Here on WBAI, and now you have an opportunity to hear them in concert.
At a special benefit for WBAI, on Monday, February 16th, that's the Monday holiday
of President's Weekend.
Heritage will be holding forth upstairs at B. Smith's on 47th Street and 8th Avenue.
The first part of the show will feature cabaret star, Janetta Alston, singing the songs of
Dinah Washington.
Tickets for the evening are $20 per person.
For reservations to see Heritage and Janetta Alston at 730 on Monday, February 16th, call
us at area code 212-575-0263.
That's 212-575-0263.
See you at B. Smith's.
Hi, I'm Samori Maxman, WBAI's Program Director, inviting you to join us on Wednesday, February
11th, 10 a.m., for a special report to the listener with Pacifica's recently appointed
Chair, Mary Frances Berry.
Miss Frances Berry will discuss a range of policy issues related to WBAI and the Pacifica
Foundation.
Indeed, we encourage you to place your phone calls during the course of that report.
Later that evening, between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., Miss Frances Berry will host a meeting
at WBAI Studios, located at 505 8th Avenue, near 35th Street in Manhattan.
Again, the report to the listener is at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, February 11th, and the
meeting is at 7 to 8 p.m.
All here on WBAI-FM 99.5 Pacifica Radio in New York.
Hi, and you're listening to Radio Station WBAI in New York, where it's time for another
edition of Off the Hook.
You know, every week we go through this where the machine doesn't work, and every week I
get just a little more impatient, but it's okay, it's part of technology, it's what it's
all about, right?
Yeah.
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, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood, from Billy Bone, for the best, expect the worst.
Some high-priority news items from the Coast Guard.
This comes to us a little bit late, January 24th, 1998.
Straight out of the Naval Air Station, a joint reserve base.
New Orleans Quarterdeck received a telephone call from an individual
identifying himself as an AT&T service technician
who was running a test on our telephone lines.
He stated that to complete the test, the QMOW,
which I guess is a way of saying quarterdeck,
should touch nine zero pound sign and then hang up.
Luckily, the QMOW was suspicious and refused.
Either that or it didn't know how to do it and refused.
Upon contacting the telephone company,
we were informed that by pushing nine zero pound,
you end up giving the individual that called you access to your telephone line
and allow them to place a long-distance telephone call.
Or, you know, it could have been a local call. You don't know that for sure.
They may have just wanted to place a local call. Who knows?
And the charge, of course, will appear on your telephone bill.
We were further informed that this scam has been originating
from many of the local jails and prisons.
So we've been asked to pass the word. Consider the word passed.
All right. That's one thing we no longer have to panic about.
However, what a lot of people do have to panic about is,
and I'm sorry to say, actually, you know, I'm not that sorry to say.
I'm really not. AOL is raising their prices.
You hear about this?
They're raising their prices and an extra $2 a month.
FiberOptic, I know this is going to affect you in a big way.
I might have to cancel one of my accounts.
Oh, boy. Well, that would certainly hurt them a lot, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
Well, the good news is that this comes from a newsletter called the AOL List.
And I guess you can sign on. I'm not exactly sure how they run this list.
I don't know how I got on it.
Sometimes I get onto lists that I don't mind being on. This is one of them.
AOL-list at cloud9.net.
I don't know what they're running it on, if it's major domo or listserv or whatever.
You can figure it out and figure out how to subscribe.
10% price increase was announced Monday for AOL's dial-up customers.
The good news is that you have integrated AOL more and more into your daily lives,
a smug Steve Case wrote in a letter to subscribers.
The bad news, starting in April, dial-up customers will pay an extra $2 a month,
$24 per year to access AOL.
That's $24 more per year, not $24 in total a year.
The change comes at a time when studies indicate AOL has one of the worst performance records in the industry.
On average, at least 30% of calls to AOL fail to connect between June and November, PC Week reports,
citing one study showing call failure rates as high as 41%.
And a November survey by PC Week ranked AOL as having the worst performance,
with the worst speed of repair, the least knowledgeable technical support staff,
and the lowest customer satisfaction score.
Talk about consistency. Yeah.
Only 18% of the users surveyed felt AOL's connections were reliable.
You really do have an AOL account, don't you?
Oh, yeah. I use it all the time.
No, but you do have, all sarcasm aside, you do have somewhere hidden an AOL account that you can use.
Me personally?
Well, maybe you don't, it's not under your name, but it's an account that you do use.
I personally do not subscribe to AOL.
You do not subscribe, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here.
I'm just saying, for the sake of the people listening, you do on occasion use America Online.
Very, very rarely.
Without subscribing to their policies, without endorsing their beliefs,
you have on occasion actually found yourself sitting in front of a terminal using America Online.
I have used AOL.
Voluntarily. Voluntarily.
I have used it.
Okay. Now, with that out of the way, are you one of the 18% of the users who feel that their connections are reliable?
Um...
Take your time answering.
I don't... I haven't used AOL in months. I don't know.
So you wish to avoid the question?
Uh, yeah. I feign ignorance.
Okay. Pretty convincingly, too.
Yes.
Significantly, the announcement about the price increase came 10 days after AOL acquired control of CompuServe subscribers.
Bet you didn't know that, CompuServe subscribers. You've been controlled by AOL.
Now, the monopoly pricing has begun, according to one AOL Watch reader.
Uh, Friday, AOL also announced plans to start delivering advertisements to CompuServe subscribers.
Oh, joy.
Um, even though three days earlier, CompuServe subscribers received email from Steve Case promising to preserve the service's look and feel.
And, uh, Case's message concluded with,
This is a non-reply mailbox. Messages sent to it will be returned.
Subscribers are expected to bear the brunt of AOL's push for advertising revenue.
Unfortunately, high bandwidth ad banners in chat rooms currently strain the memory capacity of their subscribers' computers.
A point AOL staffers privately acknowledge.
Um, interesting website. You might want to check out www.aolsucks.org.
Yeah, www.aolsucks.org. Supposedly has all kinds of interesting, uh, perspectives.
And we'll be, uh, talking about sites like that in just a little bit.
Subscribers are becoming cynical. One recent comment suggests,
Funny how Steve Case keeps bragging about all the profits AOL is making and how much revenue the ads are generating.
Yet they still have to raise prices to make money.
And AOL still has little financial justification for their rate hike.
AOL is relatively flush with cash, the Wall Street Journal reports.
It recently sold a debt issue of $350 million and received $175 million
from the sale of its third main division internet access provider, ANS, to WorldCom Incorporated.
WorldCom being those people that just buy everything.
Buy everything.
Yeah. Watch out for them. They're, they're, they're buying things left and right.
AOL is pricing themselves out of the market, Earthlink Chairman CEO told, uh,
I guess they don't give his name unless his name is CEO. I don't think so.
Earthlink Chairman CEO, okay, uh, told Reuters,
They already have hundreds of thousands of people, uh, churning off their service every month.
Now I think a lot of people who are on the fence will be pushed off by this price increase.
In anticipation of a negative response, AOL's billing FAQ included answers to the most important question of all,
What if I decide to cancel my account?
Its answer, phone, 1-888-265-8008.
Otherwise, customers will face a $2 a month price increase starting in April.
Warmest regards, or warm regards actually, Case's message concluded.
Nice homespun company you got there.
Oh yeah.
I mean, AOL anti, I guess hatred has been permeating throughout its existence.
You know, but now with most people using the internet, you know, you have to ask yourself, why use AOL?
You know, and I'm like a caller said many months ago, where's?
Remember that call?
Yeah, that was, that was, that's the reason to, uh, to be on AOL.
And I, I don't know if it's, if it's still worth it.
I don't know.
Um, here's interesting survey released by the GILC, the Global Internet Liberty Campaign,
an international coalition of civil liberties organizations has released the first comprehensive review of cryptography policies around the globe.
Cryptography and Liberty, an international survey of encryption policy is based on a survey of more than 200 countries and regions.
The purpose of the survey was to determine whether countries are limiting the availability of new technologies that are used by internet users and others to protect personal privacy.
Um, the GILC favors the unrestricted use of cryptography to protect personal privacy.
The group has urged national governments not to adopt controls on the technology.
And according to their report, most countries in the world do not have controls on the use of cryptography.
In the vast majority of countries, cryptography may be freely used, manufactured and sold without restriction.
The report says that recent trends in cryptography policy suggest greater liberalization in the use of this technology,
which was originally controlled during the Cold War for reasons of national security.
A rough breakdown of the countries into five categories from red through yellow to green,
indicating how restrictive the policies toward encryption are,
found that most countries are grouped toward the green end of the spectrum,
while a handful of countries fall in the red category.
And those countries include Belarus, China, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and Singapore.
The GILC report notes the surprising policies of the United States.
Given that virtually all of the other democratic industrial nations have few if any controls on the use of cryptography,
the report suggests that the U.S. position may be explained by the dominant role that state security agencies in the United States hold in the development of encryption policy.
Sounds really scary when they say it like that.
The group warns that law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and elsewhere will continue to push for an electronic key management infrastructure
that would expand electronic surveillance of private communications.
The group urges the development of a public education campaign to inform various political, labor and social groups on the benefits of and techniques for using encryption.
If you want more information on this, connect to their website www.gilc.org.
And I think that would be in everyone's best interest for people to become educated on that.
Here's something for you, Farber. You can have that.
That's a big, long document.
It's a piece of chain mail I received.
You know how you get chain mail that tells you, like, you know, a Mrs. Fields cookie recipe or some sort of stupid get-rich-quick scheme?
Well, this one was actually interesting because it has to do with a message that somebody got from somebody else.
And then they pass it on to somebody else saying, hey, can you believe I got a message from this person?
And then they pass it on to more people saying, wow, look at this. It's a small world, isn't it?
And it just kept growing and growing and growing and growing.
And eventually, somebody sent it to me.
And I circled the part that's of interest.
And you have just gotten to it after thumbing through about 50 pages.
Right.
Do you see what it is?
It says it's a message that was from Monica Lewinsky.
Does that name ring a bell?
Yeah.
Why don't I believe it's a real message?
I think it's a real message because look at that e-mail address.
And you may say the e-mail address I have checked with people that I asked at random.
And they say it's OK.
So give out that address.
Go right ahead because I don't think it works anymore anyway.
It's M, as in Monica.
Right.
And Lewinsk, without the Y at the end, at pagate.pa.osd.mil.
Dot mil.
I've checked it out, and that's a real machine.
And that whole thing of leaving out the Y just so they have an eight-character username, that's good.
That's a good touch.
And that tells me that this is real.
Well, it was until five minutes ago.
Well, I mean, that's been passed around pretty much everywhere.
So it's no big deal saying it here anymore.
It is possible that someone else has that name.
Anyway, what did she say?
It was e-mailed from somebody to somebody else.
Yeah.
It says, that's hilarious.
How are you, Josh?
What's going on in your life?
Monica.
How are you, Josh?
What's going on in your life?
Josh Gross.
Josh Gross.
I'll bet he has some answers to some questions being asked out there.
Yeah.
Forward that one to Ken Starr and see what happens.
All right.
Continuing right along here, the American Civil Liberties Union and a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner
are among eight plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of a decision by a library in Loudoun County, Virginia,
and I apologize if I'm pronouncing that wrong,
to use filtering software to block certain internet sites from its publicly available computers.
The X-Stop software, which is intended to screen out obscene material or sexually explicit language,
is blocking sites that include some mainstream newspapers, a Methodist church,
a university women's association, and a safe sex page for teenagers.
An ACLU attorney says, we should hold libraries to the higher standards of the First Amendment.
You simply can't block books that are constitutionally protected.
The chair of the library's board says, the library has the right to choose the material in its library.
We could become the financiers of pornography.
Spirited debate continues.
All right.
And as an update to last week's show where we talked about a kid who got kicked out of school,
expelled, expelled from school for writing an article about hacking in his school newspaper.
Actually, it wasn't even his school newspaper.
It was an unofficial newspaper.
Someone forwarded us from the ACLU, www.aclu.org, another good site to check out,
what we are allowed to say in a school paper.
Keep in mind, private schools have more leeway to set their own rules on free expression than public schools do.
It depends on whether the school is paying for producing the paper.
If it is a completely student-run paper that you want to hand out in school,
the school may not censor what you say or stop you from handing it out,
as long as the paper is not indecent, and you do not materially and substantially disrupt school activities.
The school may place reasonable limits on the time, place, or manner of handing it out.
The same rule applies to leaflets or buttons that you have created and paid for.
Now, that's for an unofficial paper.
They may not prevent you from doing that.
In the official school paper, however, you might have a problem publishing an article
that discusses important but controversial issues like sex education, condom distribution, or drug abuse.
That's because of a 1988 Supreme Court decision, Hazelwood School District v. Coulmere.
It said that public school administrators can censor student speech in official school publications or activities,
like a school play, art exhibit, newspaper, or yearbook,
if the officials think students are saying something inappropriate or harmful,
even if it is not vulgar and does not disrupt.
So, that's pretty interesting, but it didn't stop this kid from being kicked out of school
for publishing this article or unofficial paper.
It's interesting. Originally, he had been kicked out, and he took it to court,
and they found that it was unwarranted to kick him out,
and then the school appealed, and the final decision was that yes,
they can expel him from school for a year for writing an article about hacking.
Amazing world we live in.
Okay, and that's pretty much it for updates this week.
We have Bernie S. with us on the phone line. Bernie, you there?
Good evening.
How you doing?
I'm doing good in Philadelphia.
We had fun in Philadelphia this past Friday.
We had a lot of fun, and then we had a big surprise walking up the street.
We sure did. A telephone was ringing.
A payphone.
A payphone was ringing, and we picked it up off the wall,
and there was somebody on the other end, and they were talking to us,
and they were, you know, a total stranger.
You ever done this? You ever pick up a payphone and just start talking to whoever it is
that happens to be calling a payphone?
And they started talking to me like they knew me.
It's like, so what are you doing?
And I'm like, well, you know, I'm just sort of hanging out, not really doing anything.
And then the question was raised, who's the geek next to you with the laser pointer?
I won't say who that was, but at that point I realized this person can see us.
And I said, oh, boy, that sure is fun that we're being spied on by somebody
who's calling payphones and making witty remarks to the people passing by.
So basically, to make a long story short, we discovered that this person knew who both you and I were,
I guess by listening to the hacker community or whatever,
and we figured out what window he was sitting in, too.
We were able to shine laser pointers at him and things like that.
It was fun.
I guess, you know, it makes you realize it's a small world, just like Monica Lewinsky.
Purely coincidence?
You think it wasn't a coincidence?
Oh, I don't know.
Life is full of coincidences.
Yeah.
Well, Philadelphia's a pretty neat place, and I don't know, I always have fun when I go down there.
We have a guest with us tonight who is also on the telephone.
Hopefully this will work out when we start taking phone calls.
This is Owen Davis, who runs the website www.9xsucks.com,
but more importantly, because there is no more 9x,
he also runs the website www.bellatlanticsucks.com.
But what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong,
you did not originally have that particular website.
Bell Atlantic actually went out and registered bellatlanticsucks.com.
Is that true?
Can you hear me?
Yes. Can you hear me?
Absolutely.
Okay. We're talking on Bell Atlantic phone lines, so we have to be careful.
No problem.
Yeah. In fact, what happened was we registered 9x sucks early on,
and when there was talk of the merger, I looked up bellatlanticsucks.com,
and in fact, it had been registered by Bell Atlantic.
And they actually didn't pay their internet bill.
And we were watching it fairly closely, and when it went back into the pool,
we did register it, and it's now directed to our site.
Unfortunately, in the recent issue of, I think, Barron's and Computer Telephony
and a couple of other magazines,
it got picked up that Bell Atlantic actually had registered the site
to prevent something from happening like 9x sucks,
but that is totally misinformed.
Okay. So the story is that they originally registered the site,
they didn't pay their fee, and then you picked it up when it expired.
Now, of course, there's different ways to spell sucks.
They could have done S-U-X instead of S-U-C-K-S, you know,
and run around you that way.
My guess is they could have been influenced a little bit about the spelling of 9x sucks as well.
I mean, clearly, that was part of the deal.
So, okay, tell us something about the two sites.
Are they the same site now?
Yeah, they're the same site now.
Okay.
They're basically just redirected.
So as they merge, you merge as well.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we are a new media company called Pinky Media,
and our livelihood is dependent on connectivity,
and unfortunately, we have to depend on fucking Bose network.
That is, it is, you know, old and terrible and et cetera.
From getting our first T1 installed took something like six or seven months,
and it was just absurd.
And so now basically what you can do is when you go there,
you can both submit a story about basically what happened to you,
which are absolutely hilarious.
In addition, you can get, you know,
some helpful information about alternative phone carriers in New York City
and folks to help you out in case you're having a problem with 9x,
such as the president's hotline and a couple of other resources.
Well, now tell us something about, I don't know,
what was it that really inspired you to start the site itself?
Was there one final thing?
Yeah, it really was our T1.
Like we needed a T1.
We're a new media company.
We build websites and do all sorts of Java-based applications for the Internet,
and we didn't have a T1.
We didn't have a line coming into a server to work with at all,
and we couldn't get one.
And it was just unbelievably frustrating.
What was their reason for not giving you one?
Well, one was that, you know, the CO was overcapacity,
so that they had to kind of, you know,
kind of re-install additional lines.
And then winter came around,
and they didn't want to dig up the street during winter,
and so then they wanted us to wait until it got a little warmer.
And, like, the whole thing was just so totally ridiculous and absurd
that, like, it just threw me over the edge,
especially because, you know, I had dealt with them in terms of just putting it,
you know, just the regular putting in the phone line.
It's just, you know, I ran the business from a payphone for the first month
because they just couldn't get.
I would go down to the corner of 5th Avenue and 20th Street
and make all my phone calls, you know, catch up with everybody.
And it was ridiculous.
It was just totally absurd.
And the T1 thing, I had dealt with them in the past in terms of doing data stuff,
and I just basically freaked.
Now, lots of people have contributed to the site since you put it up.
Huge, yeah, huge numbers.
By huge. Give us an example.
You know, it gets visited by a couple thousand discreet visitors a month,
and it's been up for, you know, it's probably been up for a year and a half now,
close maybe to two years.
Any official reaction from the telcos?
Yeah, I mean, when we first put it up, we did get a call from the general counsel,
and he said, you know, you've really got to whatever,
and it really didn't go anywhere since then.
And then when we did take the Bell Atlantic sucks name,
we also got a letter from their general counsel saying you have to turn over everything
and you owe us all the documents and blah, blah, blah.
And we basically said, like, I don't think so, and this is fair use,
and truth is the best defense, so it's not liable.
So that was it.
We never heard back.
Now, okay, now you encourage people to submit stories, correct,
of the various things that have happened.
Uh-huh.
Give us a story.
Give us an example of some of the typical things that happen.
The typical story is there's both residential and consumer, so, I mean, residential and business.
You know, the typical story on the residential side is, you know, I'm waiting at home.
9X has not come.
They're, you know, they said they were going to come,
and somebody basically details a log, you know, just every minute of the day,
like they called, they put in the wrong, they went to the wrong apartment number,
they did, like, all of the stupid things that happen absolutely, like, all the time,
in terms of 9X putting in a phone line, are just documented.
One of my kind of, like, favorite things actually happened to me,
which was 9X had left, they had installed an internal web server
and run an ad campaign online where you could sign up for ISDN.
I don't know if you remember.
It was a Bell Atlantic campaign.
You clicked on this banner, and it sent you to this place,
and all you had to do was basically look at the URL of the root of the ad banner,
and basically their entire Lotus database was sitting open to the Internet.
So what we did is we basically went in and printed everybody's name just to have proof about,
this was unbelievable, people's phone numbers, people's, you know,
where to reach them, what their orders were in terms of ISDN lines,
like, it was absolutely ridiculous.
And I did, you know, I actually notified them that they should fix it.
It took them a couple weeks to fix this thing, which was the most amazing thing.
It was wide open for a couple of weeks.
Wide open.
Once they knew about it even, like, it just sat there.
Well, they probably didn't know how to stop it.
You know what?
It was, like, so absurd, like, you just can't even imagine something like that happening.
But, anyway.
It's hard to imagine, but...
It is just unbelievable to imagine, like, the state of affairs in terms of, like, what the network,
what the data network looks like in terms of going into people's homes.
Give us an example, though, of a typical consumer who has, you know, a fairly reasonable request
and having to go through complete hell to get to the stage that he wants to get to.
Absolutely.
Somebody writes in, you know, they stay home from work,
9x promises they're going to come between 9 and 12 or whatever it is,
or they, I don't remember what the time is, you know,
and they either show up and then they leave and the line is crossed with somebody else,
which means, right, then they have to come back, right?
And it's, like, it's one story just after another.
I mean, they can...
Well, that's the most common story where you stay home from work and they don't show up.
That happens to everybody.
Right.
I mean, you can expect that.
I want something that's, like, above and beyond that.
That's the kind of quality service we've come to expect from 9x.
No, no, no.
They actually came.
They just crossed the lines with somebody else.
Right.
So they come and then they break it even more.
Exactly.
Okay.
They'll, like, give you something.
They'll cross the line.
You've got to call them back.
They come back.
Like, or, you know, you see a 9x and you, please help me.
And the guy says, you know, of course I can't help you.
Like, you've got to phone it in and go through the whole deal and blah, blah, blah,
which, you know, like, the stories, you know, I actually should have printed some,
but if you do go to the site, people are actually quite excellent about detailing, you know, minute by minute,
all of the phone calls, the rudeness of, like, getting somebody in touch, screaming at them,
like, please, like, just fucking help me because this guy was here, fixed my line,
and I need this to do whatever, whatever it may be.
Okay.
Oh, and I've got to remind you, this is not free radio.
Okay.
You've got to be careful with the language you use.
Yeah, no problem.
Okay.
I have a favorite 9x story myself.
Go ahead.
I'm sure we all do.
I'm a, I guess, a 9x refugee.
I had a four-year career with 9x before the division I worked for,
which was actually here in Philadelphia, or at least the office was, in the late 80s.
And our largest client was DuPont Corporation.
And the regional vice president of this division of DuPont needed a workstation and needed one now.
And we were in the business of setting up networks and selling PCs, that sort of thing.
And the salesperson didn't have a computer available, so he stole one from one of his sales coworkers' desks.
And, unfortunately, this particular machine, belonging to kind of a nasty male salesperson who enjoyed hardcore pornography,
had a program which, when you booted the computer up, generated a particularly graphic, sexual, animated sequence.
And the 9x employee who stole this computer and put it on the desk of this regional vice president of DuPont
didn't think to even look on the hard drive to see what was on there and set her up with this machine and left.
And it wasn't long before Ivan Seidenberg, who at that time was second in command at 9x business centers
and now is in charge of all of Atlantic, got a phone call from the president of DuPont,
screaming about this woman who's third in command at DuPont or something having this pornography foisted on her desk.
And heads rolled. It's a miracle they didn't lose the account over that.
But it was pretty interesting to see the kind of gross negligence and ineptitude that 9x...
Is that ineptitude? It sounds kind of calculating to me.
Well, no, it was definitely... they just didn't think.
I don't think they would have... because both of those people had a lot to lose if that account were gone.
Speaking with Owen Davis who runs www.bellatlanticsucks.com
and you might want to go over there and see some fun stories and submit some of your own.
Owen, do all the stories that get submitted wind up getting published or are they edited in any way?
No, actually one of the things that we are fairly careful about is not to moderate or censor or any of that
because we don't want to kind of be involved in the content of the site.
So there is at times people post some things that are just kind of useless.
But for the most part everything or for 100% of the part everything that does get submitted gets posted to the site.
Is it organized in any kind of a way by month?
It's organized chronologically and it's broken into both consumer and resident and business.
Has anything changed at all since the acquisition of 9x by Bell Atlantic? Have things improved, gotten worse?
No, I mean the infrastructure is still entirely the same and really nothing has changed for the better.
Now you just have James Earl Jones on directory assistance and it takes 20 seconds.
That's cool. Why does it take so long?
It takes so long to get directory assistance.
I want to try this right now. Hopefully we won't lose you guys because we have two of you on the phone at the same time
and the way this phone system is set up, you're on the two important lines that never get hung up on.
So we're going to try to get directory assistance here.
I've got a timer right here. Let me see if I can. Okay, I figured out how to use it.
We're going to time from the time I dial the last one.
Excellent.
We're going to time how long it takes.
It used to be when I dialed 411 as a kid, whammo, immediately you got a human being.
She said, yeah, what do you want? Or whatever the greeting was back then.
And you would immediately be able to tell them.
And you didn't have to say all this, you know, please hold while we get your number.
Your call is so important to us. We'll be with you in a moment.
You really still need the number? Okay, we'll still, you know, yawn hold.
Because there's only like three information operators in the whole city now.
Right. Well, the way that they've done this is it's cut down on their demands for operators in a huge way
because they're now able to farm out basically ACD calls in a very efficient manner.
All right, let's give this a try. And if we lose you, we'll call you right back.
Hang on. Okay, we have a dial tone.
No.
We don't have a dial tone in this line for some reason. Hang on.
And we lost Bernie S. That's just great.
The BA iPhone system once again comes through.
Let's try getting over here.
Okay.
And last one.
And the timer is off.
Let's see how long it takes to get information.
Welcome to Bell at Monday.
Welcome to Bell at Monday.
Oh, that was fast.
Directory assistance. What listing?
Bell Atlantic.
One moment, please.
You know, I think they...
What listing, please?
Bell Atlantic, please.
For your home?
Yes, why not?
Customer service?
Yes.
Thanks.
Thank you.
The number is...
We don't care.
Okay.
That's interesting.
That really is interesting that we got it that fast.
I mean, the whole call took place in 30 seconds.
Yeah, but it used to take place in like five seconds.
Yeah, but when I call from my home,
it takes a lot longer than that for James Earl Jones to come on.
It takes about 15, 20 seconds sometimes.
Really?
How about you?
Do you ever call information?
I don't call them very often,
but I typically don't have a problem.
It drives me nuts, man.
Uh-huh.
Well, that's...
I never call information.
I mean, why would you call information?
Get one of those CD-ROMs, you know,
and you can look things up that way.
Well, if you're at a pay phone.
Yeah, that's true.
Well, pay phones are still free,
and that's not true everywhere, is it?
No, definitely not.
In Pennsylvania, which is also Bell Atlantic territory,
you have to pay money to get through to them.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm going to try to get Bernie S. again,
so I'm going to have to put you on hold while I do that,
and hopefully we can tie him in.
The problem is...
I can't even put you on hold.
Hang on one second while we figure all this out.
Okay, he's on hold now,
and then we're going to try to get Bernie S. on the phone.
And I don't want his number to go out over the air,
so let's do it this way.
Okay.
Oh, great, he wants a code.
Well, hold on.
I've got to bypass the AI phone system now.
There's a way to do that,
and I'm not going to tell anybody what it is.
Okay, we have bypassed the system,
and hopefully now we are ringing Bernie S.
So how long did the call take?
Well, the call, the whole thing took only about 30 seconds.
They actually...
Well, that was a show.
They did very well.
Unfortunately, the bad news, Bernie,
is that apparently our phone system will not be able to keep you on
while we take phone calls.
I don't know why that is.
It's not supposed to do that.
Oh, well.
Yeah.
I will sacrifice my lines.
That way we can keep Owen on,
and he can answer any questions people might have about the site.
But is there anything you'd like to say to us before we let you go?
I wanted to thank Owen for coming on the air tonight.
I was glad I got a hold of him today, and glad you could be on.
Great.
Thanks a lot.
No problem.
All right, Bernie, we'll be in touch with you in future weeks.
Good luck with your site, Owen.
Thanks.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
It's Bernie S.
Oh, great.
Now I lost Owen.
You know, this phone system is the worst I've ever seen.
It just randomly cuts people off.
Okay, now I have to find Owen's phone number.
Farber, why don't you update us on what's going on with you?
Oh, actually, I got a message on my OmniPoint phone today
notifying me that the cost of my feature package was going to be reduced by $10.
Is that so?
Yeah.
So they finally got competitive pricing there.
Yeah, I think they're getting hip to the competitiveness thing.
Okay, hang on.
I'm going to try and get Owen back here.
Oh, he's busy.
I don't know if he knows that he's disconnected.
He might still be hanging on the line there.
You know, what's ironic is I can't get rid of the busy signal.
I can get rid of him, but not the busy signal.
So, okay, OmniPoint prices are going down.
Yeah, at least my feature package, which is the Advanced Pioneer plan,
I was notified it was being reduced by $10.
Okay.
But the thing is, they still charge you for incoming calls.
They still have, like, you know, these really expensive daytime rates.
Was it $0.49 a minute?
A little at a time.
Well, that's if you exceed your $300.
That's true. That's true.
Okay, we're going to try and reach Owen one more time.
This has been a real disaster, hasn't it?
Okay, here we go.
Hopefully this is the right number.
Hello.
Oh, and you're there.
Yep.
Sorry about that.
Apparently this system is random as far as who it disconnects.
Funny thing is, it's not made by Bell Atlantic, so I can't understand it.
It's a weird system.
Anyway, we have lost Bernie, and he's going to stay away so we can take phone calls.
Great.
212-279-3400 is our phone number,
and if you're calling from outside the country, well, you know what to do to reach us.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Oh, hi.
How are you doing? Where are you calling from?
I'm calling from Omaha, Nebraska.
Omaha. How are you doing?
Now, listen, are you listening to us?
No, I'm not.
Okay, we're going to have to ask you from now on, if you're going to call the show,
that you be listening to the show as well,
because otherwise it's just completely, you know, you're coming in,
we might as well just, like, drop a microphone out the window.
You know what I mean?
Well, it's hard when you only have one phone line.
Have you ever connected? You do have a computer, right?
Yes.
Okay, have you ever connected to a website called www.9xsucks.com?
Yeah, I've seen it before.
Well, the guy that runs that site is on the phone with us right now,
so ask him a question.
Oh, that's great. Someone from U.S. West asking someone from Bell Atlantic.
Okay, is there a uswestsucks.com?
No, because U.S. West is getting ADSL by June.
So you're saying U.S. West does not suck?
Temporarily.
Okay, oh, and I think maybe you have some schooling for this person.
Well, you know what?
There's a great site called www.newnetworks.com
that's got all sorts of information about regional Bell companies like U.S. West
and others in terms of various things that happen and go on
and network upgrades that never really happened
that you basically paid for, unfortunately,
that nobody really did the accounting on.
You've got one of the big questions in my mind these days has been,
you know, Bell Labs was recently sold, right, for a billion dollars.
Am I getting any money back?
No.
You know, I should, shouldn't I?
I mean, I helped build Bell Labs, I think,
and so did you and so did everybody else paying their phone bill.
It seems kind of weird that that is kind of only the tip of the iceberg
in terms of what's going on with kind of other regional Bell companies
and their upgrading their infrastructures
and kind of providing where, you know,
the tragedy of the whole thing is really not just what exists today
but really what could have been.
I mean, the incredible...
Owen, what would you like to have seen?
Well, I think that, you know, the whole idea of offering
a regular upgrading of the phone system
where I would have fiber by now into my home,
into everyone's home, is not such an unreasonable request.
And I think that if in fact there was some sense of diligence
and competition and being well managed as a company,
certainly in New York City there's just no reason
why I couldn't have high data or some type of high bandwidth
coming into my home for a very cheap price.
And it's possible, you know, there's a community
in the middle of Kansas where the guy ran the electric company
and basically decided, you know, this was five years ago,
decided that everybody that was part of the electric company
was a small electric company.
He wanted to put data over the electric wires and did so.
And the whole town is now wired and they have T1 service for $24.95.
Now, if some guy can do that in the middle of Kansas
who's not even a tech guy, don't tell me that, you know,
with all of the infrastructure upgrades,
and I'm not saying it's a small job, it's a huge job,
but nevertheless there's no reason why I still have the copper
that was originally installed in my building 40 years ago.
I don't know, US West dug up everyone's backyard
about two years ago and stuck fiber in there.
I think that might have been for their cable TV
Right.
Is US West offering the cable modems?
And do they have any competition?
Yeah, Cox Communications, who used to be Cox Cable,
and they're national, they about six months ago
started offering cable modems service.
Now, what do they offer them for?
They offer residential.
These are really geared for home market.
So, Owen, does that sound like anything close to the dream you have?
Well, it sounds, I mean, it certainly sounds like it's, yeah,
it's within the means, like ADSL, though, is over copper, right,
which there is, you know, some limitations on that,
but, I mean, even that is, you know, that's great.
I mean, if you're really going to be able to get ADSL into your house,
or XDSL, any kind of DSL, it's amazing.
You know, the possibilities of that happening in New York City,
like, just seem to me almost non-existent.
Well, the time frame they're coming up with is within a year,
and some people say that's way too optimistic.
There's just no chance.
Like, you're telling me by next February
I'm going to have a T1 in my house for $30 a month.
There's just no way.
I think Farber agrees with you, and I think he hopes that that does not happen.
Does that include non-Bell Atlantic areas, non-New York?
What do you mean by that?
Well, because U.S. West really is kind of pushing this.
I mean, if you call their home business area,
it was even in the paper here a couple weeks ago,
that they are trying to get DSL out to consumers by June.
Well, here's what happened with this whole agreement.
All of the regional Bell companies got together and signed an agreement
with Microsoft and Compaq, right,
where Compaq was going to make the set tops or the boxes.
Microsoft was going to do the software,
and the regional Bell companies were going to offer ADSL.
They said, great, that's going to be by Christmas of 98,
Christmas of this year is what they claim.
One, Bell Atlantic is not part of that group.
Now, ADSL is not necessarily the best way to go,
but in general, even if it were,
there's no chance that Bell Atlantic is going to put together a deal
and get their stuff together by Christmas of 98.
And just because of the way that things happen in this corridor of the world.
I mean, you guys are, I think, much more flexible,
and they're part of that consortium anyway,
which will actually push them forward even more.
Yeah.
Hey, thanks for calling.
Sure.
All right, take care.
Bye.
Let's take another phone call.
212-279-3400.
We're on the phone with Owen Davis,
who runs bellatlanticsucks.com and 9xsucks.com.
Owen, are you going to keep 9xsucks.com up, even though...
Yeah, we'll keep...
Yeah, there's no reason why not.
Uh-huh.
Okay, great.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, hi.
Where are you calling from?
I'm calling from New York City.
Okay.
What's on your mind?
Yeah, a couple of months ago,
I've been having, after the fourth ring,
my voice comes on,
oh, your party is not home,
but for, if you press 1,
we will ring the party up until late hours.
Now they have, oh, if you press 2,
for 75 cents,
we will ring the party up until late hours.
You know, I never get this.
Everyone complains about this,
but wherever I am, it never seems to happen.
You have to dial locally.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, but I do dial locally,
but after four rings, this happens?
After about six rings.
Well, what happens if you want to dial the person
for like 20 rings?
Is there an option for that?
No, no, no.
No, it rings,
and then the fourth or sixth ring,
a voice comes in all of a sudden.
I had heard someplace that there is,
there was a way to get that taken off your line.
Really?
Yeah.
Now, not all numbers doesn't work.
Not all exchanges doesn't go through.
Uh-huh.
And if you get a busy signal,
it'll say, hi, this is not Atlantic.
We'll try to ring your party for whatever.
Also, if you press 2.
Uh-huh.
It's a great way to annoy somebody, too.
Oh, yeah.
And what happens if you go,
you forget about it, you go away.
Uh-huh.
Then their phone rings.
Their phone rings, your phone rings.
And then they say, why'd you call me?
And you start a whole big hostile campaign there.
Right, right.
And also, one thing that bugs me,
with the star 69,
he has on his 9X6 thing,
it says, oh, the number is not available.
If you know the number, dial it yourself.
Stupid message like that.
I've always wondered about that one, yes.
It sort of defeats the whole purpose.
It defeats the whole purpose.
If I knew your number,
why would I dial star 69?
To save four digits.
Why else?
To save 75 cents.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, that's certainly true.
75 cents.
How does that work, 75 cents,
even if it doesn't work?
Up until $6.
I'd like to be able to provide service like that.
You know, charge somebody money for something
that might not even work at all,
but you've still got to pay me.
Right.
That makes a lot of sense.
What can we do to get,
to break up the whole Atlantic again?
Well, I don't know if breaking them up
is going to solve anything.
We really have to make it clear
what it is that we want from them
and what we don't want from them.
And I think we don't want those silly services
that annoy people,
and we don't want to be paying fees
for things that don't work.
And I'm getting annoyed from,
what's his name, his voice,
Earl, Earl, um...
James Earl Jones.
James Earl Jones.
James Earl Ray Jones.
It's very annoying.
In the beginning, it was very cute.
No, it's James Earl Jones.
Darth Vader, Darth Vader.
Yeah, let's keep our people straight here.
Darth Vader.
Okay.
Okay, thanks for commenting.
212-279-3400.
I just have something to throw in here,
that, you know,
you're saying, you know,
these frivolous charges that get charged.
I think a frivolous charge
that just should be part of your phone,
you know, we pay extra for touch tone, right?
Not anymore.
Oh, you do.
We do.
You mean businesses, maybe?
Yeah, absolutely.
Really?
They haven't completely eliminated it yet.
Yeah, I mean, what kind of charge is that?
It's a charge for nothing, yes.
Absolutely.
We've been battling that one for years.
We have a new caller on the line.
Caller, are you there?
Yeah.
Where are you calling from?
New Jersey.
New Jersey, what's on your mind?
I'm just wondering,
once you put fiber into the houses,
what kind of maintenance would there be?
I think if a tree limb hit the line,
how hard would it be to fix that up, though?
It's a real pain, from what I understand.
Well, I mean, not necessarily.
I mean, the properly trained technician
would just do a fusion splice.
That's what I'm saying,
a properly trained technician.
How many of those are there, really?
Well, but this is...
That's true.
I think that's also the problem,
is that you've got, you know,
fiber should just not be something
which, you know, 10 people
or however many special green berets know about.
At Bell Atlantic, I mean,
this is...
It has got to be a very common thing
where it's just not that big of a deal.
And when you upgrade the network to that point,
then it just becomes kind of rote.
You know, it's interesting, though,
along those lines,
I have to say that
manned fiber being two of the initial people
to get ISDN in this area,
I just helped somebody get an ISDN line
a couple of...
about a week or so ago,
and everybody knew what I was talking about.
Everybody knew what ISDN was.
I mean, they didn't know how it worked,
but they knew what it was.
They knew that they offered the service.
They didn't call it IDSN.
They actually set about installing the thing,
and it's not installed yet,
but I am told on good authority
that it's being installed
and that it's actually going to be finished
in a timely manner,
i.e. not six to eight months like mine was.
So it may not be much,
but it is some progress.
Yeah.
No, I agree with you on the ISDN thing.
All right, let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Yeah, hi.
Dave Nathan from New York.
Uh-huh.
What's on your mind?
Excuse me?
What's on your mind?
Okay, what's the new ABS line
and how it affects your provider?
Yeah.
You know, what will happen?
Your provider will be cut out of the app
because you're going right into Bell Atlantic?
Well, I know Bell Atlantic.
We read this last week.
They are looking for service providers
that will monitor content
or just deal with content or whatnot.
There's still going to be a market
for those kind of services.
Yeah, but basically right now,
I have a person that I call into.
They'll be cut out of the system then.
Maybe that particular one will be
if they don't invest in ADSL.
But my understanding is that there always will be
a need for some sort of service provider.
And I don't think Bell Atlantic
wants to get involved in that part of it.
Yeah, by the way, funny thing is
when you dial your number and it says it's busy
for 75 cents, they ask you
whether they want to keep on redialing it.
Your own phone number?
Yeah, well, no, this number.
Oh, okay.
But it's busy.
Great show.
Okay, thanks.
Okay, bye.
I don't recommend people spend 75 cents
to redial us because you probably
won't get through anyway.
Fiber, am I off on the ADSL service provider?
No, I mean, ADSL is different from ISDN,
obviously, because ISDN is a switched service.
You actually dial a phone number
and it gets switched through the switching network.
Right.
ADSL is a point-to-point service,
so you have to have somebody at the other end
that you're agreeing that you're going to connect to
and it's a lease line, essentially.
But you still, yeah, you need some kind
of internet service provider at the other end
who you're going to connect to.
In the other regional bells,
they commonly, the regional bell teams up
with a small handful of ISPs
and exclusively offers ADSL.
That's what worries me, the exclusivity part.
Right.
Does this mean that somebody can't just say one day,
hey, I want to start an ISP and do it?
It's not going to be easy to do this anymore?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I could foresee somebody
challenging the regional bell,
say if it was Bell Atlantic, you know,
in the year, you know, 2061 when we finally get ADSL.
But at some point in the future,
I could see you as an ISP challenging
and possibly for antitrust reasons
or having a monopoly on ADSL service.
So I think this is something that Bell Atlantic,
if we're going to be the last ones to get,
I think they should learn from the mistakes
of the other regional bells that are already getting it.
Oh, and speaking on the issue of competition,
where do you think we stand on that?
In terms of ADSL or in terms of...
Just general phone service.
Well, I think, see, what's, you know, packet,
the packet networks are going to be
basically the future of it all,
which means that do you, you know,
whoever controls the wires,
is it necessarily going to be through a switch
or is it going to be through your cable modem, clearly,
or some other means, your electrical wires or whatever.
But in terms of, like, the circuit switch network,
it's dead.
You know, you can't project out more than,
if you're anywhere intelligent
and you're doing projections,
more than, you know, 10 or 15 years
before, you know, packets and data
are going to be carrying voice
and your PCs will have your telephone.
Who is going to break this monopoly?
I think that the larger ISPs,
the cable boxes and cable companies
are going to be certainly the next generation
of telephone providers.
But in terms of ADSL, you know,
this consolidation by the regional bell companies
for this ADSL movement is one way to fight off
kind of losing their grasp on the packet network.
Mm-hmm.
So you see them making,
kind of catching up in the world of the Internet.
I see them, I see them trying to
and, you know, and I think that, you know,
Bill Gates is eyeing the central offices
in terms of writing the next generation of software,
which means that if he can sign this,
you know, if in fact they,
he's able to kind of pull in the regional bell companies,
hardware manufacturers
and he's then therefore in a perfect position
to be able to write the back-end stuff
for the central offices and doing the packet switching.
You know, it basically is just re-insuring his monopoly
and the bell company's monopoly in terms of data.
Cable companies, alternative phone companies
in terms of putting in data lines like, you know,
BBN or Metropolitan Fiber or Teleport or whatever,
all of those guys are going to have the same opportunities
to offer, you know, long-distance service
and packet data voice service
or whatever you want to call it, you know, in the future.
You know, whether they're able to kind of play the game,
I'm not sure.
Okay, let's squeeze in one more phone call.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Yes, one good way of bypassing 9X and Bell Atlantic,
I don't know if you mentioned this on the show or not,
is a website called www.anywho.com.
Right, right.
It's a very good website.
It's run by one of the big companies.
And it has every listed telephone number
almost in the United States.
And if you can't get the number or whatever from there,
it's probably unlisted or it's not a lead number somewhere.
And you can look it up by address
as well as by phone number and name.
Right, but the neat thing that this website offers
is you click on a little icon
and it draws you a map of how to get to the place
that you want to call.
So if you want to stalk someone or whatever,
it'll show you how to get there.
Exactly.
It's a very neat thing.
Yeah.
Okay, well, it's good that everybody has access
to at least the same material and then we can...
And it's free.
Yeah, okay.
Well, thanks for passing that along.
Thank you.
We're out of time.
Owen Davis, you want to give us information
on how to reach you and how to reach your sites?
Sure.
You can certainly go to www.baladlanticsucks.com.
You can also send me email at owen, O-W-E-N,
at thethinkingmedia.com.
Okay, great.
Best of luck with those sites.
I'm sure there'll be plenty of material
over the next couple of years.
Has anybody registered AT&T, Sucks, and MCI and all that?
Nope, nope, no one.
Okay, well, there you go.
That's projects for our listeners to get involved in.
Okay, take care.
Thanks.
All right, thanks for being a part of this.
Manuel Goldstein for FiberOptic
and the rest of the Off The Hook crew.
We'll see you again.
Oh, I have a phone call, so I have to go.
We'll see you again next week at this same time,
or an hour before this time,
when we'll be leaving again next week.
Until then, have a good night.
♪
♪
♪ 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 Bond, for the best, expect the worst
♪ I hope it's understood by Billy Bo
♪
♪
♪
♪
Medgar Evers College Student Government
and the People of the Sun Collective
present the 6th Annual
Tribute to the Ancestors of the Middle Passage Fundraiser
on Saturday, February 28th
from 6 until 11 p.m.
at the Medgar Evers College Auditorium
located at 1650 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn
featuring, among others,
Wassine Roots Reggae Band,
Brother Mike and Keo,
Drums and Poets,
and the African Marketplace.
For more information,
please call Tony Akeem
at 718-270-5165.
That is 718-270-5165.
♪