Also, it's worth, I hate to say it, but this hour is almost gone.
And I don't know, Tim, this is enough for me.
I'd like to go on and continue, do another show.
The sun is out, the humidity is high, and our spring membership drive is finally over.
And thanks to you, we made our goal.
Hi, I'm Mario Murillo, host of Our Americas and the Friday edition of Wake Up Call, WBAI's
daily morning show.
I just wanted to take this time to thank you for all your support during our latest fundraising
effort.
I also wanted to remind you that as you go out and get ready to enjoy the summer, take
a moment and pay your pledge.
We need your support now.
When you get a chance, pop a check in the mail made out to Pacifica, WBAI, P.O.
Box 11445, New York, New York, Church Street Station 10277.
We need your support now, and we'll need it always.
So again, send a check to Pacifica, WBAI, P.O.
Box 11445, New York, New York, 10277.
And once again, as always, thank you so much for your support.
And this is radio station WBAI in New York.
The time is 8.01.
Once again, we're one minute late for Off The Hook.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
We'll talk extra fast.
Get funky.
Get that.
We're always funky here at Off The Hook.
It's Emanuel Goldstein with you for the next hour as we talk about the latest in high tech
and telephones, computers, privacy issues, and all kinds of neat, fun things like that.
Stay tuned.
Get that.
Get funky.
Get that.
Get funky.
Get that.
Get funky.
Get that.
Get funky.
Get that.
This is a rather momentous occasion for us as we have a special guest with us.
Guest, why don't you say hello?
Hey, it's Bernie S, live for the first time on Off the Hook, or at least live in person.
That's Bernie S, he's live this week, in case you didn't notice that.
Instead of on the phone, as he has been every single time he's been on this show since...
Actually, when was the last time you were here in the studio live?
I've never been in the studio of Off the Hook in my life.
So it's been a while.
It's always been telephonically.
How do you like that? That's incredible, that really is.
For years.
Of course, for those of you familiar with Bernie, with the radio station, with Off the Hook,
you should know that Bernie has been forcibly kept from being up here in New York by the federal government,
of course, being imprisoned for nearly two years back in 1995.
And your probation, or supervised release, ran out when?
What amounts to federal parole, they did away with parole in 1986, the conditions amount to the same thing.
It just ended about a week ago.
I got a rather terse letter from the federal office of probation last week advising me, which was no surprise.
Saying what? Go on, get out of here.
The period of supervised release has ended.
Uh-huh.
Period. Signed, Joe Blow or whatever.
No, like, good luck the rest of your life, stay out of trouble, nothing along the lines of that.
It's been really cool.
Yeah.
I think they were rather put out that they didn't have somebody else to control, but that was the tone of the letter as I interpreted it.
Uh-huh.
But it feels very strange.
It's not the same feeling that I got when I was released from behind bars.
That was like an epiphany.
You know, it must compare to the feeling that I just got right now, and I realize that I came up here and I forgot to put quarters in my car.
What a horrible feeling that is.
More oppression.
Can you do me a favor?
You know where the other person we came in with is across the hall in the Democracy Now! studio?
Yes.
Could you hand him all these quarters and ask him to run down and put them in my car?
Which vehicle?
It's very unprofessional to have to do this to a guest.
Which vehicle did you drive here?
He's probably listening to me right now.
Well, you won't be able to find it because I parked in the maze downstairs, but he knows where it is.
So if you just hand him these quarters, he can run down and do it.
Okay.
All right, thank you very much.
I'm really sorry, and I apologize to the listeners for my thoughtfulness here.
You just dropped all the quarters on the floor, didn't you?
We do have Bernie S. with us.
We're putting him to work immediately as soon as he walks in the door.
He's a convicted felon, but I do trust him with cash, and that's the important thing.
I think we can all learn something from that.
I do have a lot of questions for him, so hopefully he'll get back pretty soon.
We have an action-packed show scheduled for tonight.
Well, why don't we simply read some listener mail while Bernie's handling that particular transaction?
Just to let you know, if you haven't seen already, there is a book about hackers that is the best-selling computer book at Walden's right now.
I didn't catch the name and author.
If I go back, I'll forward that.
But it has, across the top, updated with the latest info on Kevin Mitnick.
Yeah, it looked inside to be a Donnie Roscoe type of storytelling.
How the Secret Service, FBI, etc. went and busted various hackers.
Might be worth looking at.
Not for information, but for how others see things.
Didn't get to see more before an employee started bothering me.
That's the latest from the bookstore, so keep an eye out for some other book that's exploiting the whole Mitnick case.
And again, there are no...
Bernie, I see you through the glass. Do you see me?
Keep walking in that direction and walk back towards me and then make a left-hand turn.
Yeah, okay.
Heights of unprofessionality tonight on the radio.
Directing people through the hallways of BAI live on the air.
Here is a question which a lot of people have been asking recently.
And I feel it's about time we set the record straight.
Is there a replacement number for the old 958 ANAC number from 9X?
And that's an interesting thing because in a lot of areas 958 has stopped working.
It's caused quite a panic. Caused a lot of people to...
You found them? Okay, good.
I saw you walking away. I was getting a little concerned.
Okay. Let's settle back in there.
Again, my apologies for sending in that mission there.
We're just going into a listener question.
A replacement for the old 958 number, which no longer works in a lot of places here.
You know, I tried that in Philadelphia right after the cutover to the area code change.
And on some payphones it works and on some it doesn't.
And I don't know why that is.
But in any case, clearly it's going to have to change.
I'm surprised it works at all anywhere.
And there is no 958 area code, correct?
Not that I know of. And it would probably be a big mistake to make one of those and confuse people.
But we do have an answer. There is a replacement.
And it's kind of interesting. It's one I didn't find.
Ooh, let me write this down.
A friend of mine over at the other radio station, WUSB in Stony Brook, was able to tell me.
Apparently they have more time than I do to play with the phones out there.
And, well, 511 I discovered. That one works in some areas.
So if you're on the island or in the city, you might find 511 working.
But get this.
A four-digit ANAC.
Ah.
Yeah. 9580.
Ooh.
But here's the best part.
If you dial 9581, it disconnects your phone for a good three or four minutes.
Just like the old 480 and 450 exchanges on 516.
And some 660 test numbers as well used to do that.
I don't think it's going to work from here. I really doubt it.
I really doubt it, but let's try it.
Not to disconnect the phone, to skip the ANAC.
Yeah, that would be great.
We don't want to break the phone lines anymore when they're already broken.
In fact, I can't even dial.
There we go.
Let's dial the zero.
I really doubt this will work.
That's the sound of it not working.
I know that sound.
We get that sound a lot around here.
That's not going to work because we're on a PBX, so it's very unlikely for it to work.
I can get an outside dial tone on my Sprint PCS phone.
Really?
Yes.
How do you do that?
I'd rather not say.
Okay.
All right.
Well, this isn't going to work at all.
This is going to sit there forever.
Fine.
You want to sit there?
Go right ahead and sit there.
We can sit here too, you know.
I'm going to try that.
Okay.
So that's the deal.
9580, 9581 in many areas.
So give that a try and see what happens.
I like how somebody discovered that too.
That's an awfully weird one.
I think a phone company guy had to give us the answer for that.
Dear OffTheHook, on last Tuesday's show, you received the time from an AT&T operator.
Yeah, can you believe this?
I called an AT&T operator and asked for the time, and they gave it to me.
Wow.
Yeah.
Just like the old days.
It embarrassed me because I was trying to prove how that's impossible.
I heard a phone number way off in the distance.
What number was that?
That was coming from your screen phone.
That was the phone number of the outgoing line that I reached.
The outgoing dial-to-in line I reached with my screen PCS.
So 958 is still working in that part of Philadelphia.
Interesting.
What happens when you call the number that it gives you?
What do you mean?
When you call, it just gave you a phone number.
So if you call into that number, what happens?
While I'm doing that?
No, any time.
If I just call that number, then that number is one of several in a hunt group.
Okay, but do you get people dialing out on that hunt group?
Certain friends, yes.
No, I mean, you just got an ANAC for a sprint number.
No, no.
Yeah, I got an ANAC for a wireline number in Philadelphia.
Oh, all you did was call into someone else's dial-to-in.
Exactly.
Okay, I thought you were getting something like what we used to get on trains when we dialed 958
or an 800 ANI number, and it would give you a phone number that you were calling out on.
No, no.
Okay.
I wish I could do that.
Totally different thing, then.
Yes.
All right, so last Tuesday's show, you received a time from an AT&T operator,
and like Isaac and many of you viewers, viewers?
I have viewers?
Yes.
Okay, great.
Oh, hey, viewers.
I was not surprised.
That was until the other day.
I was at a local store waiting for my ride to come when I wanted to know the time.
Everyone around me didn't have a watch or they looked mean,
so I decided to use the payphone to get the time.
First, I called the bell operator who directed me to 411.
411 then directed me to call 976-1616 for the time.
How much would that cost?
Who knows?
Having no change, I then decided to call AT&T.
After getting through to the operator, I asked for the time.
She politely asked if I had a calling card.
Sounds rather shady, doesn't it?
I'll give you the time if you give me a calling card number.
I said no.
She then said that she was not supposed to do this, but she gave me the time anyway.
The operator then added that next time I will get charged for this service.
They keep track of who they give the time to.
Yes, exactly, and they're going to follow him around to make sure he doesn't do it again.
I wonder what the penalty the operator would face if she were caught giving the time to someone.
It's a substantial penalty.
When you work for these 1984-ish type corporations,
doing something against the wishes of the corporation is, well, it gets you into a lot of trouble.
Remember when you used to call an operator and you could hear them?
A lot of times they wouldn't realize that someone was calling them
and you'd just overhear them chatting with other operators
before they had to machine answer the director's assistance lines when you called.
You'd just hear them chatting with each other.
I miss that. It was a more human phase.
Well, you can still go overseas and do the equivalent of that.
I'm sure. I just wouldn't understand the language, maybe.
Yeah, unfortunately.
Hey, Divx is dead. What do you think about that?
Really?
Yeah, totally dead.
Wow.
The makers of Divx, a rentable DVD system, announced Wednesday, last Wednesday,
the video rental alternative where registered customers will be able to view discs for the next two years.
Oh, okay.
Now, here's the funny thing.
Use them up.
Listen to the sore-headed way they say this.
The majority of customers purchasing DVD players in Circuit City stores
have selected players that include the Divx option.
Ever try to buy a DVD player in Circuit City?
They hound you to get the Divx option.
Apparently they make a bigger commission on them or something.
They mock you if you don't get the Divx option.
It's like, that guy got it.
It was. You're not as good as him.
Anyway, unfortunately, we have been unable to obtain adequate support from studios and other retailers.
Despite the significant consumer enthusiasm.
Yeah, right.
Uh-huh, yes.
We cannot create a viable business without support in these essential areas.
In other words, it's all your fault.
Boy, that's a real sour grapes thing, huh?
It sure is.
You know, the system sucked.
And for those people who don't know what the system was,
basically, how would you describe it?
It was fascinating.
Well, you explain it.
A pay-per-view of a DVD, basically.
Pretty much.
You have it, but you have to pay every time you watch it.
And they know what you're watching.
You have to call a phone number,
or you're allowed a certain number of views per DVD,
and then you have to re-register.
Ostensibly, it was marketed to people who didn't want to drive to a video store
to return the tape on time.
And people would ostensibly pay a premium
for not having to return the medium that the movie was on.
It would save lives because of those people racing to get to video stores.
Absolutely.
I'm sure more than one person has been killed doing that.
Interesting.
I got my issue of Consumer Reports magazine in the mail today.
I didn't get a chance to read it, but I flipped through it,
and there was a review of the whole DivX thing, format.
I didn't get a chance to read it.
I wish I had now, knowing that now it's dead.
Who announced it?
Did the actual developers of it announce that it is officially dead?
I think it was Circuit City that announced it.
Oh, okay.
Because they're the only ones selling it.
Yeah, I haven't seen it anywhere else marketed anywhere else.
That's because it was a Circuit City type of thing that they were introducing.
Interesting.
Well, I wonder if there's any hackable applications for DivX players.
We'll never know now.
You know?
I wonder what they're going to do with the old ones, the ones they haven't sold.
What are they going to do with all the DivX CDs, DivX DVDs?
That's a great idea.
Jump in those trash bins outside Circuit City.
You might find some really good DVDs.
Maybe there's going to be a fire sale of DivX DVD players.
Maybe they'll sell them all.
Just a fire in general, and they'll collect them on the internet.
Mark, as far as I know, there weren't any machines that were just DivX players, were there?
No.
It was always a common...
I believe.
I'm not sure.
Because I don't have either a DVD player or a DivX player.
Neither do I.
I believe all DivX players could just play regular DVDs.
Again, I could be wrong on that.
Well, if there were any DivX-only players, man, they're complete paperweight.
Well, they're giving $100 back to everybody that bought one of them.
So I think that tells you that they're trying to make up for the difference in cost.
Wow.
I should have bought one the other day.
Well, you wouldn't have made anything.
You just would have gotten back the uselessness of it, of what you invested.
I don't think they were charging a premium.
Were they charging a premium for the DivX feature?
I think you paid a little bit more for it.
Wow.
I think you did, anyway.
You paid more for the opportunity to pay more.
Basically, yeah.
That's great.
But being told that you were paying less.
It's the American way of doing business.
All right.
Speaking of that, the FCC may soon change the way cellular and wireless calls are billed.
You might have heard about this one.
At its open meeting a couple of Thursdays ago, the FCC proposed a national system of calling party pays, otherwise known as CPP,
a scheme under which the caller to a cell phone pays the airtime charges rather than the cell phone's owner.
So that means basically no more incoming calls having to pay for.
What do you think about that as a cellular customer or as a Sprint PCS customer?
Well, as a PCS customer, really, I don't care.
I pay $0.05 a minute, so it doesn't—I mean—
You're paying for an incoming call.
Come on.
It still doesn't matter too much to me.
But I think a lot of consumers are going to be turned off to that by—how will people know they're being charged if they call a phone number?
That is a good question.
You see, I still—
And how will they be billed?
I don't—I have no idea how they're going to—
And does that mean you can't—you won't be able to call a cellular PCS number from a pay phone without, like, dumping a bunch of coins?
I mean, it sounds like a whole bunch of problems.
That's why it's going to pass because it's going to be a whole lot of problems.
Sure.
But in other countries, it's pretty simple.
They have different exchanges, different area codes for cellular phones.
Now, that makes sense.
And you know if you're calling one.
It's sort of like a 900 number, I guess.
I remember years ago in 2600 Magazine, you were in favor of an entire area code for—just for machines.
Well, that's what 917 was originally supposed to be.
And, in fact, it turned out to be sort of like that for a little while.
It was beepers and cell phones, things like that.
But now they're starting to use 917 for landlines as well.
So, nothing is sacred anymore.
No.
Okay.
Hey, did you take a look at that sketch that someone—
You know, I haven't had a chance to do that yet.
One of our listeners actually—what did he do?
Didn't you—on a recent program, you put a call—actually, it was shortly after—it was after our return from the Dayton Hamvention last month.
What in the world is that?
Ooh, that's—
Is that your phone?
That's me.
Yes, that's my Sprint Touchpoint handset.
How about that?
And it's telling me that I have email.
Oh, that's email?
Yes.
You get email on your Sprint phone?
I do.
I can't even get phone calls on my Sprint phone.
How do you get email?
It's $1.99 a month for 100 emails.
Really?
Yeah, which is not too bad.
It should be included, I think.
It should be included, yes, absolutely.
But, eh, two bucks.
Yeah.
I can live with it.
What was I going to say?
Oh, yeah, you'd put a call—you'd remarked that when we go to, like, the Dayton Hamvention or other big events where there are literally thousands of people interested in electronics and communications, that sort of thing, from a technical end and a social end, listeners to this program, both Internet listeners and radio listeners, are surprised and shocked and amazed at your appearance, my appearance, and other people who are on the show.
So listeners seem to have this preconceived notion of what we all look like, and when they really see us in the flesh, as it were, they—
They back away in terror.
Yeah, exactly.
They're like—I'm sure they feel we're much uglier than they ever imagined.
So, anyhow, you put a call out for people to draw with their impression of what you look like, and one—
I'm going to regret this, aren't I?
When I see some of the things people can copy.
One listener emailed me. I guess he didn't have any address to send anything to you, although—whatever.
He sent one to me, and first he asked me where would he mail this address, and I said, well, you can mail it to WBAI, but you may not get it.
I said, you can email it to me, and I'll email it to Emanuel.
So he emailed me an attachment of his sketch, and it was an interesting sketch of you, Emanuel, lounging in an easy chair in a smoking jacket, smoking something.
Well, that's interesting.
It wasn't identified, but you were sitting in front of a microphone, I believe, and I was there also, but I was represented as a large jar with a brain in it.
What is this, Futurama or something?
You were talking to me as this disembodied brain, which apparently could also speak through the glass jar.
In a way, that's true, because you haven't been here in the flesh, as you mentioned, ever.
More accurate than he might have realized. I have never been in WBAI studios on and off the hook in the flesh.
It's a shame, because you never saw our old studio, so you don't know how much we've moved on up.
When I came here, you're like, how do you like the new studio? I'm like, well, compared to what? I've never seen the old studio.
But it looks nice. I'm duly impressed.
Well, that's an interesting caricature, I guess, of how—
I hope we get some more of those. Why don't you announce where people can send their sketches?
You can send your sketches, etchings, scrolls, whatever it is you want.
Stained glass. You can ship us a stained glass representation.
Even on the Internet, you can do this. Put it up on a website.
But the address here is WBAI, 120 Wall Street, New York, New York, 10005.
Attention.
Attention off the hook. They'll get right to us.
Or can it be emailed for people?
It can be emailed to OTH at 2600.com.
Just make sure you know what you're doing as far as putting attachments on, because—
This one was fine.
Yeah. I mean, sometimes people say they sent something, and you don't get it.
You just get the message saying they sent it.
Then they get mad when you don't get it, and it's not my fault.
But that's the way it is.
I wish I could remember who sent this one in, but I want to thank him for doing it, because I got a good smile out of it.
Yeah.
Look at that when you get a chance.
I'm looking forward to it.
We have a special feature that we haven't done in a while, and we really should start doing it again soon,
because it's something that is getting close.
In fact, since we started talking about it, it's gotten even closer.
And you know what? It's closer still now.
Before you know it, there will be no escape.
Before you know it, there will be no escape.
Of course, we're talking about Y2K.
Countdown to doom.
Y2K
Yeah, I don't know why we've avoided this for so long.
I guess we're kind of hoping it's going to go away, but it's not going to go away, is it, Bernie?
I'm afraid not.
Y2K is coming. Nobody knows when it's going to hit.
What's that?
I'm now told it will hit on January 1st, 2000.
You know, it would be nice if you told me these things before the show.
They keep changing it.
Staff. What good are they?
January 1st, 2000. Okay, so that's when Y2K is supposed to hit.
I think Congress is proposing a bill to postpone it.
You know, why don't they do that? Instead of wasting all this time about war and U.N. dues and all that kind of thing,
they could just postpone this crisis.
If you recall, at one point many years ago, Congress, there was a serious piece of legislation proposed
that they change the value of pi to 3 because it was too confusing.
Wouldn't that make sense?
Yeah, and it was actually voted on, but I think it was struck down.
Unfortunately.
That's too bad.
I've got to tell you, though, I had some trouble printing out this material
because the people running this site, the Y2K Today people,
these backwoods conspiracy net Nazi Fox News channel watching people
that want to make it so that you can't print out a web page without registering with them.
What do you think about that?
You have to register to print out a page.
It sucks.
It sure does.
I had to walk clear across the room to the Mac to get this thing to print.
And then, when that happened, it took about a half hour to print
because they embed all these real complex graphics in there
so that your laser printer gets all confused trying to get it just right.
Can't you do like a screen dump or something?
Screen print?
I mean, it's awkward.
It's awkward.
It probably wouldn't have gotten the whole thing because, as you can see,
a couple of these are more than a single sheet of paper.
But I'll tell you, I got it printed, and these stories are courtesy of Y2K Today people.
Vietnam Airlines isn't taking any chance with the Millennium Computer Bug.
The National Carrier is planning to cancel domestic and international flights
that would be in progress at midnight on December 31st.
That's according to local media.
The official English-language Vietnam News quoted Tran Van Yen,
chief of the airline's technology program, as saying in the Labor newspaper,
that all scheduled flights will resume after that critical moment passes.
That's a good way to avoid a panic.
Yen said the carriers' Fokker 70 and ART-72 aircraft could be affected more seriously
than the Boeing 767, but Airbus A320 flights may involve no risk.
Pilots are being trained to fly without technical assistance.
And, of course, Y2K refers to a programming glitch
that officials fear could cause computers around the world to crash on January 1st, 2000.
Six months after the first global conference on Y2K,
experts from over 170 countries met on Tuesday at the United Nations
to assess their progress in dealing with the Y2K problem.
We are meeting, as we did last December, to work on the last headaches of the 20th century
and to ensure that it does not become the first crisis of the 21st century,
said Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Ahmed Kamal,
who chairs the U.N. Working Group Dealing with Y2K Problems.
Over 100 developing countries have now initiated national Y2K programs,
compared with the less than 10 countries in January 1998.
Nobody is saying this isn't a problem.
So what we now have, I think, is a race to the finish line.
I wonder what you get for winning.
Well, Singapore has declared New Year's Eve a Y2K bank holiday.
I don't even know what that means, a Y2K bank holiday.
It declares the banks.
Yeah, but it's a bank holiday.
What makes it a Y2K bank holiday?
Good question.
I don't know.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has agreed with a proposal to declare that date a bank holiday
so that banks can complete all record-keeping and backup accounts early
before the date changes to January 1st, 2000,
and have an opportunity to get out of town in case it doesn't work out quite right.
Speaking at the 26th annual dinner of the Association of Banks in Singapore,
on Monday, Koh Young Guan, Managing Director of the MAS,
said that a bank holiday at the end of the year
would ensure banks have complete and accurate records of customer accounts
and year-end positions in preparation for the Y2K date change.
And if I can find the final story here.
While you're looking, I just saw in Harper's Magazine
that someone was just fined several thousand dollars in Singapore
for reading the Constitution publicly.
Reading the Constitution publicly is illegal?
In Singapore, apparently.
Let me find it.
It's in the Harper's Index here in the latest issue.
I'm trying to find it here.
I think he was fined about $4,000 for reading the Singaporean Constitution publicly.
Must be they're hiding something in there.
The Dutch government said Tuesday that 91% of its operations
were protected against the Millennium Computer Bug.
The Interior Ministry defined those operations as
all the vital processes, products, services, and systems of the Dutch ministries,
with particular attention to population records,
local financial systems, and social services departments.
The latest update did not mention the status of the Dutch military.
Our telephone number is 212-209-2900.
I can't read that.
Y2K corporate letters, federal liability.
Why don't you just tell me?
Oh, okay.
I was just trying to remind you.
You asked me to mention what I told you before the show,
that I've been getting all these letters where I work.
I manage all the computers and telecommunications systems at a fairly large company.
Actually, not too large, but large enough for me to get a bunch of letters
from all of our vendors and some of our larger customers
asking about the state of our Y2K compliance,
our products Y2K compliant, first of all,
which surprises me because they have no circuitry in them,
the products my company sells.
I won't go into detail what they are, but it's not my company.
Anyway, all these companies are sending out what I call sucker letters
asking for their customers and their vendors to sign these letters
swearing that they're all Y2K compliant and so forth.
My response, and apparently other people in the industry's response to these letters,
is just to not send them back at all because you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
If you've sworn these out and say everything is fine, perfect, there will be no problems,
if there is a problem, then you've got liability.
If you say there is a problem, then they might stop doing business with you.
It seems there's this rash of these letters flying back and forth between companies asking,
please, and I've been getting repeat letters threatening,
you must respond to this letter, and I just don't respond to any of them.
I have about 15 or 20 of them now, and they're pretty amusing.
And are they for things that really could be Y2K compliant?
Because I've got a Y2K certificate for my postage meter which doesn't even have a date on it.
Some of them are really silly because the products that my company sells are made of solid metal,
and that's all they are.
They don't do anything.
Do you know the amount of time and money that's being wasted by these clowns?
I mean, pieces of metal have to be Y2K compliant.
Meanwhile, I think Congress recently voted on some legislation putting a cap on corporate liability
for Y2K problems, which I think really encourages some companies to do nothing,
knowing that their liability is capped.
There's just sort of this devil-may-care attitude, and it kind of inspires in these companies.
So I don't know if that's a good idea or not, but clearly the whole thing is crazy,
and in about six months we'll all be able to look back and say, boy, wasn't that stupid.
Well, I think I can say that right now.
The thing is there are so many people that are out to make a buck however they can
with all this Y2K nonsense as far as certifying things and installing things on your system to keep it safe.
And I still have yet to figure out how to make a buck by saying that the whole thing is nonsense.
And you have to keep that in mind.
The people that are saying it's overblown and you really have to take with a grain of salt
these alleged facts you're being told by the experts, those people have nothing to gain by saying this
other than being able to say I told you so when January 2nd comes around,
everybody's looking pretty foolish in their bomb shelters.
But the people that are saying that the world's going to fall apart on January 1st,
they're making tons of money by saying this because they're selling things to people.
They're selling supplies, ammunition.
They're selling software and hardware and backup systems and all kinds of things.
Dehydrated foods.
Dehydrated.
I mean some of this stuff maybe is a good idea to have anyway.
Certainly backups of your system is always a good idea to have.
But the fear and paranoia, whenever there's fear and paranoia being spread,
there's profit to be made.
And just ask anybody in the war-torn nation.
That's basically the first people that come up out of the woodwork.
Okay, we've got a couple of things.
Hey, did you see the TNT program on Sunday about Bill Gates and Wozniak?
You know, I heard about it.
Somebody told me about it today on the phone, and I'd heard it was coming.
I watched so little television, I didn't see it.
Tell me about it.
The less of this you watch, the better for everybody.
Something of Silicon Valley or something?
The Pirates of Silicon Valley.
It's based on the book Fire in the Valley,
which is a much better title than The Pirates of Silicon Valley.
But I'll tell you, you know, you watch these people.
You watch Bill Gates and you watch Steve Jobs and all the other people
rising from college students who become these super mavens and rich people,
and you just ask yourself, why?
Why is this interesting?
It's not.
You're watching these people basically turn into the scum of the earth,
and it's sad if it's anything, but they miss that.
They miss that whole part of it, the sadness, the tragedy, the irony.
I just didn't see that.
And, you know, the other thing is that basically…
Why, thank you.
I didn't have a ticket, did I?
No.
Okay.
You just went down now?
Yeah.
You waited 20 minutes?
Oh, my God.
Well, I only had an hour and 40 minutes.
I saved 75 cents, but, you know, I could have lost $55 there.
All right.
All right.
Yeah, the meter next to the car.
That's the one you're supposed to…
Meter behind the car, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Because there is no meter in front of the car because I parked…
Well, no, because…
It was that phony meter somebody set up to steal your money.
No, those meters outside are terrible because they're digital.
No, they're digital meters, and you put in a quarter.
You know how the old ones, you used to crank it and it always used to move?
Yeah, they were great.
These ones, the number goes up by 10, 10 minutes.
Or it doesn't.
If it doesn't, you're screwed.
There's nothing you can do about it.
You put in a quarter.
No, you didn't put in a quarter.
How do you prove to a machine that you put in a quarter?
You can't.
The worst thing is it flashes red so everybody knows when you have…
It flashes red so they can see for miles around.
Helicopters can spot this.
So this is an electronic device?
It's an electronic device.
You want to take it apart downstairs after the show?
I just wonder how…
Remember what happened to Cool Hand Luke, all right?
Oh, what we have here is a failure to communicate.
That's right.
But I wonder if these devices are susceptible to any kind of electrical impulses.
I'm sure we'll have an answer for you next week.
So let me just finish with my tirade about this.
Carl, you saw this too.
You're the guy that helped the lousy thing on TNT the other day.
Pirates of the Caribbean.
Well, you know a thing or two about the history,
about what computers are supposed to be there and what ones aren't.
Yeah.
It's not my phone.
No, it's my phone.
Which one?
It's the stupid Sprint phone.
The stupid phone?
The stupid phone.
Yeah.
So what do you think of that?
I thought the movie was terrible.
It was pretty bad.
Was it a documentary?
What was it?
It was sort of like a documentary,
but I guess it's what the Mitnick thing is going to be,
what Takedown is going to be,
where basically they concoct dramatic episodes.
I heard the term thrown around years ago called the term faction.
Yeah.
Fiction with a couple of facts thrown in so they can say that…
Based on a true story.
That's sort of what this is.
But the funny thing about this was if you watch the promos,
and, of course, TNT went nuts with the promos.
They ran this film three times in a row on Sunday night,
and they went crazy with the…
I don't know.
They had advertisers everywhere.
I had advertisers in my dreams about this thing.
But the promos they had were of a completely different film.
They had, I'd say, 50%, maybe more than 50% of this,
were scenes that never showed up in the film.
They had scenes of their childhood.
Little tiny Bill Gates saying,
Yes, I like computers.
That scene was never in there.
They never even had anything about that.
The scene about Bill Gates saying,
they were throwing the Flexowriter tape around.
He said,
That's like stealing pages from a book.
Yeah.
Never had that either.
I really should have had that.
You have to ask yourself,
the quality of something that's on TV,
if you take the scenes that you believe are the best scenes
and you make that into the promo,
and then you don't put those scenes in the film,
what does that say about the film?
What does it say about the promo?
What does it say about the people putting this together?
It's edited to death.
That's what it says.
It was edited to death,
and they apparently took out what they thought were the best scenes
because that's what they used to promote the film.
If you notice,
a lot of the scenes are taken out of the earlier childhood,
and that means they really disposed of any kind of storyline
that would suggest how they got the way they are.
I was interested in that.
That's what got me to watch.
That probably would have been the only interesting part.
Isaac just stumbled in.
How are you doing, Isaac?
What is it?
Hi.
We're talking about the TNT piece of trash it was on.
It could have been a lot worse.
You saw it?
I saw it.
Yeah.
It could have been a lot worse.
Well, I don't see how, really, unless...
It was very bad.
It was pretty awful.
The problem is there are already so many books written on the subject
by so many different authors,
and even multiple books in the same subject by the same author,
and all this literature out there that describes how things happen.
There's no really point in going off on their own
and making their own edit of history
when it's already been done so many times.
It's interesting to see the computers evolving over time,
but they didn't tell the whole story.
They didn't evolve.
They had an IBM PC in 1980 in that shop there.
I showed you that.
Yeah.
Must have been an early prototype.
Must have been a time travel machine.
Well, no.
It had the green screen monitors.
There's a scene where Bill Gates was supposedly typing on this Apple II,
which, mind you, that was a new Apple II
because it was a separate numeric keypad,
so you knew that even that Apple was from the future.
Not only was that from the future, but the PC in the background
that Paul Allen was sitting in front of
was also either an IBM PC or an XT,
also way in the future, five years into the future.
You know what it didn't do for me?
It didn't capture the spirit, the thrill.
It's just, why are these people doing this?
Just for the love of money?
They were playing the motions.
It just didn't strike me as something they had a passion for.
I don't know.
I'd like to hear what other listeners have to say about that film.
But I've got my own problems with TNT, as many people know,
because of what they're doing to science fiction people everywhere
by their treatment of that other show, Crusade.
You guys hear about this?
This is something else.
I watch your little TV.
Oh, boy.
We talk about battle of individual against the corporate mentality all the time.
And this is a perfect case of this,
where an individual writes a TV show, and it's very rare.
You have Michael Moore doing his thing on Bravo.
Have you seen this one?
I haven't seen his show.
The Awful Truth.
It's basically sort of like TV Nation,
sort of like Roger and me in the big one, and it's on Bravo.
Now, with several hundred TV stations,
you would think that eventually we'd be able to get alternative viewpoints
onto television as well as onto radio.
It's extremely hard.
It's extremely hard.
But Michael Moore succeeded in doing that, at least for a little while.
Of course, it's a struggle.
Another rather interesting battle is taking place in the fiction world.
That's where an individual who put out the TV show Babylon 5
has managed to get a sequel put on.
But TNT, this network of cowboys and heavyweight wrestling,
has basically tried to turn the show into something it wasn't,
and the author, the guy who writes the show, the individual, said,
no, we're not going to do it at all then.
All right?
Forget it.
Take a walk, TNT.
Basically, the show is only lasting 13 episodes,
unless another network picks it up.
Now, where are these networks going to come from?
Who knows?
That's up to viewers.
But the thing is, it's just this battle against corporations,
it's on every front.
It's on every front.
It's on the radio scene.
It's in corporate America and products you buy in the supermarket.
It basically comes down from government mandates saying
that there's curfews of all sorts.
There's all kinds of ways in which the corporate mentality manifests itself,
and this is just one of them.
It's really sad.
But anyway, that's just why it's upsetting to me
to see something like that show up and be promoted to death
while other shows with alternative views are killed.
This is the way it's always been.
You look at the quality of radio today.
You look at what's happened to all the radio stations in New York
and the United States,
and you see how many of them have just vanished.
Now, this place, Bernie, you were telling me before
how stations like this just don't exist in other places.
We had a good station in Philadelphia, WXPN,
which was the University of Pennsylvania station,
which was just incredibly diverse until the late 80s
when a program director named Mark Fierst from New York came down
and just completely screwed up the station.
Now it's just like another corporate mouthpiece.
And that's what's always going to happen.
That's always what's going to happen.
The corporate mouthpieces win in the end,
and it's really sad.
I don't know how we got off into this tangent.
I don't know.
I don't know either.
But any time you mention a major network,
I'm liable to go off on a tangent like that.
All right, 212-209-2900 is our phone number.
Let's take some phone calls.
Emanuel, you're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hi, Emanuel.
I'm calling from Minnesota.
Well, there's good and bad in that.
Is there?
Yeah, what's happening?
Which direction are you heading?
Towards South Carolina.
That's good.
It's bypassed, yeah.
Yeah, that's sort of a glancing blow there.
Keep going.
What's happening in Minnesota?
Well, what's happening in Minnesota is the fact that
the phone company is U.S. West, and guess what they do
when you dial 0 plus a local number?
It says, your local telephone company.
However, your local phone company happens to be U.S. West,
but when the operator comes on, it says,
U.S. West may I help you?
I'm saying, I mean, they're saying local telephone company,
and then it's really U.S. West.
Why don't they say U.S. West?
Because there will be competitive local exchange carriers there soon.
Oh, hi, Bernie.
Hey there.
Guess where I am?
Philadelphia?
No.
New York City?
For a change.
Oh, really?
I am now a free man.
Oh.
Which you would know if you were listening,
but I guess you can't pick us up here.
That's right.
No, probably not.
Thanks for calling.
Thanks for updating us.
How has he managed to be first, even from Minnesota?
Explain that to me.
Luck?
It depends on who's talking.
No, you know, it's more like fate is what it is.
No.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, this is Fear Free.
Hi, how are you?
The IRC guy.
Yes, irc.2200.net, which is currently online.
Yes, it's working very well.
I just wanted to let you know that I am pissed off.
Pissed off?
What are you pissed off about?
My Bell Atlantic mobile phone.
Uh-huh.
Well, first of all, I'm going to give you the quick spiel.
The rates that I'm supposed to get,
I'm supposed to get 20 minutes free during the week,
and 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. free, completely free,
during the evening, early morning, okay?
Uh-huh.
And then I'm supposed to get the weekend free, right?
Yeah.
You know, all weekend.
So I'm calling, I'm calling, I'm calling on Saturday night,
this Saturday night.
Actually, a couple Saturday nights ago.
And I'm on the phone for about 2 hours.
I get my phone bill the next month.
Guess what they did?
They charged you.
And they didn't only charge me.
Uh-huh.
My normal minute rate, per minute rate is 65 cents a minute.
Oh, Alex.
So I get, like, a $70 charge just for that one call.
And I was like, whoa!
Wow.
For that much money, I get 1,500 minutes from Sprint.
Exactly.
And here's my question.
What do you think I should do about it?
Well, I'd start by calling a radio station
and complaining publicly about it.
Bell Atlantic sucks.
That being done.
Am I allowed to say that on the air?
Yeah, well, you just did.
You can put it on that, isn't that,
there's a website, bellatlanticsucks.org or something?
Yeah, I'm sure that exists.
We had that guy on the air.
Well, Bell Atlantic doesn't suck.
Just Bell Atlantic Mobile sucks.
Well, they're part of Bell Atlantic,
and the thing is, Bell Atlantic needs to know that you feel that way.
There's a website with an archive about sucky incidents at Bell Atlantic.
I think it's bellatlanticsucks.com.
And we had the person who put that site up on the show about a year or so ago.
So check that out and put that up on the site.
I should.
Yeah, and basically, here's the thing.
Here's the secret with corporate America.
When you complain to the right people, things get done.
You have to, for instance, I had an incident last week
with some of you witnessed with Kinko's.
Basically, I mentioned this on the air.
They kind of double-charged me for something at the Kevin Mitnick rally a few weeks ago.
So I went down there to get a refund, and they said, yeah, we double-charged you.
But, you know, we can't give you a refund.
What we can do is we can give you a store credit.
But we can't actually give you a refund because, well,
we don't know for sure that this is what happened.
We might have given you an extra thousand copies
and just not written it on the receipt, you know, nonsense like that.
Basically saying, you know, you might be just totally lying to us.
Even though the receipt says otherwise, we're not going to believe you.
But we'll give you a store credit, but you can only use it in this store.
You can't use it anywhere else.
And I was incredulous.
I was like, you know, what's the point, first of all,
having a chain if you can't use a credit in other outlets?
And then, you know, I basically felt I could get into a big, long screaming match with this guy,
or I can just do it my way.
My way was to leave and call corporate headquarters the next day
and say that I wanted to report a store for fraud.
I used that word.
And inside of 10 minutes, the store manager of that particular branch called me
and was taking down my credit card number to get it off my credit card.
So basically I'd gone from, you know,
I would have settled for a credit that I could have used anywhere else as well.
I would have settled for that because I do go to, can't go to do other things.
I won't be going there very much anymore.
But the thing is once you reach the right people,
things that they tell you are impossible suddenly become possible.
So try that with Bell Atlantic.
Go straight to the top.
Everybody, go to IRC.2600.net because it kicks.
Okay.
Thanks for calling.
I mean, we've all had stories like that, haven't we?
I think we have.
It kicks.
Yeah.
209-2900.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hey, that call just went right away.
Okay, let's go over here.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Speak up, please.
Hi, Emanuel.
This is Ray from Brooklyn.
I love your show.
Hi, how are you?
I have a cell phone which has an expired account.
And until recently I was able to make calls on this phone,
you know, by giving a credit card number or reverse charges, et cetera.
And when I tried this a few days ago, it no longer works.
Instead I get a recording saying your account is inactive
and I can't make anything but 911 calls.
Are you folks aware of this and have you figured out any way around it?
Well, if it's expired, it's expired, right?
Right, but if you recall as little as, I'd say, a year ago,
you used to be able to use a phone that had no account.
You would get a recording asking whether you wanted to use a calling card
or reverse the charges, and you could make the calls.
Admittedly expensive, but you could make them.
That no longer seems to be the case.
I was wondering if you folks had found any way to get around that.
What carrier were you using?
It was Bell Atlantic West.
You might look in the manual of your phone,
unless you already know how to do this,
switch the phone from the B carrier,
which is the wireline carrier of Bell Atlantic,
to the A carrier, whoever the competitive cellular carrier is in that market.
That carrier may allow you to make calls with credit cards.
So you have access to two different networks from that phone.
Try the other one.
I see.
All right?
Okay, thanks very much.
Good luck.
All right.
One has to wonder.
He can probably still make 911 calls on it.
Why does he want a phone just to make 911 calls?
So many people say, I only have it for emergencies.
Well, if that's the case, don't even just buy a used cellular phone somewhere for $10.
Don't even sign up for any service and keep it in your car for emergencies or whatever,
and you can still call 911 all you want
and get tracked with the new enhanced 911 system,
which can track you within a few hundred feet,
which is required by federal law now.
Yeah, that's one of the many ways our lives are getting ever better.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi.
My name's Jesse.
I'm calling from Manhattan.
Hi, Jesse.
Hi.
How are you?
First of all, I love your show.
Why, thanks.
And secondly, I was just wondering,
well, it used to be like 1-0 and then the extension for one of these cheap long-distance things.
You know what I'm talking about?
Now it's 1-0-1-0.
Yeah, exactly.
Do you know why they changed that?
Supposedly they ran out of space.
1-0-X-X-X only allowed 1,000 companies,
and now it's 1-0-1-0-X-X-X,
but actually I believe it can be 1-0-X-X-X-X-X,
allowing for up to 100,000.
I don't think they're ever going to need that many companies,
but I guess they just don't want to worry about it.
Okay, thank you very much.
All right, thanks for calling.
Okay, bye-bye.
It's an expansion, you know.
I wish they had done something like that with the numbering plan.
We wouldn't have all this crazy area,
because I hear there's a new area cut down in southern New Jersey now.
I heard that, but I don't know what it is.
Nobody knows what it is.
It's like, you know, if you live there, you don't know what it is.
It's impossible to remember these things.
I'm just bitter over 6-3-1 still, though.
All right, let's take another phone call.
Good evening. You're on the air.
Hi.
I'm waiting for the day where we call up,
and now we have this welcome to National 411.
Can you imagine?
Welcome to National 911.
Please hold for your emergency.
National 411 really stinks,
because basically it adds another level to what you have to ask for.
Instead of saying, what listing, please,
now it's what state and city, then what listing.
And, you know, by the time you give all this information out,
it all has to be played back to a live operator in the end anyway.
You're on the phone about four times as long as you used to be.
You know that it's another stall tactic for downsizing even further, you know.
Well, that's exactly what it is.
They fired so many people.
They have computers there now,
and, you know, only a handful of people answering the calls.
Right.
So I wanted to mention that there's two charges
that people should watch out on their Bell Atlantic phone bills.
There's a 23-cent charge that's going to go on.
Everybody's bill.
The new Bell Atlantic number portability charge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, well.
I read that phone bill, too.
You read that?
No.
Basically, I saw this on the latest phone bill,
saying that regional calling allows other phone companies
to provide you with local phone servers,
and you have the ability now to make sure
that no matter what company you use,
you can keep your phone number.
And correct me if I'm wrong,
but doing that incurs a 23-cent per line charge,
whether you do that or not.
For everyone.
Yeah.
So in other words, if I move,
you're still paying for me to have my number
if I decide I want to have my number.
Well, it's not moving so much.
It's selecting another company.
What I don't understand is where is this charge coming from?
What are you paying for exactly?
They throw another charge at everybody,
and they expect us to just accept it without question.
That's right.
They're claiming it'll be 23 cents a month
on everybody's bill for the next five years.
In addition, there's now this
I did mention this one before,
but I've still seen it.
It's a 93-cent charge.
I believe it's every quarter.
This is supposed
This is
It says something like educational surcharge,
something like that.
Oh, yeah.
This is the
AT&T
This one
They got a huge government
or basically a big write-off
because they were going to provide all the computers
for the schools across the United States
for all the
It was
They got a big federal tax.
Right.
They ran and charged everybody for it.
They ran and charged everybody for it.
Charging people to pay for it anyway,
to subsidize it anyway.
It's crazy.
I'd like a deal like that.
It doubles jeopardy for us,
and they get off
They get off the tax write-off,
and they get the fee,
so people don't pay the 93-cent charge.
But you don't dare criticize it
because what are you, against education?
That's what they'll say.
There are numerous taxes on phone services
that if it were ever itemized,
you'd be amazed how many things
I don't know if this is true or not,
but I read recently that
there's still a tax on your phone bill
that originally was a war tax
back from the Vietnam War,
and it's still on there.
Numerous taxes, but they're not itemized.
The FCC has required phone companies
to not itemize all of the taxes on your phone bill,
and I think people should write their representatives
and say,
hey, we want a bill forcing phone companies
to itemize all of the taxes on the phone bill,
so then you could be outraged about specific things
instead of just like,
well, I don't know why the phone bill's so high.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello?
Yeah, speak up, please.
It's Pam.
Pam, how are you?
Hey, I'm all right, how are you?
Okay, what's up?
Nothing, I was just really happy to hear
that Bernie was in town.
Hi, Pam.
Hey, how are you?
Great.
Good.
So what have you guys been talking about
on the show tonight?
Well, all kinds of things.
It's been running all over the spectrum
from cellular phones to...
I don't know, what have we been talking about?
We've been talking about a lot of things,
privacy issues, things like that.
Yeah, I've heard some of it.
Actually, it's nice to be hearing you in stereo now
because I've been listening in one ear with one thing
and another ear with another thing.
Okay, great.
Thanks for calling.
Anyway, I sent you a fax, too.
Okay, we'll have to find the fax machine.
We don't know where it is, but we'll look for it.
I'll talk to you later.
All right, thanks for the call.
Bye, Pam.
212-209-2900.
Actually, we only have time for a couple more phone calls,
so let's go over here.
Yeah, good evening.
You're on the air.
No, they didn't want us to go over there.
Let's go over here, then.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes, you.
You're on the air.
Hi, my name is Kathy.
I'm calling from Manhattan.
I want to talk about an ISP
that really did something really, really bad
to people that use computers with speech.
Okay, you'll have to be really quick, though.
ConcentricNet dumped all the shell accounts.
They gave us no notice,
and they said that if we wanted to keep our accounts,
we had to go to Windows, and I just said,
well, I said blind people can't use it,
and they're refusing to even compensate us for any of this.
Uh-huh.
Wow, that's, I mean,
that sounds like something we could talk about for an hour,
but do you want to give out any more information
on how people can contact you about this?
Well, I don't have an email address as of yet
because I'm looking for a new Internet provider,
which I finally got.
Now, why did they drop you again?
They said they didn't want to keep the shell accounts anymore.
They gave us no notice,
and they said we could keep our accounts up,
but they said that we would have to go to Windows,
and I said, well, a lot of people don't use Windows,
and they said, well, tough luck, goodbye.
Hmm.
Well, again, you're dealing with the big business mentality there.
The individual doesn't really matter all that much,
but again, I would suggest contacting people
at the highest possible level,
complaining about this treatment if you feel it's unfair,
and I guess calling up a radio show is probably the first step.
Bernie, you have something very quick.
Thanks for that phone call.
We have to get out of here.
So, Bernie, really quickly, let's get into this item.
Oh, our old friends, the Secret Service,
are reportedly now in high schools.
Oh, good.
Maybe they can learn something there.
I doubt it very much.
Finished that education,
never had a chance to the first time around.
I saw this thing on ABC News' website the other day.
I'll paraphrase it here.
It's not to learn?
The secret is out.
The Secret Service is trying to find out
what makes school killers kill.
Agents are interviewing people
about the Columbine school shooting
and as many shooters as they can
from other incidents of school violence.
What is it?
Are they looking for tips or something
on how to do it themselves?
These guys are crazy.
Apparently, they're trying to profile children
to find out which ones,
to predict which ones will go crazy and start shooting.
As if you don't have enough to worry about in school,
now you've got the Secret Service
crawling around the hallways
looking at everybody's profile
and them saying who's going to be
the lunatic of the week.
What concerns me is that I've read in detail
the charter of the Secret Service
and what their responsibilities are
and this isn't remotely like anything
they're supposed to be doing.
So I don't see how this fits into their responsibilities.
They're just taking it upon themselves
to do this thing that's out of their realm of responsibility.
When you look into 90%
of what the Secret Service has been doing
over the past decade or so,
even more than that,
how much of it has been within the boundaries?
Usually, there's some remote connection,
but this has absolutely no remote connection
to anything that they're supposed to be doing,
which doesn't surprise me,
but it's just another reason to get angry at them.
You certainly have enough reasons to be angry at them.
A lot of pent-up anger.
I shouldn't say that.
That's right.
You'll be profiled next.
I'm already profiled, so what's the difference?
Bernie, it's great to see you in person.
Great to see you.
Great to see you at the station
and to hear your voice coming out the way it should be,
the first time ever on this radio station.
You certainly have quite a history here.
Hopefully, we'll have you back up here many times.
It'd be great.
All right.
We are out of time, unfortunately,
so with that,
I want to invite people to listen again next week,
and we'll be back then, I guess.
So stay tuned.
Good night.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-
beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-
The consciousness of the nation, the sounds of the Asian.
Want to know more? Check it out. Asia Pacific Forum, New York's only Pan-Asian radio program exclusively on WBAI 99.5 FM.
Asia Pacific Forum is about the Asian consciousness, politics, culture, music, the spirit. Every Wednesday at 9pm on WBAI 99.5 FM.
And this is WBAI 99.5 FM in New York. Stay tuned for Tahrir, your weekly Arab and Muslim magazine.