I think about 5 percent people support King.
After the political parties and the King traded curfews in recent weeks, the Maoists have
now called for a shutdown of a week or longer, perhaps starting as soon as February 2nd and
stretching past the February 8th elections.
For Free Speech Radio News, this is Keri Byron in Kathmandu.
Free Speech Radio News is a worker-run collective produced out of Pacifica stations KPFA in
Berkeley and KPFK in Los Angeles.
And that was Free Speech Radio News here on WBAI New York.
It's time for Off the Hook.
That's understood.
Bundling it now!
And a very good intro by the program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you for the next hour or so as we update you on things going
on in the world technology-wise, along with other phone and computer-related issues.
We have Bernie S. joining us live from Philadelphia on the telephone.
Greetings.
You sound like you're speaking through one of those football phones or something.
It's one of these cheesy Sprint PCS phones.
It's the same one you always use, right?
Yes, it is.
Skype always sounds better.
One of these days we'll have the Skype set up.
We have a team of experts working on it, trying to get Skype working and hopefully in a week
or so, two weeks, a year, we'll actually figure out how to get the audio to the computer and
have you on that way every week.
If I just done this myself, perhaps we could even take callers via Skype.
That would be great.
That would be fantastic.
We also have Jim joining us.
Guten Abend.
And this week you're in the right channel mostly because that's sort of where you belong.
Mike is joining us and you're over in the left.
Is that right or am I backwards?
According to the board, you should be.
But according to my headphones, you know, I got them on backwards again.
Now they're on forwards.
I'm sorry.
It's also especially confusing for those of us who are looking at you because your notion
of right and left and mine are reversed.
Yeah.
Well, the problem stems from the people who don't talk who didn't want to move out of
their seats and I had to like adjust so that you're not actually sitting on the left in
the left channel.
You're actually in the middle sitting.
It's really crazy.
But for the listeners, you're in the left channel and Jim is in the right channel now.
See, but from my perspective, I'm farther to the left than I am to the right.
You're as far to the left almost as I can bring you.
And I've decided to leave it a little bit so that you're not completely over in the
left because that way people who have one speaker of a two speaker radio set will hear
you a little bit.
That's good.
I want everyone to hear me.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I don't know where you are.
You're over a little bit to the left, I think, or maybe you're I should probably be a little
bit to the left.
Yeah.
I think you're a little bit to the left.
And Arsene, are you a little bit to the right?
I don't know.
Yeah.
I think you are.
And Walter, there's no place for you.
So I just stuck you in the middle.
Right in the middle.
In fact, I didn't even turn your mic on.
Try that again.
Right in the middle.
Yes.
That's where I need to be.
Okay.
So that's a bit of fun.
Now, I guess we should also update people on a couple of things.
We were able to actually spread this joy to people online.
We talked about this last week, how nobody who was listening on the internet would be
able to benefit from us playing around with channels.
Well, thanks to Jens and Mike, we were able to get this rolling.
You want to tell us what's going on now?
Sure.
Now, you can download either manually or automatically a high-fidelity version of the show every
week.
High-fidelity.
I was saying high-quality for a while, but I realized that the quality of what we say
is not changing.
So I'm saying high-fidelity version of the show.
Yeah.
Well, the quality of the audio is high as opposed to low.
But yeah.
So now you can hear that.
What do people have to do to get to that?
Well, if they come to the website, which is www.2600.com, then there is directions there.
They can either subscribe as a so-called podcast or autocast or whatever we're calling
it.
Or they can just download it manually.
And the difference in sound quality, I think it was what, 16 slash 16 before?
Now it's 64 slash 44.
Is that right?
If people are really fascinated to know, it is 64 kilobits per second, two channels, also
known as stereo, and 22.05 kilohertz.
Okay, 22.
All right.
Well, that's good.
And that's pretty much FM quality.
It sounds pretty good.
Yeah.
So this is about as good as it's going to get, folks.
So enjoy it.
Of course, you can also listen to the low bandwidth, the low-quality version.
It's still there.
It's not going anywhere.
Okay.
We have news to get to besides our own, I guess, tentative steps into technology advancement.
There is a new lawsuit against AT&T by EFF.
Who knows something about this?
Bernie, perhaps you?
Actually, Mike, I think, was very closely following this case.
Mike, you're closely following this case?
Yes, I have the case right in front of me.
The whole case.
It's not much of a case.
It's 27 pages, and it's very kind of repetitive.
It's a lot of lawyers.
You want to sue AT&T, you're going to need at least 100 pages.
Well, part of the problem is that there's AT&T Corp and AT&T Inc.
And it's a whole mess.
All right.
Well, what's the gist of it?
That's not the important part.
As we've mentioned on the show, the NSA has been spying on Americans illegally.
And of course, in order to do this, they need to get access to the call data.
And the easiest way for them to do so, and at least one of the ways they are actually
doing so, is by calling up the phone companies and saying,
Hi, we're the NSA.
Could we please have access to your switches?
And the phone companies, by and large, say,
Okay, sure.
Here's where you plug in.
And the EFF is filing a class action lawsuit in which they're arguing that this is a violation
of the law and they should really please stop.
Because they're doing this without a court issued warrant.
Without a court order and without the customer's consent.
But it's not only AT&T.
All the phone companies are doing this, aren't they?
Presumably.
But AT&T is sort of the biggest company, especially in the area of international calls, which
is where the focus of this current scandal lies.
So.
Interesting.
And as many of our listeners, but probably not all, may know, the NSA has a long history
of getting the cooperation of telecom carriers.
They used to get a copy of every telegram that went overseas from the telegram carrier.
Well, that's not going to happen anymore.
They stopped with telegrams the other day, didn't they?
And this program stopped when there was, you know, shortly before the public learned about
it, basically.
It became apparent that the public would learn and the companies didn't want to be exposed.
So they're covering their asses.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So you think there's a chance in hell of this case actually being won?
I really don't know.
I hope so.
It'd be nice.
At least it brings attention to what's going on in a different way.
You know, if you're a corporation that does this kind of thing, you're going to have to
account for yourself in some form.
I mean, I think this, if it succeeds, which again, I don't know, will be much more effective
at stopping the program or curtailing the program than suing the NSA, because you might
get the NSA to say it's going to stop, but they're so secretive.
And basically what they're designed to do is spy on people legally or illegally.
That's what they're for.
Yeah.
It's like suing a snake for biting you.
It's what they do.
Exactly.
But AT&T doesn't have to play that game.
Yeah.
If you can create the notion among corporate America that illegally giving the government
access to your customer's data will get you sued, will cost you time, will cost you money,
will cost you reputation, then you have a good chance of stopping them.
Okay.
We mentioned that there are no more telegrams.
What do we mean by that?
Western Union, I believe, has stopped sending telegrams as of January 26th.
Is that actually true?
It's a shame.
Nobody seems to know.
I haven't sent one ever.
Well, no, but there have been some news stories being bandied about that concern this.
For 145 years, Western Union has been sending telegrams.
And effective January 27th, they're discontinuing all their telegram and commercial message
services.
They made a very quiet announcement and kind of went out with a whimper, which is a shame.
Well, they didn't send a telegram about it, that's for sure.
Had I known about this a few days ago, I would have sent a telegram on the very last
day, probably to my dear aunt, who is now 82 years old and who worked as a telegram
operator at Western Union during World War II and for a few years afterwards.
Are you sure it's really the best thing to do for your 82-year-old aunt is to send her
a telegram?
Usually they're kind of startling news and those things.
No, she'd love it.
She'd think it's terrific.
She tells me many stories about her interesting days sending telegrams.
She met her husband, my uncle, who was sending a telegram to his mother when he got back
from the war, when he got off a ship and went over and sent a telegram and said, hey, let's
go out to dinner.
How come they just don't drop a dime in the phone and call somebody?
Well, back in those days, long-distance calls were very expensive.
And it was actually cheaper to send a telegram when you needed to get a concise message that,
you know, I'm back from the war, I'm safe, kind of thing.
Long-distance phone calls were extraordinarily expensive compared to telegrams.
But it was like using AIM, I guess, back then, except you wouldn't expect a response right
away.
Yeah, it was sort of a one-way instant messaging and not quite instant.
You would send it and it would get printed out at the other city and then someone would
hand deliver it to the doorstep of, to the door of the recipient, which was kind of quaint.
And they were singing telegrams, too.
I don't know if that was part of Western Union's business or another company.
Yeah, it got kind of silly after a while.
But the main idea of the telegram, I think, is kind of cool.
How many of us have actually sent a telegram?
Bernie, have you ever sent one?
I have received one in my life, but I've never sent one.
And I'm very sad that I never got an opportunity to because it was a, actually, no, I did send
one.
I sent one from, I remember back in the 1980, or I'm sorry, 78, I sent a telegram, along
with money that was wired.
I had to wire money to someone whose purse was stolen in New York, of all places.
And so I wired her some money and sent her a telegram with it, with a message.
And that was back in the 70s.
Anyone in this room send a telegram, ever?
None of us?
How would that have worked in recent years?
Would they actually have come to your doorstep?
Well, they would send somebody, I would imagine.
Somebody would show up somehow.
I remember getting letters in the mail from Western Union, which stated that these were
sent by telegram and then mailed.
I forget what Western Union called it.
They had mailgrams.
Mailgrams.
Mailgrams.
Yeah.
I sent a mailgram.
I don't count that as a telegram.
And I did send a telegram once, actually.
I remember now, when I was in East Berlin in 1989, and I had all this extra money that
was useless, that I could only spend in East Berlin, and there was nothing to buy.
So I went to the post office and I just started sending telegrams to my friends in the United
States.
And that was a good way to spend money.
And they all got the telegrams, too.
Were they hand-delivered?
You know, I didn't think to ask about that.
I imagine somehow they were hand-delivered.
I don't think they came in the mail.
I think some man or something went over there and gave it to them.
So are telegrams now totally defunct, or has someone taken up the minuscule slack that
Western Union has left behind?
Are you interested?
I think maybe if it's still possible, we should do it before it dies totally.
Hmm.
Okay.
Well, this could be our big opportunity to take over the bridge-
Why don't we call them and ask?
Not a bad idea.
Yeah.
We're only on for an hour tonight, so I don't know if we get through the bureaucracy very
quickly.
But in any event, that's a little bit of interesting news for today.
Okay.
Something else in the courtroom.
An appeals court Thursday dismissed a legal challenge to federal airport regulations requiring
passengers to show identification before they board planes.
That, of course, was John Gilmore's case against ... What was it against, the transportation
people?
GIA or TSA?
The whole government.
The Department of Justice.
The Attorney General, I believe.
Okay.
And also the airlines.
And the airlines as well.
I can't say I'm surprised that it was dismissed.
It's an interesting case.
I mean, the right of free travel, the right to be able to go one place or another without
having to show ID was something that I guess was a valid point to bring up, but I just
didn't see it being cast in his favor in this particular case.
No.
It's pretty clear that he wasn't going to win.
I wish he had won, but he lost, and then he appealed, and he still lost.
The main thing was, it wasn't so much that the airlines require this.
It's that the federal government requires it, and it's based on some law that they would
not tell him what the law was.
That's how I remember it.
I thought they said that the Constitution did not guarantee the right to travel by any
particular mode of transportation.
I think they said that too.
I'm pretty sure they said that.
That might have been the actual final conclusion.
The judge's opinion, Judge Richard Perez wrote that, quote, the Constitution does not guarantee
the right to travel by any particular form of transportation.
So if you want to travel from New York to LA without having to submit your government
papers, you can walk.
Yeah.
I could see the logic in that.
But the other thing that was mentioned before, well, I mean, an airline can dictate policy.
A bus can say, no, you can't get on unless you show a particular card or a particular
bit of ID.
We can't even get into the building without showing ID.
Oh, by the way, you notice the guy downstairs has been replaced?
He's been replaced.
Yeah.
This is interesting.
Last week, our downstairs ... You don't want to get anybody in trouble, but ...
I don't think I'm getting anybody in trouble.
I'm just mentioning a fact.
And this is something that I think holds true all over the country, post 9-11, all
this Homeland Security nonsense, where people actually think they're doing good by behaving
in a particular way.
But last week, our security guard downstairs was reprogrammed, literally.
The guy is the same guy.
He was like reflashed.
Same guy, totally different personality.
It was really weird.
We'd seen this guy week after week, always, hello, how are you, and lets us in.
And last week, something happened, and he's like, I have to see your identification.
He knew who we were, and he wasn't friendly anymore.
He wasn't friendly.
He was just talking in a totally different manner.
And something must have happened.
Apparently, the upgrade or reset didn't work, and he's out for repairs now because we have
a new guy downstairs.
He didn't ask me for ID.
He didn't ask you for ID?
No.
Me neither.
I didn't ask you for ID.
You weren't here last week, Walter.
Oh.
I thought you meant today.
No, that was last week.
Last week, we had to ... This week, we have a new model downstairs.
So, but the new model doesn't ask for ID.
Well, I don't know.
I think you're supposed to.
Now you're getting somebody in trouble.
They downgraded the old model's firmware, right?
So-
Can we stop referring to people as firmware?
Well, they're acting like firmware, for God's sake.
People don't have personality anymore.
They're told, even though you know somebody, you have to go through this ridiculous bureaucracy
and not have a conversation, not speak like a human being anymore.
How many times have we seen this?
It's really sad.
I think the proper term is wetware.
I think this gentleman probably was anticipating the ring of steel that is going to be wrapped
around lower Manhattan.
Ring of steel.
Tell us about this.
Well, you haven't heard about the ring of steel?
No, I haven't.
You're going to tell me about it.
Oh, well, the ring of steel, it already exists in London, around sections of London where
it's sort of this impenetrable security barrier through which terrorists will no longer be
able to pass.
Of course, it's just, you know, silly, but the NYPD is considering a ring of steel around
lower Manhattan.
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal saying that to protect lower Manhattan, the
police are studying London's effort, which involves tens of thousands of cameras and
all kinds of other security perimeters around the most sensitive areas of the city.
In this case, it would be the financial district of lower Manhattan.
Just do a search, a web search for a ring of steel NYPD and you'll find some articles
on this.
It's obviously, it couldn't possibly work unless you literally erected an iron curtain.
Am I the only one who's thinking that every time they do this, you sort of have an obligation
to blow something up just to prove them wrong?
You know, not hurt anybody, but just show, look, this is stupid.
It's never going to work.
What are they going to do after you blow something up inside the ring of steel, you know, in
case everybody in steel, how are they possibly ever going to stop this kind of thing from
happening?
It'll only make things worse, right?
They're going to introduce even harsher, more ridiculous security measures to prevent the
next-
How harsh and ridiculous can it possibly get?
It's got the theater of the absurd.
I have an answer and this ties in nicely to our next hope because I'm going to mention
a hotel that no one should use.
The Alex Hotel, 205 East 45th Street, is actually requiring identification checks.
Not for people who stay there, but for people who want to phone upstairs on the house phone.
The New York Times reported-
Wait, wait, wait, wait, stop.
What do you mean?
People who call them?
Well, no, but they're inside the hotel in the lobby.
Well, what are they doing inside the hotel making phone calls?
They're calling to someone.
They've traipsed in from an outer borough or from their job in Manhattan and someone
they know is staying there and they want to call upstairs and say, let's go out to dinner
or drinks or the movies or Broadway show or whatever.
And they want to know who's calling their guests.
Not only that, they require a government-issued photo ID, they photocopy it, they say they're
going to keep it for five years, and then they let you use the house phone to dial a
guest upstairs.
All right.
That's kind of silly.
Outside the front door and call from your cell phone.
Yeah.
Why don't you just do that?
Well, you should.
You should.
So make sure you do not use the Alex Hotel in New York.
Yeah.
That sounds really insanely silly.
Speaking of silly things, we were talking about London as well, ID cards, they're all
into that.
Well, guess what?
They would be of limited value against terror and would not have prevented the London attacks
in July.
We all knew that, but guess who's saying it now?
The reviewer of anti-terror laws, Lord Carlyle.
He's a liberal Democrat peer, whatever that means, and he said he had changed his mind
on identity cards, which he had previously backed.
He said, I can't think of many terrorist incidents.
In fact, I can think of very few that ID cards would have brought to an earlier end.
The bill introducing the cards plan is currently going through parliament.
It recently suffered two defeats in the House of Lords with peers wanting an entirely voluntary
scheme and ministers wanting people applying for new passports and driving licenses to
be obliged to go on the ID card register.
He continued, ID cards could be of some value in the fight against terrorism, but they are
probably of quite limited value.
It's something anyway, to have somebody get enlightened like that.
You know, Emanuel, there's one small town in this planet that definitely has had no
terrorism and the local, the nearest government is going to bulldoze it anyway.
Oh, you're talking about Christiania?
I am.
I mean, we've been hearing this for years, though, that the government's going to bulldoze
it.
Are they really going to do it?
I'm not trying to sound optimistic about it, but it sounds like, you know, we've been crying
wolf a bunch of times.
I think a year or so ago we said that it was being destroyed and we never heard anything
and someone went over there and found out that it was just fine.
Is this for real?
The last time I was there with Laszlo, about a year ago, there literally were bulldozers
that bulldozed all the street vendors' stands into oblivion.
And of course, they vended various products that aren't necessarily legal outside of Christiania.
But in any case, it was nothing dangerous.
And according to an article in the Danish newspaper, this is definitely going to happen
soon, that people's rents are going to, if they want to keep living there, the condos
they would have to move into, which are going to replace their existing squatter homes,
and they'd be paying about ten times their existing rents.
Well, I read this as a proposal, not something that was definitely going to happen.
Now, is there more news on this?
I just read the same article you have, but this is some of the most depressing news I've
read so far that had actual hard numbers as far as what buildings are going to be built
and what the condos are going to cost to rent and so forth.
And this is consistent with what I was told by two people who live just outside of Christiania,
a couple of our, Andreas and his brother, who we met up with there.
They're telling us this has been coming fairly soon, and it looks like it may be happening.
Of course, I certainly hope it doesn't happen, because it's a beautiful little community,
but...
Well, of course, the people of Copenhagen have the power to do something about this,
and if you're over there, please send us an email.
We'd like to find out the facts as to what's really going on, or address oth at 2600.com.
The people of Denmark are very busy being boycotted right now by...
Yeah, they've got a whole other thing going on with cartoons that make fun of radical
fundamentalists in Islamic countries, I believe?
Well, they make fun of, according to some, all Muslims or Islam itself, and they were
published in this conservative paper some months ago, and for whatever reason, now,
they were republished in Norway, and now there's a big scandal, and Saudi Arabia and all these
countries are boycotting Danish goods.
It's very weird.
There's no scandal.
It's just a conflict.
Well, it's scandalous.
These are ambassadors.
Yeah, well, there's all kinds of people getting involved, but I understand today, the same
cartoons were published all over Europe as sort of an act of protest, which I got to
say is a good thing.
You can't have people dictating what you can and cannot say.
I think we should publish them on the show here.
Yeah, if we can figure out how to do that, we'll certainly do it.
Speaking of censorship and oppression and things like that, google.cn, we talked about
that a couple of weeks ago, or maybe last week.
That's Google's venture in China that basically, if I'm not mistaken, censors various things.
If you look up certain words, you can't get through because it's in China, and the Chinese
authorities, I guess, want certain things not to be known.
Now, you can connect to google.cn from the United States, correct?
Yes.
All right.
Now, I went to google.cn.
Tell me if I'm doing something wrong.
I typed in democracy in the search engine, and democracy now came up as the first hit.
I typed in democracy China, and I got all these dissident web pages.
Here's the thing.
So, how is this possibly working like this?
Here's the thing.
The Chinese government is primarily interested in blocking not the English word democracy,
but the Chinese equivalent thereof.
So, you're saying that if you're in China now, and you're using google.cn, you can figure
out how to type the American version of the word democracy, you won't be filtered.
Is that what you're saying?
I'm saying the filtering is less targeted.
Well, yeah.
It seems to be not at all there.
Well, they also supposedly have this big firewall, right?
So, I wonder if these links would even work, even if you did get the search results from it.
I mean, there's always the caching aspect.
Well, there's the cache version, and there's the first few words that show up in the results.
I don't know.
I was reading about some way to just get around it.
It's like you change like three letters in the URL, and it tricks Google into thinking
that you're not in China anymore, and I mean, it's probably they left it in there on purpose
or something.
It's interesting because Google could also see, you know, what IP address you're coming
from and change the results, you know, maybe disable caching if you're actually coming
from China.
Report to the authorities.
Well, do whatever, and that'd be interesting to see as well.
Google just made an announcement, or actually retracted an announcement on their webpage
a few days ago that said, they had for years had said, Google does not censor its searches,
and they just pulled that down without any fanfare.
It's gone.
Of course.
If they censor now, they can't have that as their policy anymore.
Well, it's kind of interesting that they had to sort of eat their words and just sort of
pull that down, but we did have a listener who wrote us, I believe, who went to google.cn
and put in terms like Falun Gong.
I tried last week, I tried Tiananmen Square, and I was able to find all kinds of stuff
that the Chinese government would have found objectionable, like pictures of tanks rolling
over people.
Yeah.
I don't think they want people to see that.
But what this gentleman who had written into us told us was that he was able to find a
difference between the searches on google.com compared to searching for Falun Gong through
google.cn.
And I've also read yesterday that bad spelling can also get through some of this censorship.
If you spell Tiananmen wrong, which isn't hard to do, you might be able to get through
the firewall.
So they haven't come up with every possible misspelling to filter.
Now, again, as Redbird said, we're not necessarily testing this properly because we're not behind
the Chinese firewall.
But it would be interesting to have a listener in China.
And I'm going to speak to a woman who I've talked to on Skype before.
This random woman you just connected to on Skype?
Yeah.
I'm the first person.
The one and only random conversation I've ever had on Skype was with a woman in South
China.
And now you're going to get her in trouble.
Well, I almost asked her about some stuff I heard a couple weeks ago about the farmers
being shot for protesting the land being taken away.
But I thought better not to ask about that.
So I'm kind of in this weird situation where I'm really curious about the Google.cn and
what limitations she's being subjected to, yet I don't want her Google conversation to
be maybe monitored by the Chinese equivalent of the NSA and end up her getting locked up
in a Chinese gulag somewhere.
You're pretty much done causing trouble over here, and now you've expanded your reach overseas.
I don't want to cause trouble for any good people.
So maybe governments, but that's a different thing.
Maybe we can see if any of our listeners can set up a proxy behind the firewall and allow
us to connect to that to see what kind of restrictions that are placed, as long as they
won't get in trouble for the potential.
We don't mind getting in trouble.
We can get in trouble here.
Just let's not get poor, innocent people in China in trouble.
I'd rather not do that.
I just want to say again that I don't think us performing these tests is meaningful unless
we all learn Chinese.
Well, we could do that too in our spare time.
Okay, moving on.
We have this development locally concerning the MTA's MetroCard.
Apparently a test program is beginning in the spring.
It's going to involve a select group of commuters.
I don't know how they're going to pick these people out, and use the same quick pay technology
that's used by such things as MasterCard, PayPass, and Citibank customers.
And basically what it means is you'll use a quick tap rather than a swipe to get into
the subway system.
It's supposed to make people go through the turnstiles much faster.
The tests are going to be done along the Lexington Avenue line, that's the 4, 5, and 6.
And the program is going to last for six months, and 26 stations are going to be participating.
Now that's, I'm happy to say, that's right where the 2600 meetings take place on that
particular line.
So we'll spend some time, I guess, playing around with that.
But Redbird, what is this system they're implementing?
They're implementing an RFID system basically, and I don't think the MTA is even funding
it.
I think it's a Citigroup and maybe somebody else.
Oh, so it will be at Citigroup station if they're funding it.
What they're doing is basically looking for a replacement for the MetroCard, which will
come in the form of RFID cards.
And Chicago already has this.
They're actually experimenting with it at the PATH station at the World Trade Center
as well.
There's no way you could currently buy the cards as far as I know, but they do have the
readers set up there at the turnstiles and at the vending machines to get info on your
card and refill it and whatnot.
So it seems like there's a lot of transportation systems around here that are starting to use
that technology as well.
I'm curious as to what problem exactly this solves.
Well, I know for me it solves the problem of, well, the swipe not working the first
time.
It's gotten better over the years.
Maybe somehow you'll have an idea if there's value on your card, or maybe there always
will be value on your card if you use this kind of a system.
I think you still have to refill them, but it'll certainly be easier to link it to your
credit card if that's something that you want to do.
The biggest pain in the ass is having a MetroCard and not knowing if there's any money on it
and getting on a bus.
Where were they when they designed this system?
You can't refill a MetroCard if you're not in a subway station.
There's no way to do it.
Not true.
They have the MetroCard buses that go around.
MetroCard buses?
These are buses fitted with MetroCard computers, readers, and riders inside, and they have
a station agent, which are the people normally in the token booths, former token booths,
and a collection agent to guard the money, and you can go and buy MetroCards in there.
This is one of the better yarns you've spun in a while.
This is true.
All right.
Well, next time you see a bus like that, please shout real loud so I hear you.
Why don't you go to their website, mta.info, and check the schedule for these things.
There's a schedule for the crazy bus that has a MetroCard machine in it?
Right.
It parks in various areas, normally near senior citizens.
Does it park or does it move?
Well, it moves at times.
It's not much of a bus if it's not moving.
Well, they stay still so that when they're near senior citizen centers, the senior citizens
can get on, put money on their cards, and then they can ride buses, which are much easier
when you're a senior citizen than when you're...
I've seen this bus.
I have to vouch for Jim this time.
All right.
Fine.
Take a picture, please.
But I've never been in it, but it does exist.
What would make more sense would be to have those big, sturdy machines that you can do
all kinds of MetroCard transactions at every bus stop, or at least at every other bus stop.
Would it be so difficult to do that?
Those machines are not so sturdy as they look.
Really?
According to reports...
What have you done to them?
I've done nothing to them, but according to reports, each machine fails an average of
once a day, which is a lot.
That's not bad considering how many people probably use those things.
Oh, okay.
But it's still a lot.
And what is a failure?
What considers a failure?
I don't know.
I get failures dealing with humans all the time.
Well, you know.
I'll demonstrate one in a minute, too.
But let's look at some listener email.
Of course, you can write to us, oth at 2600.com.
We'd love to hear from you, all kinds of positive and negative things.
I'm a long-time listener of the show.
Great work.
It's 2.30 a.m.
I was watching the History Channel, a show entitled Cannibals.
When cutting to a commercial break, the narrator's voice came on, Cannibals is brought to you
by Verizon Wireless.
This was way too good to pass up.
Signed iLuke.
Thank you very much for sharing that with us.
My goodness.
I wish we had a sound bite of that.
Yeah, that would be good.
I'm a listener to your show and have been for about four years.
I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
I remember a few years ago, you were mentioning on the air about how you watched the CFL Gray
Cup back in 2001 between my home team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and the Montreal Alouettes
on your Canadian satellite dish.
It's too bad the Bombers stink nowadays.
Oh, well.
What are you going to do?
Anyhow, I happen to like the political talk on your show because it is very relevant to
hacker-related issues.
If you guys only talked about purely tech-related things, it would get boring.
I think the flow of your show is very good the way it is right now.
Hopefully, he enjoys us coming from all different sides of his speakers as well.
Is there any possibility you might be increasing the sound quality of the MP3s of your show?
Okay.
He said this before we increased the sound quality of the MP3s in our show.
So, yes, your concerns have been addressed.
And Jens walked in, and he's one of the people that did this.
It's incredible, and many thanks.
I didn't realize you guys don't get BBC World in the USA.
As far as news goes, BBC is the only one that doesn't seem overly sensationalistic
and biased compared to most other news outlets, signed Phil.
Well, Phil, you're certainly right about that, and I've been going crazy over the last week
trying to get people to contact their cable companies and their satellite companies because
BBC World is now finally being offered in this country, and I have some information.
I called DirecTV, and they actually have had a few calls from people, and they said they're
going to count my vote for whatever that's worth.
I called Cablevision.
They had never heard of that channel, at least the representative I had talked to never heard
of it, but she promised on her way out she was going to drop it in the suggestion box
herself, and she was also interested in it after I described what it was like to her.
So that was kind of cool.
Today I spoke to Time Warner.
This is what I want to demonstrate.
I want to get on the phone here just to demonstrate the frustration calling them.
Here's our dial tone, and we're going to call their particular customer service number.
Now, keep in mind I had my account number.
I did not have my phone number that was registered to the account.
Thank you for calling Time Warner Cable, the place to be.
Please hold while your call is transferred.
No way.
That's not what happened the first time.
Now, that's not fair.
We've improved our system so you can answer by simply speaking into your phone.
If you would like to continue in English, say yes.
Are you a Time Warner Cable customer?
Yes.
Great.
Including the three-digit area code, please enter or say the phone number that's associated
with this account one digit at a time.
Otherwise, say more information.
More information.
In order to look up your account, I need to know the complete ten-digit phone number.
But I don't have the phone number.
In order to look up your account, I need to know the complete...
Listen, I don't have the phone number.
What can I possibly do?
Sure.
Including the three-digit area code, please enter or say the phone number that's associated
with this account.
Listen, you stupid computer.
I understand if I raise my voice and sound angry, you'll transfer me someplace.
Is that right?
You said, repeat that.
All right.
So for about 20 minutes, I had that little battle with Time Warner.
But eventually, eventually I reached a human being and I had a very nice conversation with
the human being.
Maybe she was able to hear all my interactions beforehand.
But she told me that there's one way to get BBC World onto Time Warner here in New York
City and that means, and it's a little difficult, but I know BAI listeners are capable of doing
this.
It means writing a letter, writing a letter to a particular person and I'm going to give
you the address.
She said if enough people write letters, they can guarantee practically that channel will
be added.
Now, why is this important?
Because you'll actually get perspective from another country, which is something you don't
get very often.
It's a perfect complement to BAI to actually see video from other lands, see reports from
Africa and Asia and all over the world.
Just today I was watching the riots in Israel.
Wasn't that fun?
They had horses and batons and everything.
Everyone had a good time.
Live coverage, right?
Right over the satellite there.
So okay, if you write in and just say that you're a subscriber, of course it helps if
you're a subscriber living in New York City and that you would like to see BBC World carried,
I think you might actually make a difference.
We can see what kind of power we have as individuals because maybe in six months that channel will
be available here in this city and then millions of people can see it for themselves and get
all kinds of alternative information that they would not have gotten otherwise.
I want to talk for a moment about cable channels that are not being carried, that are in fact
being dropped from the Dish network.
The Dish network is introducing something new called its family tier, family friendly
programming.
Yeah, I've heard about this.
And they do not want to include on this tier the free speech television channel, which
is a sort of a public access channel on the satellite networks.
And they have decreed that this channel for whatever reason is not family friendly and
they don't want to carry it.
Just in the family tier or anywhere?
In the family land.
So are they still carrying the channel?
Well, but the issue will be that if I guess you can set up your system so that you only
get the family friendly packages and per agreement with the FCC, Dish network is required to
carry a certain number of public interest channels, among them free speech television
and Brigham Young University television or something.
And Brigham Young has been decreed family friendly, but free speech has not been.
Well, if you're a Dish network subscriber, contact them about that.
But you completely hijacked my conversation about BBC World, which I'd like people in
New York City to contact this particular person by writing a letter and saying that you're
a subscriber and that you would like to see this channel.
And I guarantee if we succeed in doing this, it will have made a big difference to many,
many people because I'm sure a lot of people will find this interesting, informative, entertaining.
Not only do you see news, you see documentaries of sorts that simply are not really done in
this country, things that really take a hard look at US policy and a critical eye from
many different perspectives.
And if you send me proof that you wrote a letter and we actually get this channel on
Time Warner Cable in New York City, I'll send you some kind of a prize.
I guarantee that.
I'll give you our address a little later, but here's the address to write to.
You got your pens?
All right.
Guy's name is Robert Watson.
Be nice to Robert Watson because he's the guy that makes the decision.
And you can also write to him if you're not a subscriber, say that you will become a subscriber
if this channel is carried.
He's Vice President of Programming, New Business Development, strange title, New Business Development,
Time Warner Cable, 120 East 23rd Street, 9th floor, New York, New York, 10010.
OK.
One more time quickly.
Robert Watson, Vice President of Programming, New Business Development, Time Warner Cable,
120 East 23rd Street, New York, New York – I'm sorry, 9th floor, New York, New York, 10010.
And send us a copy of your letter and if we succeed, you'll be rewarded in some way.
You can do the same thing also if you live anywhere in the country.
Send a letter to your local cable company or your local satellite company and if you
actually succeed in getting this new perspective into the US, United States homes, I think
you're worthy of some kind of commendation.
So just send that over to us.
Our address is off the hook, care of WBAI, 120 Wall Street, 10th floor, New York, New
York, 10005.
All right.
Here's another letter sent to othat2600.com.
Today we had the 109th Radio Show of Chaos Radio at an FM station in Berlin, Germany
and the show ended just before yours.
So greetings from Berlin.
Hope to see you at Hope or at 23C3 being the 23rd CCC Congress next December in Berlin.
Signed Oliver from congressradio.de.
Thanks Oliver.
Good to hear from you and we hope to see you guys at our conference in July.
In fact, we hope to see a lot of Germans at our conference in July including the guys
who do the blinking lights display, the people who set up Legoland and all kinds of other
cool displays.
If you're out there, if you're part of the CCC, we definitely would like to have you
guys help us organize because you guys really have it together.
You guys are able to just snap your fingers and get amazing things done and that's what
we need here.
So send us email if you're interested in helping out, othat2600.com.
We certainly are in the planning stages of the conference which takes place July 21,
22 and 23.
Are people who are not German also welcome?
They are.
They are.
Yeah.
Not just Germans.
But the reason I mentioned Germans with such passion is because I've seen what they can
do to a conference hall, how they can bring in all this bandwidth, how they can make amazing
art displays, amazing robotic displays.
We have the space.
We have an amazing space in the middle of Manhattan.
You cannot get more conveniently located and it's a terrific opportunity.
What we are lacking, what we really need help with are an abundance of people that are willing
to simply devote their lives to making something happen that is incredible.
We have window displays.
We have all sorts of wide open space where we can set up robots or artistic displays.
Imagination is your limit.
Now if you're in New York City and you'd like to talk to us further about this, there is
a 2600 meeting this Friday.
You're welcome to come and talk to a couple of the HOPE coordinators and present your
ideas and we'll jot them all down, present them to all the rest of the coordinators and
see if maybe we can do something with your plans, your ideas for things to do at the
next HOPE.
HOPE number six and there will be more information soon on www.hope.net.
Emmanuel?
Yes.
Before you take some listener calls, I have a brief announcement which is time sensitive.
Okay, make it fast.
You were just mentioning satellite programming, BBC World, but there's a unique satellite
program that people can listen to this week only called the Suitsat.
All right, it's a silly name, but what is it really?
Well, it's going to be a satellite that consists of an old Russian space suit that some cosmonauts
are going to...
I guess they're not called cosmonauts anymore.
They're Russian astronauts.
We're going to stuff this suit with a ham radio transceiver, three batteries, and some
sensors to measure temperature and battery power and they're going to kick it out of
the space station and it's just going to be this disembodied space suit floating out there
and anybody with just a simple radio scanner or ham radio can pick up the signals which
are going to be broadcast in, I think, seven different languages with some telemetry and
even a slow scan TV signal, but you can hear all this stuff with just a regular cheap police
type scanner you can buy for $50 at Radio Shack or ham radio on the frequency of 145.990
megahertz.
Now, it's going to pass over only in certain narrow time windows, like twice a day, probably
starting tomorrow or Friday.
It's going to get kicked out of the space station and it's going to be orbiting for
a few days before it runs out of battery power and eventually reenters the Earth's atmosphere,
but if you go to suitsat.org, you can find a link to a tool where you can plug in your
zip code or your latitude and longitude coordinates and find out when the suit sat will be passing
overhead.
It's only going to pass overhead for like a five, ten minute time window every time
it passes over.
You're not going to find it by random, you'd be too lucky for that to happen.
You go to suitsat.org.
Do you think that maybe it'll pass over during the 2600 meeting this Friday?
I haven't looked it up because I don't know what the zip code is.
I guess I could have looked up the WBAI zip code.
Yeah, it's all pretty much the same.
I haven't done that, but if somebody goes to suitsat.org and they find a link for the
overpass calculation time windows, punch in your zip code and you'll find out when it's
going to pass over.
You're going to have to stand outside to pick up a signal because it's coming from lower
up.
Okay, we have a race here.
Jim is going to use the station computer and Redbird is using his laptop and hopefully
somebody will have an answer as to whether or not it's passing over in New York City
during the 2600 meeting.
But yeah, that's pretty interesting stuff.
And you'll be able to get what's called a QSL card, which is a TAM radio term for a
written confirmation of contact.
You'll be able to get a special postcard with a picture of the suit sat.
Go to suitsat.org just to see pictures of this thing, the space suit.
It's really amazing, the space suit, that they're stuffing with this equipment and they're
going to kick it out.
It makes me think of the movie Marooned where this guy was floating out and lost his oxygen.
It's spooky.
So these guys still know how to have fun up there.
That's the important thing.
This is like real hacker sense of humor, ham radio entertainment, so look forward to it.
Of course, you can get a QSL, not to ruin it for everybody, but you can get a QSL card
without actually listening, just by sending a request for one, can't you?
Well that would be cheating.
It would be cheating, yes, absolutely.
It would be wrong.
You can get special recognition if you can decode the slow scan TV signal, which anybody
can do.
There's free slow scan TV signal decoders you can download.
And if you just record the signal and decode the slow scan, which is like a single frame
of video and write in as to what it is, you'll get an even more special written confirmation
congratulating you on your reception.
Okay.
We almost are out of time, so we want to take some phone calls, 212-209-2900.
Boy, we really need two hours, don't we?
There's so many news stories, so many letters we haven't gotten to, and so many interesting
things to talk about.
And we want to hear from you as well, 212-209-2900.
Reminder, next week is our fundraiser and we're going to have all kinds of special things
on tap for you then.
I'm not sure how many times we're going to be on during the fundraiser, so let's make
sure that next week is particularly good in case that's the only time we're on.
212-209-2900 is our phone number.
And also another announcement.
We're aware the winter 2005-2006 edition of 2600 is out, and we're aware that a few clues
of the crossword puzzle were not printed, and we're sorry about this.
It will be online.
Check the main 2600 page sometime tomorrow and we'll have the whole thing posted there.
We're sorry for the inconvenience.
We've already gotten some flustered phone calls and pieces of email from people.
And again, we're sorry for the inconvenience.
Jim, did you find out something or have you given up?
I've given up because it requires the latitude and longitude, which I'm sure an approximation
would do.
But also it generates for several satellites.
I'm not sure which one is proper.
All right.
Let's take that phone call because we only have a few seconds left.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
All right.
I'm not sure which one is proper.
Okay.
You can't have a bad connection like that.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
All right.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Hey.
This is Dex from State College PA.
How are you guys doing tonight?
How are you doing?
Good.
Hey.
Just a quick observation.
If you type in democracy into google.com, google.nl, and google.co.jp, you get 144 million
results.
If you type it into google.cn, you're going to get 80 million results.
Oh, well, you know, that's a lot they're weeding out, I guess, but wow.
How do you ever get to like number 81 million in the first place?
I don't know.
I don't know how that works, but I also saw a piece on one of the major news networks
about there was a pro-democracy group in Japan that did a search in google.com, found so
many results, did a search in google.cn, and it turned out there were news stories about
how these people were arrested and convicted.
So I don't know the name of the group offhand, but yeah, it's filtering even if you're not
behind the firewall.
Interesting.
But how effective is the filtering?
That's the question.
Thanks for your call.
Redbird, have you gotten anywhere?
Are you giving up too?
I'm giving up.
Amazing.
A room full of hackers, and we can't find out when the damn satellite's passing over.
Or a space suit, or whatever it's called.
I did a google search for Suitsat Zip and Tracking, and I came up with a program called
J-Pass, which lets you plug in your zip code.
Okay, great.
But can you run the program?
I'm running it now.
All right.
Run it now.
Put in 1-0-0-0-1 or something, and I'm sure that'll cover us.
Take another phone call.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Hello?
How are you doing?
What's on your mind?
Listen, a couple of weeks ago, two or three weeks ago, two weeks ago, I came in late,
and you...
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
You were talking about the...
Someone that was...
Was it Bernie?
Someone was...
They were looking at a woman's house there or something.
She's going around.
We weren't doing that.
We were reporting on somebody doing that.
Yeah, right.
Okay.
Right.
Where was that?
What's that about?
How can I...
That was in England.
Anytime there's a story about people spying on people with cameras, it's probably in England.
I guess basically what it was was somebody who was monitoring one of the street cameras
who was being a little adventurous and pointing it into people's windows.
I don't think it was infrared or anything like that.
It was actually...
Yeah, but they also have infrared also, too, don't they?
Oh, sure.
Yeah, they do.
Well, how can...
Can that be detected, by the way, if they're doing that?
Is there a way to find out if they're doing it to trace it?
No, not really.
I mean, it's just...
It's all passive stuff.
There must be a way to find out.
There must be something you can get to find out.
Well, if it's passive, I mean, can you tell if somebody's looking at you without seeing
them?
No, I don't mean outside.
If it's an infrared or something like that.
Same thing as visual.
Can you tell if somebody's looking at you through binoculars or a telescope?
No.
No, no, no.
Well, someone said that you can.
It's in electronics.
That's why I'm asking you.
You might be able to find a resonant frequency for the electronic device, but you'd have
to be sending out some sort of signal that would overload it.
That could be interesting, but it's kind of impractical.
Yeah.
It uses essentially the same technology as a camera operating in the visible spectrum.
It's just different filters applied at the lens.
Generally speaking, the CCDs pick up everything from infrared up to the top of the visual.
We're being watched all the time from satellites, from cameras, from observing people.
It's kind of sad, but it's reality.
Thanks for your call.
Let's take one more.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Hi.
I lived in England for five years, and it's just kind of interesting that there are people
in Britain who are trying to get rid of the BBC.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, because they charge them the equivalent of $200 a year for the privilege of just having
it.
Mm-hmm.
And if you don't pay the, it's called the license fee, and if you don't pay it, you
get to find the equivalent of $2,000.
I mean, can you imagine if Fox News made you pay $200 to them, and then they call you into
court?
Yeah.
No.
It's prison time as well.
I understand the frustration, and I think it's done very poorly, but I do agree that
it's important to get people to contribute to this.
BBC does not have any commercials, at least over in England it doesn't, and that's what
that covers.
Not only does it cover the news, it covers all kinds of entertainment programs that are
really pretty gosh-darn good, and the licensing fee is the way that they do this.
Yeah, I agree that throwing people into prison for not paying it is the wrong approach, but
I do think it's a good way to avoid commercials and to have some measure of quality.
They also have, in Britain, trucks that drive through the towns, and they can detect whether
or not, if you have a television and you don't report it, like I said, you can be fined,
you can be given jail time, and also, it's the most biased reporting.
I mean, it's notoriously biased.
I just don't understand why it's so inadequate.
Every reporting is biased.
I think in light of what we see here in America—
Yeah, but you're paying for the biased reporting.
I mean, that's the difference.
Well, we pay our cable bills, we pay the advertising cost for all the people that advertise on
networks—
But as I said, it would be like Fox News charging you $200 a year to listen to biased reporting.
That's what you get in the BBC.
I mean, there's several good websites that talk about the biased reporting of the BBC,
and they're notorious for that, absolutely notorious.
Well, I'll still take them any day over Fox or CNN, but that's my opinion.
Thanks for yours.
Bernie, are you getting anywhere with that program?
Yes, I do.
It looks like in Manhattan, the only time you're going to be able to hear the Suits
set before the batteries run out is tomorrow—that is, February 2nd—tomorrow morning at 4.45
a.m.
Oh, for Christ's sake.
You're usually still up around that time, aren't you?
That's true.
I guess maybe I am.
All right.
All right.
So if we're up at 4.45 in the morning, we can listen to a spacesuit up in space.
145.990 megahertz.
Stand out there, plug it in your scanner, and at 4.45 this morning, this coming morning,
you're going to hear some really unusual stuff.
Is that local time or Greenwich Mean Time?
No, that's New York time.
Okay.
And that's as close as it gets?
We can't get a better time in Jersey or something?
Unfortunately, on the 3rd, the batteries have already run out.
Oh, man.
Okay.
So, sorry.
All right.
Let's take one more phone call.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Make it quick.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Make it quick, please.
I have a question about these phone scams, that they're sort of like major carriers run
with people where they, if someone panics and gives them a whole bunch of collect calls
and they're answering machines on, they get billed for those at their house, even though
their answering machine didn't pick them up?
Well, there are all sorts of phone companies that charge you for collect calls when there's
nobody there.
Sometimes, they can't tell the difference between the calling party and the called party,
and somebody calling you can say, yes, I accept, and they believe that.
So, there are all sorts of tricks.
The best way to avoid this thing, the only way to avoid this thing is put a collect call
block on your line.
That way, no calls can get through that are collect.
And if you do accept collect calls, maybe there's a different way you could do it through
an 800 number or something like that.
We're out of time to really explore this issue, but of course, it's a fascinating one.
Again, 2,600 meetings this Friday, so hope to see you there, New York City and all around
the world.
We'll see you next week at this time for the fundraiser.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show.
Manny Goldstein for OffTheHook.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Whoo!
Yeah.
Ha!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Who was that?
In Vegas.
All right.
Hey, well, you're listening to WBAI, or you're listening to WBAI, or you're listening to
WBAI, or you're listening to WBAI, or you're listening to WBAI, or you're listening to
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