You'll meet the likes of show waitress Dixie Lilly, Chanteuse Vanessa Tease, The Missing
Link, Aries Guy, and America's latent superhero, Captain Fabulous in his yellow ribbon cape.
And even celebrities like Elvis and Johnny Cash.
So tune into the Bernie Fleschken Show on WBAI on the first Monday morning of every
month at 9.30.
It's a rock and roll comedy adventure you won't soon forget.
Just ask the FCC.
It's the first Monday morning of every month at 9.30 on free speech, listener-sponsored,
hey buddy, got a dime radio, WBAI.
Who loves you, sweetheart?
Ciao, muchachos!
This is WBAI, New York, where rock and all kinds of other things live.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
It couldn't get much worse.
But if they could, they would.
For Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Billy Bone!
Good evening, friends.
This is Emmanuel Goldstein.
The program is Off the Hook, where we talk about the threats of the 21st century.
Technology, coupled with the human mind, can create some fantastic things.
It can also create some monsters.
Will we be seeing the second coming, or will we be seeing the return of the dinosaurs?
It's up to us.
And it's up to you.
We'll be updating you on a bunch of interesting things,
and also taking lots of phone calls today,
because we haven't had a chance to do that in a little while.
So give us a call at 212-279-3400
with your questions and comments about telephones,
computers,
privacy,
technology,
Big Brother,
and hackers.
And anything else that might fit in there somewhere.
We're on a mission to protect the planet.
We have a mission to protect you.
We have a mission to protect you.
We have a mission to protect you.
We have a mission to protect you.
Many times we focus on the humorous aspects
of technological foul-ups and blunders,
kind of America's funniest home videos of telephone mix-ups
and computer malfunctions.
But occasionally, and with increasing frequency over the years to come,
we're going to be seeing lives destroyed, snuffed out,
by the same ignorance that leads that salesperson to say,
I'm just doing what the computer told me to do.
This story comes from the Oregonian of February 20th.
A computer error added seven minutes to the time it took firefighters
to reach a 68-year-old woman trapped in her burning Bonnie Slope home.
Mildred Smith died of smoke inhalation,
suffered in a pre-dawn February 12th blaze at her home.
Well, I don't think we really need to give the exact address.
For some reason, newspapers feel compelled to give people's exact addresses.
People can go by and look at the charred remains of the house.
But since nobody is near Oregon listening to this program,
but since nobody is near Oregon listening to this program,
and since we believe in privacy, even privacy of the dead,
we're going to leave that information out.
If you really want to know, you can call up information
and ask for the address for Mildred Smith, the late Mildred Smith.
Although there's probably about 500 of those anyway.
Mildred Smith, that is, not late Mildred Smith.
Anyway, a neighbor telephoned 911 to report the fire at 2.40 a.m.,
but firefighters from Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue
were not dispatched until 2.47 a.m., seven minutes later,
because a computer error sent the original call to the wrong place.
Eugene Jacobus, Washington County Deputy Medical Examiner,
said it would be hard to determine whether the dispatching delay made a fatal difference.
Firefighters were also delayed by steel bar security doors
when they reached the remote home north of Cedar Mill,
five and a half minutes after finally getting the call for help.
It's really hard to say, but certainly a delay of that magnitude
is going to make a difference, Jacobus said.
You can be relatively sure that any delay, whether two or seven minutes,
is going to rob an individual of some ability to be resuscitated.
By Friday, officials had traced the problem to the computerized telephone switching system
at Portland's 911 Center on Kelly Butte.
Fire and U.S. West Communications, that's their 9X equivalent out there,
officials from those two organizations, the fire people and the U.S. West people,
say a reloading of some computer software by U.S. West
inadvertently changed the way a 911 system routed calls for a very small number of callers.
We're still looking to find out how that happened, said Jim Haynes, U.S. West spokesman.
What specifically happened with this case, 2.40 a.m., Jack Gilbert of,
well, they give another exact address, which we're not going to give.
He called 911 to report what he first thought was a brush fire in the area of the burning house,
about 100 yards away.
The call was answered at Kelly Butte because the Gilberts' home is just inside the Multnomah County line.
On the enhanced 911 computer screen,
the dispatcher could see that Washington County Consolidated Communication Agency
was the appropriate dispatching agency,
and Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue was the appropriate fire department.
About four seconds later, the dispatcher hit a key
that is supposed to route the call automatically to the right place.
But in this case, it didn't work.
Although the 911 operator didn't know it,
the call instead went to Portland's Fire Alarm Dispatch Office,
which dispatches Portland Fire Bureau units.
Dispatchers there looked at the address and realized it was a Washington County call.
At 2.44 a.m., Portland Fire dispatchers called the Washington County 911 Center.
But for reasons that are unclear, Washington County dispatchers looking for,
I guess I have to give the number now because it's important,
Washington County dispatchers look for 1229 Hiller Road instead of 12229
for some time without finding it in their computers,
finally kicking it back to Portland under the belief that it must be a Portland address.
About two minutes later, Portland Fire called Washington County again.
This time, the right five-digit address was exchanged,
probably along with some foul language.
Finally, at 2.47 a.m., Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue got the call.
At almost the exact moment, seven minutes after the first call,
Smith herself called 911 from inside her home.
The same thing happened.
The Kelly Butte dispatcher hit the key to route the call,
and it went to Portland Fire Alarm Dispatch instead of Washington County.
About a minute after that, Gilbert called again,
this time to report that the fire was in the house.
By this time, firefighters were on the way.
It took the first company coming from Kaiser Road in the Oak Hills area
five and a half minutes to get there.
The second unit arrived two minutes after that.
But by then, Mrs. Smith was already gone.
Well, it would be nice to say a situation like that doesn't happen too often,
but here's something submitted by Jim Carroll onto the Risks Digest.
On the evening of February 2nd,
my wife and I were woken up by sounds out on the street.
My wife struggled out of bed,
looked through the Venetian blinds,
and screamed at me to put on my glasses and come to the window.
The house across the street was on fire.
This was no small contained fire.
The entire complete structure was up in flames.
I was quoted in the press days later as saying that the flames were over 50 feet high.
I still don't think this is an exaggeration.
It was a stunning and disturbing sight,
so much so that we have slept only fitfully since then.
The house was completely destroyed.
Fortunately, the owner escaped.
What makes it all the worse is that it quickly became apparent
that the fire department was not responding.
For what seemed like an eternity,
the fire burned out of control with only a lone police officer on the scene.
Eventually, the fire department arrived and began to do their work.
As the neighbors congregated in shock outside,
the story began to circulate that it took the fire department 22 minutes to get there,
and that they went to the wrong address.
It turns out that when the operator at 911 received the call,
Birchwood was punched into the computer.
The system listed Birchwood Heights Drive first,
a street a good five miles away from our location.
Tragically, the operator selected that location,
and a full response team of six pumpers and trucks was sent.
Meanwhile, the fire on Birchwood Drive continued to rage out of control.
My neighbor across the street called three times
when it became evident that something was wrong
when the fire department was not there within five minutes,
being only about one mile away.
They realized their mistake within 10 to 12 minutes
after the third call and after obviously seeing
that there was no fire on Birchwood Heights Drive.
The Mississauga Fire Department has apologized
to the owner of the destroyed property.
Estimates of loss are one and a half million dollars or higher.
That general vicinity kind of blurs after that point.
They've promised to review their dispatch procedures.
These kind of things are happening all the time.
The London Ambulance Service crisis reported to the Risks Digest.
That...
Actually, I misread that.
The London Ambulance Service crisis,
which was reported to Risks Digest,
has been absent from the U.K. press for a while,
but now it seems likely to burst forth again.
This comes from the U.K. Computer Weekly,
dated February 18, 1993.
London Ambulance Service made a fatal blunder
London Ambulance Service made a fatal blunder
when it brought a one million pound untested computer system
to handle 999 calls.
999 being the British equivalent of 911.
An official inquiry will reveal this particular fact in a week or so.
Union leaders have already blamed the system
for contributing to the deaths of at least four patients.
Around 800,000 emergency calls are handled
by the capital's ambulance service each year.
But after a spate of incidents in which calls were lost
and emergency victims suffered long delays
before ambulances arrived,
the system was abandoned.
Now, an official report into the fiasco
demanded by Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley
is expected to be scathing in its criticism.
Since last November, an independent panel
has been looking at the circumstances
surrounding the purchase of the system,
which was bought when a previous computer-aided dispatch module crashed.
Yet, after just a few months of use,
the replacement was similarly suffering from call data overload.
Questions raised by the report will include
why Aldershot-based Systems Options was chosen
as the main software supplier
when it had no previous experience
in providing dispatch systems to the ambulance sector.
Jim Pedroza, Systems Options founder,
has consistently refused to talk to the press.
His networked solution based on Apricot workstations and servers
contrasts markedly with many based systems
favored by other emergency services.
According to sources working close to the inquiry team,
one conclusion is that a replacement computer-aided dispatch system
will now take years, rather than months, to implement.
It will also confirm that the Systems Options solution
is wholly unfit for the task.
Said one London ambulance source,
what we're talking about here
is an official stamp of condemnation.
Not enough attention was paid to the project,
and the lack of expertise in choosing the system
was completely unacceptable.
The outcome of the report has been delayed
to allow for the publication this week
of the Tomlinson Report on London Hospitals.
Since the system was ditched,
the service's chief, John Wilby, has resigned,
and control room staff have reverted
to manual methods of dispatching crews.
Many times that's what happens.
You have this real neat computer system,
and you have to go back to doing it by hand
because nobody can figure out
just how to get around all the problems at start.
Sad but true.
Another sad but true incident comes out of Canada.
Not quite as sad, though.
It's that time of year again when love is in the air
and Canada Post is seeing red.
This comes from the Toronto Star.
When we say red, we mean red envelopes.
That's because the computerized mail sorting machines,
which can process 33,000 letters an hour,
have trouble reading addresses off the red envelopes
popular for Valentine's Day greetings.
That's according to Canada Post.
We in Canada have some of the most
technically advanced machinery in the world,
but while it's not impossible for them to read red envelopes,
some of them can present a bit of a challenge.
So if your Valentine card hasn't arrived,
it may have been delayed in the mail sorting process.
A reminder for next year,
white envelopes should be used instead,
or put a white sticker on a red envelope.
Small sacrifice to pay
for the technological enlightenment
we're all facing here.
Citibank's 1,200 ATMs went down
as they refused to dispense cash
or complete transactions.
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
on a recent Saturday,
I believe it was the 6th.
No, it might have been the 13th, actually.
Yeah, Saturday the 13th.
They went down because of a software glitch
when new software was being installed.
Seems like most of these problems
come from new software being installed.
That's when the old facts
just don't get processed quite as quickly.
The Valley Times reported
that telephone service was cut off
for more than four hours
to about 37,000 phone lines
in Livermore, California,
including 911 and Operator Zero lines.
The article said that the significance
of the malfunction
was in having three prefixes
that can't reach emergency phone lines.
Pacific Bell, which is the phone company out there,
was stymied in correcting the problem
because diagnostic tests of the equipment
told technicians that there was no problem.
Technicians eventually located the problem
in a call processor computer tape
and replaced the malfunctioning tape.
Luckily for some people out in California,
that particular area
was a relatively low crime area.
No serious crimes occurred during the outage.
More than four hours.
Some banks compensated
by letting in only a few customers at a time
because they were concerned
that their alarm systems
wouldn't be able to call police.
And here's something that might affect you
a bit more often than, say,
death by ambulance or
lack of ATMs or telephones.
This can happen any time you go to the store.
This comes from Rob Slade.
About two months ago,
I was permitted to accompany my wife
on an expedition to the fabric store.
Our final transaction involving a credit card
was a source of no small confusion
to the clerk at the till.
He punched all the requisite buttons
but was unhappy with the result.
Finally, though,
he punched the transmit button.
Apparently, he was no happier
with this new result
since he mentally ran over the process again
before again punching the transmit button.
Still unhappy,
he asked help from a co-worker
who quizzed him on the process.
Satisfied that he had not, in fact, made an error,
she punched the transmit button
and was no happier than he was with the result.
The manager was brought in.
and was still not any happier
after she, the manager,
had punched transmit.
The situation was resolved
when someone remembered to turn on the printer
attached to the swipe unit.
Oh, but that's not the end of the story.
Oh, but that's not the end of the story.
Because
this person was reminded of this incident
by something else that happened.
His credit card bill came
with
four copies
of the same billing.
You see, the unit apparently was indicating an error
but didn't give any indication as to what that error was.
The procedure had a fault
but was allowed to proceed without a vital component
which is the printed receipt.
When you have a printed receipt,
it's supposed to be signed by the customer
and that is really
the legal proof of the transaction.
Even though the transaction was only entered once,
the unit still submitted four confirmed billings
with only the transmit key being hit again.
I find it odd,
says Rob Slade,
that the transaction having been transmitted
would not be cleared from the Tillside unit
in order to prevent such accidental duplicates.
This reminds me of something that just recently happened to me
when I went down to Texas.
I figured it would make sense to
reserve a hotel room,
or actually a motel room,
in advance.
See, the way things worked out was
I wound up flying into this remote part of Texas.
This was
to see the Steve Jackson trial
which, by the way,
there still has not been a verdict announced in
and we will announce it here when that does happen.
So,
the smart thing to do was
to make a reservation
at this particular motel that I was going to,
which is part of a nationwide chain,
which I won't reveal the name of.
And as part of the reservation process,
the person on the other end asked for my credit card number
and I just thought this was
just to confirm my identity.
And when I got down there,
I found the place,
I went there,
they had no record of my
reservation.
But they cheerfully took my credit card information again
and everything seemed to be fine
until I got my credit card bill
and found that I was charged by two
different motels with the same name in the same city.
Yes, I had gone to the wrong one.
I had two rooms in the same city on the same night.
Well, it wasn't much fun.
Particularly since
they weren't exactly straight in how the reservation process worked.
You think you're giving something out for identification,
but in actuality you're being billed.
That's not really
the way these things should work.
You need to keep your eyes open.
Because if you don't,
you're going to be charged.
You need to keep your eyes open.
Because if you don't,
you never know what kind of surprises will be
waiting for you.
Speaking of surprises,
Hans Jankowski was pleasantly surprised
when a money-changing machine from the bank
Tota & Encores in the
Lisbon airport
gave him his receipt in Esperanto.
It's true.
Because the Portuguese Esperanto Association
was also surprised,
Antonio Martins decided to explore.
It seems that this was
probably an error in setting up the computer.
On installation of the 10-language system,
someone mistakenly programmed Esperanto
instead of the Spanish Espanol.
So,
it's requested that no one congratulate the bank.
They would be able to repair this mistake.
Here's something of a local nature.
Continental Cablevision of Hartford broadcasts
a special offer of a free T-shirt
during last fall's
Holyfield Bowie fight
of November 14.
Unlike most pay-per-view broadcasting,
this one did not show up
through legitimate decoders.
The ad and its 800 number
only showed up when watched
through illegal decoders.
140 freeloaders
called the 800 number
within minutes of the ad's broadcast.
Continental sent the T-shirts
by certified return receipt mail
and then
sent them a follow-up letter
reminding them of the federal law's
fines of up to $10,000
and demanding a $2,000 fine.
That's a surprise.
Man, I can't believe it.
I've got a real indication
of the last couple of days.
And you know, there's
one thing that the authorities fear
more than anything else,
and that's not being able to listen in.
One of the
jewels of
Europe's electronics industry,
the new all-digital cellular phone system
known as GSM
may be blocked from export
to other countries around the world
by the U.S. Department of Trade
and Industry.
The DTI objects to the exports
because it believes the encryption system
that GSM uses
to code its messages
is too good.
Sources say this is because
the security services
and military establishment
in Britain and the U.S.
fear they will no longer
be able to eavesdrop
on telephone conversations.
Few people believe
that the DTI has woken to the problem
five years too late.
Here in the United States,
it's incredibly easy
to listen to cellular phone calls
simply by turning on a scanner
and tuning to the
800 megahertz part of the dial.
It's so incredibly easy.
Meanwhile, fans of encryption
and those who merely
fan the fires of debate
about threat
slash value
will want to dig up
Peter Schweitzer's new book
Friendly Spies,
just published by Atlantic Monthly Press.
He includes many different details
about covert intelligence operations
directed against U.S. corporations
by Cold War allies.
Time and time again,
he says,
foreign governments conspire
with foreign companies
to steal U.S. technology
and many other countries
require U.S. companies
to register the encryption key
for reasons of national security.
All of the American transmissions
are monitored
and the data is passed on
to the local competitors.
Companies like IBM
finally began to routinely
transmit false information
to their French subsidiary
just to thwart
the French Secret Service
The lesson learned here
is that key registration
in the world
hurts American corporations.
Cryptography protects the creators
and thwarts those
who seek to copy innovation.
I'll take that a step further
and say that
key registration
will hurt individual people.
There's a big debate
raging about this right now.
Should people be allowed
to encrypt their messages
instead of anybody else
being able to use
some kind of a backdoor
to get in and read the messages?
After all,
what if a criminal
is sending a message?
They're big on the
child pornography issue.
What if these nasty people
that are conspiring
in child pornography
are sending encrypted messages?
Well, there'll be absolutely
nothing we can do about it.
By defeating evil people,
you defeat
all kinds of other people as well.
I guess the question is,
do we want to be defeated?
What do you think?
Give us a call.
212-279-3400
We'll be taking phone calls
here on Off The Hook.
Why did you go?
Why did you die?
Why did you leave?
Why did you leave me?
When all the world seemed to see
Why, why did you go?
Was it me?
Was it you?
Questions in a world
full of fear
How can a heart
that's filled with love
start to cry?
When all the world seems to break
How, how can I die?
Was it me?
Was it you?
Questions in a world
full of fear
How can a heart
that's filled with love
start to cry?
When all the world seems to
This is true.
Well, incidentally,
after the trial period ended,
for him anyway,
because he's in one of these magical areas
where they deemed him worthy enough
to be able to play with these features.
And I'm speaking of
call return and repeat call
and caller ID and the other one.
What's that useless one again?
Call trace.
That's the one.
Yeah.
$1.50 every time you want to trace
a harassing call.
You might as well
just mail them a check.
Might as well.
Yeah.
And the guy harassing you
might as well get a cut.
Might as well.
Yeah.
So what happened?
So what happened was
at the end of the designated time,
my friend here, Mr. X,
suddenly realized
that his phone smart features
no longer worked.
Now, the deal was supposed to be,
and this is supposed to hold true
for everyone,
is that once the trial period ends,
everyone would still have the features
except you'd be billed on per usage
so that you'd still have call return
except every time you used it,
you'd be billed $0.75.
Only $0.75, I believe.
Only a low, low price.
The way it says in the paper.
Of $0.75.
Every time you called somebody back.
Yeah.
Okay.
And I believe it's not to exceed $6 in one month.
Otherwise, you can subscribe to it.
So many choices.
Yeah.
So little time.
So what happened was
when Mr. X here noticed
that his features no longer worked,
which contradicts
what the phone company had originally said,
he, of course, was angry enough
and with a little convincing,
he called the business office.
And the business office
had an interesting story to tell him.
They claimed that he canceled the features himself.
One on December 31st
and another at the first week of January.
So we're talking about somebody
that has memory loss here.
Is that the case?
No.
The phone company can't be wrong.
No.
Of course not.
So it's quite apparent
that either Mr. X made a horrid mistake
or who knows.
But one thing we do know for sure
is that Mr. X has absolutely no choice in the matter,
does he?
No.
And suffice to say,
they're giving Mr. X the runaround
and they insist that...
Well, another thing I should mention too,
which I thought was really downright sneaky,
was that he received a phone call.
This was before he reported
the fact that the features didn't work.
He received a phone call from a telemarketer
who was working, of course,
for our buddies at New York Telephone
and asked him if he wanted to subscribe
to the very features
that he should already have.
And in trying to explain this
to the fine gentleman,
the gentleman convinced him
that all he was was a telemarketer
and he could take a note of it.
And in arguing with this gentleman,
he requested numerous times
if there was anything he could do about it.
And all he could say was,
well, you can subscribe.
Yeah, make everybody's life a lot easier.
Yeah, just...
Fork over the cash.
Sure, just subscribe for something
you should already have.
Makes plenty of sense.
So does this story have a happy ending?
No, in fact, there is no ending.
This is going to go on forever, isn't it?
Yeah, this is the way things stand right now.
They're giving Mr. X here the runaround
and he doesn't have his phone smart features,
which he has a right to as a taxpayer.
I'd like to open this up to the listeners.
If you have, and a lot of people won't get through,
so I'd like to ask people to write in.
If you have a story about your particular phone company,
whether it be New York Telephone,
Southern New England Telephone,
New Jersey Bell, what have you,
and they're giving you an incredible runaround,
well, send it on in to us and maybe we'll have a contest
to see who is getting the biggest runaround
from their phone company.
We're not like the shame on you people
or the consumer reporters who won't fix it.
I don't think we have the power to do that.
But we'll talk about it on the air
and we'll let everybody know about it.
And, you know, I have to think
that it hurts the companies more
when you dwell upon something
and just keep talking about it over and over again
and everybody learns about it
and everybody gets angry at the company
rather than coming in with our undercover cameras,
which we don't have anyway,
and, you know, making it solve itself in one afternoon.
I'd rather, you know, let them suffer a bit too
if they're making other people suffer.
So the address to send in your story
is WBAI, off the hook.
Off the hook care of WBAI, actually.
505 8th Avenue, New York, New York, 10018.
And you read the papers today.
There was an interesting story
about President Clinton dialing a wrong number.
He was trying to reach this guy
out in, I think, California someplace,
and he wound up talking to somebody else,
somebody that was a Republican
and didn't even vote for him.
Can you imagine how embarrassing that was?
You know, saying,
oh, I want to speak to Mr. Smith,
and it's actually Mr. Jones
who doesn't know Mr. Smith,
and by the way, I'm President Clinton.
He must have really been embarrassed.
Well, I'm wondering if he got a wrong number credit.
You know, I'll bet he totally forgot to do that.
No, all he needed to do was...
He made all the papers, but I'll bet he didn't...
All he need do is dial 211.
He probably was using a cellular phone, though.
Yeah, he was probably
on his Air Force One jet flying around.
In fact, I'll bet people could have
listened in on that phone call
if they knew what they were doing.
Well, okay, we have a lot of phone calls
that we should get to,
so by all means, let's get to those phone calls.
212-279-3400.
And let's take our first listener phone call here
on Off The Hook.
Good evening.
Emanuel.
How you doing?
Yes, go ahead.
I wish that you would not have that music
behind you when you do your monologue.
You don't like the music, huh?
So distracting.
Well, it's distracting because it's good music.
You realize that.
There was a guy screaming
during one particular part of yours.
Do you know who that was screaming?
Who was it?
There was Angelo Battalamenti,
the guy who does the music for Twin Peaks.
That was the first time
we ever got to hear his voice.
What is the rationale to?
Is it that you're afraid of dead air or something?
Oh, no, not at all.
And, you know, I can prove that if you want.
How?
Proof enough?
You know, he didn't stop talking.
Okay.
Well, listen.
Awfully distracting.
Look, I listen a lot to shortwave radio,
and I try my best to zero in on the station
so that I won't have distractions
so I can hear something.
Uh-huh.
Well, you see, what is distracting to some people
is actually soothing to others.
But, you know, I'll go with the majority here.
If people don't like music,
then we won't have music.
If people don't like music,
we like to listen to you.
Well, okay.
I try to make the music not as loud as me.
The background is not my idea of
you might as well be talking from some bar room,
which will probably be a lot more authentic.
Yeah, well, that's my natural setting anyway,
so it just kind of fits in, you know.
But at least in this case, I don't think it serves your purpose to...
All right, well, I will take that into account.
Now, did you have any particular questions or anything?
No, that's the only thing.
You hopped on the phone right away
just to convey that message, huh?
I find it very distracting.
Wow.
Okay, well, I appreciate the remarks.
Okay.
I have to say, though, he got on the phone right away.
He's been ringing since we first asked for phone calls
to convey that bit of information.
But point taken.
All right?
There.
But I found it was...
The guy screaming might have been a bit much,
but sometimes people scream, you know?
You're talking and people outside in the street are screaming.
Not much you can do about it, right?
BAI is kind of like real life.
Good evening.
Hi, two things.
I like the music.
Oh, so we're tied up, are we?
And my second point is I have a question for Dr. Kaku.
All right.
All right, every week this guy calls up
a full two hours after Dr. Kaku is off the air
and has a question.
I have a question.
I might as well ask you what is the question.
I'll convey it to him.
In terms of Three Mile Island,
they were talking about the reactor core
and just how much of the enriched plutonium,
whatever, is stored in the pools in the reactors.
I knew he couldn't make it through my question.
He was making it up as he went along.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, hello.
How are you doing?
Yeah, I have a question about the computer.
I bought Windows.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
The question about computers belongs
to the Personal Computer Show.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, I tried to call early,
but you said if you had any technical follow-ups...
All right, well, at least we're getting closer to this show.
It's not Mishu Kaku.
It's the Personal Computer Show.
The next call should probably be for this show.
Okay, what's your question?
We'll see if we can answer it.
What happened was I bought Windows
and I put it on my machine.
Uh-huh.
And I had a RAM disk running,
and it filed up the machine.
It filed up my hard drive.
So I used...
I used...
Unformat.
Okay.
Right?
To get the program back.
But what happened was I hadn't put
the Mirror program on for a year.
Right?
So it brought back all the programs from a year ago.
And I still have some tax programs and stuff
that I'm trying to get out.
Uh-huh.
Now, if I use Undelete,
can I get those programs back?
If they're there,
Undelete, the Norton Utility Undelete?
Well...
Or the DOS 5 Undelete?
Same thing.
No, there's actually two different programs.
One is on Erase, one is on Delete.
I'm not sure which is which.
Okay.
Well, the one I...
Well, I'm trying to use Undelete,
because the book says to use Unformat or Undelete
in order to recover files from a corrupted disk
or a disk that you've made a mistake on.
Well, if I'm not mistaken,
the programs will tell you.
It will say that you have a good chance
of recovering this file,
or a poor chance,
or no chance at all.
Exactly.
All right.
So if it says...
Is it saying you have a good chance?
Running through the program?
Well, no, I'm not running through the program.
Okay.
Well, you can't hurt anything
by running the program and answering no
and asking if you want to recover a file.
Actually, you can't hurt anything
even if you recover all the files,
because it's not going to erase
something that currently exists on your computer.
Okay.
Yeah, but the question I want to know, right,
is if I use the Unformat with the backslash U,
which is not using the mirror file,
will the programs that I had come back?
If you haven't written over them,
there might be some.
Now, have you used this computer system a lot
in the last year?
No, no.
Well, since the problem happened,
I haven't done any writing,
reading or writing.
Okay.
All right, so they should come back,
basically, right?
There's a good chance,
but I suggest trying it.
Okay, thank you.
And not worrying about it too much.
All right.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
Good luck.
Have a good one.
But for those of you with computer questions,
this is not the computer show.
The computer show used to be on at this time,
but it's on from 9 to 10,
and give a call to them,
and they'll have a much,
much better answer for you.
So we're more involved in the movement
of high-tech telephones
and individual access
to the technology of the future
and things like that.
279-3400, area code 212.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
I had a question.
Yes, go ahead.
A question.
Steve Jackson, who is he,
and what was...
Do you know where I can get my hands on 2600?
I'll give you a phone number for 2600,
and I'll tell you who Steve Jackson is as well,
and I'll tell you on the radio, okay?
Wait, I'm going to be on the radio?
No, you're on the radio now,
but I'm going to hang up
and tell you over the radio.
Okay.
All right.
Okay, first of all,
if you want to contact 2600 Magazine,
you can call them at 516-751-2600.
That should answer all the questions
that you have concerning that.
Steve Jackson was a...
or still is, actually,
a publisher of games out of Austin, Texas.
He was raided by the Secret Service back in 1990,
the spring of 1990,
in fact, March 1st, 1990,
and he was raided
simply because he had a computer hacker
who worked for him,
and the Secret Service believed
that he was running some kind of
illegitimate operation out of his organization,
which it was later proved
that he was not doing anything of the sort.
But the resulting raid,
the raid that happened
on that particular date,
robbed the company of all their computers,
brought the organization virtually to a standstill,
and nearly put them out of business.
Steve Jackson has brought a suit
against the Secret Service
for this particular raid.
A trial was held in Austin a couple of weeks ago.
It took three days,
and the judge has not yet returned a verdict.
That's who Steve Jackson is.
That's what he's going through,
and that's how it affects us.
We've spent quite a bit of time
talking about this,
and we'll spend more time
talking about it when events warrant.
Right now, we're still waiting
for that verdict to come down.
It's been about three weeks now.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Yeah.
As far as your music,
your music is very appropriate,
background music,
and the volume controls are perfect,
how you bring it in and out.
Well, thank you.
Okay.
My question.
What kind of phone are you on?
I am freezing to death
at a payphone up here in the Bronx.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
Is it a CoCut or is it a regular payphone?
It's a 9X.
Really?
Yeah.
Because the mouthpiece
is making you sound very tinny.
It's almost like you're a thought
inside my head.
Vibrating?
I'll try to keep perfectly still
to reduce...
Is this better if I get closer?
I don't think you can get much better,
but we can understand you just fine.
Okay.
So what's your question
before you hyperthermia sets in?
First of all,
is there a minimum amount of time
that must transpire
from the moment the person picks up,
if someone calls,
where they will be charged?
This is for an 800 number?
Yes.
Well, you know,
it varies from company to company.
I happen to know for sure
some companies,
if you call and hang up immediately,
they do not bill you.
Other companies do bill you,
even if you pick up for a millisecond
and hang up again.
And some companies,
although not very many anymore,
bill you even when it starts ringing.
I think all of them would like to do that.
But the companies, though,
that give you a certain amount of time,
is it more than like
three or four seconds or so?
No.
I think once you pass one or two seconds,
there's almost no chance
that you have a free call at that point.
Some companies will bill you
in six-second increments
or other increments of various kinds.
But nearly all of them
will bill you to some degree
after, say, three seconds or so.
Right.
Okay.
And most 800 numbers,
do they work where there's like
one flat, like, 50 cents rate
whether you're on for 30 seconds
or five minutes?
Or does the cost increase with time?
No, the cost increases with time.
The vast majority that I've seen
of 800 services,
every call from every location is timed.
You can't stay on for long periods
without getting billed.
Right.
And the last question.
Yeah.
Like some places that you call 800 numbers
and they have an operator picking up,
well then, you know,
in the wee hours of the morning,
they may have a message machine.
That's true.
When you get that message machine,
they are all still being charged, I assume.
Yes, they are,
except they have no control at that point.
They can't hang up on you
because it's a machine picking up.
What happens, what a lot of hackers do,
a lot of hackers call corporations
late at night
and they find that their voicemail systems pick up
instead of their switchboard operator
and they can transfer themselves around
to their heart's content
inside the voicemail system
and occasionally can even find accounts that way
and set up their own voicemail boxes.
So a lot of companies are wide open
to this kind of abuse.
Three minutes has ended.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that.
Okay, bye.
If you can hear me, bye.
You've answered all my questions.
Okay.
Thanks very much.
All right.
Take care.
No doubt the phone cops are already on their way up there
to see who's running away from a pay phone in the Bronx
without putting in the money
for the three minutes of overtime.
Oh, pretty scary.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Yeah, good evening.
First of all, I like the music.
I think the music is great.
All right.
It sounds like it's a landslide then
in favor of the music.
And I want to ask one quick question
I'll ask and then I'll hang up
and listen to your response.
Okay.
Can you, is there anything
that the consumer should be aware of
in regards to the voicemail?
And, yeah, is there anything
the consumer should be aware of
in regards to privacy?
And I'll hang up and listen.
Actually, what kind of voicemail are you referring to?
Oh, dear.
What do you think he was referring to, Fiverr?
New York telephone voicemail?
Or if that's the case,
then the only thing he'd have to worry about
is if he's able to retrieve his messages remotely,
which you usually can,
someone else getting the pin.
I don't like New York telephone voicemail
from what I've heard of it.
You can only get messages
from a certain phone number.
Is that how it works?
Well, I forget.
I think there's a difference
between simple call answering
and full-fledged voicemail.
Yeah.
But as far as actual voicemail systems,
there aren't all that many available for consumers.
There should be more,
but there really aren't all that many,
so I can't really recommend anything at this point
because most of the ones that are in service
are used by big, huge corporations
and there's no way a person
could afford those anyway.
But as far as hackers go,
I'm sure they have
many favorite voicemail systems
that they would like to recommend
to various people.
I know Meridian Mail is a favorite.
Roam's phone mail is also another favorite.
So people that get into those systems
can probably tell us
the pros and cons of them,
but not from a consumer point of view,
unfortunately.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Hi.
I'd like to tell you
one more vote for the music.
It was great.
Thank you.
I remember you mentioned Passingly a while back.
Silver box tones, I think you called them.
It was a way to get free calls on pay phones.
No, I think you're talking about red box tones.
Silver box tones are the extra four buttons
that every touch-tone phone is capable of having.
Okay.
ABC and B.
I was wondering if you could explain that a little more.
I've heard about all these boxes.
What exactly are they?
Basically, you've used a pay phone, right?
Yeah.
You've dropped the quarter into a pay phone.
Do you get five little beeps when you do that?
Uh-huh.
Those are red box tones.
If you can use those five beeps
and send them down the phone line,
in effect, many phones believe,
many phone companies are fooled by this
and believe that you've actually put a quarter in.
That's as simple as red boxing gets.
It's similar to a speed dial or something like that, right?
No, not really.
Speed dialing, you're actually dialing a number.
You would dial the number on the pay phone.
The pay phone would ask you for money.
It would say, 50 cents, please.
You would hold up your red box or whatever.
You can even hold up a tape recorder with those tones on it
and play it as many times as you want
until the desired amount is entered.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks a lot.
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
I should point out, folks, this is illegal.
It's not legal to do this,
so we don't recommend doing that kind of thing,
but we will explain to you how it works,
and we will say that it's very widespread
and that phone companies don't seem to be able to do much about it,
at least not in the foreseeable future.
What do you think, Farber?
Do you think this is going to end soon?
I'm sure it will last for a good while longer, but...
I mean, this must be costing them more than blue boxes, don't you think?
Conceivably, but a lot of the times,
people were illegally using blue boxes
originally to make long-distance calls.
They tended to call around the world,
and it tends to be a little infeasible
to use a red box to make a call around the world.
But you could do it.
Yeah, I suppose you could,
but it would take an incredible amount of time.
The thing about red boxes, though,
you can find out when somebody is using a blue box on the line.
You can have a 2600 Hz detector.
But how do you determine if somebody is actually
putting a quarter into a pay phone or playing a tone?
How do you possibly know that
until you come to collect the money and find out that none of it's there?
I can't answer that question, actually.
It seems that the majority of people out there
that are using this simple modification to the RadioShack tone dialer
can easily be caught if they so decide to do this
because the tones are simply wrong.
It's just sheer coincidence that
when you swap the crystal inside to change the frequencies,
that the frequencies are within proximity
of the two frequencies that are used,
although they are not the two frequencies.
They're reasonably off-tune,
and if that weren't enough,
the fact that the tones are played back
as fast as the tone dialer would normally dial touch tones from memory,
the five tones are played back much, much slower
than they normally would be.
All right.
So you think they might be able to look out for those particular tones?
I think they could, considering that
the Operator Service Position System, OSPS,
which is the successor to the original TSPS,
are run on five ESSs,
and five ESSs are digital switches.
And, of course, in order to synthesize tones and detect them,
they use digital signal processing.
And this is a technology that easily can be put to work
to detect tones that are simply not within the specified limits
of what they should be.
But it is possible to completely duplicate those tones.
Oh, yeah, sure.
If you know what the frequencies are
and you know what the timings should be, sure.
I believe we've printed that information, actually, in 2600.
So if people really need to know that, they can do it.
But, again, it's not legal,
and you could be facing a lot of trouble
if somebody finds out what you're doing if you do that kind of thing.
But definitely know how the system works.
That's important in itself.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening. You're on the radio.
Hi. Good evening.
For the ignorant part of your people that hear you,
would you be having a component on your program
that will review magazines and books related to your subject?
You mean kind of like a hacker reading list?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, we've done that a couple of times in 2600
where we've come out with lists of articles and books
that people should read.
As a regular basis, as a component?
Not as a regular basis,
but we might do that as some kind of a show at one point
because it is a good idea.
It's something that would help a lot of people, I believe,
just going over various things that people should reference material, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
We'll take that into consideration.
That's something that we could very well do in the near future.
And just a comment.
I think that your music is well modulated,
and it's a good format.
Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Okay.
Take care.
Well modulated. Do you hear that?
Yeah.
That's what music should be, is well modulated.
Okay.
The program is off the hook.
We've got another couple of minutes,
so let's see if we can go through any more phone calls,
any more questions out there.
Good evening.
Yeah, Manuel, just one more vote for music.
Twin Peaks soundtrack.
Song, A Question in a World of Blue.
I mean, it's fading in great.
I mean...
You're a real Twin Peaks fan, I can tell.
Well, yeah.
Not that I don't have a life or anything,
but Laura Palmer supposedly died on today, February 24th.
But, you know, hey, I have better things to do
than know these things, right?
That's incredible.
I didn't even know that.
Yeah, anyway...
I must be tied into this somehow in ways I don't understand.
Back to the world of Computer Underground
and away from David Lynch.
Okay.
Picked up a copy of Cyberpunk by Katie Hafner
and Mark something-or-other.
John Markoff.
Yeah, that's right.
And I was also reading some Bruce Sterling,
Gibson, etc.
How do you think the media has been portraying the Underground?
Do you think it's improved in the last couple of years
or it's still the mischievous, evil, rebel teenager
tampering with technology?
Do you think it's improved?
Well, you know, I have to say there's some people out there
that have a clue,
some people that can cover things very well.
Look to The Village Voice, for examples.
Yeah.
Some people, look to Channel 4, for examples,
can't seem to get it right at all.
Yeah, well, they use four extras on child pornography rings
operating around...
Yeah, things like that,
things that make it seem like computer bulletin boards
are evil tools when in actuality they're just neutral tools
and people use them for both good and evil.
And that's the way it is and we can't change that.
That's right, but media is always a little bit of a circus ring
and what sells the papers and gets people to tune in
will always be, so...
Well, it's true, but, you know,
the truth is pretty fascinating in itself
and if they were as tied in as we are to the way things really are
I think they'd be even more fascinated.
Did you happen to catch the latest version of Time magazine?
It's cyberpunk.
Yeah, the one that smells when you open it.
Yeah, the way they're linking things like drugs like ecstasy
and clubs and limelight,
they're just linking the whole thing to the subculture
and I could be wrong,
but I thought that cyberpunk was more of a fictional culture.
I mean, what are your views on that?
Well, it is a fictional culture,
but a lot of people like to be drawn into fiction, you know,
sort of like the Twin Peaks type of thing,
except they feel like they can actually live it.
You know, cyberpunk is all fine and cool,
but, you know, it is fictitious the way that it's being portrayed.
The real computer world is much more fascinating
because, you know, anything can happen
and anything is happening right now.
I wish I could go into it a little bit more,
but we're at pretty much the last few seconds.
But don't believe what you see in the papers or on TV.
The real facts are so much stranger.
All right, so I'll let you go.
Thank you and great show.
Thanks for calling.
Unfortunately...