And you are listening to radio station WBAI, the time is 7 o'clock.
It's Wednesday night, time once again for country music.
No, only kidding. Off the hook time.
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.
Bondedly Bond for the best, expect the worst.
I hope that's understood.
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Bondedly Bond!
Everybody, the program is off the hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you.
On this Wednesday evening, and yes, no country music tonight.
That was only last week.
Joined tonight by NotKevin.ret, Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Great frequency, say hi.
Hey there.
And Voltaire.
Hi.
And down in Philadelphia, Bernie S.
Happy Passover.
Yes, and, well it hasn't started yet.
But we had quite a reaction, didn't we, to all the shenanigans of last week.
Any highlights leap out at you, Bernie?
What we did?
The whole thing, the whole thing leapt out at me.
It was just, I had trouble staying still to that country beat music.
Yeah, yeah, and we have our friend Laszlo to thank for putting that together.
Basically, for those of you who didn't tune in, last week was April 1st.
And we started the whole thing off with a big countdown.
Well, not really a countdown, sort of like a goodbye.
What the last broadcast of WBAI might sound like if that dark day ever were to happen.
And kind of closing off with Redemption Song by Bob Marley, and then Silence, and then Static.
And then all of a sudden, a new air signal, a countdown, and this super hyped up sound saying,
Country music has returned to New York City.
New York City just got a little southern, and you're at the beginning of a 10,000 song marathon.
Commercial free.
Commercial free.
And we were trying to think of the thing that would be the biggest form of hell to our listeners.
And that came up, and then we just pieced together four straight songs.
People were saying, you know, okay, you know, after one song, okay, one song's a joke.
Two songs, okay, not so funny.
Three songs, hey, what the hell's going on here?
And yeah, that was the point, to get people to realize this is what could happen.
This is what could happen to this frequency.
This is what could happen any time.
And then we sort of, we couldn't quite find our way back.
We kept flashing into different times and dimensions and things like that.
And all of a sudden, we were doing a sports show.
And then we flashed again, and we were doing some kind of regular technical show,
except the stories were all kind of crazy, except not that crazy, kind of believable.
And then finally we flashed into our right time zone and right period of conversation and all that.
And by then it was too late.
We were out of time.
But not out of space.
It was a harrowing journey.
It was.
We got quite a bit of feedback.
Some people liked it.
Some people hated it.
Some people thought it wasn't funny to pretend that the station had gone country.
But you know what?
I think we made a serious point here that, you know, you have a powerful station in the middle of New York City.
Believe me, if Pacifica sold the station, then, yeah, it would be country music or it would be something else.
It would be something like all the other stations.
It's exactly the kind of thing that could happen.
I don't think we have a country station, so I think that that would be perfect for this station.
We don't have a country station in New York.
We have what's known as HD2 stations or whatever, I think one station broadcast in HD.
And, Bernie, maybe you could explain that to us.
Does that mean high-definition radio?
What exactly is that HD business?
Well, HD is a trade name.
It doesn't really mean anything.
It's not an acronym.
But a lot of people think it means high-definition.
But, in fact, the digital audio on these HD radio stations is inferior to the analog audio you're hearing right now.
It's lower fidelity.
You can have a couple of sidebands, like HD1 and HD2, on this station.
If it were an HD station, you'd get your regular analog or the digital.
But they all sound worse, believe me.
Have you actually heard them?
Oh, yeah.
I've borrowed someone's HD radio, and you get this weird picket fencing effect where it's sort of a hybrid signal.
You get the analog and the digital broadcast on the same carrier.
But when the bit rate gets too error-prone, the radio will automatically switch to analog.
And it switches in and out between analog and digital, and it just sounds awful.
And I'm sure anybody listening has an HD radio that listens to other stations that are HD and experiences weird effects.
But I don't think it's going to catch on, because nobody wants to spend $100 for a radio.
Not that people are even buying a lot of radios anymore.
Right.
But it's just not catching on.
It costs like $100,000 for a radio station to get it, and you have to pay licensing fees to use the proprietary technology.
All that, yeah. Sounds like things we used to dot-rat.
Bernie, do you know if it's a standard feature for the receivers to switch between analog and digital?
Most of the HD radios do that as a standard feature.
You can switch it in and out.
Like there's some radios, regular stereo radios, you can just press the mono button to put it in mono mode.
But there's HD radios you can say, all right, switch back and forth.
But, yeah, you could have it just stay on analog or stay on digital.
But if you're told to stay on digital, when a signal drops down below a certain strength, it'll just drop out.
It's like a cliff effect.
You just lose all the audio, kind of like the digital TV signals.
You have a decent picture, and then bang, it disappears completely.
There's no gray area.
Interesting.
Okay, we have an interesting announcement here for people that are looking for the new edition of the Best of 2600 book.
This is something that we heard about through our friends over at Wiley.
Apparently, there are all these signed copies of the Best of 2600, the ultimate edition, whatever,
the new edition that has the CD in it and all the covers and all kinds of added features.
The poster.
The poster in there, the full-color poster.
Now, ordinarily, there's a place called Micro Center that has these.
I know because I had to sign a whole bunch of them.
It was an afternoon of fun.
But only the Micro Center, I think, in Columbus, Ohio has these.
But they told us today that if you go to microcenter.com and enter these digits, this special code, 026666,
enter that in the search bar, then it will magically pop up, and you can actually get a signed edition yourself.
So I just wanted to pass that along, microcenter.com.
Not going to be available forever, but they are available in that way.
So, yeah, exciting.
Do it after the show.
People are trying to leave to do it now.
No, do it after the show if they're already still around.
Okay.
So, yeah.
Did you hear about this case, though?
This is funny.
I was listening to this before, actually.
There's this kid who apparently had robbed a car, stolen something out of a car, and he pocket-called 911.
And basically had a whole big, long conversation with some friends of his where he basically confessed to the entire thing,
talked about how it was hard for him.
He said, it was bolted down.
I had to rip it out.
He's heard saying, it took all my energy to lift it out of the car.
His friends seemed to be unimpressed with what may only be a stolen cricket phone, lamenting that it's not a BlackBerry.
Despite long interludes of silence or muddied, unintelligible voices, the cops continued to eavesdrop.
In fact, they recorded the whole thing, and you can hear it online.
It's being passed around all over the place.
It goes about 12 minutes.
And it's only about seven minutes in that you can actually hear him really clearly saying what it was he did.
Well, the cops used cell phone signal triangulation with help from the phone company to find out where this kid was
and send a squad car over to where he was located.
And it's really kind of funny, I guess, but also it's kind of serious.
Bernie, did they overstep their legal rights in tracking him down this way?
It's a really interesting legal question.
And I'm sure his lawyer, if he's sharp, will try to challenge this as a confession that was not meant to be overheard.
But, I mean, he did call 911 just inadvertently.
It happened to probably all of us.
You put your phone in your pocket, and, you know, it presses up against your butt and presses some buttons
and calls somebody, and people get to hear you talking to people, and you don't even know they're hearing it.
I get that all the time.
People actually have me on speed dial as 2600 sometimes, and that, of course, makes it the first one in the list.
So many times phones just call the first number in the phone book.
And there are people that if I see them on caller ID, I know they're not calling me because I haven't talked to them in five years.
But I know that I'm going to hear all about their lives as they walk around the East Village or something like that.
And what do I do?
Do I call them back and say, hey, you know what?
Stop calling me.
I know you don't think you're calling me, but you are calling me.
So please erase me from your phone.
You know, I just basically replace their name with do not answer because that way when it rings on the phone, I don't ever answer it.
I just listen to voicemail later and see if they say anything incriminating.
Voicemail messages like that, too.
It's just like somebody's windshield wipers for 15 minutes or something.
What was amazing here was that the cops kept on the line.
They kept saying 911 emergency.
I guess they have to stay on because if someone's falling and they can't get up, they need to be able to get address information or something like that.
Right?
I think he will.
I don't think the evidence will be suppressed.
I think the evidence will be admitted, and they will be able to use that evidence against him.
I think he's probably going to plead to something.
Especially since when they found him, he still had the stolen radio in his hand.
So that was kind of hard.
He actually, at the end of the conversation, he actually talked to them and said, oh, I'm sorry.
My phone must have called you by accident.
Apparently he wasn't tipped off that they were on the way for him.
Not Kevin.
Now, would this violate the one-party consent rule of recording?
Well, it is the police.
They record everything.
They always record 911 calls.
But if he inadvertently called them, he didn't give them consent.
I don't know if that's true.
Well, it also depends on the state.
So it might not even be a one-party.
I think if you call 911, it doesn't matter whether you give consent or not.
Anything you say is going to be recorded and used against you if it's of criminal intent or something like that.
If someone the kid was talking to said something incriminating, that person might have a case for saying that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
But the kid who actually made the call, even though he made it inadvertently, I don't think his speech will be suppressed as evidence.
Well, it is an interesting case, and we'll see where that goes.
Wow.
The embarrassment, though.
Imagine that.
An inadvertent phone call to the cops.
Wow.
Now, as far as the triangulation, I guess if you call the cops with 911 on a cell phone and you need their help but you haven't told them where you are,
how does that work exactly?
Do they use triangulation as a rule to find out where you are?
It depends on the cell phone.
Most cell phones now have a GPS global positioning system receiver chip built into it.
It picks up a satellite signal and the orbiting military satellites that triangulate your coordinates and then your coordinates are transmitted along with your cellular signal to the cellular office.
If your phone is an older one, they can do it by triangulation between the towers that your cell phone is between two or three towers.
They can figure out roughly where you are, probably within a couple hundred yards.
But if it's the newer phone, they can tell you with pretty good accuracy where you are unless you're in a building or something and your phone can't see the GPS satellites, in which case it has to do the triangulation.
But apparently it was good enough for them to find this kid.
It was hardly an emergency.
You know, I could spend all this time calling the phone company for a stolen radio.
How long did it take before they actually caught up with them?
I mean, it didn't sound like they spent that much.
They just spent time listening on the phone.
I guess they figured at that point they invested enough time in it, might as well, you know, capture somebody for admitting something on the phone.
It's an interesting case that you'll always remember.
One of the big selling points for this technology was there was a few cases where someone was kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of a car.
Yeah, I saw that on 24.
Calling 9-1-1.
This actually did happen to a handful of people, but, you know, hardly enough to build a whole infrastructure across the country to solve, I guess.
But in any case, they would call 9-1-1 from the trunk of the car, but they wouldn't know where they were because they're in a dark trunk somewhere.
And then the 9-1-1 people would have no idea where these people were, and it would be very frustrating.
And sometimes the people ended up getting killed or raped or worse.
But now with this technology, they can have a pretty good idea of where you are.
Now, it also is a very handy thing because now law enforcement and other government agencies can literally tell where everybody is all the time.
As long as your phone is on, you don't even have to be making a call.
We did a demonstration a few months ago last year where we called Sprint's corporate security department where it had a menu where law enforcement officers can just put in a phone number and get the coordinates of where you're located.
It's very scary.
Everybody is wearing tracking devices now, and law enforcement can tell where any of us are at any moment in time.
And these drop off.
Even if we turn the phone off, they're going to be able to do this?
No.
If the phone is powered off, they cannot.
All right.
In the actually safest way, sometimes when you turn them off, they're not really off either.
They still could be receiving the signal and could be pinged.
So if you really want to be totally safe, take the battery out, and that's for sure not going to be tracking you.
Right.
Or if you really want to be safe, leave the phone at home or at somebody else's home.
Or put it in somebody else's car so that the police don't go on a wild goose chase.
Yeah, that's always fun.
DotRed, you have a really cool phone.
You just got this phone.
It's an Android phone.
Yes, it is.
It's not a robot or anything like that.
It's actual.
Actually, it is.
It's going to uprise.
We were in a cafe the other night, and you issued a command to this phone, and it was able to tell us pretty much where we were just by you asking where we were.
Can it do that now?
Can it tell us where we are right now?
We're inside a building.
Yes, we are inside a building.
It basically looks for cell signals and figures out from the cell signals.
I, by default, have the GPS turned off to save the battery, so it just uses triangulation.
It usually gets it right within a block or so.
Of course, Android phones aren't the only phones that can do that.
Lots of phones have that capability, but this is one of them.
iPhones can do that.
Sorry?
The iPhone can do that as well.
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
I don't think it has GPS built into it, but it can figure out through AT&T's network which cell sites it's closest to and give you a rough idea, like that rat said, within a block or two.
Now, cell phone triangulation doesn't always work very well.
Actually, just earlier today, it told me by cell phone triangulation I was in the middle of the water.
Really?
Yes.
And you weren't.
Maybe it's creating the future and global warming catastrophe in New York.
Yeah, maybe it was a cynical statement that it was making.
Do you guys find you need a phone to tell you whether or not you're inside a building?
Yes.
Yes, I do.
That's very confusing.
It depends what kind of day we're having.
I still have the same clunky phones that it takes 10 seconds for a message to show up when I'm reading them.
It's time for me to upgrade to something better.
I realize that.
But the thing is I'd like to have something like an iPhone but be able to choose my company.
I'd like to be able to use T-Mobile or AT&T.
Same thing with the Android phone.
Now, I happen to have T-Mobile now, so I'm not really in the mood to switch to a different company,
especially since I've been with T-Mobile since the last century.
And whenever you call them, they always kind of sound shocked.
And you get this immediate respect because you're one of the early customers.
And you've been there since they were called OmniPoint, which is two phone companies ago.
So I don't want to give that up and become a new customer of another company.
And, Bernie, I think you still have that status with Sprint, don't you?
Yeah, they're shocked that I've been with them for like 12 years plus.
I'm shocked.
They're my first subscribers in Philadelphia.
And sometimes they look at my account records.
They're like, oh, my gosh, you've been with us forever.
With the service we offer, how is that possible?
Yeah, exactly.
It's just sort of a love-hate relationship.
I just like to track their demise, which I think they're all the cell phone companies.
The only cell phone company that's doing really well right now is MetroPCS.
It's one of these prepaid phone companies.
They're stealing customers from all the other carriers because they have this like $50 a month unlimited everything deal,
which is more competitive than the others, but they have a limited network too.
There's no secret.
The whole cell phone market is saturated now.
Everybody has a cell phone pretty much.
Everybody who wants a cell phone pretty much has one now.
Yeah, but now you've got to get the new version.
Yeah, but I mean it's all the companies.
The number of cell phone users is not growing.
So these companies, their market share isn't growing much unless they steal customers from another carrier.
It's not like there's new customers that are appearing in large levels like used to over the past few years.
I want to get one of those cell phones.
They're pretty cool.
But, you know, everybody who's going to need one pretty much has one or they want to upgrade,
but they generally stay with the same company.
Well, children, infants, you know, all kinds of people that don't necessarily have them yet might find a use for them,
a way of tracking people, a way of keeping track of where certain people are.
Maybe you want two.
Maybe you want a second one as a backup.
I have two.
I have Verizon and I have T-Mobile.
In fact, okay, this is something that kind of sucks for me.
I'm going away starting tomorrow actually.
I'm going up through Montreal.
My car needs service.
I've got to go up to Canada.
And then from there I'm going all the way out to Wisconsin.
I'm not sure how I'm going to do this yet.
I might drive in the northern part of Quebec and Ontario and then come down into Wisconsin.
The thing is while I'm driving in Canada, there's no real plan that works for phones, for cell phones.
It's really pretty expensive to make calls, to receive calls, even to text message.
And I can't believe that I can get better deals over in Europe by having foreign SIMs and things like that.
So if anyone knows of a decent plan for either T-Mobile or Verizon in Canada, please forward that to oth2600.com.
And if anybody knows of anything interesting to see along the way between Montreal and Wisconsin, I'd also like to know about that.
But actually this all sort of revolves around the fact that I'm going to be able to make it to Nauticon in Cleveland,
not this weekend coming up but the one after that.
And I believe, Bernie, you'll be there too.
Yes, and I think Rob is going and Leo and a bunch of other friends are going.
A whole bunch of people are coming from New York.
So it would be kind of cool to see you guys there.
And we had Froggy from Nauticon on the show a couple of weeks ago talking about that particular Hacker Conference
and how much fun it's going to be.
And hopefully we'll see a bunch of you out there.
It takes place in Cleveland the weekend of what, the 17th or the 19th?
That's right.
Actually the festivities start Thursday, like a preview Thursday night.
And it goes all day Friday, all day Saturday until about 3 o'clock on Sunday.
And one of the new things about this Nauticon is there will be a whole room with spaces
dedicated to various hacker spaces around the country, like NYC Resistor is going to be there,
the hacker space that Mitch is associated with in San Francisco, the name escapes me right now,
is going to have a space there, I believe.
The Hackery in Philadelphia is going to have a space there,
just sort of showing off some of the stuff they've been working on and give out information and trade ideas.
So there's so many more hacker spaces this year than there were just a year ago
that it's just good to get all these people together and exchange ideas about what works for your group.
And in the new issue of 2600 Magazine, which is just arriving on newsstands and in subscribers' mailboxes,
you will see a page devoted to all the hacker spaces in this particular hemisphere.
And that way you can wander around town, 2600 in hand, and find one that's near you.
And that list is going to grow. This is going to get bigger and bigger. We'll need more pages.
There's also hackerspaces.org.
Hackerspaces.org, if you're online, yes. Go there and get all kinds of...
They have all kinds of different ones there, ones that are in vans and things like that.
Ones that have fallen apart two years ago.
Yeah, yeah. We basically sort of narrowed it down to the ones that actually exist,
that have addresses, that want people to come there and aren't secret and things like that.
Okay, so that'll be fun. Canada, Natacan, Wisconsin, Ohio. Yeah.
Fun thing is, I've got to drive back to Montreal after Natacan to get the smart car and drive back here.
It's crazy, but nobody will service a Canadian car in this country, so occasionally it's necessary.
All right. This is an interesting story that we also got. This is courtesy of the BBC.
The government in Thailand has set up a special website,
urging people to inform on anyone criticizing the monarchy.
This is something that I know our listeners can help out with.
If you know somebody who's criticizing the Thai monarchy,
well, you can do some good and report them or report their website,
and that way the people of Thailand don't have to be subjected to it.
It's established an internet security center to coordinate the blocking of websites,
deemed offensive to the monarchy, and on the first day of operation,
the center banned nearly 5,000 websites. Yeah, 5,000.
The Ministry of Information had already blocked many thousands of sites,
but that work is now being accelerated by the new center.
For all the many other challenges confronting the new government in Thailand,
it has made protecting the image of the monarchy one of its highest priorities.
Internet users are being urged to show their loyalty to the king by contributing to a new website.
You ready? It's protecttheking.net.
That's right, protecttheking.net.
It's been set up by a parliamentary committee, and on the site's front page,
it's described as a means for Thai people to show their loyalty to the king
by protecting him from what it calls misunderstandings about him.
It calls on all citizens to inform on anyone suspected of insulting or criticizing the monarchy.
The site has managed to block 4,818 websites in its first 24 hours of operation.
The military apparently is concerned about growing anti-monarchy sentiment,
particularly among supporters of the ousted prime minister.
So, interesting times.
I guess we can access that site here, can't we?
I tried the other day, but I could not.
When the story came out a couple of days ago, I tried to access it
because I wanted to say on the site that when I was in Thailand,
I saw billboards and pictures of the king everywhere,
and his ears stick out a whole lot, and he looks really ridiculous.
Wait a minute, that's criticism.
That's why you can't reach the site, because that's criticism, Bernie.
You're blocked now.
I just wanted to post that note myself on their website.
I just wanted to say that all these billboards and posters of the king everywhere in Thailand
make him look ridiculous.
They cut you off at the pass, Bernie, because you were going to say something to offend them,
and they wouldn't let you.
Not Kevin.
China's been doing the same thing for a while now,
except they're throwing people they catch in prison.
Is there any news of Thailand doing the same thing?
I imagine they might.
If I was running a country like that, and that was my goal,
to find people that were criticizing the monarchy, yeah, you'd come after them, sure.
Makes sense.
But my impression is that they're blocking sites everywhere, not just in Thailand,
any site that criticizes the monarchy.
What I happened to notice was they not only got protecttheking.net,
but they also bought up the .com and .org domains, so they got the big three.
They have all of them.
They have all of them.
I'm wondering why they would use the generic domains instead of maybe something.
What's Thailand's domain?
.th.
.th.
Further patriotic ties.
I think there's another way to help out the country
by adding fake complaints and stuff.
It's kind of like a DDoS attack.
Just go on the website and put in anything that you want to waste their time, I guess.
Well, that's what people did after Tiananmen Square.
They faxed China over and over again with all kinds of lists of people
that they were supposed to investigate and turn in, except they didn't exist.
There was bad information, and it just wasted a lot of time, supposedly.
That's how the story goes.
Hint, hint.
Yes.
I'm just amazed they even got those domains.
I kind of would have figured they already would have been taken up.
Who else would have protecttheking.net?
I don't know.
Maybe some fans of some king in some other country.
These domains have been around for quite some time.
Well, you just have to come up with a phrase.
It's not necessarily the best phrase that comes up with a winning combination.
For instance, eBay could have just as easily been called something else.
Protect the auctions.
It happened to be something that was available, easy to remember.
Flickr is a great example.
They don't even spell Flickr right.
No, but Flickr is not really a word.
It doesn't have an E.
That's my point.
But protect the king.
That's a real phrase.
And there are many kings around the world.
The person who actually has Flickr with an E,
they don't have anything on their site,
and they could be making a million dollars.
How many people do you think go to the wrong one?
It's amazing.
So, yeah, you can come up with all kinds of crazy words and things,
and it'll be remembered.
Protecttheking.net
Okay, what else?
Okay, talking about China.
Eight parents and teachers who used high-tech equipment
to help children cheat in Chinese college entrance exams
have been sent to prison.
They were given sentences of six months to three years
after being found guilty of obtaining state secrets.
State secrets, wow.
One group of parents, some of them local officials,
waited a teacher to fax them the questions
once the exam got underway.
They organized six university students to answer them.
That's kind of a weird way of saying that sentence,
and it comes from the BBC.
They had organized six university students to answer them.
They sent these answers using mobile phones
to their children in the exam hall
who were wearing tiny earpieces.
Wow.
Well, wait, how would that work?
They sent text messages, or they talked to them?
I guess they talked to them on mobile phones
You can't really hear a text message with earphones, can you?
Could be a voice synthesizer.
Another man had employed more high-tech equipment.
He bribed the student taking the same exam as his son
to get him the questions using a miniature scanner.
He had nine teachers on standby to answer them.
He then transmitted the answers back to the two boys taking the exam.
A third scam involved a teacher at the school
who had charged hundreds of dollars to get the answers to students
but whose equipment failed.
The cheats were discovered when police nearby
detected the efforts to transmit the answers to the students on their radios.
Wow.
In court, one of the fathers involved said they had high hopes for their children
and the exams were vital for them to secure good futures.
So those of you trying to get into college now,
and you have parents that are really pushing you and willing to do anything,
will they go this far?
Will they actually risk going to prison to cheat
to get you into the school of your choice?
Well, apparently in China, there's a lot of people
pushing for that entrance exam.
Amazing.
Doesn't anyone just write the multiplication tables on their palm anymore?
Yeah, I never did that, actually.
Me either, but who would think?
Yeah, incredible. Yes, not Kevin.
What I want to know is how is a test state secret?
Anything in China tends to be a state secret if they want it to be.
Yeah, a lot of fun.
Okay, those of you flying,
American Airlines is about to expand in-flight web access.
Yeah, expanding internet access to about half its fleet of aircraft
over the next two years as it attempts to raise revenue
and improve customer service.
The company said yesterday it will install flying Wi-Fi hotspots
in about 300 planes used in the continental US,
charge up to $12.95 for browsing the web,
sending email, or connecting with corporate VPN sites.
American has been testing in-flight internet service
for several months on 15 planes.
The airline declined to give figures on usage during the test,
but an American technology executive called the response positive.
American Airlines is a very financially driven airline.
We are especially careful in how we're spending,
but this is a good strategic investment,
something our customers will value.
I don't know.
You think people will value using the internet on flights?
I mean, I guess using the internet is different than using a cell phone, right?
I imagine so.
I'm sorry, Bernie.
They're going to block voice over IP packets
so you can't have voice conversations like through Skype.
Oh, really?
Yeah, they're going to block that so you can't do that.
I don't think the latency would let it work anyway,
but they specifically said they're not going to allow voice over IP,
and I think for flights under,
I don't know if the article you're looking at has prices,
but I think it was like $12.95 for under two hours,
but if the trip is more than two hours, it's more money.
It's $5.95 for some red-eye flights, $7.95 using a handheld device,
$9.95 using a laptop computer on a flight up to three hours,
$12.95 for using a laptop on a longer flight.
So, yeah, I suppose it's different prices
depending on where you're going and what you're using.
They also plan to have censorship policies
on the traffic that goes through just regular websites.
They're going to block pornographic sites.
They say at first the airline said they weren't going to do that,
but they relented after hearing complaints from customers and flight attendants.
I guess people were surfing porn on those 15 flights that they were testing.
Yeah, there was a very loud chorus also telling us
do not allow voice over IP calls in the cabin.
So I guess that means cell phones probably would be a negative thing as well.
But if they're going to allow you to connect to things like corporate VPNs,
what's stopping you from using the same functionality
to connect to your own system at home,
bounce the connection through that, and surf unfiltered?
I guess an angry crowd of passengers with torches and things
that'll string you up right there.
I don't know.
Of course, you can always pretend you're talking to somebody when you're not.
That'll annoy people because they can't figure out how you did it.
You could pretend to be talking to somebody
and pretend to be watching a porno at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, unbelievable.
Okay, what's happening over in the UK,
our surveillance capital of the world?
The government is backing a project to install a communication box
in new cars to track the whereabouts of drivers anywhere in Europe.
That's according to The Guardian.
Under the proposals, vehicles will emit a constant heartbeat,
revealing their location, speed, and direction of travel.
The EU officials behind the plan believe it will significantly reduce
road accidents, congestion, and privacy.
No, I added that, but carbon emissions is the other thing they're saying.
How is it going to reduce carbon emissions?
Does anybody have an idea as to how that's going to work,
knowing where drivers are?
I guess maybe by telling them to go someplace else
if everybody is going to the same place.
Specifically, The Guardian was given unpublished documents
detailing the proposed uses for the system.
They confirmed that it could have profound implications for privacy,
enabling cars to be tracked to within a meter,
more accurate than current satellite navigation technologies.
The European Commission has asked governments
to reserve radio frequency on the 5.9 GHz band,
essentially setting aside a universal frequency
on which this particular technology,
known as Cooperative Video Infrastructure Systems, or CVIS,
that technology will work on 5.9 GHz.
They say there are no current plans
to make installation of the technology mandatory.
However, those involved in the project
describe the UK as one of the main state backers.
Transport for London has also hosted trials of the technology.
You know, guys, I'm beginning to think
that this is just going to be a given,
that just pretty much like we have headlights in our cars,
we're going to have tracking devices now,
and you're going to have to jump through a whole lot of hoops
to disable them.
And if you don't have tracking enabled in your car,
that's going to be a red flag right there.
You pass a cop, he's going to say,
wow, that person must be up to something.
I can't track him.
And we seem to be welcoming these innovations with open arms
because, hey, they protect us.
If our car gets stolen or if we're in trouble
or we get hijacked in our own car or something like that,
then this is here to protect us.
And we're all going around with our Android phones and our iPhones,
knowing where we are to within a few inches,
and we're happy about this.
I don't know.
Bernie, what do you think?
I think it's scary.
Like you said, it's a double-edged sword.
People, all these tracking and spying technologies are always
sugar-coated by the government agencies and corporations
that really have ulterior motives.
They want to, like, for instance,
use your location to market stuff to you.
Like if you are near a store,
then they're going to send you marketing information
because you're near that store.
Oh, boy.
I mean, there's, you know, this is not all good.
I would think that you could try to, you know, if you're a good hacker,
you could figure out ways to disable these tracking devices in your car,
either by disabling the antenna or jamming the 5.6 gigahertz signal.
I imagine there will be a cottage industry
and people trying to jam these things once they become mandatory
or block them some way.
But it's going to be a challenge to,
it's becoming a bigger and bigger challenge to protect your privacy
about where you are and what you say.
It seems like this is another method of, like,
trying to justify these tracking methods.
It used to be only about security,
but now it seems to be about green issues as well.
Like when New York City was trying to install cameras
to track people's, how often they came into the city by their license plate,
they used green issues to justify it.
So I think it's important that we, like,
separate protecting the environment while protecting your privacy.
I don't think that one can be used to justify the other.
Now we have a very limited system just like this already here.
EasyPass and all the other toll booth things,
they do the exact same things on a limited scale.
Right, and EasyPass actually has transponders
in places you don't know where the transponders are.
That's how they have these new signs up on Long Island
that tell you what the traffic will be like for the next,
up until the next intersection or something like that.
It'll say it'll take you about eight minutes to get there,
and they're getting that information by reading EasyPasses as they go by.
So it's not just when you go through a toll that they read this information.
They're taking it at all different times.
I know for a fact they actually have these receivers
embedded in certain highways throughout the country
to basically catch people speeding.
Yeah, yeah, and when I drive up tomorrow on the thruway,
I might take an EasyPass with me and go really, really fast
and see if I get a ticket based on the EasyPass.
Of course, I could get pulled over just by a cop, you know, for speeding,
but if I get pulled over for the EasyPass transponder,
that'll be an interesting story to tell.
I'm kidding.
The thing is that an EasyPass is still detachable.
You're allowed to take it off when you're not going through a toll bridge
and put it in an ammo box or something, so it can't be read.
You can't really do that if it's going to be a component of your car.
Exactly. If it's inside your car, you don't even know where it is.
Now get this. This is also kind of interesting.
Basically, these things are going to talk to each other.
The system allows cars to talk to one another and the road.
Yeah, talk to the road.
A communication box behind the dashboard ensures that cars send out
heartbeat messages every 500 milliseconds through mobile, cellular,
and wireless local area networks, short-range microwave, or infrared.
Now these messages will be picked up by other cars in the vicinity,
allowing vehicles to warn each other if they are forced to brake hard
or swerve to avoid a hazard.
And that data is also picked up by detectors at the roadside
and mobile phone towers, and that enables the road to communicate with cars,
allowing for intelligent traffic lights to turn green when cars are approaching
or gantries on the motorway to announce changes to speed limits.
What's a gantry? Does anybody know what that word is?
This is from the Guardian in England, so of course they're going to have
these crazy words I've never heard of, gantries.
I guess it's like an entranceway or something.
Data will also be sent to control centers that manage traffic,
enabling a vastly improved system to monitor and even direct vehicles.
I mean, all that sounds great.
How many times have we been stuck at stupid traffic lights that turn red
when nobody's around?
It would be nice to have traffic lights that actually work where you can
simply keep going based on how many cars are on the road.
But the privacy issues, wow, they're pretty scary.
Just knowing where you are at all times, and eventually, yes,
this will become mandatory.
There's no question about that.
Bernie, any chance we can fight this somehow?
Well, like I said, a good hacker can figure out a way to, as Rob pointed out,
shield your device so you only use it where you absolutely have to use it.
I still prefer to use cache instead of EasyPass.
I'd rather wait a minute in line than have my web apps tracked.
But it's going to get harder and harder.
Hey, we should talk about the North Korean communications satellite.
Yes, tell us all about that, Bernie.
Well, the KCNA, not a radio station, it's the Korean Central News Agency,
reported that the North Korean government, the NPRK,
successfully launched a communications satellite into orbit a couple of days ago.
This has been in the news for the past couple of weeks.
North Korea was saying they were going to do this,
and all the other countries were up in arms saying,
hey, this is really just a thinly-veiled missile test
to test a new ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile platform.
But North Koreans swore, no, no, no, this is just for space research,
a communications satellite.
So they said they launched it, and it was in orbit.
There it is.
I'm sorry, Bernie, that's my fault.
I just added somebody.
Apparently this has a lot of noise going on where they are right now.
Bernie, is there anything else you had to say about the North Korean satellite?
Supposedly, it was broadcasting...
Hang on, hang on a second, hang on.
I've got to deal with this.
I'm sorry.
That happens sometimes.
Go ahead, Bernie.
According to the Korean Central News Agency,
their satellite was broadcasting music on 470 megahertz,
which is a common UHF frequency.
I don't know the exact song,
but it was a song singing the praises of Kim Jong-il and Zion.
They all sing the praises of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung.
But I listened.
I got out my radio equipment, my ham radio equipment,
and I listened to 470 megahertz,
and I left it on with a tape recorder by my window for like 24 hours
because I didn't know what the orbital,
the Keplerian elements of this satellite were,
so I didn't know how often it passed overhead.
I assumed it wasn't geosynchronous if it even did make it into launch,
and I didn't hear a single thing on 470 megahertz.
I was really disappointed.
So it could have been a hoax.
It could have been that it really was an ICBM launching platform,
and they just said it was a satellite thing.
And 10 years ago, back in 1998,
the North Koreans supposedly launched another satellite.
It was another rocket they set off,
and they said that was an attempt to do a satellite,
and that was broadcasting supposedly in 27 megahertz,
which is in the CB radio band of all places.
Yeah, that's kind of a strange place to do that.
Nobody ever heard that signal either.
So either they're just not very good at launching satellites
or they're just using that as a thinly-veiled disguise
for launching other nastier things.
Well, you probably didn't hear it
because the rocket launch was not successful, according to NORAD,
which says the payload exploded and dropped into the South Pacific.
Yeah, that's probably why.
Okay, listen, joining us now on the phone is Laszlo.
Are you there?
I'm here.
Okay, there was a bit of noise on your end before when I added you,
so hopefully that's gone now.
But Laszlo, you're the person responsible for starting a panic last week
when we went country for about 20 minutes at the beginning of our April Fool's show,
and we all want to thank you for that.
Oh, sure.
There was actually a couple of us.
A friend of mine, Jeff Berlin, who's a voice guy,
he's the voice of about 60 radio stations nationwide,
and he's also the voice of several TV networks.
I told him about it, and he knows about BAI going way back,
and so he provided the voice in some of the production,
and I did some of the production as well.
I had to go to the Billboard Top 100 and find out what the top five country songs were,
and then I actually had to go purchase them, which I felt really odd,
purchasing such horrible pop country music.
But they sang about trucks and daddies.
It was phenomenal.
I can't get those songs out of my head either.
They really stick with you.
And for those people who did not hear this, it's available in our archives.
If you go to www.26700.com off the hook and simply click on our April 1, 2009 show,
you'll be able to hear just what happened at 7 p.m. last week.
And it really was very convincing, very believable.
It sounded just like something that would happen.
And it's also incredible to me because we learned so much about how easy it is really to program one of those radio stations
because there's no real human involved.
It's just basically a lot of hype-sounding announcements and a bunch of sound effects and music,
and you don't really need to have anybody in the station, do you?
No.
And what's interesting, I think one of the reasons that it was so believable that BAI had suddenly switched to country
is that stations nationwide have been flipping formats, most notably the CBS stations.
Here in New York, KROQ flipped.
And, I mean, it was just the same kind of thing, just out of the blue.
They switched formats completely.
They go DJ-less, and they play 10,000 songs in a row, they say.
And basically what's happening is they've ruined radio so much,
and they're going broke because nobody wants to advertise on their commercial station.
So they fire all the talent, and they basically just make a glorified iPod with a transmitter
and put it on shuffle and then pay somebody $30,000 a year to sort of jump in and give the weather.
And they don't even do that live.
That's something that's not even in the city.
They pretend to be in the city sometimes, but they're not actually there at all.
Yeah, Clear Channel pioneered that.
A friend of mine, he does seven DJ shifts a day for different cities,
and he just sits in a dark room, and he does a radio show.
He does some of them simultaneously, and you just record it and upload it,
and the computer drops it in between songs.
Yeah, I was really happy with how that came out.
In fact, my friend Jeff contacted a guy that does production for country radio stations,
and that's how we got those artist drops where it's like,
hi, I'm Shania Twain.
Hi, I'm Brooks and Dunn, you know?
Yeah, really, it was scary.
But the thing is, you mentioned it's like an iPod on shuffle.
I think this actually went a step beyond that because I heard, like,
actual announcements of the artists I was playing.
I heard the announcement say Toby Keith, and they were playing a Toby Keith song.
Do stations even do that?
Do they even, like, make a reference to the song they're playing?
Yeah, they do.
But a lot of times they'll do that.
They'll just get the voice guy to say a bunch of the artists' names and songs,
and then they just have that play right before the song.
That way they don't have to deal with a DJ.
But, I mean, this is happening nationwide where stations are flipping formats.
Many have been flipping formats almost every six months.
Yeah.
I think it's actually kind of positive because, you know, you told me shortly
after you played this April Fool's spoof that, I mean, people were really losing it.
They really believed it.
Well, it's kind of interesting too because, and this is almost not funny,
right afterwards we got word that Pacifica was changing the locks at the
transmitter room here at WBAI or at the Empire State Building.
And at first I thought that was an extension of this or maybe that it was
because of this or something like that.
But, no, basically all kinds of things happen in the radio world,
and there's all kinds of talk around here of changes and things like that,
maybe some good, maybe some bad.
But we're still here for now.
But the point is you have to be vigilant.
You have to be careful.
Our listeners have to get involved and know what's happening and be educated
and involved and make this place the best it can possibly be because we're
still humans here.
But this kind of station that you're describing,
the kind of station that we had for 20 minutes last week,
how much space does that actually take up?
I mean, literally, can you do it on an iPod?
Do you need something a little bit more than that?
Can it be done in a single little room?
How much space do you need?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, most radio stations are now in what's called clusters,
which I always like the word that follows the word cluster.
So they're in clusters, and so there's seven or eight stations,
and each station is basically a little smaller or about the size of the
studio you're sitting in.
And all you need is, you know,
a computer with a decent-sized hard drive to hold the music,
and you buy the software,
and it interfaces with the computer that you upload the commercials to.
And, you know,
most radio stations now in a lot of markets are run literally by two people.
I'm surprised they're run by that many or a person at all.
Well, I mean, you don't need people.
A computer can do all this.
You just record the voice once.
It's there forever, and you just play the same songs over and over again.
And that's the other thing.
You know, there are stations in this city and every city that keep playing the
same songs from 1973.
It never stops.
It never gets anywhere.
I mean, they're good songs,
but there are so many good artists out there and so much variety,
and not just in this culture, but in so many other cultures.
We could be learning from that.
Imagine if there were more stations like ours around just in New York,
how much we'd all benefit from that.
I think we actually get richer by having more alternative programming out
there.
Yeah, and I think, you know, hopefully, you know,
hearing that and the station possibly switching to a country format
encouraged a few people to join the AI and kick in a few extra bucks.
But, you know, you're right.
If you look at the programming on this station,
and then you travel to, like, for instance,
I was just doing a bunch of radio interviews around England,
and the stations there are so diverse,
and they have so many different shows and so many different opinions and kinds
of music on one station, on commercial stations.
Wow.
Yeah, and it's really refreshing to see a place that's getting radio
partially right, where we have worked so hard to get it wrong here.
Would it be so bad if, I mean,
I'm not in favor of new laws and regulations, but let's just consider this
for a second.
If there was a regulation that said a radio station had to be run by a live
human being and they had to make live announcements of whatever it is that
they're doing,
there had to be somebody in the studio at all times,
not just simply playing a satellite or playing a tape or playing a computer
or something like that.
Do you think that would be a bad thing?
Oh, no, not at all.
I mean,
a lot of the laws that were set up to sort of protect us from the media
monopolies that we have now were really whittled down.
I mean, you know, when I first got into radio,
you had to prove to the FCC that you were somehow doing something for the
public good.
So you had to run sort of local shows about local issues.
A lot of stations would try to bury them on Sunday mornings.
You had to run a certain number of free PSAs.
But you've seen all these things,
like equal time and the laws that stations had to actually benefit the
community and people as a whole.
They've sort of thrown that all out the window.
So now you've just got, you know,
the monotony of a station that's playing the same 10 songs over and over or TV
stations and TV networks where it's just, you know,
we figured out what our demographic is and it's angry liberals or angry
Republicans or conservatives.
And we're just going to talk specifically to those people.
And the public interest has not helped in that at all.
No, but the thing is,
a lot of the public says they don't want to hear this kind of,
they just want to hear their favorite songs.
But I think in this day and age of the internet and little devices you carry
around with you, you can have that.
You can have your iPod on shuffle.
You can carry it with you.
But for actual radio serving the public, that should be local.
That should be live.
That should be something that offers more than just random songs being played,
the same thing over and over again.
I mean, we all have the capacity of doing that.
So why not use the public airways for something a bit more educational and
constructive, right?
Absolutely.
Bernie, go ahead.
I just want to say, oh, hey, hi, Laz.
How are you doing?
Hi.
I just want to say that the low-power FM station class that the service at the
FCC approved about 10 years ago by popular demand, actually,
the popular uprising, does have a requirement.
These low-power 10 or 100-watt stations must have all locally,
not only must they be owned and operated by a nonprofit organization,
they must have only locally produced programming.
I mean, they can play music and stuff, but like any,
they have to have local content as far as if you're talking about something,
it has to be done locally by a local person about local topics.
And I think there should be a percentage,
I think there should be an FCC regulation that a certain percentage of
programming in any given market has to be locally produced.
Wouldn't that be cool, though, if there was a station that, a music station,
but they simply played music from the tri-state area,
from the area that their transmitter reached.
So you turned on a particular commercial station,
you heard progressive rock or whatever is fashionable these days,
but it was only from people, bands that were in this particular area.
And, you know, I would extend this to all sorts of things.
I think baseball teams should only have people who live in the area that come
from the area on their teams.
It encourages a sense of regionalism and healthy competitiveness and things like
that. I don't want to talk about sports again. We did that last week too.
But it's just new ideas instead of having the same sound.
And I know when I travel in the next few days, a couple of weeks, actually,
I'm going to be hearing radio stations that sound exactly the same.
I won't be able to tell where I am based on those particular stations,
unless I listened to the non-commercial stations,
they're all going to sound the same. And that's sad. It shouldn't be that way.
Well, I think this is a, there's a light at the end of the tunnel here.
And that is all these stations,
these corporations paid a ton of money for all these signals.
And you know, as soon as the deregulation happened,
they spent a ton of money buying up all those stations.
Then the iPod and satellite radio came out.
And you know, most radio stocks are in the toilet right now.
And some have been,
some have been literally kicked off of the stock exchange for being so low for
so long. Cumulus got kicked off. You know,
it's been devalued so much that I think that the opportunity now is for people
to come in who are genuinely interested in radio and serving communities and
towns are going to be, you know,
picking these stations up for really cheap prices.
And I think it might be a great tax write-off for Clear Channel or one of those
other companies to simply donate a radio station,
a full power radio station to a community.
And then the community can put out real radio and you won't have the same music
box that's pervading the airwaves and you have some diversity.
If they did that all over the country, then radio would become alive again.
There's no reason a station like this should feel the effects of,
of the internet or of iPods or things like that,
because what we offer is a completely different sound and something that makes
you think. And that's, that's always going to be in demand,
but that's also why we have to be very careful not to lose this place to
country music or sports talk or anything like that. All right.
Well, yeah, I mean,
Clear Channel has been shedding stations and the rumor is CBS is in, you know,
they just fired all their top talent nationwide just so they can take a write
off. I would not doubt if they get rid of their stations as well.
Well, you know, anyone wants to donate radio stations,
you can contact us othat26thousand.com. Now we won't run the station,
but we'll, we'll contact the other people in various cities that we think will
do a good job with them.
So many people out there really want to get involved in radio,
but how do they do that? You know, if they're not allowed inside the door,
people who will volunteer their time to keep stations going, it's a passion.
It's an art form. And there's so much material that could be shared.
You hear the same things over and over again on commercial radio stations.
Why do you think that is? Who picks the material? You know, it's not us.
It's not the programmers because they're not programmers.
They're simply on air voices.
If they're even that much and they do what the computer tells them or the
executives tell them, it's sad. It doesn't have to be this way.
I think as technology moves forward,
businesses have to adjust the way they do things. Record companies,
newspapers, radio stations, television stations, movie industry, all of that.
It all has to change. So radio is one example of that.
And I think, Laszlo, what we did last week was sort of point that out,
point out how valuable and unique WBAI actually is.
I think my favorite story you told me is when you were playing that, you know,
we produced like a 20 minute segment of country music songs with country music
production in between. And you said somebody called the,
called the phones there and you answered country 99.5.
And then there was a pause and then somebody said, Oh no.
Yeah, it was a good pause. It was like, what?
Dot Red, did you take that call? Oh yeah.
And you know, you, you went above and beyond the call of duty here because I,
I didn't really think people would be answering the phones in the other room.
For some reason, the phones in the tally room are ringing.
We're not even taking tally calls. Well, this, this phone, the phone here,
our main switchboard, it was packed throughout the entire 20 minute period.
Everybody was calling. At first it started with a few,
it just kept getting bigger and bigger. It did not stop once.
But you found phones ringing in another part of the studio and yeah,
people want to know what's going to happen with their premiums.
Of course they always want to know that.
And what's going to happen with the radio station thing is it's believable
because in this time of economic strife,
it's entirely possible that we could lose this place or any radio station could
be lost. And it would just be an incredible bad stroke of luck for that to
happen to us.
Just that what I think is a renaissance in the radio world for,
for creative non-commercial radio. So let's hope that never happens.
And you know, it was an April fool's joke what we did,
but it was also kind of,
I think a learning experience for a lot of people and hopefully our listeners
will be reinvigorated by that. And what happened afterwards with Pacifica,
I think is also a wake up call.
We all have to get involved and make this place thrive, not just survive,
but thrive. All right. We're just about out of time, but Laslo,
we all want to thank you for, for the mischief.
And thanks everybody else who worked on that.
It's great how radio people sort of come together, non-commercial commercial.
We all sort of know how the game is played, right?
Oh, absolutely. And you know, it, it, it was fun to,
to do something like that because this work in radio has been fired because some
dumb corporation decided to switch formats and get rid of everybody.
And inevitably they end up with worse ratings than they had before.
Absolutely. They don't know how to run their, their, their business model at all.
Okay. We are out of time.
I want to remind folks one more time,
if you're looking for those autographed copies of the best of 2600 book,
the collector's edition, you won't get any more collectible than this.
Micro center has a, has a bunch in that Columbus, Ohio store,
but if you're not in Columbus, Ohio, be more convenient for you to go online.
All you have to do is go to micro center.com and enter the special hacker code
of 0 2 6 6 6 6.
And then an autographed copy of the book will be sent your way. That's simple.
All right. We're out of time. We'll be back next week.
I'll be somewhere else for Kim Il-sung's birthday next Wednesday.
I'm not sure where exactly I'll be, but I'll be phoning in my parents
and you can write to us. O T H at 2600.com.
So then another song about phones. Good night.
Oh, my girlfriend has a mobile phone.
Now we can never have a minute alone.
The other night I asked her for a kiss.
She said, hang on now,
till I answer this.
Oh, this mobile phone, it is a curse and it makes a novel.
Hole in her purse with her mobile phone.
She gets such a thrill, but her smile disappears when she gets the bill.
Oh, my girlfriend has a mobile phone.
Now we can never have a minute alone.
The other night I asked her for a kiss.
She said, hang on now, till I answer this.
On Sunday's rang in the middle of mass
and all the children thought it was great.
Some people thought it was the Angelus,
but the priest and the author was furious.
Oh, my girlfriend has a mobile phone.
Now we can never have a minute alone.
The other night I asked her for a kiss.
She said, hang on now, till I answer this.
Last week I was courting her in my car
and she was letting me go to far.
The next thing her mobile phone did ring
just as I was about to put my hand on her.
If you're looking for a girlfriend
now you see, my advice to you would be
if the girl that you fancy has a mobile phone
don't bother about her, just leave her alone.
Oh, my girlfriend has a mobile phone.
Now we can never have a minute alone.
The other night I asked her for a kiss.
She said, hang on now, till I answer this.
Oh, my girlfriend has a mobile phone.
Now we can never have a minute alone.
The other night I asked her for a kiss.
She said, hang on now, till I answer this.
Hello, is that Finne-double-two-double-two?
No, this is Finne-two-two-two-two.
I'm sorry for getting you out of bed.
I had to come down and answer the phone anyway.
Oh, boy.
Ha-ha!
All right, all...
Songs about telephones.
These guys are off the hook, I tell you.