without due process. This, unfortunately, I think, is part of an international current.
Similar things are being done in the United States under the Patriot Act and what we are seeing in Guantanamo.
Despite opposition from rights groups and the United Nations in December,
Columbia Senate approved an anti-terrorism bill
that gives the military sweeping powers to search homes,
detain suspects without warrants, and wiretap phones.
From Bogota, I'm Nicole Carson for Free Speech Radio News.
Okay, that's enough. It's four minutes after seven o'clock.
By the way, call 212-209-2800 tomorrow and complain that the news is always running late
and cutting off your favorite radio show, which is Off the Hook.
The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a call.
We couldn't get much worse, but if they could, they would.
Von Diddley Bond for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood. Von Diddley Bond!
You know that it would be unfair. You know that I would be a liar.
If I was to say to you, girl, we couldn't get much higher.
Come on baby, light my fire. Come on baby, light my fire.
Try to set the night on fire. There's time to hesitate, it's true.
No time to wallow in demure. Try now, we can only lose.
And our world become a funeral pyre. Come on baby, light my fire.
Come on baby, light my fire. Try to set the night on fire.
It was in New York, it was pretty convenient, but we missed it.
A Sound Blaster.
It's MIDI synthesis.
Yeah, I'm still hearing music. Are you running it there in the background?
Okay, good.
Is that Stephen Hawking?
No, it's not Stephen Hawking, it's...
The artist is called 386DX.
That's so impersonal, you know, I think we can do better than that.
I thought it was Rebel.
No, definitely, definitely, and don't encourage him to start doing musical things and everything else.
There's one track I wanted to try, actually.
You sure Elmer Fudd hasn't died and been downloaded to a computer somewhere?
Wow.
I wanted to try the track after this, actually.
I don't know if our CD player can handle playing two tracks in a row.
It's flashing at me, so I think I might have broken it.
Come on baby, light my fire.
Drive us at the night on fire.
That's a tricky lyric for anybody to get.
You know, computers alone, it's hard for humans to pronounce all that.
All right, I wanted to play track seven, which comes right after this one.
And it's not going to work.
Okay, I have to reset the CD player.
I don't know what it's doing now.
Stop that.
Let's try this one over here.
No, it did it again.
Okay, let's try this one, the next one then.
Boy, I hate this CD player so much, I can't even express it anymore.
Anarchy in the UK.
I am an antichrist.
I am an anarchist.
I don't know what I want, but I know how.
Anarchist, that's how they pronounce anarchist.
Okay, well this will be a nice little theme to have in the background.
It's been an interesting week, as always.
And we have some new stories we want to play, or not play, say.
And of course, Listener Mail will be taking phone calls in just a little bit as well.
This week, all our news will be read by a computer synthesizer.
No, we're going to put an end to this pretty soon.
It's just kind of a unique thing to have.
Guarantee you, none of the other radio stations are playing this.
Okay, we have all kinds of interesting news events going on, as we always do on this radio program.
Where do we start?
Anybody have anything they'd like to jump into right away?
Go ahead, Jim.
AT&T Wireless.
Okay, Bernie beat you there.
AT&T Wireless.
What about AT&T Wireless?
Well, probably everybody who is not living under a rock has learned this week.
AT&T Wireless will be purchased by, as I correctly predicted two weeks ago, Singular.
Yeah, you did predict that, didn't you?
Not Vodafone, after all.
Bernie is better than New York Times.
Well, now what does this mean to the consumer?
Well, good and bad, I think.
Bad from the standpoint that it will be less carriers and less choices.
And whenever there are fewer companies competing for customers, there's less competition,
which really isn't good for the customer.
On the other hand, it might be good for AT&T Wireless and Singular customers in that both wireless networks have a lot of holes,
as all wireless phone networks have holes and dead spots and so forth.
So both systems would be combined and complement each other.
And they're going to have to deactivate a lot of redundant cell sites that serve exactly the same space.
But this is a great opportunity for these two companies to fill out each other's holes so that it's one larger network.
But the catch is everybody with a handset that's either AT&T Wireless's or Singular's will probably have to have it reprogrammed,
either over the air, as some handsets can allow over-the-air reprogramming,
or they'll have to take it into a Singular store and have it reprogrammed
so it will recognize the frequencies that Singular is using or vice versa.
So it's not going to be seamless, but in the long run, I think it will provide better coverage for both AT&T and Singular customers.
Well, it should be interesting.
I don't think anybody here is using either one of those companies.
Or any of us? No.
For some reason, we've completely skipped over both of them.
So if our listeners have experience with either of those companies, please let us know.
I've been having yet more positive experiences with Verizon Wireless since I switched from Sprint.
You know, I discovered something this week, which is really interesting.
I called someone else who's a Verizon Wireless customer.
And I like for people that have Verizon Wireless to try this.
When you call another phone that's on the network, it rings instantly.
No delay at all. It just rings immediately.
I've never seen a cell call go through so fast.
And I know Sprint doesn't do that.
I know T-Mobile doesn't do that.
Now, does the other phone begin ringing right away?
I don't know that.
Or do you hear a ringback signal right away?
I was next to the person I was calling, so I don't know.
It's worth a try.
It's worth a try. That's true.
That's true.
Is anybody here using Verizon Wireless?
You are?
Yeah.
Okay. Well, I have to turn my phone back on.
I've got it, too.
Okay.
Well, I have him programmed in my voice style.
It's kind of cool.
You're going to call me?
It's kind of cool because I just have to open up the phone.
It plays a stupid tone when I turn it on.
But after that, if I open the phone, I just speak your name.
But, you see, the thing is if I speak your name,
it's different than if I dial the number because there's a delay while it processes the name.
Here, you try it.
Hold both phones, dial your number since you know it better than me,
and see if it rings immediately and report back to us.
Yes, Bernie?
What a lot of people don't realize is if they call a phone number
and they hear ringing in their phone, that doesn't mean the other phone is ringing.
That's true.
That's just a false ringing signal that's provided to you to tell you that the network is working on ringing the other phone.
Well, the thing is Verizon seems to send that ring faster for its own phones
than, say, for any other phone that I might call.
That's good.
But if it actually fairly represents what's happening outside of your phone, that's even better.
Yes, I agree with that.
And that's true of phones in general.
The rings don't tend to match anymore.
Red Hat, what do you have?
Okay, I'm ready to just hit send.
You're going to hit send?
Well, you should listen in the earpiece to see if it actually starts ringing
because we can all hear the ring.
All right, go ahead.
I heard the beep.
And it's ringing.
And this one is ringing.
I think that went through pretty fast.
Anybody want to compare Sprint to Sprint?
I don't think it'll be nearly as fast.
Am I the only one here unfortunate enough to have Sprint?
The people who complain the most about Sprint, with me as the exception, seem to stick with them for some reason.
Why is that?
It's kind of a masochistic thing.
I guess it is.
Well, we need something to complain about.
That's awesome.
Let me turn my phone off.
I'll call you, Bernie.
Well, I'll hear the call waiting beep if you want to give it a try.
Okay.
Of course.
I'll tell you when I hear it ringing.
The level of signal in this studio is not so great.
We had no trouble with Verizon Wireless.
What is it?
Does Verizon Wireless have a transmitter in this building?
I mean, come on.
It shouldn't be that hard.
That's a good point, Emmanuel.
That's a very good point.
You know, a lot of people go into a wireless phone store to test phones to see if it works there.
Well, AT&T has always done something very sneaky.
If you look at almost any AT&T wireless phone store, soon to be a singular phone store, they have a cell site right on the roof of the store.
I believe OmniPoint did the same thing.
They have cell sites right in the store.
Well, how could it not be great coverage there?
Well, you know, I can sort of see why they want it to be good coverage.
All right, Mike, are you going to try this?
All right.
Yes.
We're putting the phone to the microphone.
I'm going to call you now.
All right.
And that's about all that happens is I press buttons.
I hear little tones.
Yeah.
Indicating I have a call.
Oh, you just got your call waiting?
Yeah.
About how many seconds was that from the time you heard a ring to when I said I heard it?
Two at the most.
That's not too bad.
Not too bad.
No, that's true.
That's not too bad.
All right.
So now can we compare the two?
Were they about the same or was Sprint a little slower?
Well, you know, just based on personal experience, having used both phones within the last few weeks, Verizon just seems startlingly faster to me.
There were about five seconds between the time I pressed the OK button and the time the phone even started talking to the network.
OK.
Which were the beeps you heard.
Well, that's –
Right for Verizon.
Yeah, you should have said OK when you hit the button, not when you heard –
I did say OK.
OK.
All right.
OK.
We can hear it.
The do not call list has been upheld by a federal appeals court yesterday.
They said that it does not violate the free speech rights of telemarketers.
Gee whiz.
That's something I think we all knew.
So that basically says the registry is a reasonable fit.
We hold that the do not call registry is a valid commercial speech regulation because it directly advances the government's important interest in safeguarding personal privacy and reducing the danger of telemarketing abuse without burdening an excessive amount of speech.
Well, they said the right thing.
They just said it in an incredibly stupid way.
I think basically that for me the difference between free speech and what they do is that with free speech, when you go out and speak, people don't have to listen if they don't want to.
But in the case of a telemarketer, you're almost forced to.
Well, is knocking on your door – is that speech?
Can I say I'm knocking on your door?
It's part of my exercising my right of free speech.
I don't know.
Somewhere I think that argument is lost.
Many communities do have laws regulating door-to-door solicitation, most of which have been overturned in the courts.
Can you still sign up for that list?
Oh, sure.
I don't think they would close it off ever.
I didn't know.
And I can still access it.
I can still find out who's on that list.
It's very easy to do for free.
What else?
Okay, we have this interesting information for some reason everybody's talking about, and that's the auctioning of phone numbers.
Bernie, you've heard something about this, haven't you?
Yeah, I think this number portability, wireless number portability thing probably triggered it.
But a lot of people realize that numbers – this happened with 800 numbers, I remember, what, about eight, nine years ago.
It was like this huge craze to treat phone numbers as a speculative commodity where you could get the most desirable 800 numbers or toll-free numbers and market them.
As a piece of property.
Well, people are now selling their wired or wireless phone numbers on eBay.
And Verizon, I believe, or Verizon stepped in and said, wait a minute, customers don't own their phone numbers.
So they talked to eBay, and eBay banned or canceled all these phone number auctions.
It's kind of interesting.
One of the numbers in particular comes from a hit song, 8675309.
And, you know, you just have to wonder, if you put out a song that has a phone number in it, I guess you're pretty much invalidating use of that number for all time if it becomes a popular song.
They got sued for that.
Who got sued for that?
Tommy Teutone, the singer of the –
Got sued by who?
15 or 20 years ago, when the song came out, they got sued by the then-subscriber who had that number in the 212 area code, saying that it had engendered all sorts of prank phone calls.
Yeah.
And just in that one area code.
What about all the other area codes?
They didn't sue, I don't believe.
Well, the phone number popularized by 1982's one-hit wonder, Tommy Teutone, 8675309, rings into a Murfreesboro used car dealership in area code 615.
Does anybody know in the song what area code he's talking about?
He doesn't mention an area code.
It's just a phone number of a friend, I believe.
I guess you should assume.
No, it's Jenny.
He found her number on the wall, which is a whole lot of Jenny.
Well, where's Tommy Teutone based? Is he based in New York?
I honestly don't know.
Hmm.
Well, anyway, the 212 version of that number was, believe it or not, going for more than $200,000 on eBay.
Now, this guy who's a lawyer is trying to sell the thing.
He was shooting for at least $10,000.
He said he was happy to keep the catchy number once we get through all these prank calls.
But I think we have…
A little birdie told us this.
The great WBAI bird is here in the studio.
It's triggered by sound.
Jeff, you got this from a toy fair or something?
I was at the toy fair Sunday, Monday, and then for a little while today.
Tell the bird to shut up because it's getting very annoying.
I can just turn him over and flip his thing here.
We don't need to know.
Put a newspaper under it at least.
Anyway, this guy says that we get 100 more calls every day.
People call all the way from Miami.
Why do people call from Miami if they can call their own 867-5309?
Maybe it doesn't exist.
Exactly.
They just keep running through area codes.
Anyway, basically the guy in New York who has it, he acquired it a few months ago after he called it and realized that no one else had it.
He got the number from Verizon and has used it as a second line, hooking it up to an answering machine.
Well, let's see if that is in fact true.
You know what's fascinating is that it's currently used in two different television ads at the moment.
One is for, I think, some candy.
Possibly M&M's.
It's not that memorable.
The other one, interestingly enough, is singular.
How about that?
That's great.
They just keep coming back into things.
All right.
Let's get a dial tone here.
And we're going to call that number.
All right, we're going to see what happens now.
Oh, gee whiz.
I guess that shouldn't be too surprising.
All right.
Either the lawyer's on it.
Let's try one more time.
Or one of our listeners beat us to it.
Which, if you think about it, there we go.
Ah.
Probably Rebel calling.
You've reached 212-867-5309.
Your rights to this number are up for sale.
If you are interested, please email me at jenny212-867-5309 at hotmail.com.
That's jenny212-867-5309 at hotmail.com with no dashes between the numbers.
Thank you very much.
Well, that was my touchtone, by the way, and apparently there's no message allowed to be left on that machine.
This is 9X a few years ago.
Maybe it was to Atlantic at the time.
I try to market this as something called a gold number.
Do you remember?
Ah, yes.
Well, don't they still do that?
Gold numbers.
Yeah, do they get rid of the gold numbers?
I think they still charge you for that.
Do they still call it that, gold numbers?
I don't know if they call it that, but if you request a particular number, you have to pay extra for maintenance of that number, which is ridiculous.
Yeah, right.
Ripoff.
Yeah, it's just another way they get you.
The phone company gets you in many different ways, and I'm sure our listeners can attest to that.
So, yeah, okay, 8-6-7-5-3-0-9, if you have that number someplace, we'd like to hear about it.
The fascinating thing about the singular ad for this is that it has a young woman in her 20s jumping around and saying,
I'm going to keep my number because it's famous, forgetting about the line in the song that says,
Jenny, I found your number on the wall for a good time call.
All right, all right.
Now, what about the movies?
Don't the movie studios get around this by using the 5-5-5 exchange?
Not only 5-5-5, 5-5-5-0-1-X-X.
If you look at most TV shows, they've made it so that you can only use 100 numbers in total.
I think there's all kinds of possibilities, numbers that you could use that aren't 5-5-5, because it just sounds so silly to use that all the time.
You can use 9-5-0, for instance.
You can use 8-9-0, I think, is an exchange that's open in most places.
You can do what they did in the movie Heat and start numbers with a 0 or a 1.
There's all kinds of possibilities.
You don't have to use 5-5-5 all the time, because it just sounds so fake.
If you dial a 5-5...
I know I've tried dialing 5-5-5-1-2-1-2, and I think I've gotten directory assistance.
From that one, yes.
That's their number.
You're watching a movie, and you're really getting into it.
Then somebody says this phone number, and then suddenly the suspension of disbelief that you've been maintaining just goes out the window.
If they could maybe have a bus or something honk its horn during the last number, that at least ensures that people won't be getting phone calls.
There are two other thoughts on that.
Firstly, I've tried a number of those numbers, and they tend to be internal offices for the local phone company.
In our case, Verizon.
Also, you would think that they would do some marketing, like they do with websites, and have a number that goes to...
Hey, it's the publicity department for so-and-so movie.
I'd like to know if anybody has...
I'll be AI listeners. They know everything.
Maybe they know this.
The last four digits of the phone number in the Dick Van Dyke Show, which I happened to be watching the other day, they gave a phone number, and it was not a 5-5-5 number.
I forget what the exchange was, so I couldn't really give you that.
But the last four digits were kind of interesting, and if anybody knows that, I'd like for them to call us and tell us, if any of you guys know it.
But you know.
I know, because I saw it.
And, you know, if you use your imagination, you can come up with some interesting exchanges and extensions.
All right, enough about phone numbers there.
You see the article in the New York Times about New York City police training for catastrophic terrorism.
This appeared on February 15th.
The New York Police Department, working with city health officials, federal authorities, and other agencies, has been preparing for a possible attack with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, perhaps the most daunting threat facing municipalities in the post-9-11 world.
They've been meeting in secret, conducting complex drills, and they've brought together governmental agencies in a broad effort for much of the last year.
Now, they've been training for things like boarding cruise ships from helicopters and piers.
They've begun reviewing floor plans of most large midtown theaters, conducting exercises inside some to improve their ability to respond to a possible attack like the one that happened in Moscow last year.
And this spring, city and federal officials say the police will work alongside the city health department and other agencies to open a pilot program that they hope will ultimately allow officials to test the air across the city for biological agents quickly and constantly.
Officials say the department has even taken to the city's streets to conduct a drill with the city's medical examiner's office to prepare for a chemical weapons attack that would litter the streets with contaminated bodies.
Boy, we should be seeing some very interesting people wandering around in all kinds of strange uniforms.
What kind of, what kind of, sorry, so many microphones, go ahead.
What kind of, I mean, what kind, what amount of, you know, chemical or biological, I guess biological could spread, but, I mean, what kind of, what amount of chemical agent would be required to take out New York City?
I mean, it seems unreasonable.
You don't want to necessarily take out the city, but a serious gas leak of certain gases in Midtown would kill, you know, a few thousand and hurt a couple hundred thousand possibly at the right time of day.
Plus, I really think that we've probably been seeing these people move around.
I mean, you said they should be running around in strange uniforms.
I mean, this is New York City.
Come on.
That's true.
It's probably illegal to take pictures of them or to ask them questions or anything like that.
I don't know.
It's just, you have to wonder how much of this is the kind of thing you have to be ready for and how much of it is just people's imaginations running away with them in a Hollywood world where, you know, okay, maybe they could suck the atmosphere out into outer space or something like that.
What are we going to do when they do that?
You know, and how much does this affect the way that we live our normal lives when you have people thinking that the city is going to be completely contaminated by chemical agents?
I don't know.
How much of an interesting world is this going to be to live in with this kind of attitude?
So, if you see anything strange, of course, we ask that you contact us and let us know what you see so we can spread the word.
Now, something else interesting and kind of scary that's happening, not related to this.
This is something that we got word of from a number of different sources.
The FBI apparently has raided an Internet service provider in Ohio, seizing 200 computers.
This was supposedly done because some hacking of various sorts happened through that ISP.
Supposedly, this happened through IRC.
The real disturbing thing, according to this reader, is that the company mentions it was something related to their IRC network, which is Internet Relay Chat.
This means the FBI seized 199 machines that were completely unrelated and one machine that it was related to more than likely has no usable forensics data on it.
This is the letter that is on the website, which can be reached at www.cityhosting.com, or I'm sorry, cithosting.com.
Dear customers of CIT, we regret to inform you that on Saturday, February 14, 2004, at approximately 8.35 a.m. Eastern Time, the data center in Columbus, Ohio, temporarily ceased operations.
Here are the facts of what occurred.
The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host.
According to the warrant, it appears that the Bureau is investigating whether someone hosted on our network hacked and attacked someone else.
After several hours of attempting to track down, inspect, and audit the terabytes of data that we host, the FBI determined that it was more efficient, from their point of view, to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection.
This was completed at 7 p.m. the same day.
The FBI has assured us that as soon as the data has been safely copied and inspected, the equipment will be promptly returned.
Unfortunately, the FBI has not been able to tell us when they will be completed with their inspection.
This is really kind of an insane type of a scenario to even think about.
But basically what they're saying is that somebody on an IRC network does something or says something or is suspected of something untoward, and the entire internet service provider can have all of their machines seized.
Just like that.
This fundamentally puts the company out of business because it's going to be years before they get their machines back.
Would you want to put your machine there?
No.
I mean, who knows what they're actually looking for?
Even if it's only a few weeks, people have to go elsewhere for service.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's really tragic.
And what does this say for IRC networks as well, where just showing up on the radar screen can result in not only you being investigated, but all the computers that you connect to being seized?
We run an IRC network at 2600, irc.2600.net, and we welcome people to come on and talk to other people that have similar interests.
But I'm sure every IRC operator is going to be very concerned about this now.
The serious and so far untouched upon question here is that this is exactly equivalent to the FBI seizing printing presses.
Everyone who had web pages hosted on those other computers that were seized is in effect a publisher.
And the FBI went in and prevented them from disseminating their ideas.
This is against the First Amendment.
And they're seizing a lot more than just a couple of printing presses.
A lot more.
If there's anybody out there, you know, who's affected by this, I mean, I really think that you should get a good lawyer and sue and make that point.
I mean, I'd be willing to pledge a couple hundred bucks to help your legal expenses.
I'm sure there are other listeners that would.
This is totally absurd.
This is the most outrageous, egregious breach of power by the FBI I've heard of in my life with one exception.
Waco.
Oh, okay.
I thought you were going to say Bernie S.
No, no.
That was Secret Service.
Okay.
Yeah, you're right.
You're right.
But the Secret Service did something very similar, well, somewhat similar with the Steve Jackson case.
Right.
Exactly.
There's precedent to show that this is illegal, unlawful, unwarranted, improper, immoral.
If I was running a server farm, I would put up a note that says, Dear FBI, you come in and seize the machines, you're dead.
I'm blowing the whole place up.
Well, that's one way of handling it, I guess.
I wouldn't live there, but not for long.
That's mildly illegal.
What was unique about the Steve Jackson games case back in, what year was that, Emanuel?
Do you recall?
That was 1992.
1990.
1990?
Wow.
Well, the company was effectively out of business for quite a while.
But what was unique about the case was that a federal judge actually just, you know, really ripped into the Secret Service for violating this company's rights.
And somehow I don't think in this day and age, in this environment with fear of terrorism and so forth, that's going to happen in this case.
Well, we have to keep our eyes on this story.
Again, if you go to CIThosting.com, you can see for yourself just what's going on over there.
And hopefully that situation will resolve itself quickly and it doesn't happen again because this kind of thing is just unacceptable.
Jim?
And off on a tangent, but while we're speaking of abuses by the FBI and Secret Service, about nine days ago, last Monday or Tuesday, there was a report on Fox Television News.
I forgot to mention it last week, but I'd like help from our listeners.
Fox News Channel?
No, it was on the local Fox station.
Oh, God.
Channel 5 News.
Channel 5.
But it was...
News at 10.
Do you know where your children are?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Just so people know because people outside the city won't be able to see that, but they saw the same report.
Okay.
The way it was presented, it did seem like it came from higher up.
Okay.
But they allege that there is a website in Germany published in English which outs undercover NYPD and other officers
and has maps of the homes of Ashcroft, the vice president, which of course isn't hard.
He officially lives on the grounds of the Naval Observatory, and other law enforcement people.
And they thought this was shameless and horrible to be publishing photos, descriptions, and license plates of undercover cars, that sort of thing.
What's the website?
That's the thing.
I've gone looking for this.
It's supposedly a German site, which would be a .de suffix.
Well, it doesn't have to be, but it could be.
It could be.
It could be a .com.
Yeah, okay.
They could have anything.
So they didn't show the URL?
They didn't show the URL.
In fact, they patted themselves on the back for not showing the URL.
So basically they could have just made up a story about this.
They showed screen captures fuzzed out in places for, shall we say, to obscure strategic information.
But it looked real enough.
They would have gone to a lot of trouble to make it a fake one.
Well, now, Bernie, you got into quite a bit of trouble for this, too,
because you had pictures of undercover Secret Service agents that you brought to a 2600 meeting,
and they took a very dim view of that.
In fact, that was listed as one of the reasons why you were thrown in prison in the first place.
Well, in fact, those photos were aired by the Philadelphia Fox TV affiliate on the evening news.
And when the Secret Service found those photos in my home that led to the TV broadcast from the 2600 meeting in Philly,
then they took my case far more seriously.
They told my attorney they were going to drop the case.
It was just going to be handled by the local police.
But once they found those photographs, it suddenly became a federal case.
And according to my prosecutor, who told my attorney, who used to work with my attorney when he was a prosecutor,
that the case was really about the pictures of the undercover Secret Service agents that I made available at the 2600 meeting
and were broadcast in the evening news.
Law enforcement authorities take a very dim view and take it very personally when their pictures are published anywhere.
They just don't like it.
But they have no trouble taking our pictures and spreading them all over the place, do they?
Oh, no. That seems to be their game. It's a very one-sided situation.
Well, with the advent of phones that can take pictures,
it's probably very easy to take pictures of undercover and above-cover cops and spread them wherever you wish.
And these days, you know, maybe that'll help get less people shot in the streets
because they'll know who the cops are when they're coming up to them.
And they'll say, I'm unarmed. Don't shoot me by accident because I startled you by the way I looked or something.
If you wish not to be photographed by the police, of course, obscuring your face is once again a crime in this state.
So don't do that.
Okay. Let's read a couple more pieces of listener email.
Then we'll take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
This listener writes in, I just heard this on the radio.
In New Mexico, the House passed a bill requiring all cars have a breathalyzer installed in the pre-ignition stage.
This bill is supposedly in the New Mexico Senate.
The supposed idea is to cut down on DUI and DWI.
Love your show, even though I'm three months behind on Off the Hook and Off the Wall.
Signed, Phil. Thanks very much for writing in.
Yeah, I expect to see this kind of thing.
I expect to see this kind of thing all over the place.
Does that bother you, though, as a driver?
It seems kind of invasive to always be tested.
You know, every time you start the ignition, you have to take a breathalyzer test.
Well, you do have to find the keyhole with the key.
I mean, that's a smaller test.
What if you're choking and you can't breathe and you're trying to get yourself to the hospital?
The car won't start.
You shouldn't be driving if you're choking.
What if there's no other way to get to the hospital?
Call 911.
This is silly because you could have your passenger breathe in there.
You can have a passenger by breathe in there.
Theoretically, why not get a rubber bulb?
So we're going to have to connect this thing to a fingerprint of some sort
so that they'll know for sure that it's you.
They still don't know it's you.
You put your fingerprint in the fingerprint sensor,
you have your girlfriend or your passerby or your rubber bulb blow into the saliva DNA first.
Well, then they make it one unit so that it can't possibly stretch beyond your finger or something like that.
I don't think the point is, I mean, if you had a sober driver around,
they'd probably just drive for you in any case.
I mean, the point's not you're not going to try and trick it because, I mean,
you might want to try and trick it if you're drunk,
but the idea is that someone who's sober wouldn't go and breathe into it just so you could go drive and run into people.
What if your handsome guy, $5, is walking by in the street to do it for you?
Or you have your children who can't drive to it.
You could make a lot of money outside bars doing that.
You really could. Just walk up and down and people will pay you $5.
Suppose they go whole hog and make it so you can't even get into the car until you pass this breathalyzer test.
I'm going to go around with an eyedropper and squirt 200-proof lab alcohol into the breath slots of this.
It'll be weeks before you can run your car.
Okay, well, we can figure out all kinds of ways to mess up the system.
What do you ask someone when you're asking them to blow into your breathalyzer?
All right, let's move on.
It's one way to meet people.
I was just going to say if you just used a breath freshener or something,
you'd have to wait several minutes before you'd actually pass the breathalyzer test to start your car.
Yeah, that's true.
I'd be kind of curious myself to see if I pass a breathalyzer test for my own entertainment.
But this kind of thing is just, I don't know, I think it's a bit intrusive to have it all the time.
Okay, here's another letter off the hook.
Maybe you guys could explain this one for me.
I just find it creepy.
About one year ago, I was a curious little boy who got bored easily.
Now, he must still be curious, somewhat older boy.
I'll give up this information.
My computer and Internet passwords used to be 82465.
Okay, get on it.
Being the bored little kid I was.
You're still a little kid.
If you were a little kid one year ago, you're still a little kid today.
I'm sorry.
You can't be an adult, right?
So it's okay to be a bored little kid today too.
Anyway, I dialed 82465, 82465 on my phone,
and I got a ring, which filled me with kicks and giggles.
Being the little kid that he is.
Although, we'd be filled with it too, probably.
A few months later, I decided to try it again.
This time I called, and the normal female voice came on and said something like,
We're sorry, the number you have dialed,
and right where she should have said the number,
there was just a pause followed by a, has been disconnected.
This part kind of scared me a little bit, but mostly just excited me.
It must have been the female voice.
Ah, youth, yes.
About three months later, I called, and absolutely nothing happened.
Not even a connect.
Any ideas as to what this number was?
This has been on my mind for a long time.
Signed, Mike.
Well, Mike, are you calling the other Mike in the studio?
But he didn't give an area code.
It's ten digits.
824 is the area code.
Yeah.
Alright, well, maybe.
He didn't dial one first though, so.
Okay, you know, I honestly don't know.
I don't think you have anything really to worry about.
It's your password.
You called a recording.
It did something.
It didn't include the number one time.
It didn't connect another time.
Welcome to the American phone system, you know.
And now we're in your computer.
Yeah, now we know your password.
We own you.
Okay, what else do we have here?
Should we bring up the Microsoft code thing, or should we just let that sit?
No, let's totally skip over that.
I mean, who cares?
They had their source code.
The source code had obscenities in it, and that offended me.
And I do intend to file a complaint with the FCC about that.
I did enjoy going through the source and grepping for the word bug
and being astounded by the number that came up.
The one thing that kind of annoys me, though, is how on the news all the time
they're just saying, well, now that the source code is out there,
all these hackers will be able to attack your systems.
Isn't that amazing?
That's just because the source code is flawed in the first place.
If they would do it right, then it wouldn't be a problem.
But hackers didn't release this information.
They released it somehow through some company.
Mainsoft.
Yeah, but hackers will get blamed no matter what because it's released now.
Even though hackers didn't do it, hackers will exploit it,
and hackers are still the problem.
It always goes the same way.
And I do know that they're hunting down the people
who distribute it through BitTorrents and things.
I've seen letters, e-mails, cease and desist, and so on.
Okay, dear OffTheHook, the same day you read my letter on the air
about the H2K2 VCDs from the last fundraiser,
they arrived in my mailbox.
They rocked. They were worth the wait.
Hopefully everybody got theirs to keep up the good work.
Signed, Bob.
Thank you, Bob, for your patience and for letting us know that they arrived.
That's from the fundraiser in the fall.
So not the spring fundraiser or the winter fundraiser.
One just went by.
This is the one from last year.
So if you pledged for VCDs, H2K2 VCDs,
and you haven't gotten them yet, send us an e-mail, oth at 2600.com.
You should have gotten them by now.
One final letter, then we'll take some phone calls.
212-209-2900.
I was listening to a show from January,
and you guys were talking about your experiments in drive-thrus
and the unprotected radios.
I won't mention any names to protect the guilty,
but one of the best pastimes is to find a McDonald's and a Taco Bell
that are close together.
Then, using your scanner and a radio,
you hook the drive-thru speaker from one restaurant
to the inside speaker of another restaurant.
Imagine the surprise of the Taco Bell employee
getting orders from the Burger King down the street.
It often degrades into an argument between the customer and the employee.
I want a Big Mac, employee.
We are not McDonald's.
Yes, you are.
And this goes on for quite a while to the delight of listeners.
Food for thought.
Thank you very much for that.
You know, we've been playing with this for years.
I've never thought of doing that.
Bernie, did you ever think of doing it quite that way?
Actually, no.
It's pretty funny.
It really wouldn't be that hard to do.
If you had a ham radio, like a handheld ham radio,
or handy talkies are called.
It's dual-band.
Some of them are capable of cross-band operation.
You could program one radio to do this whole job.
You just program the one restaurant's set of frequencies
into one set of radio and vice versa.
One radio could do this whole cross-band operation in one fell swoop,
and it would be pretty amusing.
Okay, we're going to take some phone calls now.
Jeff, you're going to pick a number,
and I'm counting on you to get the number right, so go ahead.
All right.
Let's take a phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Nice going, Jeff.
Really good finger there.
I didn't say to hang up on him.
You didn't have to.
Oh.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Hey, Emmanuel.
How are you doing?
How's it going tonight?
Pretty good.
Where are you calling from?
I'm calling from Florida on a Verizon cell phone.
Well, you're coming through loud and clear.
Oh, great.
It's a VX4400.
Okay.
I've had their plan about a year now, and I really haven't had any problems with them.
That's the LG you have, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Well, that's good.
I'd like to hear some complaints about Verizon.
I haven't heard any.
I mean, not to speak of.
Nothing.
I've had no problems with them whatsoever.
No problems.
A happy customer from Verizon.
Is there anything else on your mind tonight?
Yeah.
You were talking about the alerts for the weapons of mass destruction.
The chemical weapons are not as bad as the biological ones.
I say this because when I was in the military, we took NBC training, which was nuclear biological
chemical, and just a very little amount of anthrax can contaminate a whole city.
You know, they have a weaponized form of anthrax, like the ones were sent through the mail with
the dash letters, where they're engineered to float and to stay afloat, and they use a form of static
electricity to either negatively charge them or positively charge them.
I forget which, so they don't adhere to any surface.
They just keep getting kicked up.
Airborne.
Yes.
Well, that's something to worry about, I guess.
But what can we do?
What can we really do about this?
Are we going to have all these people in crazy outfits walking around the streets testing every bit of air out there?
One thing to do might be to start producing them ourselves as the U.S. government.
Well, that would be nice, but we can't go back in time.
How do we?
We could stop.
Yeah, that would be nice, too.
The British first weaponized it, and they contaminated an island off their coast called Gruenard Island, and they contaminated it.
It was like 50 years, and finally they declared it decontaminated, but they had to go remove all the soil and coat the whole island in formaldehyde.
And as an interesting side note, there was a strain of rabbits on the island that turned black, and they're naturally immune to the anthrax.
Interesting.
Yeah, they developed that during the beginning of World War II, and it stayed contaminated, I think, up until 2000.
Well, the Brits are always at the cutting edge of anything that's new, and I'm sure this won't be an exception.
If you see any black rabbits, look out.
Yeah.
Actually, I know a black rabbit, but this could be interesting.
Okay, I'm going to look into this some more.
Thanks for your call.
All right, take care, Emanuel.
Thank you.
You want to try another one?
Yeah, what the heck.
Okay.
All right, good evening.
You're on the air.
Hi, Emanuel.
How you doing?
Okay, I'm an AT&T wireless customer.
Ooh, we got one.
Great.
Okay, and my thing is, when they merge, I like to know, one, am I going to keep the same number?
I assume I'm going to.
Yes.
And two, you know, the plans that they have, that AT&T has now, will they, you know, change or, you know, I mean, how's this going to work?
That's a good question.
Bernie, do you have any inkling as to what might be happening?
Well, there's probably no reason at all why you wouldn't keep the same number.
There's no compelling reason why Singular would force you to change your number.
That would be a good way for them to lose customers.
Right.
And number portability would allow you to keep it anyway in any case.
So that won't happen.
But as far as your plans go, I imagine Singular will dictate new plans.
I'm sure they'll honor your existing plans for a while.
Let's look at our own experience.
Right.
Bernie, let's look at our own experience.
We have, you're a Sprint customer from way back.
I'm a T-Mobile customer from back when they were OmniPoint.
And they kept us on the same plans pretty much.
In fact, the current day plans, for me anyway, got better than the old ones.
But I was allowed to stay on as long as I wanted to because I was considered, you know, one of the first customers.
Okay.
Another thing.
They were talking about the phone number that was in the song.
I don't know if you guys are old enough to remember, but Wilson Pickett had a song in the 60s called 6-3-4-5-7-8-9.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
It was a big hit.
You know, a very well-known song.
And I don't know whether the same thing happened back then when people dialed that number regardless of whatever you called it was.
See, I mean, other countries have different lengths of phone numbers.
I think you can get around the whole thing in songs and in movies and TV shows by simply having a six-digit phone number or an eight-digit phone number or something like that.
Right.
And then you're not bothering anybody.
Right.
And it still sounds believable.
Because I remember the whole controversy with the other song that came out in 1980.
I think it was the 80s, that 6-3-4.
Yeah, 82, I think.
82, 83.
And I remember the whole controversy there.
People would, whatever area code they were in, and they would dial that number.
And, you know, it's like, wait a minute.
I'm not, you know, my number has nothing to do with the song.
And I can imagine whether the same thing happened back in the 60s when Wilson Pickett had that song out.
Probably.
Probably did.
And back then, of course, numbers were given, you know, as you say, with names.
Right.
Not just numbers.
Right.
I miss those days.
Pennsylvania, you know, the Glenn Mills song, Pennsylvania.
6-5000, which is the phone number of the hotel that we have our conferences in, the Hotel Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, right.
Yeah.
So, yeah, phone numbers can be very interesting things to have.
I have one more thing.
Does that thing still work when you dial, I think it was 958 or 658?
958 gets you your phone number in the New York area, I think New Jersey as well.
Philadelphia, too.
Philadelphia, too.
There's another thing that if you dialed a certain seven-digit number, you got, like, they used to say DXF.
If you dial an exchange followed by 9901 in New York, it will tell you the kind of switch that you're using.
I don't know of anything outside of New York that does that.
I would love to know nationwide how to do that because it's a very useful thing to know what kind of switch you're using.
Right.
All right.
Thanks for your call.
Jeff, you have something?
Well, I was just going to say he was concerned about whether his number was going to change because of the merger,
and I think the only numbers that we will see change will be at the bottom of the bill.
Yes.
Not to be cynical or anything, but I just...
The number to call.
No, no.
Oh, you mean the actual amount of money that you pay.
The bill amount, yeah.
Bottom line.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I used to use a company called Cable & Wireless for various things, including toll-free numbers,
and they recently, within the last year or two, got taken over by a company called Primus,
and the bill is a quarter what it used to be.
Yeah.
It used to be at least four times as much as it is now, so I'm really kind of happy.
That's nice to hear.
Sometimes it works to the consumer's advantage.
Before I forget, since I don't think anyone's going to get the answer,
the last four digits in that Dick Van Dyke show for his home phone number was 9970.
In New York, 9970 is an always busy.
At least it used to be.
Sometimes people get those phone numbers now,
but the whole 99XX extension where a phone company tests numbers or busy signals, reorders, sweep tones,
all kinds of fun things that are slowly dying out.
Wait a minute.
In New York, no matter what three numbers you dial for the exchange,
if the last four are 9970, it's a permanent busy?
Well, if you had asked me this ten years ago, I would say, yes, Jim, that is absolutely true.
Today, I will say, maybe, Jim, sometimes true.
Well, okay.
We go back to what we covered earlier about numbers in movies.
Why not give a number with a 9970 after checking that it's an always busy?
That makes perfect sense to me.
And that's what people did in the past.
That's what Dick Van Dyke did, and obviously he knew what he was doing.
Yeah.
All right.
It's a funny show, too.
It really is.
It ages well, and it's surprisingly sophisticated for 1962.
I often wondered what you did while we were working.
All the time.
That's what I do.
All right.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yes.
This was my fault.
I hit the button this time.
Yes, you did.
Rebel, make it quick.
A lot of tourists, they ask New York City cops to take pictures with them,
and that seems to be okay with the New York City cops.
But anyway, I have a song that I'd like to play from the 80s about telephones.
How long is it, Rebel?
One minute.
I'll make it short.
Maybe I'll make it 30 seconds.
Start it right now.
When you make a long-distance call on the telephone,
it will show up on the itemized page of your phone bill.
But when you make a local...
How do you like it?
Rebel, you know, promise me you'll play that at Hope, okay?
All right.
I'll play this one.
That will bring people in in droves.
It really will.
Okay.
Speaking of Hope, I want to also bring the pictures of the sign that say,
Don't take pictures of this bridge.
You might want to pick up the current edition of 2600, Rebel.
Oh, you put my pictures in there?
We're not going to say any more on the radio.
Okay, I'll pick up the...
All right.
We'll talk.
All right.
All right, thanks.
Well, now he's got something to do.
And good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Hi, how are you?
Pretty good.
How are you?
Good.
This is El Nerto calling from the Toronto 2600 group.
Oh, great.
How are you guys doing?
Oh, great.
Let me just turn down my stream so we don't get any sassy feedback.
Okay.
Just a couple of things I wanted to ask about.
Hope coming up this summer.
Are there going to be opportunities for volunteering this year again?
Oh, very much so.
In fact, the website should be launching this week,
and you will see all kinds of things that you can get involved in,
volunteering to help us in various ways.
Absolutely.
Fantastic.
We wouldn't be able to survive without our volunteers.
I can imagine.
I'm wondering what you guys think about the whole www.goatsy.cx thing that's been happening.
I'm wondering if you think that's a free speech issue
or if there's some line that's been drawn.
I'm just curious what you guys think.
I think it's a line that's been crossed.
Yeah, probably many lines have been crossed.
Redhack, I think you know something about this, don't you?
Well, as far as I've heard, it was taken down by the registrar,
decided to get rid of the domain.
It used to be people on IRC or wherever would link people to it and say,
oh, look at this, and it was a pretty nasty picture there.
From what I've heard, eventually the registrar caught wind of this and took it.
The registrar took it?
I could see the provider taking it down, but the registrar?
Bits and pieces here.
I'm not sure.
What I heard is that the Christmas Islands registrar has been trying.
They've been known for a long time as a registrar where people could get away with
posting explicit photographs, things like that.
Now they sort of want to become a little more serious player in the whole domain registry thing.
Apparently they've been trying to clamp down on things like that.
They're .cx, is that right?
Yeah, .cx.
My question is, where do we draw the line?
I mean, a lot of people think that's funny.
A lot of people think it's disgusting.
A lot of people think it's horrible.
But I always thought the Internet was a little bit more than that.
Where do we draw the line?
Just because one person thinks it's indecent doesn't mean someone else does.
Who's next to say that Sports Illustrated isn't going to be the next person taken down
because someone finds bikini pictures offensive?
Right, I think the Internet is a place where people use their own judgment as to
what is objectionable and what is not.
As far as a particular nation or island saying, you know, we don't want this anymore,
I guess they do have that right if it's their country.
They can say, okay, you know what, we only want nice sights on our island.
And we may not agree with that.
Okay, we can move it someplace else.
The same laws and ideologies don't apply to other places.
I mean, we're all on the Internet, but it's different.
Laws everywhere.
We are allowed to use common sense.
As far as I know, I believe the Christmas Island's registrar is actually run by an American company
and the decision was made by an American.
So I don't know if the whole international value thing even comes into play.
Well, you see, that's something I have a problem with right there
is American companies running foreign registrars.
It should be in the hands of the people of that particular country or nation.
Like .tv is some island someplace and, of course, it's being run.
.tv is Tuvalu and it's actually run by a Toronto firm, actually.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
How funny.
That was all over the news here last year.
.fm is, I think, the Federated State of Micronesia or something like that?
Well, you know as well as I do that the almighty dollar makes the big play there
and that the company wants to walk in and pay these small companies
who have GDPs the size of a small American town.
They want to say we'll pay $100,000 a year to run your registry.
Most countries aren't going to say no to that.
Absolutely.
The Federated States of Micronesia itself is, I think, run by the U.S. government
so their domain is kind of ancillary.
Okay, I guess it sort of works out then.
Listen, we're out of time so I want to thank you very much for calling, for listening
and good luck up there.
Bernie, thanks again for being with us.
We'll see you next week.
Thank you.
And the Personal Computer Show is up next.
We'll be back again next week, hopefully on time, between 7 and 8.
Write to us, othat2600.com.
Manuel Goldstein for everybody.
Have yourselves a good night.
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and Women's History Month on Saturday, February 28th
from 6 to 11 p.m. in the Medgar Evers College Auditorium,
located at 1650 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.
The Medgar Evers College Student Government Association,
the People of the Sun Middle Passage Collective,
and Akeem Productions will present Fashion Show 2004
to raise funds for the 15th Annual Tribute
to the Ancestors of the Middle Passage that occurs in June.
An African Spirit Award will be awarded
to both WBAI's Imhotep Gary Byrd and Camille Yarborough.
Fashion Show 2004 will feature top designers
with special performances by Caltef Shanto,
Crown Heights Youth Collective, and the New Kemet Society.
For more information, call Akeem at 718-270-4902.
That's 718-270-4902.