Shiokaku, Jonathan Schell, Admiral Gene Carroll, and Arjun Makajani.
So come join us and learn about the Cassini and future NASA plutonium launches, the uses
of radiation in consumer products, and plans for abolishing nuclear weapons.
For more information, call 516-324-0655.
That's 516-324-0655.
This has been a public service announcement for WBAI on behalf of the Starr Foundation
and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
This is Lynton Kwesi-Johnson, and you're tuned to WBAI, 99.5 FM, in New York City.
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.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
Bum-diddly-bum!
And, of course, a little bit of the present.
We'll be taking phone calls, but
this is kind of a special show.
It's different.
Because we're imposing a rule
just for this one show,
just for this one time,
we want all new callers.
It's not that we don't like
the people that have called before.
We love these people.
Well, with one exception.
But let's not get into that.
We just want some of the new people
who might not have
as quick a dialing finger
as those of you who are pros
who call the station 24 hours a day.
Those kind of people
really deserve a chance.
So let's all get together
and give those people a chance
so they can call in a little later on.
I understand if you call the number now
you won't get disconnected.
However, there's a possibility you'll get charged.
I'm not quite sure what the policy
with that new phone company is.
I should in the tradition
of our present day society
warn you
because requests
are no good
unless you back them up
with some kind of a warning.
That's what our society has become after all.
You can't just make a rule.
You have to back it up
with something unpleasant
if you don't follow the rule.
Anyway, what will happen
if you call up
you will be banned from future shows.
I don't know how long
the ban will be in place.
Maybe just one week.
Maybe if we're really angry
maybe it'll be for a long time.
We have to impose this.
We just want to get some new people out there.
Nothing against the old people.
The old people can call back next week.
But for now, the old people
just sit back and listen.
Just relax.
Get a cup of lemonade or something
and we'll be pretty entertaining as well.
So our number is 212-209-2900
We'll be taking calls in a few minutes.
Let's first
Let's first go over some stories
that we might have missed last week
when all the
New York Times things
hit the fan, as it were.
There's one story
that I'd like to
I would have liked to have read last week
but since that was impossible
I'm going to read it this week.
It comes out of Denver.
It was on the Associated Press
and I thought it was rather humorous.
A 28-year-old computer expert
now he's not a hacker
he's an expert
I don't know when they become experts
but this expert is accused
of hacking into the U.S. West
computer system
and diverting more than
2,500 machines
that should have been
helping answer phones
to his effort
to solve the 350-year-old
math problem.
That's according to documents
filed in a federal court.
Aaron Blosser
also allegedly obtained
the passwords to 15,000
U.S. West workstations
and sent much of the coded material
he found in them
onto the internet.
According to an FBI search warrant
served at his Lakewood, Colorado home
this was about
two weeks ago.
The warrant says
Blosser, a contract computer consultant
who worked for a vendor
that was hired by Denver-based U.S. West
is under investigation for computer fraud.
In a telephone interview with the Denver Post
Blosser said
he has not been charged with any crime
and said he made no money from his
unauthorized use of
U.S. West computers.
He also failed
in his mathematical quest
which was
the search for a new prime number.
Search for a new prime number
if there's not enough of them floating around already.
He wanted to get another one.
No doubt to be used
for some encryption algorithm
that would be used then to commit
crimes which would then result
in the loss of
hundreds of dollars to somebody.
I don't know.
That's what they should charge him with.
No more crimes that actually happen
just crimes that could happen
if we don't stamp them out.
I've worked on this math problem
for a long time said Blosser.
When I started working at U.S. West
all that computational power
was just too tempting for me.
Blosser enlisted
2,585 computers
to work at various times
during the day and night
and quickly ran up
10.63 years
of computer processing time
in his search for a new prime number.
U.S. West spokesman David Beege
called the hacking
unprecedented in company history.
It would be virtually impossible
to do it from the outside, he said.
Blosser's alleged hacking
was discovered when computers
at U.S. West's facility in Phoenix
which normally respond
in 3-5 seconds
took as long as 5 minutes
to retrieve telephone numbers
and customers just thought
it was normal service.
That's right.
I wonder if that resulted
in the strike.
If some supervisors
turned into real hard asses
as a result of poor work performance
taking 5 minutes to get a phone number
that could result in a few memos
being posted.
And that might have upset
the employees so much
that they said
we're not going to take
this kind of stuff anymore
a prime number
on U.S. West computers.
It seems to me
that government computers
would do that better.
Not that I'm saying.
Not that I'm suggesting
in any way, shape or form
that somebody access government computers
and try to figure out
new numbers.
Although, you know,
when you think about it
isn't that really what government
does instead of trying to
kill people in foreign lands
and indict people
for things nobody really cares about
and all kinds of other
wasted time.
Anyway, Blosser's alleged hacking
was discovered
as we said
when the time was rather
far extended on
looking up phone numbers
but computers were so slow in mid-May
that customer calls
to states and at one point
the delays threatened to close down
the Phoenix Service Delivery Center.
On May 27th
U.S. West intrusion response team
found a software program on the system
that captured U.S. West computers
to work on a project
unrelated to U.S. West services.
The anti-hacking team
traced the software
to a terminal at the company's
Littleton offices
where they found Blosser
a self-described
math geek.
And an important story
that we'd like to circulate
that's being passed
around the internet
Technically this is spam
because I got it
without asking for it
but I'm gonna let this one go
only because I thought
it was interesting.
Make money fast
the easy...
I'm not gonna read that one
this one has to do with
the .us domain
that's right there's a .us domain
did you ever wonder why
we're the only country that doesn't use
the .us domain?
Seems kind of unfair.
The National Telecommunications
and Information Administration
known as NTIA
and they're part of the Department of Commerce
has asked for public comments
regarding the .us internet domain
and how it should be used.
Because this issue has
important implications for non-commercial use
of the internet the NTIA
needs to hear from you.
Why the US domain issue
is important? Well right now there are very few
internet addresses ending in .us
as opposed to the more popular .com
and .org top level domains.
The NTIA
wants to change this but
NetAction along with the
Domain Name Rights Coalition
DNRC
that's right
Domain Name Rights Coalition
straight out of the 60s
they're concerned about how the NTIA
will structure the governance of the .us
domain space. Specifically
we want to ensure that
the proposed new .us governing body
will uphold the rights of non-commercial
speech on the internet
and prevent the .us domain
from being restricted
geographically
by linking all .us domain
addresses to postal addresses.
NetAction believes that the .us
domain should not be dominated by
corporate interest at the expense of private
individuals, community groups and
political organizations. If you believe
as we do, you can help
preserve our rights to the .us domain by
submitting comments on the issue to
NTIA before the October 5th
1998 deadline.
Our colleagues in the DNRC
who are following this issue closely believe
that the NTIA will be more responsive
to concerns about non-commercial
speech aspects of .us
domain governance if they
hear from numerous individuals and organizations
before the comment period ends
on October 5th. For that reason,
we are urging you to submit comments rather
than inviting you to co-sign NetAction's
comments.
Comments are being
accepted by email to make
participation easy.
We're circulating a draft
of NetAction's comments
which I might read part of.
The email address
to send comments to is
usdomain at
ntia.dlc.gov
usdomain
at ntia.doc.gov
If you prefer
to submit comments on paper, you will need to
include a computer disk
with a copy
of your comments in ASCII, WordPerfect
or Microsoft Word, indicating the
version of WordPerfect or
Word. Mail the comments and
disk. Can you believe this?
You can't write a letter anymore. You have to
send a disk. Send that to
Karen Rose,
Office of International
Affairs, NTIA,
Room 4701,
U.S. Department of Commerce,
14th and Constitution Avenue,
Northwest, Washington, D.C.
I'm sorry, Constitution Avenue, Northwest,
Washington, D.C.
20230
If you want to find out more information,
you can go to
the NTIA's webpage
www.ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
http://ntia.doc.gov
http://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
https://ntia.doc.gov
And there's all kinds of controversy surrounding this.
The .us top-level domain provides the United States with a golden opportunity to alleviate
overcrowding in the .com and .org domains, to experiment with new forms of Internet governance,
and to present an example to the world of how the American values of free speech and
open communication go hand-in-hand with the Internet.
Ha!
Oh, what has this person been smoking?
I don't know.
Yeah, that would be something if that actually happened.
NTIA has taken the first crucial step by recognizing the value of the .us domain and promoting
these goals.
However, we feel that certain issues involving policy guidelines, guidance rather, of this
domain and the potential conflict of commercial speech versus other types of speech need to
be addressed more strongly by NTIA.
I'm not really sure where they're going with this.
I don't really know exactly how it all works.
I do know that there are a bunch of .us's out there.
There are organizations that manage .us top-level domains.
In fact, 2600 has one.
I don't know what it is, though, because it spells out the whole town that we're in.
It's very confusing.
It's middle-island.ny.us or something like that.
And we never get any mail at it anyway, but it's kind of cool to have.
So anyway, that's all the information on that.
If there's anything you'd like to share with us, please give us a call or send us email,
oth at 2600.com.
Now we had somebody call the show last week concerning the New York Times hack, the hack
of the webpage.
Still no new word on that.
It's kind of funny, though, how the Times has been rather quiet about just what it was
all about.
They wouldn't tell anybody how it was done.
You know, they're a newspaper.
They're a newspaper.
They should be telling the news.
And that was news.
That was something that definitely should be focused upon.
They should be investigating it.
Instead, they seem to have turned the whole thing over to law enforcement, and they're
not actually going to tell any of the details to the public, which I think the public has
the right to know.
For instance, what were the security holes?
How did it happen?
What is the aftermath?
Is there an investigation?
Has the investigation turned up anything?
You know, things that if the Times wasn't involved, maybe they'd be exploring.
What I thought was particularly funny was that we were trying for quite some time to
get the Times to take notice of important issues such as the Kevin Mitnick case, the
involvement of John Markoff, their writer in the capture of Kevin Mitnick, and the Free
Kevin movement that has started as of this spring.
We tried to contact them in July to let them know about the demonstration that was taking
place outside Miramax headquarters in New York, and we got no response whatsoever.
Nothing.
Zilch.
No request for us to stop sending them faxes, and not even a reporter or a photographer
showed up, and of course, not surprisingly, the next day there was nothing in the newspaper
about it.
The first report the New York Times had that there was a demonstration outside Miramax
against the takedown film, which puts Kevin Mitnick in a bad light, the first indication
of that was the day after their website got hacked.
That's when they finally catch up and say, oh, there's all this stuff going on that we
should tell you about, and the only reason we're even bringing it up now is because somebody
did it for us, because somebody got there and revamped our webpage and told the world
about all the things that we're not telling you about, so yeah, we're going to acknowledge
that.
We're going to acknowledge, yeah, there was a demonstration outside Miramax, and there
were pro-Kevin sympathizers and things like that.
Where were you when we needed real news coverage, when we needed people to tell the folks what's
going on?
Bad job as far as that kind of thing goes, really pretty sad.
Anyway, someone called up the show last week saying how they had heard on Fox that Kevin
Mitnick was the leader of these people, and it was utter nonsense, and he wrote them a
letter saying just that, got a letter back, a form letter saying, thank you for writing
to us, and please do this to get a free gift from us.
They don't care at all, they don't even acknowledge what you say, it goes straight into the trash.
There's just no real acknowledgement whatsoever, just a form letter, and of course, nothing
ever was read on TV, and nothing was ever acknowledged that they had made a big mistake.
Of course, that dog rapist guy that wrote the Daily News story, he never acknowledged
anything that he got the story wrong, and said that Kevin Mitnick got arrested in 1983
for hacking into the Pentagon, I mean, come on already, you just make these things up
and turn them into news, and you don't have to answer to anybody?
I'm afraid not, I'm afraid you do have to answer to people, and if you don't answer
to them in your own pages, then you'll have to answer to them in some other way, but you
can't really keep people quiet, I think that's the theme of the 20th century, is you can't
keep people quiet.
Anyway, I wrote them a letter, I wrote the New York Times a letter, because I was rather
upset with the reaction to all this, and I figured, you know, maybe it would mean something,
maybe they'd actually take a look at this, and who knows, print it maybe, as a reaction
to what it was that happened to them, maybe, you know, see it as valuable, helpful hints
that are coming from someone who's trying to give them a, you know, a hand.
Anyway, to the editor, so the Times is surprised that its website was hacked, I'm not, and
I doubt very many people in the online community are, for more than four years, the Times has
been involved in the pursuit and capture of Kevin Mitnick, who, by your definition, was
the most wanted man in cyberspace, in fact, on July 4th, 1994, you ran a front page story
complete with Mitnick's picture that reinforced this notion when, at the time, the accusations
against him were so trivial as to be absurd.
Once the front page story appeared and the FBI was made to look as if they were incapable
of capturing a computer geek, the search for Mitnick began in earnest.
When Mitnick was finally apprehended on February 15th, 1995, Times reporter John Markoff, author
of the July 4th piece, was on the scene, having actually played a part in helping the FBI
track him down.
Within a week, Markoff had signed a six-figure book contract followed closely by a movie
deal.
Although many saw a conflict of interest with the reporter getting so personally involved
in the story and profiting so greatly from it, the Times said nothing.
Years have gone by, and Mitnick has yet to have a trial.
He has never been granted a bail hearing, something even the most heinous of terrorists
are afforded.
After nearly four years in prison, Mitnick is still not allowed to have visitors outside
of three immediate family members and his lawyer.
This kind of treatment for someone who has never been accused of stealing, causing damage,
or being violent is a very big news item in the Internet and human rights communities.
But the Times has been silent.
What happened on Sunday was illegal, yes, but mostly it was embarrassing to the Times
because, in effect, your printing presses were used against you to tell the story you
have declined to acknowledge.
Rather than vow to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, you would be well advised
to learn from this, both on a security level and on a journalistic integrity one.
Remember, the net is a lot more equal than the real world.
If the Times doesn't get the story right, some 14-year-old from Topeka will.
Well, you know, they didn't even respond to that.
They didn't even send me a little acknowledgment saying, hey, we got your letter.
No, nothing, not a thing.
That was sent a week ago and it's old news now.
They can't print it now.
It's too far gone.
But just something back saying, thanks for the letter.
We can't print it because it sucks, something like that, like newspapers used to do when
you sent them letters.
But no, nothing, nothing, not a thing.
All this crap about Kenneth Starr and Clinton, that's all over the place.
Like the National Enquirer, no problem there.
Also I wrote a letter to CNN.
I was writing a lot of letters this week because I didn't like their coverage either.
CNN is better because they're more interactive, but they didn't acknowledge this either, which
was kind of annoying.
Your story in the New York Times webpage had contained a serious error, one which has been
spread throughout the media.
Kevin Mitnick has not been in prison since 1995 because he was, quote, convicted of computer-related
fraud charges, unquote.
Rather, he has been held without trial, without bail, and without visitors outside of immediate
family and lawyers for three and a half years.
By the time his trial begins, he will have been in prison for four years.
In that time, New York Times reporter John Markoff, among others, have gotten rich telling
their story of Mitnick and now a major movie is being made at Kevin's expense.
The irony is that what he's charged with is less of a crime than what these pranksters
pulled off today, today being two Sundays ago.
People on the net are angry about the Mitnick case and the lack of attention it has gotten
in the media.
This frustration will lead to more of his expressions in the future.
It wasn't a threat.
I'm sure they're going to take it as a threat, but it's a fact, you know.
People will express themselves.
It's regrettable because it winds up bringing bad publicity to the Mitnick case.
I spoke with Kevin tonight.
He was very upset that this happened in his name.
The fact is, none of us can control this.
One way or another, people will express themselves.
Well, I didn't get to express myself in any CNN forum.
I just sent that into a black hole and who knows, who knows if anybody even saw it.
But I figured by sharing it tonight, at least somebody will hear it.
All right, this one final note, a letter from a listener, and then we'll take some phone
calls, 212-209-2900.
Dear Emanuel, glad you had fun with Freddie the phone fraud fox a couple of weeks ago.
That was fun, really was.
I hope to meet Freddie someday.
Following up on the caller's question on reducing ISDN costs as a way to cut monthly
service charges too, according to the tariff on file with the PSC, a customer's first
circuit switched voice channel is free.
Oddly, a second CSV channel costs seven bucks, but if the second channel is circuit
switched voice slash data, that only costs two dollars.
On another topic, I've signed up with MCI for long distance.
Their MCI-1 savings plan gives a rate of nine cents per minute 24-6.
24-6, not 24-7, the seventh day, it's ten dollars a minute.
Now, it's Sunday.
It's only five cents a minute.
Pretty good.
There's a five dollar minimum per month, though.
Minimum, though, not a charge.
AT&T, I think, has a charge, which is not a minimum.
So that's definitely different.
I have three lines dividing up my long distance, making the minimum a pain in the
butt. You know, you could turn long distance off.
I'm told this works.
Now, somebody go out there and try it because I don't have time to deal with Bell
Atlantic. They put you on hold forever.
I just don't have time for it.
But if you if you turn long distance off on your phone, you say, I want no long
distance carrier whatsoever.
Get rid of them. They're all evil.
They're all tools of Satan.
I don't want them on my phone line.
They'll take it off so that when you dial one plus a number somewhere else, you'll
get one of those little recordings that says, sorry, you can't do that.
If you if you feel you've reached an error, go and make the error again or whatever
they tell you to do.
So.
You can still actually make long distance calls, I believe, by dialing a carrier
access code one or one or XXX, but you won't.
And this is something that I don't know has been proven yet, but I think enough
people have said it to me where I almost believe it.
You won't get that annoying monthly charge for long distance from whatever your long
distance company is, AT&T, MCI, whatever, where they charge each line.
When is it three dollars for for just having a line?
Or whatever they got away with this time.
So try that.
Try taking all long distance service off.
Of course, when you do that, you don't qualify for things like MCI one savings
plan.
You have to pay certain certain long distance charges.
And sometimes some really nefarious phone companies, I think AT&T is one of them,
charge you every time you use a carrier access code, you know, a buck or two, which
is really annoying, too, and sort of defeats the whole purpose of that system.
So that's a that's a possibility.
Of course, if you make a lot of long distance calls, it might be worth it to pay
that stupid charge.
If you don't, you might have to be a little creative.
MCI also has an MCI one net savings where customers sign up via the website and get
billed by email.
Then the bills are paid by credit card.
The rates are the same, nine cents and five cents, but there's no minimum.
The catch?
I don't have a credit card.
Well, it's just too bad, isn't it?
Anyway, the best part of this miniseries came while schmoozing with an MCI employee.
I mentioned really wanting the net plan, but I didn't have a credit card.
She sympathized and said, would you like mine?
And no, no.
But there are some that will do that.
Actually, they really are people they hire.
She sympathized and said, do you watch the home shopping network?
I told her, no, I don't even have a TV.
She replied, well, maybe I can find you that number.
I know I really shouldn't, but what the bleep?
I sat on hold for a bit.
Half hour later, when she returned, she gave me the number.
1-800-334-0468.
It's the same plan, but with a slightly more tolerable $3 minimum.
Save two bucks.
All right.
That's kind of weird.
I got their PR mailing that discloses the rates, et cetera.
And here's the real catch in state.
Long distance is 25 cents per minute during peak hours and 10 cents.
Other times, no 5 cents Sundays either.
So you got to be careful.
That's okay.
Here's the thing.
That's not regional.
It's not regional is, is within our area.
Okay.
It's a Eastern Suffolk to Westchester.
It's New York city to Rockland.
It's NASA to Suffolk even that's regional calling.
Local calling is within your little area, Western Suffolk to Western Suffolk, but
Western Suffolk to Eastern Suffolk.
Those are two regions.
So that's regional calling.
Now there's been a lot of, uh, a lot of nasty stuff going on in recent months
where long distance companies try to fool you into signing up for regional and long
distance.
And the result is you pay far more than you would if you stuck with your local
company, Bell Atlantic in this case.
Now in state long distance is one step above that.
And that's something that you're stuck with, with your long distance company, no
matter what.
There's no differentiation between in state long distance and out of state long
distance.
Now, New York to say Albany that's in state.
It's also long distance because that's not regional New York to Buffalo.
That's also the same thing.
Buffalo to Albany.
It's, uh, it's confusing.
People have had all kinds of breakdowns as a result of this.
So I guess that, that leads this person to ask the question, is there a website
that lists the various carriers and perhaps their rates?
If there is, I'd love to know about it.
So, uh, listeners, please either email us or call us with that information.
Of course, if you're an old listener that has called the show before, you're not
allowed to call tonight because we have a special show of only new people, not
necessarily new people that have just landed on the earth.
I mean, people who have never called the show before and we'd love to have you
and we'd like them to call us for the first time.
There's nothing to be afraid of.
It's nothing to be afraid.
If you've heard the kind of people that call over the last few years, you know
that anybody can call and not be made a fool of that's our job.
Two one, two, two zero nine, two 900.
And you know, I got a bunch of, um, new phone features on one of my phone lines.
Isaac, you're here.
You're how you doing?
Your mic is not working.
There you go.
It's not working.
You're a, you're a bell Atlantic, a customer as well.
Uh, so far, isn't it fun?
Telephone?
Yeah, it's, it's, it's just, it's just an adventure.
Every, every day, every, every single day is a, something new is found.
Yeah.
Well, I had this phone line that it was stuck on, you know, that old system called
IntelliDial.
Did I ever tell you about this?
Uh, no, it's sort of, it's, I don't want to say it's like Centrix because it's not.
It's horrible.
It's awful.
It sucks.
It's the worst.
You know, basically the only thing it's good for is that you can transfer calls
all over the place.
You know, you hit flash dial number, hang up and it goes there.
It's not like three way.
It is like three way, except you can use it as three way.
Or if you hang up, then it actually connects the two lines.
Uh, it's, it's meant to sort of, uh, a small home business type of phone thing
where you can dial, you have to dial pound something and another phone rings.
It's an intercom call, but you can't tell us an intercom call because it
rings just the same way.
And I don't know why just hitting the button for a speed dial wouldn't be the
same exact effect.
Um, the only reason I kept that service was for the call transfer.
But you know, after a while I get fed up with it.
They have this thing, crippled caller ID.
That's my term for it.
Crippled.
Yeah.
Well, basically caller ID doesn't work at all on, on that service unless it's
within the same central office.
Oh, a few years ago I noticed this and I said, you know, it only works in Suffolk
County, only works in the region.
So they said they'd fix it and they fixed it.
All right.
They made it only work in the central office, a smaller zone.
So, so, um, I figured, you know, after a while they'd, they'd, they'd catch up.
They'd make it work.
They'd make star six, nine, work star six, six, all these features that everybody
else is using.
They, they'd finally get compatible with this system.
And so I talked to them a couple of weeks ago and I said, look, is this ever going
to happen?
And she said, well, you know, those, that system is just grandfathered in and we're
just waiting for it to die.
That's how they deal with their old customers.
That's how they deal with their old services.
They don't try to make them work.
They just, they just wait for them to break.
They wait for all the customers to just get fed up and walk away.
So I got fed up.
I said, look, yeah, it was ridiculous.
And she looked at my phone bills.
He said, you know, you're paying so much for this.
You're paying more for call waiting and call forwarding than you would pay for
this new feature.
We have, it's not really that new.
It's about a year old where you get all these feet, you get something like 16
features and right away, you know, it's less than those two features you're paying
for, which you also get with those 16 features.
So I'm like, you know, I must be some kind of idiot if I, if I want to, if I want
to stick with this thing, you know, I just being stubborn just to transfer calls,
which I don't really do anyway, but I just think it's a neat feature.
I think they should introduce it.
You know, I maintain that, but with this, I get, I get the voice dialing, I get
call forwarding, all kinds of call, call ID, call name, ID, call or name ID on
call waiting.
What?
Yeah.
And then here's the, here's the real clincher.
I get two additional phone numbers, two additional, you have, you have the one
line, but there's one line, one super master line here, but it has all this, all
this stuff going on.
I get two additional phone numbers going to that line.
It's not, it's not an outgoing number.
It's an incoming number.
And, and, and people call me and they get distinctive ringing or I get distinctive
ringing.
That's really silly.
Yeah.
It's really silly.
So I either, I get a regular ring or I get a short, long, or I get a long, short.
Depending on which number you're depending on, which number it is.
I don't like boy, you know, all I want is, is a service.
I don't need all of this, you know?
And, and, and the reason why we're running out of phone numbers and area
is because Jack balls like you are giving out all of these phone numbers to people
who don't need them in the first place.
I don't, I already have 10 phone lines.
I don't need three numbers for a single one of them.
Imagine God forbid, if I was to get this service on all 10 of my lines, I'd have
30 phone numbers, 30 phone numbers.
Where does it end?
I asked, can I not get this?
No, you have to get this.
This is part of the package.
I'm stuck with these numbers.
I don't even know what the numbers are.
I don't know what they are.
I have no way of finding it.
They, they told me what they were, but how am I, I didn't write them down because I
really didn't want them, but I have them.
I can't nine, five, eight them.
I can't dial because I can't dial out on them.
So the original number for nine, five, eight and yeah, you get the original one
because you're making outgoing calls on that.
So the only, the only way I can ever find out what these numbers are is a, to spend
a half hour waiting for Bell Atlantic to pick up their phone, which is never going
to happen and I don't really care that much or B here, the distinctive ringing
coming in, run to the phone, grab it, talk to the person who obviously called the
wrong number and asked them what they dialed.
You know, that's what I have to do to find out what my new phone number is going to
be.
Two of them.
I have two of these numbers.
I mean, I don't need this.
These are services I never asked for.
I'd like to have called transferring.
Can I have that?
Sorry, sir.
We can't do that, but you do it.
You have it on the IntelliDial crippled grandfathered service.
You have that, but you can't give it to me on my real nice new phone line with
multiple phone numbers, caller name ID on call, waiting, forwarding, whatnot.
You know, we're not, we're not driving this boat.
I don't know who is, I don't think anyone is at the moment.
I think it's, it's just going freeform somewhere, getting all these ridiculous
services.
I mean, what am I going to do with distinctive ringing?
You know, I have an answering machine.
I have an answering machine that picks up my phone.
It doesn't care.
It doesn't care about how many different kinds of rings it got.
Well, wait a second.
Will the answering machine actually work now that you have distinctive ringing?
You know, I don't even know that that would be something to try.
I think it picks up in the first ring.
So it doesn't even matter.
It doesn't even matter.
You know, you don't even know what kind of a ring you're about to get.
And you know, there's other services too.
I don't even know about, uh, I was playing around with anonymous call rejection the
other day where you dial star seven, seven, I think it is.
Then anybody calling you who wants to maintain their privacy gets rejected, right?
Out of hand.
Sorry, accepting any private calls.
Star seven, seven, the star six, seven, six, seven blocks your caller ID.
That's a whole other field, but star seven, seven, uh, means anybody calling
you with a private privacy flag on your phone on their phone will get rejected.
Star eight, seven defeats that.
It's a great gag to pull in my line of work.
When everybody calling you is trying to remain private, trying to remain
anonymous and you reject all of them.
You know, it's easy to get around, but, uh, it's, um, it's, it's kind of fun.
I don't know what else I have.
I've got the voice dialing.
I've got speed dialing somewhere hidden in there.
Now they didn't send you a pamphlet or anything.
Nothing, nothing.
It just, you know, started one day.
It just threw a switch and all of a sudden I'll say what's cool.
What's cool is, is, is the caller name display.
Cause I have a caller ID thing on this line.
And it's kind of neat to see people's names show up, especially people who
think that phone number is unlisted.
Because yeah, your phone number might be unlisted, but you still have a
name attached to it with the phone company.
So when they call you, you know, it says, you know, Timothy McVeigh or
whatever your name is that you're trying to hide, and it just comes right over.
Even though you're not in the phone book, as long as you don't star six,
seven, or block it, uh, block the line.
That is exceptionally silly.
It's typical.
It's typical.
And it's going on all over the place.
Sorry.
How much?
It's about 15 bucks a month for all this.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Can't beat the price, but I don't want the service.
What am I supposed to do?
I just want things to work.
You know, I just wanted a few services to work.
You know, I wanted to be able to star six, nine people, which
I think is kind of cool.
Yeah.
It's useful, but you know what happens if, if, if you star six, six, somebody,
which means repeat dialing, it's a busy signal and you call them
and then they call you back.
Well, it's a distinctive ring.
How do you know if it's, if it's a distinctive ring, one of
your distinctive lines or yeah, you don't know, you don't know.
It's pretty sad.
It's a big mess.
And you know what else?
I just thought of this right now.
I remember we, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago.
There's a little trick that, uh, I used to be able to do back
when caller ID worked on my old line, where if I called somebody
and their line was busy and then they called me back with that
distinctive ringing, they aren't actually calling me back, but on
my caller ID box, their number shows up.
So I can say to them, look, you called me, even though they
didn't do anything of the sort.
I wonder if now their name shows up as well.
What an interesting way to get people's names.
That is a very interesting way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, uh, well, anybody who has caller name, I can't say that right.
Caller ID.
I can say call name delivery, whatever.
I can't say that right.
But if, if anybody has one of those, one of those features, they have a
caller name ID box and they have a second phone number, call that second
phone number or first call, call your caller name box with that phone number.
See what shows up.
Then call that number, making sure it's off the hook.
So it's busy.
Do a star six, six thing, then hang up.
Actually, you don't do star six, six anymore because that annoying
lady comes on and says the line's busy.
Press this button.
Then I'll keep trying for a long time or whatever.
And, um, then when it rings back, see what number shows up and see
if a name shows up with it.
Interesting little, uh, experiment to pull there.
Yeah.
Some experiment for all the happy listeners.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, anything new in the world of, uh, whatever it is that you're up to these
days, me?
Yeah.
You think I do interesting things?
No, I figured it was a long shot though.
Might hit something, but no, as usual.
Yeah.
Nothing, nothing fun on the net?
Uh, not particularly.
Um, actually, if anyone is interested, there's a forum tomorrow night at the
Cooper union, uh, the folks at name dot space are hosting a DNS open town
meeting kind of strange thing.
I haven't heard much about it.
Grab your top level domain of your choice.
Uh, well it is named out space, so you can get dot whatever you want, I suppose.
It's for people interested in actually seeing how this works and where
they're trying to go with it.
And where is this again?
Uh, it's in the Cooper union foundation building.
That's a Cooper square.
Uh, for those unfamiliar, it's a third Avenue and St.
Mark safe street around there.
Uh, you'll see it.
It's a big building with lots of scaffolding.
I thought the net was going to break yesterday.
I really did.
When, when, well, they released those video, uh, transcripts at 9 AM, which I
think was pretty stupid.
They did it on the net.
It was really, it was on every TV station and every cable network, you know, it was,
it was insane and they put it on the web as well.
But, uh, you know, for some reason the background didn't snap maybe because
everybody was watching TV and they didn't even try it.
But, uh, it was, uh, it was definitely a test.
No, uh, no major ramifications that I know of.
If you know, otherwise, please let us know.
Okay.
We're going to take some phone calls.
Two and two, two zero nine, two 900.
Again, let me just warn you of the gravity of the situation.
All right.
It's nothing against the old calls.
We just want new callers this week.
And, uh, if, if, if, if you don't take that seriously, you're going
to find that we mean it.
All right.
I'm going to find that we mean it don't make us be mean.
All right.
Next week, everybody can call two and two, two zero nine, two 900.
See this way.
I can press any, but look, all these buttons are all lit.
I can press any button without fear, not have to have to fear what might be
waiting for me on the other end because they're all new people.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello.
How are you doing?
Okay.
This is a new voice, isn't it?
Yep.
Where are you calling from?
New York, New York.
What's on your mind?
Okay.
I've got a few questions.
Uh, first off, uh, great show.
Why thank you.
Welcome.
Uh, it's a statement though.
It's not a question.
Okay.
Uh,
I've got a couple of questions.
What?
No, we're just, we're just having fun at your expense, but that's what we do here.
Yeah.
Okay.
Uh, I got a couple of questions.
First of all, do you know of any, uh, resource that lists, um, remote
systems that you can tell net into
lists, remote systems that you can tell net into as in like free shell account
access, things like that, or just, you know, systems that you, uh, that offer,
you know, just a list of various systems that have telnet, uh,
places you could tell net and like play around with links and pine and
just have a shell at your access.
I think he's asking for all different kinds of services.
Yeah.
Basically like, you know, dungeons and dragons and things like that.
And just everything.
Any, uh, any kind of, is there any kind of list master list?
Yeah.
If, if there were a master list, uh, it would be very large.
Uh, wasn't there, isn't there like a list of lists somewhere?
There, there used to be, uh, things floating all around using that, but
that was like 20 years ago.
Um, just the, the amount of resources out there have outgrown the possibility of
lists.
I mean, you could go out and buy a copy of like the internet yellow pages and
maybe get one hundredth of a fraction of the, uh, possible sites out there.
Couldn't you also, uh, just sort of look around for that on the web?
Uh, yeah.
Internet yellow pages.
Um, well the internet yellow pages, uh, actually, if you look around Yahoo, you
might like dig yourself into one of those categories where they have, uh, lists of,
say, uh, muses, muxes, and muds, or, uh,
Under computers, I assume, would they?
Yeah.
Something like that.
Yeah.
Put computers into Yahoo.
That's going to, that's going to yield you a few hits.
Um, yeah, there, there isn't like the, the, uh, the Bible of, uh, available
resources.
It's, it's, it's a very large world.
Um, basically look around Yahoo, uh, someplace that has categories where you
can have, like, a long list of sites that may have other things.
Uh, some, you might want to also try some Usenet, uh, group, uh, FAQs, or
facts, uh, they might have certain resources pertinent to a specific topic.
For instance, like, uh, SciCryogenics used to have a, uh, a gopher site where
they linked to all these other places, which was really cool.
Um, why I was in SciCryogenics, I couldn't tell you, but, uh, but, uh, yeah,
the things have gotten to a point where you can't really have a master list
anymore.
If you look around one of the services like Yahoo, you might dig into something.
And if we, if we hear something, of course, we'll let you know as far as,
uh, what people have, have said, uh, to us as far as lists.
Thanks so much for the call.
212-209-2900.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Okay.
Uh, since these are new callers, maybe we should explain the rules.
Uh, when we say good evening, you're on the air and the voice doesn't come
through your radio, it comes through your phone.
That means it's you.
That's right.
And, and by that token, you should always have the phone next to your ear.
You should also have the radio down.
So we don't get feedback.
That too.
That too.
When you make a phone call to the station, don't put the phone down and put the
clothes in the dryer.
No, because it could happen that you're next.
Like this person is good evening.
You're on the air.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hi.
How you doing?
Can you hear me?
We have a bad connection.
I can hear you just fine.
All right.
Well, thanks for your invitation.
I am a first time caller.
Why thanks for calling and taking us up on that invitation.
Compared to the weighty matters you've been addressing, my problem is rather
trivial, but I didn't know where else to turn and hopefully you can provide an
answer.
We're here for you.
Every two or three weeks, my beeper gets activated by a computer, which reads out
the numbers 07734, which you may know if you turn upside down spells out hello.
I've gotten that a few times.
Well, it happens to me about every week or two, and then I get paged continuously
every three to five minutes for about three hours.
And this goes on for about three days.
That's not good.
Okay.
You said a computer is involved.
How do you know a computer is involved?
Well, just because of the regularity of it, it seemed that way.
I would say because of the irregularity of it.
You say it only happens every couple of weeks.
If it was a computer, it could do it every couple of seconds for a month without
stopping.
Well, it happened that way first when it first started, which was about a year ago.
It went like that for about three days solid every three to five minutes.
But then it's been recently every two weeks, I would guess.
It just seems to me that for someone to be doing it manually would involve an
awful, awful lot of time.
Well, no, I wasn't suggesting that, but I'm saying something like a fax machine or
a speed dial on a phone could be programmed to do that.
Call a certain number, pause for a little bit of time, enter some more numbers, hang
up.
It's a very bored person who wants to play with you.
Also, there are some beeper companies.
I'm not sure which one, but there is one in particular where you call it up and it
asks you, it's got an 800 number.
I think it's whatever company it was that blocked phone calls from pay phones.
Basically what you do is you enter your page and it asks you how many times you
want to page the person with that number.
Nine, nine, nine.
You can do it a lot of times and you can call many times.
So there are some services that do it for you.
You don't have to have a computer.
So check with your beeper company first, make sure they're not one of those idiot
companies that do that.
And then if they aren't, say to them, look, at this time, we're getting all these
phone calls.
We need to do a, what's known as a trap and trace on it, which they have to work
with the phone company for.
They can do that.
They told me that I had to speak to the phone company and the phone company told
me they couldn't do anything.
They couldn't trace it.
Well, no, that's not true because they're, they're, they're calling a phone number.
It's just a question of the interface, the right people talking to the right people.
It's just simply a question of that.
So who would you suggest I call?
Well, you call, first of all, how inconvenient would it be for you to change
your beeper number?
Extremely.
I'm listed in directories and that's how I get work.
Uh huh.
Okay.
That's, that's probably why you're getting beeped too, because you're listed in
directories.
Uh, then in that case, you have to, uh, come down hard in the beeper company
because they're the ones that own the phone, the phone number.
It's actually, it's not you that owns the phone number.
It's you that has an account with the, uh, with the beeper company.
Well, there is another interesting possibility.
Um, if there is some kind of what?
Oh, okay.
If there, if there is some kind of internet gateway to the beeper, uh, there
may be somebody with a program running about, uh, just setting up some kind of a
script that would do this.
Do you know if your beeper has an internet interface or something like that?
I doubt it is that I've had this number for probably five years.
Okay.
The most likely not.
Uh, yeah, definitely call the company.
Uh, if they don't do anything, uh, I'd really get on their case.
I think Ray has some input here.
Yeah.
What you have to do is find out who your carrier is.
Um, probably he's only talking to this reseller who's, who's selling in the
service or the beeper.
So he's going to have to find out who the carrier is.
Okay.
Page net does have an interface into the internet and your pager could be for the
internet too.
Your pager, the guy is probably accessing you through the internet.
And that way he doesn't have to keep paying for the phone calls to count to
contact you, uh, to keep setting your beeper off.
And there's a lot of software out there that's designed to do that, to keep
sending messages at predetermined times.
Uh, you need to contact the carrier itself and talk to their, uh, their customer
service people there and tell them what's going on and they can probably track it
back through the internet.
And if, if, uh, if that's the case, they can also very easily find out the address
that that's coming from.
I mean, it's, it's just a question of looking at some logs, every best of luck
with that, uh, an example of one of the many problems that face people in this
technological age.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
All right.
Another, another one of these people that needs to, uh, not leave the phone.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Yes, go ahead.
Um, hi, um, I'm calling from New Jersey and, uh, I was actually happy to get
through.
Um, I've listened to you guys and, uh, I like, really liked the show.
Um, and I was wondering, um, you guys talk about PCS and stuff like that.
I have a, uh, the Atlantic mobile, uh, phone and, um, I really liked the service
on it.
I mean, I don't like the Atlantic at all as, as a, like a local carrier, but, um,
they're actually, they're a mobile service.
Like the feeling that I have is actually like pretty good.
And I was wondering if you guys ever tried the Atlantic mobile or know anything.
I have it myself.
Uh, Isaac, do you know anything about the Atlantic?
I know people who have, uh, it's, it's a decent service.
These new, uh, things they have with the USA, uh, and the East coast, uh, plans
that I've been hearing about.
It's kind of silly.
They're actually not offering them yet.
And they don't really have enough literature for them.
Uh, but supposedly it's, it's a big money saver.
I'm considering switching myself.
I mean, I have like a lot of free time and a lot of like features, like everything
was like included.
And, um, and I've, you know, I've, I've actually brought the phone like across
country and back and have made lots of calls and have never had any like
interruption of service or any problems.
That's good.
But now this is a, this is not a PCS service.
This is just regular cellular.
Right.
Um, it's a digital, digital cellular.
Yeah.
Okay.
Uh, it's, it's not the wave of the future.
I mean, eventually it's, you're probably going to wind up with some other type of
service that will replace it, which will be even cheaper.
Hopefully.
Well, what exactly is the difference between like digital cellular and PCS?
Well, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, somebody, but I believe that Bell Atlantic
is using TDMA over a 900 Meg band and much more powerful transmitters.
Yes.
So you have a more bang for the buck so far as how many, uh, towers you have to
erect, uh, sprint sites doing at one, three gigs have to be closer than the
Bell Atlantic towers and Bell Atlantic already owns a lot of towers so they can
put up all their TDMA stuff, uh, already since they have the room.
Um, it's a quality issue I've never used either, but, uh, according to
the specs, they're about comparable.
And then you got GSM, but we're not even gonna get into that.
Thanks for the call.
Uh, also an appeal to our internet people.
If, uh, we can get some email from, uh, the coordinators saying how, uh, how
many listeners we have out there.
We'd like to know how many people.
And if they know how to get ahold of us via the old GSM phone, where you can get
email, still can't get a send email on the sprint phone, you can get email, but
you can't send it, which is pretty silly.
Let's take another phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi, I'm a first caller.
I'm calling from Florida.
Great.
Uh, I just wanted to tell you how much I love you show.
I just started listening to it, uh, maybe the beginning of this
August and I just love it.
So you, you probably heard us when we were on the road.
Uh, yeah, I did.
Uh, that was, uh, that was pretty hair raising.
It was adventurous.
If anything, I got to hear the show fairly recently.
Did I talk about this last week where, where basically I was talking
through my sprint PCS phone and it gave me like an accent that I didn't have.
It, it did something weird to my voice.
I was listening to it saying, this is not me.
It's not me.
It was though.
It was me talking on my phone and it wasn't, it wasn't being handed
off, uh, you know, to different sites as I was passing.
It was, it was me throughout.
Cause I, that's the one time I didn't get dropped and I was traveling.
So I'd like some sprint engineer to tell me just what happened to my voice.
And if you, if you want to go, it's on the web.
It's one of the, uh, it's the August show where we were in the Bay area.
That's all.
Yeah.
I think I listened to that one.
That was pretty scary.
So, uh, what's happening down in Florida?
You're part of bell South, I believe.
Um, no, we've got a GTE.
Oh, my, my sympathies.
Wow.
So you're, you're part of that, uh, that independent zone.
Uh, yeah.
Wow.
Uh, so any horror stories for, for that company?
Um, no, they've been, they've been pretty good.
Really?
Yeah.
They offer ISDN?
Um, yes, they do.
They do.
Yeah.
How about DSL?
Uh, oh, I'm not sure about that.
Ah, okay.
You might want to ask him about that.
Oh, got him into a panic.
Uh, do you have, uh, I was wondering, do you guys have Time Warner up there?
Uh, Time Warner Cable?
Yeah.
Do they offer, uh, their Roadrunner service for you up there?
Is that what a cable modem?
Yeah.
Roadrunner?
Yeah.
Uh, cable modems in, uh, the New York City area are kind of on quote unquote
hold.
Well, doesn't Liberty Cable have, uh, have cable modems?
I heard they did.
I heard they did and I heard they were offering it.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I've been asked by my cable company to stop asking about it.
So I can't even like broach the subject.
I'm out on the Island.
I used to be on a beta test list for the Mac version of a cable vision system.
And for some reason I never heard from them.
So do you have one of these cable modems?
Um, I'm planning to get one, uh, pretty soon.
I'm running on a 56 right now.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I, from what I've heard, DSL is better because it uses existing
copper wire and because you can get it through your local provider.
You don't have to worry about the cable company not liking something you're doing
or cutting you off and you can pretty much run your site any way you want.
Whereas the cable company says, uh, you can't have a server running for instance,
which is kind of, you know, what's the point server?
Yeah.
Define server.
Well, when, when they come to install, I've got a few friends that, uh, have it
installed.
They have to bring in, they come in, rip your computer open and put their
ethernet card in.
And, uh, you have to clear out one of your, you got to clear out a big space
because they got to put in a big hub for you.
That's a, that can be inconvenient.
Yeah.
Well, best of luck down there.
Thanks.
Thanks for giving us a call.
We have a male from Porkchop who's, uh, handling the, uh, the internet traffic.
We have 125 listeners from around the world listening to us on the internet
right now, which is a pretty good, pretty good.
So a solid base.
Thanks to the people out there that helped put that together, the coders and
servers who are dutifully standing by.
Also, I should, I should mention that the 2600 website has gone through some major
changes in the past week.
Uh, thanks to, uh, Wicked David over there for, uh, putting it all together.
We also have new webmasters, uh, Carrie and Mackie who are throwing things
together along with Curator and Phil as well, working on all kinds of different
things.
So, uh, expect changes.
If you have any kind of, um, any kind of request input, please send them to us
over at 2600.
Let's take one more phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Oh, great.
Thanks very much.
Um, I don't know if you could help me.
I have a friend in Southern Africa who has asked me to buy him a cell phone and
I've seen some of these phones on sale, the Motorola StarTAC, but the price of,
which is very cheap, $50 comes with a, you have to activate it here.
Well, the problem also is they use a different frequency over there.
I'm not sure actually if South Africa uses the European frequencies.
I imagine they probably would.
Uh, in which case they don't, you know, swing about this.
Hold on.
We could know something about this.
Uh, certain parts do use them.
Certain parts use.
How do you know this?
Well, you have a chart of every country in your head.
You know, South Africa uses.
No.
Cause a friend of mine that, uh, relative that lives out in Israel travels into
Africa a lot to do his satellite stuff.
Uh huh.
And, uh, he has to use two different phones.
Really?
Well now, is this GSM?
Do they have GSM in South Africa?
There is GSM in South Africa.
Okay.
And that's what the StarTAC phone would, would, would be, right?
Um, no.
That's not, that's a, that's a Sprint phone.
Although there is a version of the StarTAC for GSM, but I think the one that's on
sale lately is the analog version.
Well, okay.
But GSM is what you should use if you're in South Africa, right?
Um, no, there's, there's different areas that are, some are, some are regular
analog cellular, nothing special.
And I think GSM is just moving in there now.
It's a difficult question to answer without, without being there, without
having somebody actually there to tell us what the situation is right now.
It's probably not a good idea for you of all the people, this person knows
to get that phone, right?
He should get it from someone who is like, you know, there knows what works,
what doesn't work because in all likelihood, you're going to get him
something that doesn't work until, until things get standardized.
All right.
We're, uh, we're out of time.
Thanks.
Uh, thanks for calling.
Thanks to everybody who called in and, uh, thanks to all the old
listeners who, who listened this week.
And we hope to hear from you all next week when we're back talking about all
kinds of other developments in, uh, in the world of high tech till then.
So manual Goldstein for, uh, can you believe this?
Someone snuck in here, took my theme out and put something else in.
Can you believe that?
I almost played the wrong thing.
All right.
There it is.
Despite the efforts, we're back again next week, manual
Goldstein for off the hook.
Good night.
Couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
The best expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Hi, I'm Samori Marksman, program director of this radio station WBAI-FM in New York,
inviting you to join us on Friday, September 25th at 1 PM for our
monthly report to the listener.
That's this Friday at 1 PM for news information, reports, questions,
and some answers to everything.