to
shout one more call one more call good evening you're on off the hook
hello I wonder if that gentleman had ever been to Cuba himself you know he
really ending it he should go he really should he should check it out I think
he'd be amazed I think he'd be delighted by many things that they have over there
let me ask you guys the most general question I could ask you guys which is
suppose someone's pretty ignorant when it comes to computers and the Internet
and so on you know just sends your basic emails as a Facebook account that
kind of thing is there a book is there a single piece of literature that a person
could get their hands on that would help them start on the road towards being
more computer literate more computer savvy and so on well there are a million
books that will teach you things about computers just go to any bookstore and
look for dummies guide to various things of course I'm going to recommend the best
of 2600 if you want to get into the hacker world and see what the spirit is
all about but yeah I think there's a treasure trove of information out there
to search on Amazon go to a bookstore you can find all kinds of interesting
things there but that's gonna have to be the last word I do want to I do want to
get people to submit talks or we're running out of time running out of time
for people to submit talks to to the hope conference which is coming up in
July of this year go to www.hope.net for all the information email speakers at
hope.net if you want to register a talk volunteers at hope.net if you want
to volunteer and help out in various ways anything else any other email
addresses we should give out probably but they can go on the website hope.net
and see it it's all there Walter and then Rob and then we're out of here
if you do want to sponsor us to go to Cuba you can go to the 20th center with your PayPal details yeah please we'll take the money right out
also if you're if you're interested in hope get involved talk.hope.net is our
forum yes yes very much like for there to be more activity there you know we
we're gonna try to get more involved ourselves but talk that hope that an
excellent way to ask questions and get the answers right away all right I'm off
to former Yugoslavia I'll speak to you from somewhere over there next week and
we'll be back at that point to OTH 2600 calm good night
you know I'm looking everywhere trying to find my mom she's sitting in her
chair shopping everywhere calm I said hey mom get off the computer come and
look I just got cuter every time I look for my dad he's sitting at the screen
he's staring like a zombie in a movie I hope I never see
I said hey dad get off the computer let's play some ball and fix my scooter
hey dad get off the computer now
yeah
in the middle of the night not a creature stirring in my house but
sometimes I hear the clicking of a little mouse I said hey mom and dad get
off the computer there's a guy at the door from Roto-Rooter
everybody get off the computer now
yeah
yeah
whoo that was hot I love that song I don't know why just had a great beat to
it