AT&T
My name is Ace and I'm a Leo, on a digital highway
My name is Neo and I'm a Nero
In a flash I'll screw you on burning Dreamcast
You need some ISO? Let me through my hard drive rifle
Our exchange you could never stifle
In a digital hug, you just caught the love bug
I bootlegged your CD, I caused a fight between Un and Jay-Z
Your CG, it's all gonna be free
Whether we take it by force or we take it nicely
You feel that rattling your bones?
When I tell you we just hacked out Jones
And NASDAQ leaves your fight on your back
Cause I am he who loves to hack and crack
This is dedicated to the hackers and the craps
Serial cards, source codes, ISO, RAN, Zip, Zip
Hello and welcome to a very special Binary Revolution Radio
Episode number 123 for November 22nd, 2005
I'm Strom Carlson
I'm Black Ratchet
We have Natus this evening
Yo
You have me for a little bit
A little bit
Yeah, Natus might be leaving so he can get an Xbox
I don't even want the thing, I just wanna sell it
So much for that five minute long discussion we had about not blowing what you're gonna do with it
Yeah, well he's just hard, he's that hardcore for making money
This is a man who's definitely employable
He's definitely employable
He's going to wait in line for nine hours to buy an Xbox
That's dedication
If that's not dedication, I don't know what is
And I'm getting calls right now too
Our special guest is Natus during the introduction
All right, we don't have any housekeeping this evening
Do you have any housekeeping, Strom?
Oh, I've got tons of housekeeping, but it's not related to the show
Oh, yes
You're gonna have to clean up your computer supplies
And all your floor covered in Western Electric 500 parts
And that's it exactly, yes
Your Western Electric transistors and such
I've got relay valves
I've got mousetraps that work with relays
You got step-by-step mousetraps?
Exactly, exactly
Exactly
The mouse eats the cheese
That'd be pretty cool
You got a little flutter right there
And you got to go snap right at the end
It doesn't sound kind of like a snap right at the end of a step-by-step
Yes, okay, just so you all know
This is a phone episode
So if you're all, in case you couldn't tell from the intro
Phone, phone, phone
And we'll reveal why it's such a very special binary revolution radio
After we get through all the normal stuff
So, why don't we get right to the email?
Well, it's special because Natus is going to be waiting in line
Yes, sort of
That's just part of the specialness
Xbox will be released today as this episode airs
And Natus is going to be sitting there in line this evening
With his friend
Somewhere in the United States
Hey, but I thought this was a special Gen 2 episode, Black Ratchet
Oh, it's our special Gen 2 iPod and Asterisk episode?
Yeah, it's our all Gen 2, all iPod, all asterisk
Mega-spectacular
Seriously, if you want to come on here and just rant about how Gen 2 is the shizzle
We can get you
We can get, oh, who else runs Gen 2?
Like, you know, half the IRC channel in here
Except, you know, Tioski
He runs OpenBSD
I don't know, we'll get like half the IRC
And you guys can all like rant for like, you know, a full hour on how Gen 2 is the shizzle
And then I can just see you right now and say, okay, why is Gen 2 so cool?
And you'll be like, well, I can compile stuff from source
And that's it, that's all you'll be saying
Because Gen 2 sucks!
Gen 2
Gen 3
Gen 4
Gen 3
Our first email is from Candela
And he says, just want us to let you know that episode 122's left audio track came out way low in volume.
I had to use Audacity to increase the volume so I could enjoy the show.
FYI.
Great job.
I enjoy every single show.
Candela.
Yeah, well, first off, I'd like to thank Candela.
He included a, I guess it's sort of like a text-to-speech engine of someone saying his name.
And it sounded very nice, and we knew how to pronounce it.
And so props to him, and, you know, for people who complain that we butcher names, that's what you need to do right there.
And, yeah, I don't know why.
It sounded fine to me before I encoded it down to MP3, and I never actually checked the quality of the MP3 before I uploaded it.
And I guess it sucks.
So hopefully sometime this week I'll fix it in the archives, and therefore it'll be fine and happy and feel good, and everyone can listen to it.
This is what happens when I take over mastering the show for a couple weeks and then let Ratchet do an episode.
Well, no, it's all Zygmunt's fault, because he was using his crappy-ass soft phone.
Soft phones are the work of the devil, dammit.
Yeah, it's hard phones forever.
Or VoIP phones.
Yeah.
Well, my Cisco phone is a hard phone, in my opinion.
Well, not really.
It's an IP phone, but it's a tangible telephone.
I can pick it up and talk to you on it.
Yeah, but I can pick up my laptop and talk to you on it.
That's something tangible.
Yeah, but your laptop isn't designed to be pressed nicely against your ear and held comfortably in the palm of your hand at the same time.
Have you ever seen my laptop?
Yes, I have.
It's not like it has a telephone coming out of it.
Maybe.
It does.
That's right.
I'm going to, like, wire an RJ-11 up to my sound card and plug it in that way to the microphone.
I can just see you running off, you don't understand, none of you understand, and then wiring something up.
See, see, I told you, I told you.
Actually, I don't even think my microphone, my computer has a microphone.
I could be wrong.
I don't know.
Next email tonight.
Yeah, it comes from Hack5190.
He says, you talk about asterisk frequently, but until finding a link about installing asterisk on a Linksys WRTGS box, I never seem to have enough spare time.
What do you know about this project, and what would you recommend for a total asterisk noob?
And that's, you want to do the tiny URL, Ratchet?
That's tinyurl.com slash 8NovemberYankeeVictor9.
That niner ass breath.
Ha, ha, ha.
Um, I don't know, see, I couldn't really tell if you actually installed it already, or, as Natus starts to prepare to go out into the...
What, can you hear me?
Yes.
Oh, okay.
It's great, we just hear you, like, getting naked or something.
No, I'm just a little backpack, I'm packing something else.
Yeah.
Don't graduate all the ladies out there, Natus is fucking hot.
So anyways, yeah.
Are you packing provisions for tonight's...
Yes, I am, I'm packing, I'm packing ammo.
Let me get this out, actually, let me tell you exactly what I'm packing.
Yes, I'm curious, what does one pack to wait in line for an Xbox?
Start a small profit big in real estate.
Learning Pearl, uh, 4th edition.
PHP and MySQL for Dummies, because I'm a noob, and, uh, this is an interesting one.
AT&T, GBCS Products Security Handbook.
GBCS, what is GBCS?
What is it, Strom?
Strom knows what it is.
What, G as in golf?
Yeah.
GBCS?
Oh, GBCS.
Hmm.
Yeah.
That I've never actually heard of.
Really?
To be honest, yeah.
Oh, damn, I thought you knew what it meant.
Uh, uh, Blake Ops knew what it meant, and he told me.
Hmm.
I'm trying to look it up.
Hold on.
You don't know what it is, but you're going to read a book about the security issues.
Well, it's about phone security.
It's just some AT&T-like acronym.
Great big computer system.
I don't know.
Well, anyway, while you look that up, we'll actually answer Hack 190's email.
Hack 5190 email.
I'm curious if the 5190 is a birth date, or if he just likes the number that AOL Instant Messenger sits on.
So, um, I really couldn't tell if you already had it installed or not, but if you're a noob with Linux and you have a WRT54G, um, I really wouldn't recommend installing it.
I'm not even sure if you can install it without a Linux box already installed.
Lord only knows.
But if you're, like, a noob for Linux or you're a noob for Asterisk, I would kind of recommend you might want to shy away from your WRT54G projects for the time being.
If you haven't installed it yet and you're completely new to Linux, don't do it at all.
It's an interesting process.
I've never actually done it, but I've known people who did, and they've, it was a while ago, so it might have improved, but they said it was rather hairy.
And if you don't know what you're doing, you have a good chance of, uh, ending up with a big blue paperweight.
That doesn't really work good, because they're rather light, but, um, as for Asterisk, if you have Linux installed on the WRT54G or whatever the heck they call it,
because you called it a WRTGS, I don't know what the difference is, um, it should be pretty easy for you to get it running on it,
and it should be rather the same as getting it running on a real PC.
Um, it's a fun project, but, I don't know, as it stands, I would kind of shy away from this if I were a noob, as you stated.
Just, just get a cheap computer, toss, toss Debut on it, not Gen2, because Gen2 sucks.
And, uh, you know, grab, grab Asterisk and install it on that.
So, so, I think it'll save you time and effort and pain.
Yeah, easier, easier to learn it in a native environment, and then, once you're familiar with it,
try and cram it to somewhere where it really isn't designed to go.
Yes.
Well, I mean, the WRT54G is designed for Linux, I mean, it runs Linux in the first place,
but it's just kind of more along the lines of, you're, I don't know what you would kind of compare it to.
You're cramming it, yes, but you're, it's designed to go there.
Oh, that could be taken out of context.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I told my mom I was going to Walmart to hang out all night, she's like, yeah,
and she sees me packing this bag, she's like, yeah, like, you're going to Walmart all night.
She doesn't know how hardcore you really are.
She doesn't know how much I own people's money.
Natas, Natas is hardcore.
All right, so if you, just out of curiosity, if you have the chance to buy two, are you going to do it?
Hell yeah.
I'll buy them all, I'll have a credit card.
The young investor.
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
Kind of weird.
I mean, I, I, I kind of, it's cool that Natas is doing this,
but it kind of sucks if you actually want to get an Xbox at Walmart.
And this one nut buys out all eight just to eBay them for a profit.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, you know what?
That's, uh, what's that called in the business world?
Supply and demand.
Yep.
Speaking of supply, don't forget to bring stuff to eat.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I, I would do that, too.
I, I did notice that on your whole stuff that you did not list in your...
There's a grocery store right next to it.
So it's all good.
Is it a, is it a, is it a 24-hour Walmart?
No.
Uh.
So they haven't even closed, they haven't even closed yet.
Because it's only like 9.30, they closed at 10.
Well, just think, you're just going to sit out there,
and you're going to just wait.
Oh, I am trying to find a dresser.
What you should do is you should, like, uh, dress up like a Halo guy.
You dress up like Master Chief and sit down there.
Hold on, my, hold on, my partner in crime or business is calling me.
I'll be right back.
All right.
Another email.
Glorious episode.
Oh, yes.
You guys sound like default.
Well, this week, yes, yes, you're right.
We're pre-recorded and everything.
Yep.
What's the next email, Strom?
All right.
The next email is a bit of a long one.
It says, hey, guys.
Yes, you can get John to work under Windows, at least with Sigwin.
It can work with both NT hashes and LAN manager hashes.
The weakness exploits you were talking about are LM hashes.
And, yes, new versions of Windows XP are vulnerable unless you turn off the storage off LM hashes.
It's on by default.
Turn off the storage off LM hashes.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Last crack, Kane and John all use as vulnerable to crack SAM files faster.
Exact details can be found in this video.
That's tinyworld.com slash delta mike hotel to fox.
But the gist is this.
LM hashes are quick to crack because of the algorithm.
One, convert password to uppercase.
Two, pad the plain text with null characters to make it 14 bytes long.
Three, split into two seven-character byte chunks.
Four, use each seven-byte chunk separately as keys to des-encrypt the magic value, which is...
This very long string.
You can look it up online.
Capital G, capital S, bang, at, pound, dollar, percent.
Or in hex.
I don't know if you're a father reading that.
Step five, concatenate the two ciphertext from step four to produce the hash.
Step six, store the hash in the SAM file.
Since the password is always uppercase and split into two seven-character chunks,
it's really like cracking two seven-character password hashes with a limited key space,
which is much faster than cracking one 14-character password of both upper and lowercase.
Rainbow tables with pre-generated hashes make it even faster.
Since there is no randomizing assault, it's possible to make these pre-generated tables.
NTLM hashes, all versions, are more secure, but can still be cracked with John's lost crack at Kane given time.
Turn off LM hash storage in XP to the following.
Step one, turn off LM hash storage in the SAM via local policy registry or GPO.
And that's tinyurl.com.
Slash nine, Victor, Sierra, Whiskey, Yankee.
Number two, if you use a password longer than 14 characters to no LM hash will be stored, try using a passphrase.
I enjoy the show.
Keep up the good work.
Iron Geek.
Wow.
That's an awesome letter.
Iron Geek's the man.
Yeah.
Iron Geek never fails to impress.
He does some crazy shit.
Oh, he does it really good, too.
Like, he does everything with a really good quality, you know?
Like, all those videos he puts together, he doesn't half-ass it.
No, he doesn't.
Actually, since we're talking about his videos, we're going to go pimp his website out here at
IronGeek.com.
And I believe he's also on TWAT at TWATech.org from time to time.
And he also hangs out on binrev.com forums.
So, go to binrev.com forums and hang out with Iron Geek, myself, Strom, Natas, and the rest
of the crazy Binrev gang.
All right.
Hey, guys.
Hey, I got to go.
I'm going down to Walmart right now.
I'll call back in a little bit, okay?
See you guys for the show.
We're going to have our live check-in from the Walmart line waiting for the Xbox.
Yeah.
All right.
Late.
See you guys.
Yeah, Natas said he was going to be on for the whole episode, but I guess not.
So much for that.
So, letter number whatever it is.
Hey, guys.
Greetings from New Zealand.
Just listened to episode number 122, and I thought you might be interested in this little
program I came across a while ago.
It's a fantastic free open-source hex editor for Windows called FR Head.
Or Fred, maybe.
That's www.kibira.de slash f-r-h-e-d dot h-t-m-l.
Also, I thought I'd tell you my favorite email client for Linux is Sylphied Clause.
It's little known about client, but I love it far more than any other mail client on Linux.
It just works.
It has a Windows port, but it sucks.
Just use Thunderbird when you have to use Windows.
That's clause dot Sylphied, S-Y-L-P-H-E-E-D dot org.
Anyhow, keep up the good work on the show, Blair.
And he says he's Trogs on IRC.
Hey, I forgot to a tiny URL that Fred or FR Head for...
I guess it's...
I don't know.
It's from German, so Lord knows how to sound stuff over there.
Yeah.
Fred, what in guys?
And...
It's probably something like totally non-conceivable.
Like, it actually sounds like palm tree.
Yeah, probably.
Anyway, the tiny URL for that is tinyurl.com slash 4-2-Zulu-5-Hotel.
And I've got to say, Blair, hey, New Zealand.
All right.
This actually occurred to me while I was reading his email and he saw you're from New Zealand.
I really want to create like a map of all the listeners and everyone can check in right where the hell they are.
I think it would be cool.
So far, we've got one from Taiwan, one from New Zealand, one from Poland.
And...
Is actually have, you know, that giant map and get all those little colored pushpins.
Oh, yes.
You know, actually stick the pushpins into the map.
And then we can put like a webcam on it so people can see it all the time.
Yeah, exactly.
Map cam.
Yeah.
No, I actually found this website.
It makes you like do little maps and it uses a Google Maps API.
I need to research on what the website is.
I saw it someplace and I haven't narrowed down to where it is, but I just need to figure out what the actual URL is.
Um, I know, also, speaking of your, this was a response to our, in case you hadn't paid attention last week,
Straum didn't pay attention because probably he didn't listen to the episode, um, was the whole software that we like.
And this is our, this email and the next are responses to it.
Um, I, I never touched fur head or Fred or palm tree.
Um, it looks pretty cool.
I, I downloaded it and I ran it and I fiddled with some stuff and it looks like a very run-of-the-mill, standard, functional text editor.
Um, simple, not too many bells and whistles, and it just looks like it works.
It does one thing very, very well from the looks of it.
It's kind of like the, the AK-47 of hex editing, I guess you could call it.
Um, you know, it's designed to shoot people.
It doesn't have many bells and whipples, bells and whistles as the M16, but it always seems to work.
Shift one, shift one, shift one.
Yes.
Shift one.
Yeah, right.
Bang, bang, bang.
Um, Silphied.
I, I think that's how you pronounce it.
I'm not exactly sure.
Um, I played with Silphied a few years ago.
It was before Thunderbird even came out.
I believe, actually, when I played with it before, it was pre-Firefox or pre-Phoenix or whatever the hell they called it back then.
Firebird, I think it was.
Well, it was, it was Firefox and Firebird, and I think before that it was Phoenix.
Hmm.
Because it was, that, that's the original one.
And then they got into a problem with the Phoenix BIOS trademark,
and then they got into trouble with the Firebird trademark, which is a, a lightweight sequel engine, I think.
Then they came out with Firefox, and then there was the, the, the Firewhatever, who, uh, where it came out with,
it was a plug-in for Firefox, and it would, uh, change the Fire, it would change the name of Firefox every time you started up to, like, you know,
adjective and bird, like, you know, wet dog.
It was like, yeah, I think it was, like, called, like, Firewhatever.
Um, I, it was usable, I, I didn't have any major problems with Chill Feed, but I, I just never really got too comfortable with it.
I, I, I, now that I think of it, um, it could have been the fact that I think I was still in a very much a KDE zealot stage back then,
and I really didn't like the, the known look and feel on top of my KDE screen.
But, uh, as far as I remember, I, there was no real major complaints with it, unless, of course, there was something very horrible with it,
and I just decided to completely suppress that memory.
Um, who knows?
It was a very well-done client.
Um, I did enjoy it.
It never really stuck.
Um, and right now, Firefox, not Firefox, Thunderbird is out there, so, who really cares, honestly?
Unless you really, unless it's really, really, really good.
So, try, try it anyway, uh, sylfeed, S-Y-L-P-H-E-E-D dot org.
And there's claws dot, S-F-I-L-F-E-E-D dot org, just, but, I think I actually just used the original one.
So, Natus, what have you been doing?
Oh, wait, he's not here, he's, he's trucking down to the Walmart.
OMG, Walmart.
Um, I'm, you know, I'm probably gonna, we're probably gonna get, like, tons of hate mail from people who hate Walmart.
Oh, yeah.
All, all, all, all this, Natus, I can't believe you're going down there, you evil, evil person, you.
All the trendy, anti-consumerist pseudo-hippies are going to email us.
They're, they're, they're, they're dirty hippies, come on.
Yeah.
No, no, no, they're not even any real hippies, they're pseudo-hippies.
Didn't you hear me?
No, no, no, it's a dirty, dirty hippie, dirty hippie is a state of mind.
Eh, I guess so.
Being from California, I should know that, but it is.
Hell, you, you, you're infested out there.
Yeah.
So, anyway, well, Strom, what have you been doing?
How about that?
Oh, I have been playing with smart cards galore.
Oh, really?
Yes.
What have you been doing with smart cards?
I have been hacking them.
Oh, you're hack-soaring the smart cards?
Yes, I'm hack-soaring the smart cards.
I'm actually to the point where I feel confident enough to throw together a presentation, and
I'm actually, so I threw together a, an outline and a summary, and I sent it into the Layer
One conference, and with any luck, I'll be speaking about this at Layer One, but it's
pretty interesting, because what I've been doing is I've been playing around with the smart
cards you get at FedEx Kinko's.
Oh, that could be interesting, because that's where they, that's where they store all your
change and everything, right?
Yep.
Oh.
Everything, as it turns out, is completely unencrypted.
Oh, no.
So, it's a 256-byte double EEPROM, and everything's stored unencrypted on it.
You can't write to it until you select, until you write the correct three-byte security code,
and at least there's a prevention against brute force attack, because if you write the
wrong code to the card three times, it burns out.
You can't write any more codes to it, or anything else there, for that matter.
So, if I wanted to brute force it, it would take 5.6 million cards, so I don't think I
have that kind of money or time, but...
Oh, it's three bytes.
Okay.
Yeah.
For a second there, I thought you were talking about, like, three bytes, as in it could be
anywhere of 100, anywhere of 999 combinations.
And I was just like, I'm pretty sure these cards are easy to get.
Yeah, they are.
Yeah, no, if it were only, like, 999 possible combinations, are you kidding?
I'd have a stack of cards, and I'd be doing this for the next week.
Yeah, 300, yeah, after you DEF CON by phone and everything.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, because I was going to say, okay, well, you know, 5.7, for those of you who
don't, have never been to Kinko's, or FedEx Kinko's, or whatever the heck they call themselves
now, all of your, instead of, like, putting quarters in the copy machine, you get these
smart cards, and they write, like, you give the person a $5, and they write $5 to the card,
and that's what they use to all the copy machines.
I don't think they officially accept change anymore.
Yeah, no, you can't actually, you could theoretically buy a card from the cashier.
And say, hey, I've got a bunch of coins, can I get a card from you for this much?
And the cashier will make one up.
But, uh, typically, you just go with bills to the kiosk, and you press the button, and
you get a card, and then you stick the card into the kiosk, and stick bills into the kiosk,
and then take, get your card back, and make your Xeroxes.
But actually, one of the fun things is, is that, like, especially around colleges, if
you go, and you go root around, because, like, once people are, quote-unquote, done with
their cards, they'll leave them around, and occasionally, like, find one with, like, a
dollar or so on it.
Mm-hmm.
You find a lot of, like, a lot of them are, like, five cents, ten cents.
Mm-hmm.
If you really want to get them, you can, but occasionally, you do find a gold mine.
And I think I do have one with, like, actual, like, three dollars on it in my pocket right
now, that I found at the, right outside of Brown University Kinko's.
Before it was FedEx Kinko's, yes.
And I, I, I, that made my night.
Yeah, I've got some of the older Kinko's pre-FedEx cards.
Yeah.
In my pile of cards here.
But, uh, but no, it's really interesting, because all the data is just stored unencrypted.
Uh, it stores, like, a serial number, and it stores a timestamp when the card was created,
and then it stores your, um, it stores your dollar value in, like, standard IEEE, uh, double
precision floating point format.
Oh, God.
Double precision floating point.
Oh.
Yeah.
Little Indian, of course.
And, um, and so, really, I, my theory is that all the cards have exactly the same,
uh, exactly the same security key.
That would make the most sense.
Yeah, and it's not, I mean, because everything else about this card is turned out to be stupid
easy, so something's, like.
Actually, half-brained, like, oh, let's base a security card on a hash of something that's
on the card already, would be, uh, be too, uh, too intelligent for the system, I think.
So, the key now is to figure out what that security code is, and then I've got a really
solid presentation, you know.
Why not to do this for a stored value system?
But even if I don't figure out the security code, you know, I think it still makes a really
interesting, solid presentation.
Well, not even that.
I think you have a very, if you, if you figure out the security code, you have a very solid,
uh, business.
A solid security consulting business?
Well, no, more like, just go and sit out for a, uh, hey, you know, give me $5, I'll give you a Kinko's
card for $15.
Mm-hmm.
I'm sure it's questionable legality, but hey, you know, if they give you the card, it should
be yours what to do with.
Yeah, why even bother sitting outside at Kinko's, you know, just, just do it on Craigslist.
$15, exactly, there you go.
God, that would be a very bad scam, wouldn't it?
Mm-hmm.
God, they probably wouldn't even be able to tell.
Oh, man, that's creepy.
As Kinko's is probably listening to the show right now, ready to bust down our doors.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I mean, I'm going to present it at Layer 1 anyway, so.
Well, my, my small, my small foray in the smart card, which didn't even get anywhere close
to what you did, was I, I was planning to reverse engineer our, uh, laundry cards back
in our dorm room, back when I was in college, because they used to use all the smart card
system, and it was the same concept.
It had, like, a debit system, you put, like, $5 on, you used that in the, uh, uh, washing
machine and the dryer.
I always find that stupid.
You had to pay for the dryer and the washer.
Come on.
What the hell?
Hey, that's how it is in my, uh, apartment.
Complex.
See, that's silly.
You shouldn't be able to, dryer should be complimentary, because you've got to dry
your clothes somehow.
Come on.
Well, you, you pay for the convenience of, of drying it in the dryer rather than going
out to the clothesline in the back and using the clothespins.
Well, still, from, well, especially, I guess if you're in Southern California, that's,
that's an option all during the year.
But if I, if back in my, back in Boston, you know, you, you hang that out in the middle
of the winter, you get frozen clothes rather than, uh, dry clothes.
But frozen clothes are the best kind.
Don't you like shirtsicles?
Mm, I was about to say a clothesicle.
Mm, yes.
So we, uh, took your clothes, we, uh, wrapped them around a stick, and we put them in the
freezer for a while.
Clothesicle.
Oh, yay.
I, I always find that stupid.
And it's, uh, just all the exorbitant charges, $1.25 to wash, not $1.25 to dry.
Of course, I'm probably dating myself there.
It's probably up to, like, $1.50 or $1.75.
Mm-hmm.
Actually, my, my fiancée, or, well, back then she was my, just my girlfriend, what I
used to do is I, she, she got her laundry free, so I used to basically truck down my
dirty clothes to Providence, which is about an hour drive, because I was going to see her
anyway, and I'd just abuse her washing machine.
One of my, I only did that once or twice.
Yeah, one of my ex-boyfriends, actually, uh, would, would, would schlep his clothes all
the way out to his parents' house, and, uh, and wash it there, because it was free.
Well, that, that's understandable.
Even though he moved out, yeah.
Oh, well, should he move down?
I used, I used to do that during when I, when I had to go home for a weekend, and I'd
bring my dirty clothes, and I'd do my laundry, and I'd go back, and I'd have a nice
clear clothes, and I'd save myself a, $10, no, $5, one, two, yes.
Mm-hmm.
So I'd have to do two loads.
And oh, boy, they were, they were, those loads were crammed.
I'd fill up everything.
On all your whites turned gray.
Yeah, we, oh, come on, the whole color and white thing, it's, it's a bunch of lies, but
the laundry industry.
Boy, remember that, kids, tide is all lies.
It's, it's made of lies and coloring.
Horrible, horrible, mean people who monopolize the, the clothes washing industry.
I was talking about the detergent itself.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah, that's what I was saying.
Anyway, I, I think we've been talking about too much about laundry.
Hey, that'll be our, our next running joke.
iPods, Gentoo, and laundry.
That'd be great.
We should have a laundry episode, because most people probably hear, bro, right around,
right around when people go to college, we should have a laundry episode.
Yeah, I think we should do that.
We should have like a, a tips for actually surviving outside of your parents' house episode.
Ramen noodles are nutritious and delicious.
Buying a five pound bag of rice will feed you for weeks.
Yes.
Anyway, here's what I've been doing.
I haven't done my laundry, thank God.
Um, actually my, my, I've been buying a house, buying a condo down, down on the south shore
of Massachusetts.
So that, that's where I was gone last week, and I may be gone next week doing that, or
basically fading in and out for the next month or so.
Hopefully always being here, but you never know.
Um, also I decided to finally break down and gut my Windows server and rebuild it.
So now I have a freshly installed Windows server that runs at a relatively decent speed again.
Um, of course, you know, Thanksgiving this Thursday, gotta get all, get all that going
on there and getting ready to eat and everything, I guess.
Don't forget to stuff yourself with turkey when you go back to your parents' place, because
if you're living alone, I can, and you're a young 20-something hacker, I can guarantee you
you're probably not eating right.
One word, leftovers.
Yes.
Take home leftovers.
All the leftovers you can.
Stuff it in your, stuff the stuffing in your pockets, and put a couple of slices of turkey
in your shirt pocket, and stuff it down your pants, and then you drive through and wonder
what the hell you've been doing with the turkey.
Well, turkey is the, Thanksgiving is the only day that you can celebrate stuffing your hand
up a turkey's ass.
Oh, boy.
Of course, you know.
What is that thing where they put, like, multiple birds inside each other?
Is that a turducken?
A turducken!
Yes, I was watching a tur, uh, on Home and Garden, no, not Home and Garden TV.
Food Network on, on turducken, and it looks very weird.
What is it, it's a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, or?
Oh, I think, uh, yes, I think so, yeah.
Chicken, duck, turkey, yes.
Turducken.
Ha-ha, that, that makes sense, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, I, I don't understand that.
I guess that if you're, if you're rich and you're yuppie-ish, that's kind of what's a trendy
thing to do a couple years ago, and it's just kind of hanging around there right now.
That kind of, like, strikes me as falling in the same trendy but bad idea category as
tofurkey.
Tofurkey's just plain weird.
Turducken actually is, it's weird, but not as much so.
Yeah, at least it's still real birds.
Yes, at least it's a turkey.
I mean, you can't call a tofurkey a bird.
No.
Yeah, it's, it's a soybean that has been horribly tortured into resembling turkey on some levels.
So, pilgrims did not eat tofu.
They didn't even know what the hell tofu was.
I can just imagine the pilgrims sitting around with, you know, their, their, their, their
miso soup and their California rolls.
Mmm, California rolls.
And their shrimp tempura.
Exactly.
Um, also, I'm, I'm still Linux server-less for some reason.
Still haven't gotten that fixed.
I, I still need a motherboard and a power supply.
And all kinds of stuff.
Koresh, if you're listening, give me that damn motherboard, damn it.
Yeah, sadly, like, my, um, my USB ports on my desktop system, I think they've just taken
a turn for the worse.
I don't know why.
Stopped working or taking a turn for the worse, as in they're coughing up phlegm?
Well, you know, they actually are coughing up phlegm.
But, uh, but no, like, little, like, small things, like my graphics tablet, works just
fine.
But every time I try and plug a hard drive into it, no matter what hard drive it is, or
what USB port I'm plugging it into, it, uh, says, USB device not recognized.
That's, that's weird.
Yes.
Radio have been revved dot com, if you know the solution.
Help Strom out, get a hard drive working, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, it's, it's doing it in Windows and Linux.
So, I don't think it's a software problem.
Yeah, it definitely sounds like a hardware issue.
I have no luck with hardware.
Did I mention this?
Hey, well, you buy enough, God.
How many computers have you gone over the past year?
Uh, I don't even want to count.
Yeah.
Ah, so anyway, uh, so my, my Linux server is still dead.
I'm currently running all my Astra stuff off a Pentium 233 laptop, sitting on my floor.
And I'm always, I always pray to God that I don't step on it when I'm kind of stumbling
around in the morning, when I'm not fully awake.
But it's just so convenient down on the floor, because I don't have any other place to put it.
Mumble, mumble, squash!
Oh, fuck.
No phone for me.
Oh, no.
All right, well, our specific show talk, oh, would you, would you like to explain why today
is such a special day?
Yeah.
In the world of telephony.
Today is a very special day, and that's why this is a very special Bin Rev Radio, because
We should, like, have, like, little, like, Mr. Rogers music going in the background.
Yes.
I'll find someone, I'll dub it in.
Today is a very special day for Bin Rev Radio, because we're both phone freaks in the world
of telephony.
I'm going to dub this action stuff actually in.
It's a very special day for Bin Rev Radio, because we're both phone freaks.
It's a very special day in telephony, because today, well, actually, this is the episode
that broadcasts in the 22nd, so yesterday, from the point of view, the broadcast, but
because we're recording on Monday, today, today, 11-21-2005, while you'll be listening
to this tomorrow night on 11-22-2005, today, November 21st, 2005, is Merger Day!
Well, dubbing sounds of party horns there.
Yay!
Today, SBC, no, actually, on Friday, SBC closed their acquisition of AT&T, and today, they
rebranded themselves AT&T, which is, so this is a historic milestone in telephony.
American telephony.
Well, maybe to a little bit, but...
AT&T's got a global reach, so...
Yeah, true.
So, it is somewhat of a milestone for global telephony.
So, they've unveiled a new logo, they're busy consolidating everything, and Bell is back,
sort of.
No, not really.
Yeah, not really.
www.thenewatt.com
Yeah, check out their new logo, which I think looks pretty cool, even though it looks either
like a beach ball or a lozenge, depending on how you're looking at it.
It did look a lot like a lozenge, now that you say it.
That's what I was thinking of.
It does look like something like candy or something, that you're just like, you put in your mouth
for far too long, and you've been, like, you take it out afterwards, and you see, like, all the, like,
the striations of the...
Mm-hmm.
You get the hair candy shell is gone.
It's the AT&T Everlasting Gobstopper, is what it is.
Well, the Everlasting Gobstopper wasn't round, though.
Was it?
No, it was round.
In the movie, it was kind of oddly shaped.
Which movie are we talking about?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Are we talking about the 19...
Oh, the 1971 film.
Okay, it's been forever since I've seen that, but I always recall, from reading the book,
as imagining them as being perfectly spherical.
Oh, no, when I read the book, I imagined them perfectly spherical, too, and I remember
watching the movie and seeing one, and it's just kind of...
I don't even call it.
It looks a lot like an asterisk if it was three-dimensional, but, like, with all kinds
of, like, you know, jets going out.
So kind of like a really, really big cold virus.
Yes, yes, a lot like that.
Of course, everyone's going, oh, cold virus, what the fuck does that look like?
Jesus.
Yeah, read a science textbook.
Yes.
So, yes, AT&T is now SBC, or SBC is now AT&T.
Basically, AT&T is no longer SBC, but AT&T is...
Yeah, you're confusing it.
Yeah, I know, but that's what I'm kind of going for.
Basically, basically, AT&T is dead.
Long live AT&T.
Yes.
The AT&T that was there last week really is no longer the AT&T that we know today.
Yes.
Thank you.
All right.
All right, well, that wraps up the episode.
Yeah, there.
Yeah, no.
Well, actually, no.
We're going to, like, you know, do this with a little background, so we're going to let
Strom wrap on about, you know, Bell System history.
Where should I start?
Yeah, I don't know.
I think the best thing to start is, well, when was the phone invented?
How about that?
Okay, let's do a very, very, very quick and dirty history of the telephone.
All right.
Oh, oh, dial me harder.
Here's your dirty bit.
Anyway, the telephone was, the way AT&T tells it, the telephone was invented in 1876 by
Alexander Graham Bell.
There were, if you read into the history of it, there were actually a lot of other people
who came up with ideas which were similar, but I think Bell was the first one to file
a patent.
Yes.
And, what was it, Antonio Miucci is recognized as the inventor of the phone, but I, from what
I've read, he didn't quite get it.
Like, it was almost there, but it was Alexander Graham Bell who actually got it functionally
near what we have today.
Yeah.
Oh, there's all kinds of conspiracy theories out there that, you know, Bell stowed his
idea from Miucci and blah, blah, blah.
But, okay, as it stands today, Bell invented the phone in 1876.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
So, actually, I think IEEE, weren't you the one who was telling me this?
Hmm?
Weren't you the one who was telling me about the IEEE thing, the 130th anniversary of the
phone call?
Yes, yes, IEEE is planning to do a get-together in Boston.
Actually, the interesting fact is that the phone was invented in Boston by Alexander Graham Bell.
It was invented about three blocks from my work, so if you cover, you know, nine square
blocks of, actually, no, it would be, if you, it's 100 Court Street for Alicia Curious.
It's actually right in, about one block away from the Bowdoin Street Exchange in Boston,
and there's, right outside the JFK Federal Building, there's a little plaque that says,
on this site, on 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
And it was a little courtroom that he was, not much, a little courtroom, a little apartment
that he was renting, and actually, IEEE is planning to have a 130th anniversary party,
gala, I don't even know what the hell they're doing.
I just heard a rumor about this.
A soiree.
I don't even think that.
It's just kind of like an expo or something to say, hey, they invented the phone 130 years
ago today, isn't it spiffy?
Yeah.
Woo-hoo, cake.
Exactly.
I hope there's cake.
I think there's...
Apparently, a friend of mine who works at AT&T, the new AT&T here in Southern California
somewhere, tells me that it was pretty much just a party day there.
They were having cake, and they were getting free T-shirts, and all sorts of fun stuff.
Yeah, I hope you don't get the T-shirt with the pink slip in it.
God.
You're cynical.
Come on.
Do you really think that's not going to happen?
Well, sure, but they're not going to give you pink slip in T-shirts.
You never know.
Hey.
Well, we'll get into that later.
Yeah.
So, Bell invented the telephone in 1876, and what happened?
He patents the phone, and things go slowly for the first 20 years or so, and then his
patent expires at, like, around about the late 1890s, and a whole bunch of independent
phone companies spring up to do telephone service.
But the problem was that all these various little telephone exchanges couldn't talk to
each other.
They didn't have any concepts of interconnect agreements.
So, Bell ended up buying up all the telephone systems to make them all work together.
Actually, just to interrupt you for a second, I found a fun tidbit today.
The first telephone exchange on Tremont Street in Boston, the first one they used, you actually
couldn't talk to anybody.
For example, if you had a phone and I had a phone, I couldn't talk to you.
I would have to call the operator, and she would have to relay everything.
Oh, that's funny.
Yes, I never knew that until today.
Until they actually came up with the first switchboard.
Wow.
Yes.
So, no secrets on the telephone.
The trunk trawler lives back in the 1890s.
Anyway, getting back to what you were talking about.
So, basically, over the course of the next couple decades, AT&T was originally the American
Bell Telephone Company, and AT&T was created as a subsidiary of the American Bell Telephone
Company in like 1889 to start building out the long-distance network.
And I think there was some sort of reverse merger in which American Bell's assets were
sold to AT&T, and AT&T became the governing company.
But, basically, by the time the 40s and 50s rolled around, you pretty much had the structure
of the Bell system.
You had, you know, like 22 local Bell operating companies, and you had AT&T, which was the
corporate parent of everything.
There was AT&T Long Lines, which was the long-distance part of the network.
There was Western Electric, which was the manufacturing company.
And there was Bell Telephone Laboratories, which was the research and development arm
of the Bell system.
God bless Bell Labs.
Bell Labs actually brought you all kinds of wonderful things like the transistor, C, Unix,
stereos.
I think the motion picture soundtracks came from Bell Labs.
Oh, yeah, motion picture soundtracks, too.
Yep.
Crazy shit.
Radar.
It's amazing.
Yeah, radar came from Bell Labs, too, I think.
Didn't they?
Mm-hmm.
Well, I don't know.
I'll take your word for that one.
It's amazing what kind of stuff came out of Bell Labs.
They're a very research-orientated thing, and I guess that's what happens when you're
a government-sponsored monopoly.
Well, when you're the biggest company in the world at the time, you can afford to have
a research lab that comes up with all sorts of wonderful inventions.
Yes, true.
True.
So, fast forward to 1984, and actually there are various other antitrust things in AT&T's
past, but the big one comes in the late 70s when the Department of Justice files an antitrust
suit against AT&T.
1978, I believe.
Yeah, like 1978 or so.
Court case goes on for a couple years, four years, and then in something like February 1982,
AT&T announces that it's going to break itself up.
Basically, what happened was that the Justice Department, there were two options for AT&T.
One of them was to spin off Western Electric and Bell Labs and continue with the telephone
monopoly, but get rid of the manufacturing and research development stuff.
And the other was to spin off the local operating companies, but keep the manufacturing and R&D.
And what AT&T believed was that by spinning off the local operating companies, they could
get into the new computer business.
And they thought that's where all the money was.
And they were right, but not for them.
Yeah, not for them.
So, in 1984, AT&T split itself up into AT&T, which was, AT&T Corp had Western Electric and
Bell Labs.
And then the seven local operating companies, which, well, the 22 local operating companies
were sold off to seven regional holding companies, which were specifically created for their purpose.
And those seven regional holding companies are 9X, or were 9X, Bell Atlantic, Bell South,
Ameritech, Southwestern Bell, U.S. West, and Pacific Telesis.
So, you know, we really want to get to piss off strong.
We can ask them to aim all 22 companies.
And he will sit here for 15 minutes trying to do it.
And he will actually eventually get it right.
Kudos to him.
Yeah, I will eventually get it right, but I just don't remember it all off the top of my head.
And I'm sure you don't want to hear me sitting here for 15 minutes struggling to remember
the name of the diamond-made telephone company from Delaware.
TMP Telephone.
Yeah.
So, and then you have the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which basically deregulates the phone industry
quite a bit and opens up things for competition.
And so the first thing that happens is Southwestern Bell buys up Pacific Telesis.
And so Pacific Telesis Group ceases to exist, and Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell become the subsidiaries
of Southwestern Bell Corporation.
And then that was in 1997.
In 1999, Southwestern Bell buys Ameritech and Southern New England Telephone and becomes
the SBC we all know and love as of last week.
And so, and then what else goes on?
Well, around 1996 or so, Bell Atlantic bought 9X.
Yeah, Bell Atlantic buys 9X a little bit after Southwestern Bell buys Pacific Telesis.
Yes, Bell Atlantic consisted of all kinds of telephone companies.
And 9X, my wonderful, nonverful 9X, consisted of a New England Telephone and New York Telephone.
Or New England Telephone and Telegraph, as I like to refer to it as.
New York Telephone.
We're the one for you.
Oh, yeah, the New England Telephone jingle.
I like the New England Telephone jingle.
I was so thrilled when I found that online.
I was like, yes, because I just, I literally, I looked for this, for some reason I wanted to
find this jingle after I, it just came to me one day.
And I like searched all kinds of like my old VCR tapes from like the 19, early 90s and
everything.
And by that point, everything was 9X, so I couldn't actually find the jingle because
I remember this from my childhood.
And then on like some obscure GeoCity site, someone actually has like the audio of a complete
commercial and it had the jingle at the end.
I was, I was completely thrilled when I found that.
Should we sing the jingle to the secret of our listeners?
No, we shouldn't.
I can't sing.
I'll sing it then.
Oh, God.
We're the one for you, New England, New England Telephone.
Part of the 9X family.
Oh, man, that's, that's painful.
Yes.
I think you should actually splice it in here so people can actually hear it.
Yeah, well, send me the file and I'll splice it in.
All right.
So, yes.
So, okay.
So, Bell Atlantic buys 9X in like 1997 and changes everything to Bell Atlantic.
And then in 1999, Bell Atlantic starts talking to DTE, which was the large independent telephone
company.
And they eventually merge in 2000 to form Verizon Communications, which is the lamest name
ever.
Yes.
Made up names suck.
And in 2000, Quest buys U.S. West.
And this whole time, Bell South is just kind of tottering along and saying, we're Bell South.
We're not going to change.
La, la, la, la, la.
Well, where did Quest come from?
Because what company did that consist of?
Oh, Quest was a fiber optics company, basically.
I think, I forget the exact history, but I think it was something along the lines of, the
company was formed as a contractor to lay fiber for other companies.
And then they realized, you know, hey, nothing in our contract stipulates that we can't lay
fiber for ourselves as well.
Since we got the trench here anyway, and additional fiber is cheap.
So they laid a bunch of fiber, and that's how that got started.
So then Quest, that was like 1996 or so.
And then over the next four years, Quest just builds up this huge market capitalization on
the stock market.
You know, investors really believe that that's the future and so on.
And this completely inflated market capitalization allows Quest.
Look at the left hand.
So Quest, with this insane amount of cash that they suddenly have from the investors,
manages to buy U.S. West, the regional bell operating company serving, like, the old
mountain bell states, the Pacific Northwest, and then, like, Minnesota and Nebraska and
so on.
Because Nebraska, that's high telephone up there.
Yeah.
U.S. West got screwed, man.
Yeah.
They're kind of like at a Ma Bell's will.
They're the one with, like, the bastard child.
Yeah, well, we like you, but we're going to give you all the shitty, uh, shitty, uh, states.
Shitty territories, yeah.
Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado.
We'll give you, you know, Seattle.
And Minneapolis and Denver and Phoenix.
Those are your big cities.
Well, Minneapolis and Denver, but, like, you know, the Midwest states, like, nothing's out
there.
Nothing personal to anyone who lives in the Midwest.
I know one person, actually, lives in Colorado, so we won't insult him.
He doesn't listen, who cares?
Yeah, Denver's nice, but it's kind of gray.
And always snowy.
Yeah.
I watch South Park.
I know how Colorado works.
Their summer, like, last one-half-hour episode, it was horrible.
And so, let's see, who are the other major players?
Oh, yeah, Sprint.
Sprint, um, Sprint originally started off with the Southern Pacific Railroad, and the, uh,
the Southern Pacific Railroad laid communication lines along its right-of-way for its own internal
telecom system.
And I think, I'm not sure whether this is true or not, but I believe that Sprint stands
for Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Telecommunications, or Southern Pacific Railroad, um, something
network.
I, I, I, I'm going to guess what the intercommunication, inter-telecommunications or something.
Yeah, internal telecommunications.
Internal telecommunications.
That sounds cooler, and it actually kind of fits better than whatever the other one
was.
Let me see what Wikipedia said.
Let me take a look here.
So, there was Sprint, and then there was also MCI.
And MCI, the MCI was the, basically, they prided themselves in the 1980s as being the first
completely fiber-optic...
No, that was Sprint.
That was Sprint?
I thought that was...
I thought it was MCI.
Well, yeah, no, no, no.
Sprint's whole thing was, everything's so clear, you can hear a pin drop.
Oh, it was Sprint.
Their ticker symbol was F-O-N, which sits for fiber-optic network.
Oh, so it was just phone.
No.
Oh, look at that.
F-O-N, fiber-optic network.
Yeah, yeah.
Learn something new every day.
Yes.
I actually think I remember hearing that now that you mentioned it, but I'll play dumb
and let the other people say, oh, I'm smarter than Black Ratchet.
So, there was MCI...
So, where did MCI get started?
They stand for...
MCI, yeah.
Microwave Communications, Inc.
Inc.
Oh, Inc.
I thought it was international.
Yeah.
Microwave Communications Incorporated.
And I think they did a lot of microwaves.
Sprint may stand for a special psychiatric rapid intervention team.
Well, honestly, with them buying Nexito like they did, I wouldn't be surprised if they
needed one.
Yeah.
So, what happened?
MCI was Microwave Communications, Inc., and they started off with, like, one link between,
I think, Chicago and somewhere in Texas.
That's a hell of a microwave link.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, it's either Internal Telecommunications or Southern Pacific Railroad Information Network.
One of the two.
If you know, feel free to email us, radio at binrev.com.
Yeah.
Anyway, so, we have MCI Sprint Quest, SBC, or...
Actually, did they name themselves SBC by this point, or were they still Southwestern Bell?
In 1995, they changed their name from Southwestern Bell Corporation to SBC.
And then Verizon, yeah.
And this is where it stands today, or stands...
Actually, no, this is where it stood about, oh, six months ago.
Yes.
So, in January, SBC announced that they were going to buy AT&T for whatever AT&T's market
cap was at the time, like $16 billion.
And keep in mind that, although $16 billion sounds huge, SBC's market cap was like $85 billion,
and Verizon's market cap was like $90-something billion.
I think it was more than that.
Was it?
No, I don't recall it ever being over $100 billion.
Oh, okay.
I remember being like in the mid to the high 90s, last I looked.
And for those of you who don't know what market cap is, like you don't know the stock market,
A, you should know.
Stock market's fun.
It's like legal gambling.
And what a market cap is, is basically it's all the stock you have currently out for sale,
and that's all the value of all the stock.
So, it's basically all the cash you currently can, all the cash people currently have part of your company.
Mm-hmm.
Basically, it's a quick and easy measure of what a company's worth.
Yes.
So, SBC announces that they're going to buy AT&T.
Mm-hmm.
And then, in response...
Oh, yes.
And then, in response, Verizon says, well, shit, we don't want to be cocked with our pants down.
We're buying MCI.
And then, poor Quest, because Quest is kind of, you know, the really poor performer among the now four regional bell operating companies.
Well, I mean, look at them.
They have all the Midwest states.
Yeah.
No, there's like two telephones in Kansas.
Kansas is Southwestern Bell, mister.
Oh, Kansas is Southwestern Bell?
Mm-hmm.
Fine.
Wyoming.
Is it Wyoming?
Yes, Wyoming is Quest.
Yeah, Wyoming.
They have like three telephones out there.
I don't think Montana has any telephones.
There's like one phone number in all of Montana.
That's why they have just one area code.
Yes, yes.
Can I get a, what is it, 207?
No, that's Maine.
208, I think, is Montana.
208, yeah.
No, can I get 208-7, please?
Okay.
No, it's 408 is Montana.
No, 40...
Shit, I can't remember now.
It's, it's, it's something.
Ah!
And I have a friend who lives in Montana, too.
I'm so embarrassed.
Shame on you.
So, anyway, this is where we're saying there was like three phones in Montana.
There really isn't, but that's what we're trying to say.
Yeah.
So, Quest goes and says, oh, we, we, we, we want to buy MCI.
Mm-hmm.
And thus a bidding war ensued.
Oh, yeah.
Essentially what it boiled down to is MCI's, Quest kept on offering more and more and more money for, for MCI.
And Verizon kept kind of upping them, but it was always lower.
But the problem with all of the, the problem with Quest is that they're, they're still very heavily into debt.
Mm-hmm.
They're like, how much are they into debt?
Like, billions and billions?
Yeah, billions.
And they only have a market cap of like $8.9 billion or something.
And they were offering $8.9 billion for MCI.
So, this was getting totally ridiculous.
It's like, yes, you, you, you, you can't spend your entire worth to buy another company that doesn't buy work.
Montana is $406.
Okay, I was close.
Okay, yay.
For those of you who want to dial the three phones in Montana, you can dial $406.
So, what it actually boiled down to is, you know, Quest kept on offering more and more money, but everyone in MCI started saying, sorry, Quest, you suck.
We want to go with Verizon.
Because the thing is, it made more sense.
See, the reason why SBC is buying, or SBC bought AT&T, is that, you know, SBC is a local phone company.
They, they have local service in their 13-state footprint.
And, and because of, you know, federal restrictions, SBC can't carry its own long-distance traffic.
I mean, what they've actually done is, you know, with relaxed rules now, they've been able to start offering long-distance service, but it's not their own long-distance network.
They're actually just offering a resale of somebody else's long-distance service.
And depending where you are, it's a, it's a gamble as, as to what network you're going to be placing your call on.
And also Verizon is the same way. Verizon actually, their long-distance service is actually a separate company within Verizon.
I think it kind of gets them around, skirts them around certain things.
Yeah, well, yeah, same with SBC. There's like SBC long-distance.
Yeah.
There's Verizon long-distance.
And actually, if I, if I dial certain out-of-area numbers, and like I dial invalid ones, I actually, it is, it does seem to use AT&T a lot.
Like I get a lot of AT&T error message or intercepts.
Yeah, I seem to recall that Verizon long-distance was actually AT&T, and SBC long-distance was also, for the majority, AT&T.
Yeah, so it made, it made sense for SBC to buy AT&T, and I think part of the reason why Verizon wanted to say, oh, crap, we need one of these now, is because I don't think SBC wants to sell Verizon long-distance service when they could be selling their own.
Exactly.
So, it makes sense, you know, you're, you're putting together a local operating company and a long-distance company.
And the thing about Quest is, Quest already has a long-distance network, even before buying MCI.
All that gaudy amount of fiber.
Yeah, tons and tons of dark fiber capacity, sitting there unused, ready for purchasing.
But the reason that Quest really wanted MCI was for the, for the business customers of MCI.
They really just wanted MCI for the revenue.
Verizon wanted MCI for the network.
So, eventually, Verizon won out spending, how much did they spend for MCI?
Like, are they spending like eight, nine?
No, I thought it was somewhere in the range of 16 billion.
No, that was AT&T.
MCI was like eight or nine billion dollars.
Let me look it up.
I'm not such an expert as you.
Yeah, let's see.
MCIP is their stock symbol.
Yeah.
Last trade, 1982.
Market cap, 6.5 billion.
Okay.
That doesn't seem right, but okay.
I seem to recall it was, let's see, six months.
Let's look back here.
Oh, yeah, MCI took a major dip for some reason in early to mid-October.
It dipped from like $26 a share down to under $20 a share.
Oh, there were dips because they did it.
Oh, I'm so funny.
Ha, ha, ha.
But, yeah, no, at $26 a share, I think their market cap was closer to like eight or nine
billion dollars.
So, I think Verizon is buying MCI for like $8.9 billion.
Yeah, that's it.
$8.9 billion is the number that's coming to mind.
All right.
That sounds about right.
So, I'll just let you go.
Yeah.
So, now, so, basically, you know, we've got Merger Mania, SBC and AT&T are now one,
and Verizon MCI are going to be one company shortly enough.
And it makes sense because, you know, if you've got a company that's offering local and long
distance service, that company should have their own long distance network.
So, now we really have four major players in the long distance and local markets.
We've got SBC.
I'm going to have to get out of the habit of saying that.
We have AT&T.
We have Verizon.
Did we actually mention that SBC has actually opted to take AT&T's name?
Yeah, yeah.
SBC is abandoning the name SBC, and they're operating now as AT&T.
I like to, I actually like to call them SBC and T.
SBC and T, yeah.
Well, I like MCI then.
I don't know.
It doesn't just roll right off the tongue.
But, yeah, because the whole WorldCom scandal and the fact that MCI has never been
known for having amazing quality service, I think Verizon would do very well to drop
the MCI name.
I bet so.
I'm sure that MCI won't exist in name any time after the merger.
Mm-hmm.
So, you have like, what do you have?
You have four major players in the market.
AT&T, Verizon, Quest, and Sprint.
And speaking of that, there goes my telephone.
So, yeah, all of those have some sort of local footprint and a long distance network.
So, it'll be interesting to see how things shape up with that.
Because now, they're all perfectly capable of transitioning that network into a nationwide
IP network.
Mm-hmm.
So, you've got four major IP networks competing against each other in the not-too-distant future.
And that'll be really interesting to see how that plays out.
All right.
Well, I think the question is, what is in store for the future?
I mean, we see Quest over here.
And do you think Quest is actually going to happen anytime soon?
It's going to be lasting anytime soon?
I don't know.
I mean, Quest has the potential.
Quest has the potential for massive, you know, to be competitive with SBC and with AT&T and Verizon.
Apparently.
It's only the first day.
You have an excuse now.
You can last a couple of months.
Yeah.
I mean, heck, they still had Ameritech signage up on a lot of the CEOs.
That's true.
But no, apparently, someone got a call from somebody at AT&T today and said, and the person
said, hi, this is my calling from SBC.
I'm sorry, AT&T.
I've done that all day.
Well, heck, I mean, that's what it is.
I mean, I couldn't imagine my company changing names and suddenly have to be calling it.
I think the only people that have ever actually done that were the WWF people, apparently,
because one of my friends was marking, oh, man, when they changed your name, no one made
a mistake.
It was weird.
And then I laughed at him because he watched his wrestling.
Well, that's because that's all pre-scripted.
Well, I can imagine that, but I couldn't have someone, because it was like WWF to WWE, and
it's just, if you're used to saying it, I guess.
Lord only knows.
Hmm.
So how we went from phones to wrestling, I don't know.
It was a whole name change thing.
Yeah.
But, yeah, Quest definitely has the potential to compete in the market against AT&T and Verizon,
but the problem is they're so massively in debt that I don't think they're having a lot
of trouble getting loans from the banks.
So they really don't have the cash on hand to be able to fuel, to pour into a marketing
effort to compete.
Yeah, because I remember them when they were, like, right around the dot-com boom, they were
advertising left and right about how they were so great in fiber optics, and you can get
every movie ever made in a hotel room or something.
Mm-hmm.
And I always looked at them and said, what the hell is this?
But, yeah, well, here's a question.
I mean, what could happen to the network within the next couple of years for people to compete?
Because, well, with the whole Sprint and Nextel merger, Sprint's dropping their local and
their landline services.
That's what I hear.
I don't know for sure, but from what I understand, Sprint is going to divest their local operations
sometime in the next few months here.
Yes, it is official.
It was on their website.
Oh, was it?
Yes.
What did they say?
Are they spitting it off to somebody else, or are they selling it to somebody else?
They didn't actually say of what they're going to do with it, but they did say that they
are going to do it whatever it is.
Hmm.
Did they give a date?
No, they did not.
I actually just read this after they announced the whole name change things with Nextel.
So, they said that it is going to happen, but as for what actually is going to happen,
the Lord only knows.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I think what's going to happen is they're going to spit it off into – either – one
of two things is going to happen.
They're going to spin it off into an independent company.
Probably what's going to happen is that.
They'll spin it off into an independent company, and then either one of the large independents,
like CenturyTel, is going to buy them up, or they're going to get bought up by one of
the bigger companies, like maybe AT&T or Verizon.
I don't think that would really go.
Would the FCC even allow, like, you know, AT&T or SP – see, now you've got me doing
it, damn it – AT&T or Verizon to buy another company, because they're starting to become
tremendously huge.
Well, I mean, the local phone operations of Sprint are only like a $6 billion company
in revenue, and I think market capitalization is even less.
So, I think it probably wouldn't be that difficult for, you know, Verizon or AT&T to buy them up.
I'm not really sure exactly what's going to happen.
That's probably what's going to happen to that.
It's going to get bought up by somebody else.
So, I don't know why Sprint is divesting it, because it's a local phone operation.
It's revenue generation.
Well, I guess Sprint's whole future is going wireless here.
That's true.
And they're walkie-talkie.
They're Boost Mobile.
Where you at?
Yeah, that's right.
Also, yeah, now that I think about it, the reason, I think, part of the problem for Sprint
local is that a lot of their territory is in really fast-expanding metro areas like Las Vegas.
And the areas are expanding so fast, they're having to pump a lot of money into new facilities
and new plants so quickly, and there's such huge demand for it that they're not seeing
any return on investment.
So, that's losing money left and right.
Really?
I always kind of foresee it as if it was expanding really fast, you would kind of make money as
long as you had utilization up to that.
Well, I mean, yeah, you expand and you make money, but I think there's a threshold where
you expand at a certain rate and you get a certain return on investment, you know, but
if you're pumping a lot, because don't forget, I think, you know, the cost to install a phone
line, it only pays for itself after a certain number of years.
Huh.
So, you know, with all the facilities you need.
So, I think that's the problem.
There's a point where you can't expand too fast.
True, I guess I could see that.
You pump too much money into facilities and everything and you get the customers, but
it's going to take you so long to recoup that lost cash that it's not worth it.
Hmm.
So, it's a balancing act.
That's very interesting.
Now that you mention that, it kind of seems like it makes sense.
So, do you see Bill South actually surviving, or do you see that being gobbled up by somebody?
Or do you see someone gobbled up by Bill South?
Let's see.
I think Bill South is actually pretty solid as far as their revenues go.
I think Bill South Corp is like $38 billion market cap.
Let's see.
Market cap $49.72 billion.
So, yeah, they're pretty damn solid considering that they have a relatively small in-state region.
But don't forget, Bill South also owns 40% of singular wireless, whereas Quest is on far less stable footing because they don't have a wireless division anymore.
I think they have to sell the wireless division off in order to get operating cash.
Which, yes, I believe that sounds correct.
Mm-hmm.
So, well, I'm also, the other question with Bill South is, you know, with the whole Katrina business, I think they had to replace, like, about at least 10 or 12 central offices at the cost of some obscene amount of money.
Yeah, but that's what they have insurance for.
True.
But, I mean, how much is that covered?
That's the question.
I'm sure.
I mean, you know, you put central office, which is an area which is prone to hurricane, you insure those things against flood damage.
Unless, of course, you've got some bean counter upstairs going, you know, oh, we don't need that.
Hurricane will never hit New Orleans.
Ah, well, I mean, let's see their stock price over the last six months.
Really, it's, you know, kind of at the same level it was in June.
It took a dip after Katrina, you know, it dipped in September, hit a low in early October, but it's back up to where it was now.
Fascinating.
Mm-hmm.
See, stock market, kids.
Stock market is fun.
Yeah, stock market is very fun.
Especially if you like numbers.
Especially if you like charts.
It's legal gambling.
Yeah, charts are always cool.
Mm-hmm.
Plus, you can sound erotic talking about it on Hacker Radio.
Exactly.
And people are just like, man, where's my wares?
Yeah.
We should say Linux, iPod, Gen 2, asterisk right now, just to satisfy the kiddies.
It's asterisk about phones, though.
We can't talk about phones because we're turning into the next default.
That's true.
So, oh, my gosh.
Monday, AT&T plans to resurrect the wireless brand.
Really?
Yeah, let me read this right off the AP Newswire.
Monday, November 21st, 6.16 p.m. Eastern Time.
So, a few hours ago.
AT&T to resurrect wireless brand for service provided by a singular partnership with Bell
South.
AT&T, Inc., the company created by SBC Communications, Inc., just completed purchase of its former corporate
parent, plans to resurrect the AT&T wireless brand for cell phone service provided by a singular
wireless partnership with Bell South Corp.
No time frame or details have been set for the plan, which is permitted under the joint venture
agreement with Bell South, but could generate friction between the partners when it comes
to decisions such as allocating Singular's financial resources for marketing.
AT&T declined to say whether the AT&T wireless brand might be marketed broadly under a specific
consumer segment.
We plan to sell our wireless service under AT&T Wireless at some point, but we don't have
any definitive plan now, said AT&T spokesman Selem Bingal, confirming comments made by Chief
Executive Ed Whitaker to USA Today.
Bell South and Singular appeared to be caught off guard by their remarks, but downplayed
the significance.
They stressed that every new customer would generate revenue for the joint venture regardless
of whether it is under the Singular or AT&T brands.
Still, the return of AT&T Wireless also may spell new competition for Singular's existing
52.3 million customers, particularly those who reside in the western and midwestern states
where a former SBC is the dominant local phone company.
AT&T is investing billions to upgrade its local network in those markets to deliver cable
TV and multimedia capabilities so it can keep and win customers with a bundle of services
on a single bill.
Together, the former SBC based in San Antonio, Texas, and Atlanta-based Bell South Corp have
poured billions of dollars into advertising and building the Singular name since they merged
their cellular operations consisting of 11 different local brands in 2000.
This does not change in any way how we'll market Singular.
This is still a national brand, and they support our marketing Singular as a national brand.
Singular spokesman Mark Siegel said, Singular is a well-recognized brand with a huge base
of customers, and I'm sure this will be taken into account with these decisions.
The decision marks another confusing twist in the recent lineage of the AT&T and AT&T Wireless
names.
Confusing?
Hell yeah.
The two brands went separate ways in 2001 when AT&T Corp spun off AT&T Wireless Communications,
Inc. as an independent company.
But the branding arrangement between the two companies called for the right to the AT&T
Wireless name to revert to AT&T Corp if the cell phone company was ever acquired.
And that provision was triggered about a year ago when AT&T Wireless agreed to be acquired
by Atlanta-based Singular.
With that, AT&T announced plans to return to the cellular business with its own brand of
mobile phone service.
Until the long-and-distance company agreed to be acquired earlier this year by the former
subsidiary, SBC.
Cutting full circle, SBC has now decided to rename itself and most of its products under
the more familiar AT&T brand that came with the acquisition.
Under their joint venture agreement, Bell South and SBC share equal management control
over Singular, though Bell South owns a 40% stake and the former SBC owns 60%.
Bell South's shares fell 17 cents to close at 27.19 on the New York Stock Exchange, while the
former SBC fell 1 cent to close at 24.37.
Oh my god, one cent!
Who knows?
Well, with the volume of shares they had out there.
Let's just recap this.
Well, yeah, I mean, that is a lot of money.
It always just sounds like stupid with, oh my god, one cent.
So, let's recap.
AT&T had cable modem in cable business, because I do remember getting AT&T broadband cable.
Yeah, what happened was AT&T bought that.
And now they sold that off.
AT&T bought TCI and Media One in, like, 1999 or 1998 or something.
I don't even think it was that.
I think it was, like, 96 or so.
No, it was the late 90s.
Oh, really?
Yeah, because they redesigned their logos slightly in 1999 because of the merger.
Oh.
So, what is it?
So, AT&T...
But they sold that off.
Well, yeah, they had wireless, but they sold that off.
But now they're getting back into both.
Well, okay, here's what happened.
They're not getting back into the cable business.
What happened was AT&T bought the cable company, because AT&T at the time was only inter-exchange.
And they figured the best way to compete with the local phone companies was to offer service over cable lines.
Offer phone service over cable lines.
So, that's why they bought the cable companies.
So, this turned out to not be such a good idea, and it spelled financial ruin for AT&T.
AT&T had to sell that off to Comcast for a fraction of what it bought it for just to sustain its operating cash.
And then I think the reason they spun off AT&T Wireless was, again, just for operating cash.
I want operating cash.
Yeah, I want operating cash, too, to the tune of a couple billion dollars.
Yeah, tell me about it.
I'd be all set.
Mm-hmm.
All right.
So, that's what it is.
And now we're coming full circle all the way back down, at which point we can get AT&T Wireless again.
I wonder if they're going to, like, say, like, AT&T Wireless is back, when in reality it's just part of Singular now.
So, it is a new company, but we're still having the name.
I wonder how they're going to market that.
It's going to be very interesting.
I should hold on to Singular.com.
Tingular.
AT, no, come on.
It's AT and Tingular.
Yeah, I have ATTingular.com.
No, now it should be SBC and Tingular.
SBC and Tingular?
Yes.
SBC and Tingular, yeah.
But, no, what AT&T is going to do now, the new AT&T, they're not doing television over cable.
They're doing it over fiber.
The bet is that there's going to be more demand for multimedia and bandwidth services in the future.
So, they're running lots of fiber, you know, out to neighborhoods and out to premises to give customers more bandwidth.
And the hope is that in addition to offering high-speed DSL or high-speed internet access service, they'll also be able to offer television over IP.
So, that's the whole IPTV thing.
Toip!
I want to get a toip button.
Toip.
Well, it's...
I've got to love this whole crazy merger and acquisition, and I just want to know when I can get a cell phone with a rotary dial.
We never talk about BellSouth, I think.
I think there are a lot of loose ends we need to wrap up.
All right.
Well, let's talk about BellSouth.
Oh, yeah.
BellSouth has a market cap of almost $50 billion, which is pretty big considering they have a small footprint.
But they have 40% of singular wireless, which contributes to that greatly.
And I'm not sure whether or not BellSouth is going to...
I'm wondering.
BellSouth might buy up some long-distance company, like one of the smaller ones.
They could theoretically buy up Global Crossing.
So, I think that's the only long-distance company left that is solely long-distance.
Well, see, my personal fantasy is Sprint, local, when they spin off, they buy Quest.
And then we get to enjoy a company called Sprest.
Ah, yes.
Which sounds just like this really bad soda.
I can just picture this little bubbly-type logo on it, and this guy with little cans.
Enjoy the refreshing telephony of Sprest.
Mmm, it's good.
Yes.
Yeah.
Voice, data, lemon-lime.
That's Sprint.
Mm-mm, Sprest.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens.
One of two things is likely to happen.
Well, either Bell South is going to continue on its merry way, but I think the competitive
pressure is going to force them at some point to buy up some inter-exchange carrier, and
they might just buy up Quest.
Hmm.
Because Quest is cheap right now.
Well, considering how loaded they're debt into, it's not surprising.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it might be, you know, feasible to buy up Quest and their debt and still pay
it off and make a profit, because Bell South has the revenue.
Oh, Bell South can definitely do it.
It's just, you know, more questionable about whether Sprint can do it.
And also, Bell South just seems to be happy of where they are.
Yeah.
They're running a good product down in the southeast of the United States, and they just really
don't care about anything else.
Mm-hmm.
And I guess their stockholders are just really, yeah, okay, yeah, that's fine, just keep making
us money, we're cool.
Mm-hmm.
They're not worried about, like, you know, ooh, got to sustain double-digit growth every
year, blah, blah, blah.
So, it'll be interesting the way this actually affects the telecommunications landscape and
the United States.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
So, yeah, merger mania, it's, well, I guess we only have a few minutes left, so let's
get to the practical upshots of what this all means, really.
Basically, the various companies will now be able to pretty much offer everything.
You know, local, long distance on their own network, and mobile phone service on their
own network, and to a degree, you know, internet service and, you know, television service.
And, I mean, it's really all going in the direction of everything being internet service
anyway.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, in fact, on AT&T's website, there's a graphic of the future of the network, and
it shows, you know, today, a separate path for everything, and tomorrow, everything goes
over IP, over a single IP network.
I want my cell phone over IP.
Yes.
Quipe.
Mm.
Cell phone.
Which I think with all, like, EVDO and all that crazy crap, that's going to be possible.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, if you people have thoughts on the mergers, feel free to mail us.
Radio at binrev.com.
I'm sure everyone's either shut us off by now, or if they're listening, they're just
sort of, like, sitting back and drooling on themselves, because we've just gone all kinds
of crazy ways about it.
Yep.
So, eventually, it's just ironic the way that, in 1984, the Bell system broke up, and
here it is, about 20 years later, and everything is just coming back together.
Well, I mean, two factors have contributed to that.
One is the fact that, you know, the market then was different than it is now.
True.
You know, back then, it was really monopoly.
These days, there are enough competition rules in place, and there's enough competition
in place from different technologies that, really, the whole monopoly thing doesn't apply
anymore.
Mm-hmm.
So, and the fact that, also, the price, the margin of the services has gone down immensely.
I mean, look at the cost per minute and the price per minute of long-distance service.
Hell, look at just the fact that we have unlimited long-distance now.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
Who would have conceived of that 20 years ago?
Nobody.
No?
MCI.
MCI, yeah.
So, that'll be interesting to see where this all goes.
And hopefully, it'll move toward the better, but chances are, no, that's not going to happen.
Well, we'll do a, what's the title of the show?
We'll do a Merger Mania Revisited at some point in the not-tearly distant future.
Merger Mania Redux.
Yeah.
So, let's wrap it up.
Look at our show.
I don't know.
We have no announcements this week.
It's relatively quiet.
Do you have any announcements?
Natas, do you have any?
Oh, wait.
No, he's not here.
Yeah.
We have an announcement.
Natas freezes to death in outside New England Best Buy.
No, Walmart, Walmart.
Or Walmart, yeah.
We're not even sure if he's in New England anymore.
He may be someplace else.
Yeah, I think it's New England.
Well, he, he, he, that kid goes everywhere.
I really don't even know where the hell he is now.
He does.
Yeah, he does go everywhere.
Yeah.
Well, we'll send, we'll go right into shouts.
So, shouts to Natas.
Don't die on us, man.
Mm-hmm.
And may you have lots of fun purchasing and reselling your Xboxes.
And if you, if you want an Xbox for slightly above retail price, uh, Natas says, go contact
him via PM at forums.bidrev.com.
He'll be, he'll be sure to sell you one.
Mm-hmm.
Because he's just that little, young entrepreneur.
Um, side of the week.
Uh, att.com.
Might as well.
Yeah, the new att.com.
The new att.com.
Yes.
Go there.
Look at the new logo.
Learn to love it.
Email, radio.bidrev.com.
And, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll let you introduce our closing quote-unquote music tonight.
Yeah, our closing music is not really music.
It's a, um, it's a recording which was made by Mark Brené in the late 1960s that he played
on the telephone line, which, uh, which explains the, how do I put it?
It explains the philosophical views of a bunch of phone freaks.
The philosophical and religious views of a bunch of phone freaks.
And, uh, that's, I think, all I have to say about that.
You will enjoy it.
It's, it's humorous.
It's a chunk of it a listen.
If you don't listen to the closing music, just, just give this a listen for the hell of
it.
If you close halfway through, hey, what's he gonna do?
So, well, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll send shouts out to Natas one more time and hopefully
he won't die.
It's actually supposed to be raining.
Well, it depends on where he is.
Mm-hmm.
Either way, good luck.
Have a good time.
And we'll see you next week.
Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
Hello again, my friends.
This is Reverend Mark Bernay of the Universal Life Church.
Thank you very much for calling.
So many of you have been calling me lately and asking me what the church is all about
that I thought I would put it on a recording to explain to you, the public and all my dear
friends, just what are the basic principles of the First MBS Church of Seattle.
Our church is a church of the Universal Life.
We believe that there is one common controlling thing that is throughout the universe and that
is the secret and the wisdom behind all living and non-living things.
We believe that we believe that this one entity, this one universal being created us.
We came from within it and without it we are nothing.
Now what is this thing, this universal life force?
It is your telephone, my friends.
That's right, your telephone.
What else is there that can connect you anywhere around the world immediately?
Nothing but the telephone.
Surely, it must be that one overall universal being that I spoke of earlier.
No, of course, I am not saying that your one telephone in your one house is the creator
of the universe.
That surely is ridiculous.
But it is the essence of the telephone, the interrelationship, the connections between
all the telephone systems in the world.
These, all together, are the universal life.
And each individual telephone and each individual call is a manifestation of its greatness.
This universal system, which in this country we call the mother, was truly the creator of
us all.
It has been on earth as long as earth has been.
And in the universe as long as the universe has been.
For reasons of its own, it did not show its true nature until recently in human times.
But the modern telephone system is the same thing that created the universe and that our
ancients talked about in their scriptural works.
This is why, my friends, we say that you must not play with your telephone.
This is why it will anger the mother if you do.
For you will be playing with your creator if you do.
I will be explaining in future discussions just why the universal life force chose to manifest
itself as a telephone system.
But for now, my friends, please recognize it for what it is.
That instrument that you are holding in your hand now while you listen to me must be handled
with the greatest of love.
For it is a part of our mother of the bell.
Now, I would like to leave you with the immortal words of our forefathers.
So, thank you for calling.
And if we can be of any spiritual guidance to you, please call us in person at Emerson 5-8110.
Goodbye for now.