George Pataki has, in effect, stuck his finger in the eye of New Yorkers. Well, hypocrisy is everywhere. But have you noticed how thick it gets on the far right? No sports, no weather, and no fluff. That's the WBAI Evening News every Monday through Friday at 6, rebroadcast Monday through Thursday at 11, and a week in review every Sunday at 6, right here on WBAI 99.5 FM. Peru's best-kept secret is its African legacy. Afro-Peruvian music and dance traditions have survived in the towns of Chincha and Canete, but have become popular throughout the nation. Sunday, October 22nd, from 4 to 6 p.m., tune in to New World Gallery for a special focus on Peru's renaissance of black culture. Did you know that Toro Mata is Peruvian in origin? That's Sunday, October 22nd, 4 to 6 p.m., on New World Gallery, with host Chico Alvarez, right here on listener-sponsored WBAI 99.5 FM. And you're listening to radio station WBAI in New York, where it's just about time for another edition of Off the Hook. The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call It couldn't get much worse, but if it could they would For Billy Bond for the best, expect the worst I hope that's understood, for Billy Bond For Billy Bond And a very good evening to everybody. This is Off the Hook, a program that keeps you up to date on technological issues involving the Internet, the phone company, Big Brother, and every last one of us. And we've got a couple of things to experiment with tonight, some new forms of technology, some old forms of technology, a couple of announcements, some exciting news, some depressing news, and, of course, your phone calls at 212-279-3400. Well, we have a brand new issue of 2600 Magazine that just hit the mail today, so if you're a subscriber, you'll be getting that pretty soon. Included in this issue is a very thorough article on co-cuts, those evil pay phones that you might see on the street that don't quite do what you want them to do. Although, I don't know quite what's going on out there, but for some reason, somebody has decreed in the upper echelons of 9X that pay phones shall not receive incoming calls anymore. I don't know. FiberOptic is here with us. Fiber, have you noticed this same strange phenomenon? Yeah, I've noticed more and more that 9X pay phones are not receiving incoming calls, even though they don't say that. Some of them at least say no incoming calls. Yeah, and the original reason for that was because, supposedly, this is part of the war on drugs. If drug dealers can't receive phone calls, they can't sell drugs or something like that. Never mind, everybody has cellular phones these days anyway, but that was supposedly to make our lives better for our own protection. But, of course, it could also be argued that the phone company doesn't make obscene profits on incoming calls to pay phones, whereas they make obscene profits on outgoing calls, unless, of course, someone's using a red box, which is a whole other issue. So, you have all these pay phones now, including all the yellow ones, all those new yellow card phones that do not accept incoming calls. You know, it's becoming almost the norm. Pay phones do not accept incoming calls. It's not good, and it's not good for people, say, at the 2600 meetings once a month, because the pay phones don't get incoming calls anymore. We can't keep in touch with other meetings. They can't call us. It just seems like a bad idea, a very bad idea. So, we're about to start lobbying 9X to change that. You know, politely at first, more firmly later on, and whatever means necessary in the end. So, that's the update as far as that goes. It's kind of depressing. But, anyway, co-cuts are the phones that are not 9X phones. Sometimes they accept incoming calls. More often than not, though, you'll get some sort of weird carrier or a recording or something like that. You ever call a co-cut? Yeah. I mean, it really depends on what company made the co-cut, what you'll get. Yeah, sometimes you get a modem. Sometimes you get a computer voice. Right. Sometimes you don't get anything. Sometimes you get a recording. So, yeah, the co-cuts do some interesting things, and this article is a guide to all those kinds of things. There's also a bit of news about viruses and mutation engines and all kinds of other things, which I guess are best off left to people to find on their own. Have you ever seen this magazine? Someone handed me a copy of Private Line, a journal of inquiry into the telephone system. Now, I've known about this magazine for a while, but for some reason they stopped sending them to us, even though we send them our magazine. It comes out of California, and it's pretty much all about the phone company. They've put out, looks like they've put out seven issues so far, and this is the eighth issue. And there's articles in here about, let's see if I can find a title, there's something on Canadian phone systems. You know, do you know all the different Canadian phone companies? I know you know the RBOX. I mean, let's go over the RBOX first. There's seven of them? There's seven of them. 9X, Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Ameritech, Southwestern Bell, US West, and Pacific Telescope. Okay, that's right. Now, there also, of course, are independent phone companies. Independent phone companies are not part of the RBOX. They're like GTE and various other crazy things like that. But in Canada, there's some Canadian phone companies. Uh-huh, not so easy, is it? I don't really know any off the top of my head. Nobody does. Nobody knows the Canadian phone companies. Well, it used to be just all one company. Well, I imagine everything used to be all just one company. It was just Bell Canada. Bell Canada, but Bell Canada these days Hmm. Now, if you're interested in some other phone companies, well, I could talk to you about Northwest Tel. That's right, Northwest Tel. And Northwest Tel, by the way, there's only one T in that. They serve the Northwest Territories. Kind of clever, huh? Northwest Tel. Then there's BC Tel. Guess where that serves? British Columbia. Very good, British Columbia. AGT, bet you never get that one. AGT. No, you're right, I wouldn't get that one. What about government telephones? I don't know why they call it government telephones, but it serves the entire province of Alberta, with the exception of Edmonton, which happens to be the capital, so I don't know what they do over there. And they get served by Edmonton Government Telephone. I don't know what serves them. But in any event, SaskTel is Saskatchewan Telecommunications. MTS, the Manitoba Telephone System. And then, of course, you have Bell Canada. So those are all the phone companies there. So that's one of the things you can learn with Private Line. And let me give out their information. They have a voice number of area code 916-488-4231 and a fax number of 978-0810, again a 916 area code. Or you can write to them at 5150 Fair Oaks Boulevard, number 101-348 Carmichael, California, 95608. By the way, the name of one of the writers on the cover is also a writer for Nuts and Bolts. And he's also a writer for us occasionally. Oh, really? Occasionally, yes. And if you want our phone number at 2600-516-751-2600 in case you want information about that. All right. I got news this weekend. I got a telephone call on Friday from Bernie S. Really? And you know what? He didn't call me collect. He was out. He was on the street. Now, this kind of got us by surprise because we talked to him last week on this show and he said that he would be in prison again. He was supposed to be released on Saturday, then he would be transferred to, I guess, the county police, and they would hold him until a hearing, I believe, on Friday, this coming Friday. It turns out what happened instead was Friday came along. They don't release people on Saturday. As you well know, they don't accept people over the weekend or they don't release them over the weekend either. So they decided to release them on Friday instead. And basically what happened was they just said, well, you're free to go now. They didn't say anything about him having to be taken into custody by the sheriff or anything like that. So he just sort of, you know, slunk towards the door and then when he got there he ran full speed and hasn't stopped. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. He hasn't done that. But he is. He sounded very happy. He sounded really glad to be back for the first time since March in civilization such as it is. And we might be hearing from him tonight as a free man. Let's hope so. If not, we'll certainly update people. Again, you can finger the site, BernieS, B-E-R-N-I-E-S, at 2600.com, 2600.com for updates on his particular escapades. Also, this is rather interesting. I just found out about this today. In Holland, where, by the way, Bill SF is now back safely in Holland after being picked up in California. He actually got out and is nice and safe and at home. But something happened in Holland which is very disturbing. There was a bust, a raid of various people, and the charge, this is what they were charged with doing. They were charged with possessing equipment that could monitor beepers. You know, POG, what was it, POGS? POGSAC. POGSAC and the other standard. They simply had the equipment. That's all. And that, apparently, in Holland right now is a crime, enough to get people arrested, enough to have all the computer equipment seized. We're looking at a very different Holland than we were a couple of years ago. It's kind of disturbing. It sort of reminds you of what happened to BernieS, where he was put into prison simply for possessing a red box, not being accused of doing anything wrong with it. I know these people very well. I've seen the equipment that they're talking about. It's something that we can buy here in the United States for about $300. Universal is a company that makes a model of that beeper monitoring. Basically, what you do is you tune in to the spectrum. You just simply listen to a certain frequency, and you hear little beeps and things like that, and all of a sudden you're able to translate that into numbers. So when someone beeps somebody over the air, if you're listening on that frequency and you have the right equipment, you can see what it says. Now, they had a system over there in Holland where you could see virtually everybody because they all used the same standard. It was quite interesting to sit there on a computer and watch all the different beeps that went on in the country, including alphanumeric pages. But apparently they are rather sensitive to that, and they've passed some sort of a law similar to our cellular law, which makes it illegal to listen to cellular phone calls, which is also kind of silly. But in this particular case, we actually saw a raid. So that's something to keep an eye on. We'll be updating people on that. Nobody's in jail at the moment, but a lot of equipment was seized and charges are pending. So that's a bit disturbing. Okay, we have a couple of things we're going to play with, but first I want to introduce one of our technical consultants. Scott is with us today in the studio, and he has brought some really interesting pieces of equipment. In fact, I was wondering, Scott, if it's possible for us to tune into a beeper frequency so we can show the folks just what a beeper sounds like. A beeper frequency? You know, a frequency that a pager would... You know, we can do that, but it's the sort of thing where when you don't want them, they're always there. Oh, no. If I try to find one right now... Oh, this is New York City, but we can look on the back of our pagers... Oh, sure. ...and simply tune to that. In fact, all right, I'll do it. I'll give out my beeper frequency. What do you think? Do you think that's a... Well, it's not yours personally. Well, no, it's not mine personally, but I don't know, maybe it could be hacked. You know, those evil hackers out there, they might hack my beeper frequency. I don't think you have anything to lose. Okay, well, maybe I'll see all kinds of funny things coming across in this frequency now. Are you ready, Scott? Sure. Okay, it's... All right, you see, it's started already. I haven't even given out the frequency, and already people are starting. Oh, boy. Okay, I'm still going to do it. I don't care. Here we go. 931.71250. Now, I don't think you have that many digits on your... That doesn't matter. ...scanner there. Okay, now, if you tune to that, guaranteed you will hear some pager noise. Okay, that's it. Hold that up to the microphone there. I just have to change the mode. You need a little better reception than that. That's what it sounds like. It's like modulated noise. Yeah. And notice it stopped. There we go. Classic beeper noise. So if we had a universal M400, we could now, like, listen to... If you hear that noise in your head, which I know a lot of our listeners probably do, that is what you're hearing. You're hearing beepers. They're everywhere. Always going off. Always setting off pagers and making noise. Yeah, what's happening is more and more of the radio spectrum is going digital. It's becoming things like that. And those noises you're hearing, it's just like modems and stuff. It's all digital. So that could be the police, even. Yeah, it could be. In fact, the police are now using trunk systems and more digital aspects of communication, so it's harder to monitor them. But it is possible to monitor them, and that's what this equipment is capable of doing. You can get this board that you plug into your PC and actually see on the screen what those insane sounds actually mean. Okay, now, what we have... You have an interesting setup. Perhaps you could describe it for us. There's actually three pieces there. And I think this is something that a lot of people would be interested in getting. So if you're interested in monitoring, if you're interested in seeing what's going on around you and collecting data, this is the most impressive setup I've seen so far. You have a scanner, first of all. Right, the scanner. The scanner's pretty recent. It came out last year. The manufacturer is AOR, and the scanner's called an AR8000. And it's sort of like the Swiss Army knife of scanners. It does everything well and nothing excellently. So, for instance, you can get shortwave, you can get wide FM, which is what we're broadcasting on right now, narrowband FM, every frequency from maybe 30 kHz all the way up to... You know, someone just came in here and said their beeper just mysteriously went off. I don't know what's going on. 1.9 GHz. That's a lot. That's high. But what's up there? What's 1.9 GHz? What's going on? You know, the only thing I've managed to catch beyond like 900 MHz, like above that, is cellular imaging, which is like cellular phone calls, except it's not the true frequency. It's a multiple of that frequency. Harmonic. It's a harmonic of that, right. And I haven't really been able to get any signals that were supposed to be up there or that I knew of. I'm sure there'll be something up there soon at some point. But in any event, okay, so you have the scanner, right? That's the scanner. All right. And that in itself isn't very impressive, but this particular scanner is designed to interface with other equipment. And in particular, it's designed to interface with this other thing I brought, which is called an optoelectronics scout. Okay. We've talked about this on the air before. In fact, turn it on. Those of you with Morris code will be into this. Okay, it's now on. It's kind of warped there. That's all right. All right. Because the one I brought in a few months ago, because it has a slightly lower tone. Mine's been battle-hardened. Yeah, I guess so. So, okay, so that is what will tell you what frequency is nearest to you. Right. And if something is transmitting right next to you, you'll actually, it'll show the number there. It picks up the nearest, the strongest near-field frequency. All right. And it has to be, I think, about 20 decibels louder than all the background noise. Okay. Because otherwise, you'd be picking up everything. So in New York City, I imagine it would be kind of difficult to isolate one particular frequency. Right. It's constantly being bombarded with noise, and something has to really stand out in order to make this beep. So if a cop is standing next to you, and he's got a scanner, and he talks to headquarters, this is going to pick that up. Right, exactly. All right. Now, the problem is, this has always been the problem, it's bulky to walk around with two, using two hands, one holding the scanner, one holding the frequency counter. And then, when you get the, and I've had to do this while I'm driving, and, you know, you don't know what difficult it is until you try this. You're driving around, and your frequency counter beeps, which is nice. The old ones didn't even beep. You had to constantly watch them. It was a nightmare, yeah. But this one beeps, you see the frequency, and then you have to tune your radio to get to the frequency. Lots of times, people, you know, get into all kinds of accidents trying to do that while they're driving. So do you have a solution? Right. So the AOR interfaces with the scout through a wire, and basically, as soon as the scout gets something, it automatically reactive tunes the AR8000, and you're listening to whatever it was that it got. So it's basically something I've been waiting for for about five or ten years. So it actually tunes? Yeah. Just as fast as it gets the signal. You're hearing what it is. So you know what the frequency is, and you're listening to it. Okay. Interesting. And that's not all, is it? There's more to this. Right. And the last piece of equipment we brought in is, it's a DTMF decoder. That's nothing special. They've been out for a while. But this particular one, I like because it's the same size as the scanner, as you can see. And so it's portable, and it's very easy. It's almost like designed to work with this equipment in terms of how small it is. It's battery-operated. And you can then feed the signal out of the scanner and into this, and we can not only hear what's happening, but if anyone decides to press a touch tone, we know what the touch tones are as well. That's pretty good. That's something that I think we even reviewed it in a couple of issues ago, in 2600, as far as ease of use. Permit me to give you an example that I like to do. Okay. David Letterman at night likes to call his grandmother and other sources. It's his mother in Indiana. Anyway, and the scanner can get television as well, so I can tune to television broadcast. Okay. I can listen to David Letterman on it, and then as soon as he starts dialing, I can hear those tones come out and I know what he's dialing. Well, we know David Letterman doesn't listen to this show, so we're in no danger of that going away, so I don't think we have to worry. But there is one thing I'd like to test. Now, theoretically, what you have there, you have three things set up. We don't need a frequency counter right now because it's not going to be transmitting something, but if you could plug your touch tone decoder into your radio, all right, and tune your radio to 99.5. All righty. All right, can you do all that? I think we're all ready to go. The only thing, before you do this, I might want to have a few test tones just so that I can get the proper volume level. Okay, we can do that too. All right, hang on a second. Let me get to a... I'm getting a little bit of feedback, but I don't think it's going to be much of a problem. I'm going to hit a tone and you tell me if you hear it. Seven. Very good. Very good. Although, Fiber, you can tell tones by ear, right? Sure. Okay, now, he's not going to look at your decoder. I'm going to hit a tone and you're going to tell me what it is. All right, we're going to do this anyway. Even though Fiber could tell us, we're going to do this just to demonstrate it. Apparently, I don't know why they're doing this, but directory assistants, if you've called directory assistants any time in the recent past, you may notice that they hit a touch tone. They hit a touch tone right before they give you the number, so we're going to demonstrate that live on the air. Let's get a dial tone. All right, and now we're going to dial. Of course, you'll see what I'm dialing. I'm going to ask for the number for WBAI. You'll hear a touch tone before they give it to us. When did they get around to it? 9X, what listing? Yes, hi, in New York City, the number for radio station WBAI, the studio line, please. They only list one number with us, sir. Good enough. The number you requested to... Well, what was the number? Didn't come through. Didn't come through? Your tones that you dialed came through, but that tone didn't come through. Didn't come through. Did you get it? Yeah, it was a little muffled, but it was either a 1 or a 4. A 1 or a 4. Now, why do you think yours didn't pick that up? It could be a number of reasons. It could be the volume level that I'm piping into the unit. I might have to play with it in order to get just the right tolerance. It was muffled. It's very important for the tone to be clear. How often is the tone going to be clear in certain situations? If you're listening to, let's say, not that you would listen to a cellular phone call or anything like that, and you happen to be listening to somebody entering their voice mailbox, let's say you had a legitimate reason to do that, whatever it could be, it might not be completely clear. Is there a way of boosting the signal somehow or boosting its sensitivity? Right, again, we can just adjust the volume level until we've got the right tolerance, and then we can go over again. You want to try it one more time? Let's try it one more time. Now, each one of these information calls cost, what, like $4.50? The only problem is I'm going to have to raise the volume perhaps. I think it's because it's not loud enough. And you're worried about feedback. Feedback, yeah. Is there any way you can prevent the feedback? Well, we could ask you to leave the room, I guess. That's one way of doing it. Well, it doesn't matter because I'm cutting your mic, so you won't hear any feedback. You don't have to worry. So let's do this one more time. Actually, I have to reconnect this line over here. And we'll try it one more time. I guess we'll ask for the same number. Let's get our dial tone. It always takes about four rings. Information to answer. What listing, please? Yes, hi, New York. The number for WBAI Radio, please. The number you requested, 279-0707, can be automatically dialed by pressing the number one or saying the word yes at the tone for an additional charge of 35 cents. Again, the number is 279-0707. No way. We don't want to pay anymore. Please hold while we complete your call. No. No. I said no. I can't believe that. I said no. What a ripoff, 35 cents for that. They changed it, though. Didn't they used to not repeat the number until after they gave the tone or something? I don't remember that. That was scary. All right. It didn't work this time. No, it didn't. So, that's two failures. Are you any more certain as to what the number was? No. I'm still certain it's either a one or a four. Why do you think they're playing touch tones? I'm not really certain. I don't know. Is there any way? One thing I'm not sure about is whether or not the unit can detect the old military touch tones. Do you think maybe it's A, B, C, D tones? I'm wondering. No, it's Fiber. Fiber does not seem to think it's an A, B, C, D tone. No. There's no way. Could it be just a fake tone that isn't a DTMF tone? No. It's definitely a one or a four. Okay. No question. All right. Well, perhaps if we got better input to that, we could get the actual number, but we're going to experiment and we will get an answer to our listeners. In any event, though, how can people get this equipment and what other possible uses are there for it? Well, you can order it directly from the firms that produce each piece, or if you get any sort of radio or scanning magazine, they always have ads for this since this is the hottest stuff out right now. But one thing I would recommend is right now they're offering a sort of package deal for the AOR scanner and the Scout. If you buy them together, it'll be cheaper than if you buy them separately, and I think that's probably what you'd want to do if you were into it. Okay. How long have you had this one? Not too long. I've had it for a couple months, but I haven't even had a chance really to use any of the equipment. Uh-huh. It's kind of neat because usually you have to, you know, I have an ICOM scanner and it's just kind of bulky. It can do a lot, but it's kind of bulky, you can't really interface things as easily as this. Actually, the nicest thing about the scanner is that it allows you to attach a text tag to every frequency you want to store into it, and it stores about a thousand frequencies. So what usually happens with the old scanners are that you store a frequency and then a month later you forget what the frequency is. So it's sort of like, you know, it's kind of useless to you if you can't go to it and you don't know what it is. Right. Right. And this one, you can actually, you know, put down weather and you know it's the weather or whatever you want to do. So it stores all that text information as well. That's pretty neat. Yeah. That's pretty neat and very useful for people that want to monitor things and see where everything is. You could tune now to, say, channel 50. Right. And instantly you would know. Right. I know where, I've already programmed all the TV channels and they all have text tags. For instance, channel 50 will just say TVCH50. Now, let's say you wanted to find that right now. How long would it take you to do? A couple of seconds. A couple of seconds? And what do you enter? You just... Well, right now I would unlock it since I locked it to make sure that I would... Right. Right. And then I would just go to the bank that it's being stored in. In this case, it's B. I chose B for broadcast frequencies. And then I would just go to 5.0, which is holding channel 50. That's real simple and easy. So about what does all this equipment cost altogether? Okay. Wow. Wow. That's the bad news. Yeah. Yeah. When I bought it, I bought it when it just came out, so the prices have come down. It's a lot better now. But I bought the scanner for $650, and I bought the Scout for $400, and I bought the touch tone decoder for, I think, $350. Wow. So this is pretty expensive stuff. But, you know, about the touch tone decoder, a nice thing about this machine is that it interfaces with the computer, so it really is like a pen register as well. And pen registers are very hard to come by right now. Unless you're the FBI. Right. If you're willing to pay a lot of money. Well, they discontinued the Radio Shack one. Exactly. Which I still have one. I really don't know any other pen registers offhand that I can even mention that you could buy. But I'm sure they're out there, but, you know. So this thing interfaces with the computer. Every tone it gets can go right to the computer, and the computer can store it. Right. The software can be designed to look for specific touch tones, so that, for instance, if a certain number is dialed, it'll appear on the screen, and the computer could be programmed to do something with that, and maybe alert you to it, or keep a note of it. So it does a little bit more than what it seems, you know, right now. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, that's good to know, and thanks for stopping by. If anybody has any questions, they can call us, 212-279-3400. And when we come back, we'll be talking to Fiber about the new ISDN features, which finally got installed on his phone. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. And the number is 212-279-3400 if you want to call in with a question or comment. Also, we have a question for people out there. Perhaps they can help us with this. We're trying to figure out where the name pen register came from. Nobody seems to know why it's called a pen register. There must be some historical reason why they refer to it as a pen. The pen entered into it. And also, if anybody has a number, we'd like to try this, too. If anyone has a number, you know those code cuts where you call, and you hear five tones, and then it says, thank you? Mm-hmm. If anyone has a number for one of those, we'd like to call that up and maybe see what those tones are. Maybe our little pen register here can pick it up, and we'll try that out as well. Anyway, Fiber, you had an exciting week. Yes, I have. Okay. Tell us what happened. It's been so exciting. I can tell by the excited look on your face. Go ahead. Basically, I've been trying to get ISDN supplementary services, which are the equivalent of custom calling features for normal phone service. And I actually received a Motorola BitSurfer Pro, which just came out fairly recently. I received it for beta testing. And I finally succeeded on Friday in working out with one of the technicians at 9X at Pearl Street in getting my supplementary services properly configured on the Switch. So what I have access to is five call appearances, three-party conferencing with the ability to drop someone, which you'd expect, as well as call transfer. And I currently have message waiting on order. Message waiting is the equivalent of call answering. Well, I'm opposed to message waiting. You know that. I won't get into that here. My personal reason is against having 9X store your messages for you. But call transfer is something that I'm very much in favor of. Yeah. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to use it. And neither does 9X. Okay. So nobody knows how to use this feature, which is good. No. If I had an ISDN telephone, I would simply have a transfer button. But how do you emulate it without a telephone? Exactly. There must be some sort of, usually it would be a two-digit touchtone code that I could enter. Like, if I received a call, I could flash over, dial this two-digit code. With IntelliDial, which is wrapped around my phone like some sort of virus, which I'm trying to get rid of, IntelliDial, the one good feature it has is call transfer. And the way it works, you simply hit flash, dial the number, and hang up. Yeah. And, you know, just like any office phone, I guess, would work. Have you tried that? It doesn't work with you? No. See, if I flash, it automatically initiates three-party conferencing. I see. So I'd actually be on three-way. Uh-huh. See, I don't know if... But you see, I can go on three-way, too. If I dial the number and then flash again, then that's three-way. But if I dial the number and hang up, then the person gets transferred. See, I think if somebody calls me and I click over, and then I dial another number, it's as if the first person is on hold, and I'm talking to someone else. And if I flash again, then we'll be conferenced together. Right. Same with my system. But if I hang up, they all get transferred away. Oh, I haven't tried that. But I believe if I hang up, it'll just disconnect the person I just called, start ringing me back from the first party who is now on hold. Okay. So if anybody knows that little secret about 9x ISDN, or maybe Bell Atlantic already has that worked out. You know, people in Bell Atlantic seem to be a little bit further advanced than we are. Then again, it's also possible that without a feature key on a telephone, there might not be any way to actually use the feature. I don't know. Call transfer seems like a pretty basic feature. Yeah. You'd think there should be a way. Yeah. You know, if you're doing a call park someplace onto another extension someplace, yeah, you might need a special phone for that. But this is transferring. It's pretty basic, even though it's not offered in any other service. Also one feature that I'd like to mention that I think is pretty amazing is multi-link PPP. Mm-hmm. Oh, yes. Multi-link PPP wasn't specifically made for ISDN, but it quickly was adapted to many ISDN terminal adapters and grew in a much larger favor than the original bonding specification, which has fallen out of favor. Multi-link PPP is a lot more intercompatible between various ISDN hardware. What I'm able to do is I'm using a Motorola BitSurfer Pro, and I'm able to connect to an Ascend pipeline. I believe it's an Ascend pipeline 50. I initiate the call by specifying two telephone numbers or the same phone number twice, and what it does is it actually grabs both B channels, and I actually have this set up as both as audio calls. So I can actually initiate connections to the internet at 112 kilobits. Wow. So you figure, well, that's really good, but now you're busying out your other B channel and you can't receive calls. Not so. With dynamic multi-link PPP, which is the dynamic aspect of it is inherent in the protocol, if somebody calls me on my voice number, then it will automatically drop one of the B channels without interrupting the data connection. I'll drop down to 56 kilobits, and as soon as I'm done with that call and I hang up the phone, it reestablishes the other B channel in the connection. That's incredible. So no bandwidth is wasted, and it also goes for outgoing calls. If I want to make a call, I simply lift up the phone and I'll drop down to 56 kilobits. That is amazing. I'm happy to hear that's actually working. However, I'm extremely frustrated because out on the island, we've been trying to get onto the net at ISDN speed now for, what is it, how many years has it been? It feels like it's been most of my life, and everyone's complaining about how slow our site is because we're only at 288 PPP, and I'll tell you, folks, if you know of a Long Island provider that will actually provide ISDN and allow us to do the 56K thing, which virtually any service will do, let us know. Let them know. It's pretty insane. I don't know. Is there some sort of a conspiracy out there? Do not provide ISDN service to people because we've been calling different providers so many times. I don't want to give out names, but if they provide ISDN service and they're on Long Island, we've called them. We've called them many times, and it just seems like they don't want to do it. You know? Is there something bad about it? It's like it's a big bother to them or something. I don't know. But, yeah, any help on that particular front we certainly could use. All right. So the news on ISDN, at least for you, seems to be good. You're up to 112. Great. I have yet to make it to 56, but hopefully next week at this time we will have made some sort of a jump. Who knows? All right. We're going to take some phone calls in just a moment, 212-279-3400. This is an interesting thing, though. I don't know if you know about this. This comes from a letter somebody sent to us over on the net. He says, I called directory assistance in the 202 area code a few weeks ago and was astounded. Do you know why? No. Bell Atlantic has mastered voice recognition. The line, I noticed this when I was down there, too, but I didn't put two and three together. The line rang and picked up saying in a computerized voice, which town, please? I replied, the district. Then it asked, what listing, please? It was in computerized voice. Then he asked for his particular request, and then the system connected me with a person who had my request on the screen, and it was correct. I spoke with her for a moment to let her know how astounded and impressed I was, and then she handed me off to the other computerized voice that read off the number. When you call directory assistance in DC, you say something to the computerized voice. It transfers you to another section, and then you tell that section what you want, and the operator actually is able to read that. What should we look up? Let's look up the Pacifica station down there. There's one in DC? Oh, yeah. What is it, WPFW? Is that it? Okay, I think that's what it is. All right, so we're going to ... Yeah, W for DC, for Washington, rather. We're going to call up Washington, DC information. The first thing we should hear is a recording that says, or a computerized voice that says, which town, please? We will say the name of the town, then it should transfer us to another computerized voice that asks what listing. We'll say WPFW, and see if it connects us to a person that has that listing on their screen. Okay, let's go. Dial tone? Okay, our pin register is probably getting all those. I have to enter our secret code here. Hopefully nobody can hear our secret code. Here we go. Get ready. For what city? Washington, DC. Thank you. What listing? WPFW. Thank you. Please wait. I messed up. Please hold for your number. The number is 202-783-3100, the number is 202-783-3100, thank you for calling, this number is 202-783-3100, thank you for calling, this number is 202-783-3100, thank you for calling, this number is 202-783-3100, thank you for calling. The operator looks for that number. Well, that's different. Sorry, sir, you've reached the DC information. You need 212 from New York. Uh-huh. Can you ask me one question, please? Yes. Do you hear a recording of my voice? Mm-hmm. You do? Yes. Okay, so you have to look up the number. It's not the computer doing the whole thing. Right. Okay. Thank you very much. All right, I guess you were right. Well, I had them pegged. Yeah, you had them pegged, all right. Okay, so the thing, first of all, plays back the city. Now, what's the point of separating the two? Why doesn't it just do the whole thing at once? You got me. I don't know. Well, I just know this. We're moving further away from human intervention in this particular case. Remember when it used to be that all they did was play that recording with the number? Then they had the greeting saying, you know, Mrs. Smith, what number, please? Now they don't care what name anymore. It's like, we don't care what the operator is. It just asks you what city, what listing. Bam, there's the number. And they don't give you a second chance either. You have to call back if you want a second chance. Okay, that's pretty much our lesson in directory assistance for today. 212-279-3400 is our phone number. Let's take some phone calls. Good evening, you're in a very noisy location. Excuse me? You're in a very noisy location. Emanuel? Yes, where are you calling from? I'm calling from a pay phone. Well, it sounds like you're at a zoo. Last 35 minutes. Wow, well, now you're in a very noisy place. So try and speak up and tell us what's on your mind. Yeah, I have two questions. Okay. Why am I talking louder than him? I used, I forgot what it's called. I think it's a blue box or red box. And I used it to make a phone call, a long-distance phone call. Do you know what it is? Do I know what it is? Yeah, is it a blue box or a red box? I know what a blue box and a red box is, but, you know, people sometimes use those to complete calls, but you've got to be careful. It can be a risky thing to do. Yeah. I mean, I know pay phone rates are incredibly high, but you should also, you know, be careful of what you're doing there to thwart that. Is Bernie S. on the line? Bernie S. has not called us. I'm not sure. Maybe he's out enjoying his freedom somewhere. I hope he's free anyway. But we'll update people. He has a hearing coming up on Friday, so we'll have something next week. Do we sell taped cassettes of the program? Do we sell taped cassettes of the program is the question. Well, we have them all on cassette, and we do intend to keep track of them, dub them, and figure out ways if people want them. If, you know, maybe people can let us know if they want something like that, and if so, we can try to make it available. Okay? Hello? All right, it sounds like you have more important things to worry about over there, so you get to that, and let's go to another call. Good evening. You're on the air. Hi, I have a question. Yes, go ahead. All right, first of all, that number that you were trying to decode, 411, I think that was a 1. You think it was a 1? Well, if I ever seem to agree with you. All right. Now, the only question is, why are they hitting 1? Amnex PBXs? Amnex PBXs? Yeah, what's up with those codes? What codes? What are you talking about? What codes? Where? There's codes? Amnex PBXs. Uh-huh. Okay, I'm not... You dial an Amnex PBX, you get a dial tone, and then you dial another code. You dial the code, right? Well, I don't dial Amnex PBXs very often, but you're saying... Amnex is a long-distance company. What do you mean Amnex PBXs? Well, there's a 950-0370 with an Amnex PBX. That's not a PBX. That's a carrier access code to make a long-distance phone call. Okay. Now, what you're looking for is a long-distance code. Yeah. Now, you know, that's different for every phone company. Different phone companies have different length codes. Because I was wondering what kind of algorithm they use to generate that code. The code is the phone number of the COCOT. Oh, I see. But you can't complete a call with an Amnex code. An Amnex code is only used to authorize a call. I see. Amnex doesn't have subscribers. They're strictly a COCOT long-distance company. I see. You'd actually need a valid calling card as well as an Amnex code to place a call, which is useless. So how does the whole process work? When you make a calling card call from a COCOT, it calls this 950 number. Yeah, with Amnex, it would do 950-370. Okay. Then it would dial the seven-digit number of the COCOT. Then it would dial the actual phone number the person wanted to call. Then you would hear some little Amnex jingle thing. And then you would dial in your calling card. Okay. Now, all this is done automatically from the payphone. The payphone would dial in the... Well, yeah. All you do is dial the number you're calling, zero plus. And then when you hear the little Amnex jingle, you would dial in your calling card. And then it takes care of the rest. Yeah, the dialing of the 950 and the dialing of the number of the COCOT are all done automatically. Okay, let's try this out, because I've never actually done this myself. And it sounds kind of interesting. Now, the 950 number, it's 950 what? Oh, 370. Let's hear what we get. Okay, we get another dial tone. And then what does it want now? There's a seven-digit code, which would be the phone number of the COCOT. Okay, so let's go 279-3400. Another dial tone? Yeah, now dial, I believe, either an area code in the number, or possibly zero area code number. All right, let's try area code number. We're sorry, you have dialed an invalid authorization code. There you go. Please check your authorization code and try your call again. Thank you. Well, the thing is, I didn't dial any authorization code. It didn't give me the chance to do that. No, you did dial the seven-digit authorization code. Oh, the phone number was wrong. Yeah. That's the authorization code? Just the phone number? Yeah. Okay, so supposing I know the phone number of a COCOT. Right. Then it'll get you to the point where you can enter a valid calling card. Okay. All right, so let's say I have a COCOT number. I have my own calling card, and I have the number I want to call. What happens if I place a call this way? Then you'll be billed by Amnex, or whoever Amnex's operator services company is. So you have the ability to rip off yourself any time. Yeah, there you go. Wow, that's pretty interesting. Well, the interesting thing is Amnex didn't quite have permission to validate calling cards, specifically AT&T calling cards, and would literally let any call go through where the calling card was of the format of a valid telephone number with any four digits at the end, and they'd simply bill that person. Really? And if you had a valid Amnex authorization code, a seven-digit number, a call could literally be billed to anyone you wanted to, just by specifying their area code number and any four numbers. Was this specifically Amnex? Yeah, specifically Amnex. Interesting. And this worked around five years ago. Okay. 212-279-3400. Good evening. You're on the air. I'm sorry. Speak again. Good evening. So I'm wondering about at work there's this Mitel business system, and I have a Superset 2 which does not have a speakerphone, and I have an answering machine. In order to get transferred to a Superset 3, which does have a speakerphone, which I really need, I need to get a digital answering machine. And what I'm wondering about is how much should I expect to pay for one of those, how does the technology work, and I did talk to AT&T who had one with a computer. She's breaking up. Instead of a tape. We're losing you here. You're on a cordless phone, aren't you? Yeah, I'm in the car. Oh, you have a cellular phone. Yeah. Okay. Well, all right, try to drive close to a base. Okay. Yeah, you want to pick that up on the scanner there? Yeah, did you understand my question, or should I repeat some of it? Well, I think, do you understand what she's asking? You want an answering machine that has the capability to transfer a call? No, I want a digital answering machine. Well, what does that mean to you? Yeah. What do you mean by digital answering machine? I have no idea. Well, why do you want one? Because that's what the guys at work say that I need in order to operate an answering machine with a Mitel Superset 3 with a speakerphone. Well, first of all, the guys at work, you know, I wouldn't put faith in everything they say. You need to speak to the guys who make the phone, right? Speak to the guys at Mitel? Yes, exactly. And find out, what kind of phone is this? Describe it to us. Well, it's like a, it's called a Superset 2 or a Superset 3. They have different grades of these phones, of which have more features. It's just got, it's a regular business system phone. In other words, there's a switchboard and they ring through to us. And it's got like, it doesn't have a speaker, but it does have a redial and it has a transfer and it supposedly has a conference, but I haven't really used that yet. I'm not sure if my phone actually does that or if just the button says so. Can you plug this phone into your existing phone line at home? Yeah, I think so. I mean, because I can plug my answering machine in and get it to connect to my answering machine just like a regular phone would be. Well, then it's not a digital phone. No, it doesn't sound like it. If it was a digital phone, it would not work at all when you plugged it in. Well, what they're saying is that when I go to the upper grade model, it's going to be a digital phone. Okay, that's a different story. Well, right now, how many lines are on this phone? Is it like, say, a three or four line phone? No, actually, it's just my line, but the whole network system has like, you know, hundreds and hundreds of lines on it. Right, but you can't pick up different extensions on your phone? No, I can't. Oh, so it's only one. Yeah, it's like a dumb terminal analogously. It's sort of analogous to a dumb terminal on a computer network, I think, but I mean, it may not be. So basically you're saying that the company is going to be upgrading to a Mitel digital phone system. Well, it's the same phone system. It's just a higher grade of phone. In other words, what I have now is a Super Set 2. Right. It's going to upgrade me either to a Super Set 3 or 4 if I request it because I want to be able to use my answering machine instead of their stupid voicemail, which is horrendous. Well, if you're saying that you could connect a normal answering machine or a normal telephone to your line at work, then the phone system isn't digital, and if you plug in a digital telephone to a non-digital system, it's going to do absolutely nothing. Right, but I think they'll have to rewire it for the digital upgrade because I think in order to have the speakerphone, for some reason, they're going to stick with this idiotic system. They're going to have to upgrade my wiring to accommodate a digital phone, in which case it will not accommodate my analog answering machine. So what I'm wondering about is digital answering machines, and what are my options on them? What have you seen on them? What you're asking is this is possible to plug an analog answering machine into a digital line. Yeah, that's what they're saying it's impossible. If you have a digital-analog conversion, I don't see why that would be a problem. Yeah, but there's no real good place to convert it where the answering machine is going to be able to detect the rings. Well, first, let's dispel all rumors. There is no such thing as a digital answering machine, so let's get that out of the way. That makes it easy. Mostly, it's voicemail systems and things like that. Holy, because AT&T says it has one. No, what you want to get is voicemail. Let's dispel another rumor. When they say they have a digital answering machine, they mean that the messages are stored on a chip instead of on tape. That's their definition of a digital answering machine. It's for a normal analog telephone line. Only the messages or the greeting or both are stored digitized on circuitry instead of on cassette tape. That has nothing to do with your phone service. Aha. So, in other words, I could use my regular analog answering machine, or why couldn't I use my regular analog answering machine if the only difference is the way it's stored? Well, you can right now, but you're saying you're going to be upgrading to a digital phone system. Yeah, yeah. Well, if you are, then you're not going to be able to use analog equipment on a digital phone system. But you're saying that this supposedly digital answering machine is really an analog answering machine. Yeah, but we're telling you that because, essentially, it's the wrong thing that you want to use. But there is no right thing. There is no right thing, no. Well, you see, I don't agree with that, because I think it is possible to use analog equipment on a digital phone system. I've seen regular telephones on digital phone systems. Yeah, but you need some sort of conversion box from Mitel. You need a conversion. Right, so that's what you need to get. You need to get a conversion box to place at some point so that your particular instrument will be an analog instrument. It is possible. Oh, yeah, but the only people that are going to be able to sell you something like that are Mitel themselves. Oh. If such a piece of equipment even exists. You need to get Mitel in on this, basically. Yeah. So, in other words, I shouldn't just order a digital answering machine for $80? No. No, definitely don't do that. No, that's not going to do anything for you. Oh, okay. Listen, I really appreciate this bit of advice. I think you're saving me some money, I hope. No problem. Keep your eyes on the road, though. Okay, thank you. All right. Take care. I hope she realizes that people could be listening to that conversation. Yeah. Do you think she knows that that was not a private conversation? I guess she did call a radio station. Yeah. Good evening. You're on the air. Hi, okay. This is the guy who called about the 9-5-0. It's very important, okay? Very important. If you dial that seven-digit access code, okay? Yeah. You can dial an area code and a number, and it'll go right through. It doesn't ask you for a card. It doesn't ask you for anything. You can call from a payphone. If you have the right seven-digit code, it goes right through. You're saying if we know the number for a co-card, and we enter that number when we call the 9-5-0 number, and then we enter any ten-digit phone number, it's just going to go through? That's right. Well, that's kind of hard to believe. What kind of co-cards does this work on? Any phone. Any 9X phone, any Amnex phone. Any 9X phone or any Amnex phone? Yeah. If you want, you know, you can take me off the air. I can give you a code. It's not a problem. I don't know if that's wise, but let me ask you one thing. Is it a seven-digit number you're entering or a ten-digit number as the code? Seven-digit number. So how does it know what area code you're entering? Excuse me? No, you dial the 9-5-0 number. Then you dial the code. Then you get another dial tone, the third dial tone. Is the code that you're entering, is that a phone number? No. It's a code? No, it's not a phone number. All right. Then it sounds like we have two differing opinions as to how this company works. You're saying that it requires an authorization code and then it puts through the call. Exactly. All right. Well, that's different than what we assumed it was. We assumed it was asking for the co-card number and then the phone number after that. We'll just have to play around and see who's right. Thanks for calling. What do you think of that? Do you think it's possible that it was a code it was asking for? No, I think he's mistaken or misunderstanding what's happening. Well, he does seem to be making free phone calls. Well, maybe so, but Amnex never used to complete calls directly if you had an authorization code. All right. We'll have to look into it. Authorization codes on Amnex were always the phone number of the co-card. Okay. We'll have to look into it. It was used as a code. But how does it know? I mean, it's a seven-digit number. Yeah, I know. Don't you require an area code? It would make sense. Well, maybe they've gotten so many pay phones all over the place that it no longer directly pertains to the co-card's number. All right. That's how they originally assigned them. We'll check into this. Good evening. You're on the air. Yeah. Hi. I'd like to ask Scott a question. Okay. He was talking about his DTMF decoder, and I'm wondering which other ones he's checked out and which other ones he's used, because I know about the Motron, I know about the Weider, and I know about the one from Rainbow. And I'm wondering, you know, where's this $350 DTMF decoder coming from? Okay. Of the three you just mentioned, I know one of them. The only other DTMF decoder I've used is one that Opto Electronics puts out, and it's not too good because it's not really designed with portability in mind. The nice thing about this unit is that it's very small and portable. Whose is yours? Oh, I'm sorry. Motron is the company that makes mine. And that little puppy runs for 350 clams right now? That's right, 350. Well, it does seem a bit much for somebody that just, you know, captures numbers. Well, it's got a lot of features. It's really a little bit more than just capture the numbers. Again, you can interface it with a computer, and a lot of the other models don't do that. Motron makes other models that are cheaper, and they don't do that. So this is sort of the top-of-the-line Motron unit. Sir, do you know of a better deal? Well, I've seen one from Weider. Rainbow Technologies has one, but they use one that the space shows up in a weird way. I forget how the heck that works, but I think I discarded that one. The one from Motron, I'm familiar with one of their baser units. I know there is an RS-232 port option on one of theirs. I think that's the one Scott's talking about. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not sure. Motron makes cheaper units, but, again, it's the difference between something that comes in a kit that you put together that has lots of diodes and transistors that you see, or, you know, a complete package, the sort of thing you just buy in a store. Right. So, I mean, you have to look out for that. If you order through a firm you're not aware of, you might end up getting just a bunch of parts that you have to assemble. You might end up getting just a breadboard with a bunch of parts on them, and that's not really the sort of thing that I would recommend anyone get, unless they're technically minded and they're not scared by that sort of thing. Well, I'm just curious what you've got there that's working, you know, this well for you. And, you know, if you had it to do over again, what would you look into? And, you know, possibly, you know, could somebody there at 2600 do a review on some of these others and say, hey, you know, I like this one, I don't like this one, yada, yada, yada. Right. Well, funny you should mention that. We did review this. In the current issue of 2600, this particular unit has been reviewed. Actually, the summer issue, not the fall. Is it the summer issue, or is it this new one here? This new one, right. Okay. Yeah, you're right. I lose track. But, yeah, the autumn issue does have a review of this, so you might be interested in that. Okay. Well, we're out of time, so I want to thank Scott for coming in. I want to thank Farber for coming in, and all the callers for asking their questions, and everybody else for just listening. We'll be back again next week with another edition of Off the Hook every Tuesday night from 8 to 9. This is Emanuel Goldstein. Have a good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night.