Washington Square Park at 11 a.m. You are needed now. Go to RiseUpOctober.org or call 929-249-7996.
Once again now, that's 929-249-7996.
Brothers and sisters of all colors, which side are you on?
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook.
Yes, it is Off the Hook. This is the theme. You might not hear it, but it's definitely there, somewhere.
As soon as we figure out what button is not pressed.
I cut myself while shaving. Now I can't make a cut.
We couldn't get much worse. But if they could, they would.
Bum-diddly-bum for the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bum-diddly-bum.
Bum-diddly-bum, bum-diddly-bum.
Bum-diddly-bum, bum-diddly-bum.
Bum-diddly-bum, bum-diddly-bum.
Bum-diddly-bum, bum-diddly-bum.
Bum-diddly-bum, bum-diddly-bum.
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is Off the Hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday night.
Joined tonight by Mike.
Hi there.
Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
Kyle.
Where are you? Where are you? Hold on. Okay, try that one.
Present.
Okay, good. And somewhere, Bernie S.
Greetings from Philadelphia.
All right, we figured out where everybody is.
And we are on for two hours tonight because it's one of those special fundraising shows.
So get ready for that.
That's exciting.
We haven't done one in a while, and hopefully we're still good at it.
But we'll see. We'll see.
I mean, it's not really we who are good at it.
Hang on. Do you hear that?
You hear all those sirens?
It's amazing.
You can hear the whole city in this room.
You literally can hear everything.
You can hear sirens.
You can hear trucks.
You can hear pedestrians going by.
We even heard an airplane the other day.
It's just, you know, we're redefining what radio is all about.
A lot of people seem to think that radio has to be done in what's called a soundproof room.
And that, to me, always struck me as a bit of a contradiction because we embrace sound.
We don't want to, you know, protect ourselves from sound.
So what we basically do is open up the walls and the windows and everything and let all the sound in.
Right?
Yeah.
And, I mean, how else would we be able to participate in the conversations in the hallway?
I mean, that's what's open.
Speak up.
I can barely hear you over the noise in the hallway.
I'm sorry.
Oh, yeah.
No, I agree with her.
Yeah.
No, she's making some good points out there.
But, yeah.
But, no, continue with your point.
I lost my train of thought.
It happens.
Do we have access to, like, any Twitter accounts?
Because I think our listeners should see our, we do have some soundproofing in the room right here.
You're asking me if we have any access to Twitter accounts.
I mean, you know, like a BAI Twitter account or something like that.
We should document it.
Yeah.
It's lovely, the soundproofing that we have.
It is.
Bernie, I don't know if you can hear any of the sound, the wonderful sound that surrounds us all the time.
I'm enjoying all the ambient sounds of the WBAI studios right now.
Well, I hope that you also enjoy this sound, which is our musical theme that we intend to play all night long.
Maybe not this loud.
And we're off.
Yes.
The two-hour fundraiser has begun with the sounds of Kraftwerk in the background, which is only appropriate for Hacker Sheridan, do you think?
Very much.
All right.
We'll try to keep it just, you know, in the background subtly, like that.
Yeah.
So we haven't been on in a couple of weeks.
We weren't on last week.
We won't be on next week.
This week we're preempting the Personal Computer Show at 8 o'clock.
And next week we will be preempted again, but we'll be back in another two weeks.
They're on next week if you're a fan of them.
That's what I'm told.
That's what I'm told.
You know, I'm not the person to ask questions about because I don't always get all the right information.
But there are lots of things that we do get the right information about, and we're going to be focusing some time on that tonight, as well as a bunch of other things.
Hey, maybe we'll even try to take phone calls.
What I do want to make sure people know, though, is that we are in fundraising mode for the autumn.
And the phone number is 212-209-2950.
That's the number to pledge.
You want to just get started right away with what it is that we're offering tonight because it's pretty cool.
And I know, Bernie, you played a huge part in getting this to us from our friend Mitch Altman, who is currently, I believe, currently speeding his way from Shanghai to Beijing on a fast train and cannot be with us tonight.
I know you can talk on phones on trains, but it also happens to be 7 in the morning, and that's a lot harder to do than just talking on the phone.
So, Bernie, tell us something about what we are offering tonight.
Well, we've had Mitch on the show many times over the past few years, and he's one of our favorite people and I think one of our more popular guests.
And a key part of the HOPE Conference is just putting on all kinds of great talks and workshops and things.
But I think we first became aware of Mitch or actually became aware of one of his inventions.
And then I tracked him down to, like, I want to meet this guy or talk to this guy who invented this thing called the TV Be Gone, which turns off TVs from, like, over 100 feet away.
And it just fits on your keychain and you carry it around.
And if you're in a public place, maybe a restaurant or a bar or somebody's home and you're trying to have a conversation, you just press a button on this keychain thing and the TV is magically turned off.
And it's just magical.
I mean, I love it.
I think everybody in the studio there, including myself, we've all had a lot of fun with these things, haven't you?
Oh, absolutely.
It basically has brought many hours of joy to adults and children everywhere around the world.
Just imagine you're in a crowded location and you're able to just turn a television off without even seeming like you're doing something of that nature.
It causes all kinds of consternation and confusion and various things like that.
But it's also for the betterment of mankind because people wind up talking to each other again.
And it's just really, really cool.
I mean, this is a story that so many of us can tell.
It happens all the time.
But I was just last night in a bar for a friend's birthday party.
It was a Tuesday night.
There were not very many other people in the bar other than my friend and the people attending the party.
None of us are really big sports fans.
But there were five televisions strewn about the bar playing two different sports games.
You're watching the Mets, huh?
Was that one of the teams?
No, it's a good thing if you turn that off.
Seriously.
I don't know what these games were, but I really, really wished I had brought my TV-B-Gone with me because there was just no way to make this go away.
And I don't watch a lot of commercial television.
Every five minutes there was an ad for impotence drugs.
I do not understand commercial television, and I really wish it had not been present in my environment.
If I had had a TV-B-Gone with me, I would have been able to solve that problem.
As soon as he hit that double that went along the left field line, I couldn't believe that on top of that he bobbles the ball.
Of course you need a TV-B-Gone for something like that.
Yeah, that's the point where they just totally lost the game.
Right?
So if you're a Mets fan, you might need to have a TV-B-Gone just for general principle.
So anyway, what are we offering tonight?
We're offering a TV-B-Gone as one of our premiums.
$50 pledge.
$50 pledge.
212-209-2950.
You say to the person, hello, I would like to support WBAI and get a TV-B-Gone in return.
Yeah, be careful.
If you don't say that exact sentence, they hang up on you.
I don't think that's how it works.
It doesn't work that way?
Good.
Okay, we've improved.
But you might have to say TV-B-Gone.
Well, yeah, definitely say TV-B-Gone.
Why wouldn't you want to say TV-B-Gone?
And if you just call up and say the first word out of your mouth is TV-B-Gone, that would be a little rude.
Why is our theme playing again?
Oh, you hit the button there.
Okay, Rob's trying to fix a CD player and he wound up playing the other one.
So many buttons.
But when prompted, say TV-B-Gone, and you'll get a TV-B-Gone.
Well, yeah, it won't just suddenly materialize in your house.
$50 pledge.
I want to make sure people know that we're not that good.
It's not going to just materialize in your house.
You'll get it.
It will come in the mail.
It's probably true that this thing is so useful you will wish you had it sooner, but we will
send it to you as soon as we can, and you'll be able to control your environment by eliminating
unwanted televisions.
That's what?
$50 pledge?
$50 pledge.
212-209-2950.
So people know how this works.
Basically, when you hit the button on a TV-B-Gone, it cycles through all these different frequencies
and eventually, in 99% of the cases, finds the frequency of the television set that you're
face-to-face with.
And unless somebody has been smart enough to cover it with electrical tape, you know,
the infrared sensor, they can't stop you from sending that signal.
That signal will turn the TV off.
It will also, by the way, turn a TV on if the TV is already off, so that can also spook
people out.
I remember, Bernie, I think you were with us one time in Dayton, Ohio during one of
the hamventions where we just were—I think we had had a few drinks and we were just kind
of wandering around suburban streets holding TV-B-Gones in front of houses, realizing that
it's midnight.
People's television sets are turning on and they're going to come downstairs in the morning
and see the TV on and wonder just what it was that happened.
That was in the—as I recall, that was in the Oregon district, just outside of Dayton.
And there was a used—
You want to give a date, too, so they can nail us for this?
Yeah.
Well, this was—I think the statute of limitations is over.
It was a few years ago.
But there was a store, like a used—like a thrift store, and there were these TVs in
the window, and they were all turned off.
So we turned them on so that when the folks came in the morning, they would wonder, who
broke in and turned on all the TV sets?
So, I've got to say, though, these TV-B-Gones are the last available.
Mitch is not making any more of these.
What do you mean by that?
The last available?
Well, this is the—you're not—this made one of your last opportunities to get a TV-B-Gone,
because Mitch has conveyed to us that he is ceasing production of—he's going to move
on to another project.
He's been making these for 11 years.
More than half a million people have acquired TV-B-Gones and shut off probably millions
of TV sets, and he feels he's accomplished his mission.
He's going to move on to a new project.
He's going to stop making them.
He's not making any more.
This is the last of the TV-B-Gones.
So if you want a TV-B-Gone and you want to support WBAI, call 212-209-2950, because this
is a unique opportunity.
I don't know if I—I don't think I have ever lived in a world where I've known of Mitch
Altman—Mitch Altman that did not make TV-B-Gones.
I don't know if I'm ready for that.
I don't know if any of us are.
I don't—but he seems to be.
It's a brave new era.
You can commemorate the beginning of that brave new era by pledging and receiving one
of the last of these TV-B-Gones.
212-209-2950.
It's taking a bit of a somber tone.
Wow.
I didn't know that that's where we were.
Rob, you were spending some time researching the CD player.
Did you get it to work?
I may have.
I cannot promise anything.
Well, let's see.
Yep, I think we're getting something there.
All right.
Good work.
We'll turn it down just a little bit, and what Robert's doing is getting it to play
in continuous mode, not just single mode, so that we can play more than one song, which
is awfully nice.
Because we have other things to do here.
We do.
We do.
Rather than babysit the CD player.
Should I say something like, but wait, there's more?
Sure, say that.
Go ahead.
But wait, there's more.
If you call 212-209-2950 and you don't want the TV-B-Gone, but you do want to pledge $50,
you can get instead the Trippy RGB Waves Kit, which is a...
So, we want to be clear, this is a thing you'll have to solder yourself, but it's pretty easy
soldering.
It would be a great present for someone who wants to learn to solder.
It would be a great present for yourself if you want to learn to solder.
And what it is, is it's an RGB light, so an LED, that you...
It can display any color, and you can control it by waving your hand over the board, and
you can also control it by programming the embedded microcontroller.
So, it's a great way to learn about electronics, to learn about embedded microcontrollers,
and Mitch has videos for how to assemble it.
He's got very clear instructions.
It is a great thing, wherever it exists.
You know, anytime there's a group of hackers assembled, and there's LEDs around, just like
people are in rapt attention.
And so, this is an LED that you can control.
You can make it do whatever you want.
It's really quite something, and you can get that with your pledge of $50, 212-209-2950.
Yeah, I would add something maybe we don't talk about, but a lot of these projects are
hackable, and that is encouraged, to use these in as many different projects as you can,
and adapt them, and change them, and borrow some of the things behind them.
So, add it to your toolkit, as it were, with this promotion here for our station.
212-209-2950.
So, Mike, round those down again, those two offerings?
So, you can pledge, for your pledge of $50, you can have a TV be gone.
You could have a trippy RGB Waves kit, which is a thing you can ask for.
But, you might want both.
Some of our listeners really want to support us with more than $50, and we want to support
them, or they just can't decide between these two things.
So, we have the Control Your Environment Package, we're calling it.
Oh, wow.
212-209-2950, and your pledge of $75 will get you both the TV be gone and the trippy
RGB Waves kit.
But, wait, Mike, I'm confused, because one item is $50, the other item is also $50, but
you just said, obviously it was a mistake of some sort, you said that you get both of
those for $75.
Well, Emmanuel, it was not a mistake.
Well, then it's a lie, it's something wrong here, something seriously wrong.
$75, Control Your Environment Package, you will get the TV be gone and the trippy RGB
Waves kit.
Get out, really?
Yeah, it's true.
So, you're saying for 50% off, wait, you get 50% off which one?
I'm questioning your math.
Well, if you do, well, bear with me here, if you get the TV be gone, right, and then
you get, what's the other thing called, the trippy?
Trippy RGB Waves kit.
I expect to pay $50 for that, but instead I'm only paying $25, right?
That's one way to think about it.
So, that's 50% off, that's my 50% there.
Well, it's a total of $75.
It works the other way around too, if you want to get the trippy things for $50 and
get the TV be gone for half price, you can do that as well.
Either way, it's a great deal, and what's amazing, what's really amazing is that with
any of these packages, you also get the radio station, you keep us on the air.
Yes, that's really why we do this.
We don't do this for our health or for the fun, although it is fun.
But how do you think a radio station stays on the air at 99.5 FM on top of the Empire
State Building for over 50 years?
It's not magic, although it is magic.
I'm sorry, Bernie, what?
With no commercials.
With no commercials.
No corporate underwriting.
Yeah, because that's how all the other radio stations stay on the air is with their damn
commercials, and I don't care what format you're listening to, they all have commercials.
Even some of the so-called non-commercial stations have the equivalent of commercials now.
It's like hard, hard underwriting.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, and we don't even have underwriting here.
Do you realize that?
A lot of people don't seem to realize that we could, we could just one day take underwriting,
and it wouldn't be commercials.
It would be completely allowed in the non-commercial world.
We'd probably make a ton of money, but we have this, I guess it's a bit of a disease
here at this radio station.
You must have heard people talk about it.
It's called idealism.
It's really a bad case of idealism here, and nobody knows how to cure it, and we don't
take underwriting.
So, the only thing that we rely upon, other than finding bags of money in the street,
which I don't think is going to happen more than once, is our listeners.
That's really the only thing that we can depend upon, and they are very dependable.
I read something recently, an interview with Ira Glass, who many people know is a very
famous public radio person, and good at his job, but he said something I totally disagree
with.
He said, public radio needs to be ready for capitalism.
It needs to start taking more and more advertising money, and that is just so not what we do
here at WBAI.
It's not what I want to do.
Uh-huh.
His show has taken money in the past from Volkswagen.
Guess how awkward that made the story they tried to do on Volkswagen.
Wow.
I'm kind of curious how they did that story.
Yeah.
Did you actually hear a story about Volkswagen?
Yeah, they did one, and you know, it was okay.
They are no longer taking money from Volkswagen, so maybe they have a little bit of their independence
back, but when we talked about Volkswagen, which we did two weeks ago, you know we were
not affected by any potential to want to receive money from them in the future, because we
would not take their money.
We will only take your money, dear listeners, 212-209-2950.
Although we might take their money, because we own a Volkswagen diesel car, so it's entirely
possible that we individually might take their money, but yes, we are not going to take their
money on the radio.
Well, I mean, unless they pledge 212-209-2950, they can be listeners as well.
We would happily send them a TV Be Gone, or a Trippy RGB Waves kit, or the Control Your
Environment package, as they like.
Sure, but they get nothing in addition to that, because they have more money, is what
I'm trying to point out here.
Well, guys, why does that matter?
Why does what matter?
Not having more money?
I think you don't take money from advertisers.
Well, because it makes our programming more, I guess, impartial?
What would you say, Bernie?
I would say we can be really objective.
We can criticize any corporation with impunity, I guess.
I guess we could slander them and maybe get sued, but we don't have to feel beholden to
corporate underwriters on the station, because there aren't any.
We can't hold our tongue, bite our tongue, and say, we can't say anything bad about this
company, because they gave radio station WBAI a lot of money and keep the show going, or
keep the whole station running.
We don't have to worry about that.
That's a special thing.
That's why WBAI is a listener-supported station, really, in every way, shape, and form.
Listeners keep this station on the air, and tonight is the way we do that, by listeners
calling 212-209-2950.
You can get one of the last of the TV-B-Gons donated by Mitch Altman, our good friend,
or a trippy RGB waves kit.
I kind of look at it like an optical theremin.
You can create any color of the rainbow with just a wave of your hand without touching anything.
You can kind of freak people out.
Like, how did you do that?
Let me try that.
And then they can do it too, and they're like, this is cool.
And if you do it in a dark room, it's really awesome, because it lights the whole room
up in different colors.
But if you pledge $50, you can get either one of these things, or the Control Your Environment
package, which I think Mike aptly named, is available for $75.
Both of those items, by calling 212-209-2950.
You can do it online too, can't you?
Yes, indeed.
You can go online to give2wbai.org, and any time, if there are any left, you can look
them up on the website, look up Off the Hook, and you will find the premiums that support
our show in particular, whether it's the RGB LED, or whether it's the TV-B-Gon, or whether
it's the package of both.
Or, there are even some other things on there, some WBAI station things that you can get,
as long as you indicate that you're donating to support your favorite show, which we hope
is Off the Hook.
That is what keeps the station and the show on the air.
And what it also keeps us is not answerable to people like Volkswagen, or people like
Apple Computer, or Verizon, or any of the other companies that we find ourselves regularly
taking to task on this particular program, because we don't want that awkward position
of somebody who gives us money then being angry with us for saying something that they
don't like.
There is a grand total of one entity that we're answerable to here on WBAI, and that's
you, the listener.
And because you, the listener, are what has kept this station on the air for over five
decades.
You, the listener, are all that stands between us and this room being empty with nothing
plugged in.
And really, it's so prevalent out there, the concept of money.
And there's so many things we don't question that we just throw money at.
This is something there's no question.
What we're telling you is true.
We've been at this for quite a long time.
All of us here are passionate about the things that we're able to talk about, the information
that we can share, the responses and the interactions we get with our audience and stuff.
And I dare say, has allowed a lot of us to grow.
And we've learned as much from doing this as maybe people out there who have listened
over the years.
And this is as important as ever.
We joke about some of the furnishings here and the way the station's evolving, but really
we're in a good spot for growth.
And there could be a lot of fantastic facilities improvements and other things in the future.
This is how you get to support that.
And you are as important out there listening right now.
Five bucks, ten bucks, whatever it is, please donate it.
It's not about the gifts.
It's not about any of these details.
That's part of the process.
We want you to become a member.
We want you to support Community Radio in New York City.
212-209-2950 is our telephone number.
Of course, the most important thing, as Kyle said, is hearing from our listeners.
It's easy to forget that they're out there sometimes if we're just in this room, not
being able to take phone calls half the time.
Of course, we figured out a way around that.
Or not interacting with them.
And we try to go to as many different events as possible so that we can actually meet our
listeners and hear stories from them.
It's just so great to do that.
Not just the same kinds of gatherings.
Not just the hacker meetings every month.
Not just Maker Faire.
Not just Hope Conferences.
All kinds of things where our listeners are out there.
Because our listeners are everywhere.
They're in all walks of life.
And it's just amazing to run into somebody who says, hey, I recognize your voice.
I know who you are.
I listen to your show.
There's nothing more magical than that for us.
And I hope that we bring some of that magic to you in bringing you familiar voices each
week as often as possible.
And telling you things that nobody else is telling you.
Because nobody on the mass media circuit cares enough to talk about the things we talk about.
And they also don't have the expertise to talk about them intelligently.
They go for the headlines.
They go for the tabloids.
And that's not something that we tend to do here.
We tend to tear that apart.
Suffice to say, it is absolutely worth it from our perspective.
And we hope you share in that.
And we hope that all of this is worth it to you.
Worth it enough to give us a call.
212-209-2950.
Okay.
Before we head on into talking about various things that have gone on in the news this week,
let's give out that information one more time about what we are offering tonight.
Mike?
Sure.
So, 212-209-2950 is the number to call.
And when they ask you what you would like as a thank you gift, you can say you would like
Turn off any television anywhere in the world.
$50.
You can say you would like the Trippy RGB Waves Kit.
Really amaze your friends.
Learn soldering.
Great kit for kids or for anyone.
Also, a pledge of $50.
Or if you would like both, you can save a little bit of money and still support the station
by pledging for the Control Your Environment Package at a pledge of $75.
212-209-2950.
And we again want to thank Mitch Altman, who donates these premiums.
So, every dollar you donate goes to the station.
We don't keep it.
Mitch doesn't keep it.
The station keeps it and uses it to keep us on the air.
212-209-2950.
Bernie, anything you want to say to get people to call in?
I just want to thank our listeners for listening to this show for so long.
You've been producing your show for, what, 27 years now?
You know, we just had an anniversary, didn't we?
Somebody told me the Hacker Calendar mentioned this.
Is this right, Rob?
Indeed it did.
Last Wednesday, we were not on the air.
But if we were, it would have been our birthday episode.
Wow.
Okay.
One of the radio stations is going to air.
Actually, this show hasn't been on WBAI for the full 27 years, right?
Well, it hasn't been on every week, but it went on in October of 1988 for the first time.
Actually, we tried to bring it on, I think, in July.
But literally, the moment that the show went on in the afternoon of that day,
a fire broke out in the Empire State Building,
and all the radio stations in New York were taken off the air.
It really was kind of weird.
What other radio stations are going to broadcast a hacker radio show
where we can talk about technology and cool things people are doing with technology
and point out corporations' use and abuses of technology and security and surveillance?
No other radio station is going to air a show like this, even for a week, let alone decades.
I think everybody listening should try to support this sort of radio
and all the other great shows on WBAI by calling 212-209-2950.
Pledge whatever you can, but if you can pledge $50,
you can either get a TV Be Gone, turn off TVs wherever you are,
or a trippy RGB Waves kit, which is a really awesome kit to amaze yourself and your friends.
And you get both of those for pledging $75, calling 212-209-2950.
All right. I think we got the message out there.
We're here for two hours.
I'm taking phone calls, taking listener support, and hopefully coming back many times in the future.
By the way, those of you who want to hear old shows, they're all online.
www.2600.com slash off the hook.
Prepare to overdose on hacker news from the 80s into this week.
It's all there.
And I think it's a great time capsule on a really changing world,
a fascinating world that is constantly changing both technologically and socially
and in every way imaginable.
Okay. We had an interesting story that came across a couple of days ago.
I thought the headline was particularly charming.
Southwest Airlines Blames Technology Problems for Flight Delays.
Oh, yes, technology problems, our favorite problems behind all the inconveniences of the world.
Basically, they say hundreds of flights were delayed by technical issues
that are forcing it to check in some customers manually at airports
and are crossing long lines, as you can imagine, checking people in manually using pens.
Actually writing things down.
Don't they have a funny check-in thing anyway?
They have like different lanes, like A, B.
They have A, B, and they also have C.
C.
Yeah, that's the controversial one.
And they do waves of people, and you sort of stand in a line,
but not in any kind of numerical order.
No, no.
It's in sections.
It's in how soon you checked in.
Or maybe you pay them extra sometimes to jump ahead in the line.
But basically what they say is everybody in A, you know, storm the plane now,
get your seats, and everybody in B is going to come charging in.
They're going to sit wherever there's space available,
and then finally the poor suckers in C get to go in and find what's left.
Something like that.
It's all printed on your ticket now.
I remember they used to give you these different color plastic cards for each of those sections.
Yeah, I think they—
That was quite a while ago.
They might still have the cards.
Do they still do that?
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure, but—
It's a distinct process.
They might have just had the cards on—I think it was Sunday they had most of these problems.
Right.
So 450 of 3,600 flights scheduled for that day had to be delayed.
That's actually not so bad.
I've seen a lot worse than that.
Basically they were asking—this is the part I don't understand.
They were asking flyers to print their boarding passes and luggage tags at home
because they didn't have the ability to do it there.
Bring us reams of paper.
I am not an airport representative or any kind of executive or anything like that.
Don't know how to fly an airplane either.
But one thing I can theorize on, if somebody could print out the boarding pass at home,
why couldn't they just hook up a phone line there and print it out there as well?
I mean, there wasn't something that said,
thou shalt not be able to print out boarding passes in the airport.
You have to print it someplace else.
It wasn't that kind of a problem.
It was a problem with their internal computer system.
Maybe they couldn't print out boarding passes,
but they could certainly set something up so people could do that on site.
No.
Instead they were filling things out by hand,
which I think you should always know how to do that.
You should always know how to do things by hand,
and I wonder how many people still know that.
We were talking about this the other night.
Handwriting.
Do they still teach kids in school cursive writing?
I hope they don't.
You hope they don't?
No.
Explain.
I'll give you your 30 seconds.
The last time I wrote in cursive was fifth grade.
So I learned to print probably in first grade like most people,
and then instantly told what you're doing is wrong
for the next three years of your life,
and then you go back to what you did in first grade.
I think my handwriting would be better today
if I hadn't had those three formative years
of being told that the way everyone writes is wrong.
I'm going to use my challenge now
and say that Mike, I believe you have written in cursive language.
Don't you sign your name?
Is that not cursive?
No, it's not.
What, you print your name?
I print quickly, yeah.
You're the only person in the world that prints their signature?
I might be.
I probably not because people don't know how to write in cursive.
It's a useless skill.
Well, yeah.
Okay, I don't disagree with that, to be honest,
but I just don't know how you could sign your name
if you don't sign it in cursive.
I'll demonstrate for you after the show.
Yeah, I can hardly wait till 9 o'clock.
I don't want to disrupt the flow of the show by doing it during the show,
but, you know, afterwards.
Barney, you know how to write in cursive, don't you?
I do.
I think it's beautiful if one really learns it,
but, I mean, it's not mandatory.
I don't know about making it mandatory, frankly,
but I think it's a useful skill.
It's sort of like a combination of
It's an artistic way of communicating the written word, I think.
Calligraphy.
I've even tried my hand at calligraphy,
and that's another thing that, you know, they could teach in school.
I think it should be optional.
I don't think they should just get rid of it in school.
What do you think?
Well, how do you teach or tell a first grader,
by the way, it's optional, that we're going to torture you
and teach you how to write in cursive?
It really was difficult learning this.
I hated it when I was in school,
but, you know, I'm kind of glad I know how to do it.
Like, Mike, I remember the last time I actually wrote a sentence
in cursive, but I have written my name in cursive.
I couldn't imagine printing my signature every time.
But it's kind of a strange custom.
I think we were liking it to different alphabets,
knowing two different alphabets almost.
Because when you print something,
it's not really very efficient, is it?
Yeah, it's very staccato.
That's the musical term.
Like a MakerBot.
Yeah, very rigid, linear.
It's angular.
I don't know if those are also visual or geometric terms.
But that's much different from having the ability
to connect words and fluidly just continuously write.
And I think certainly, like, strict cursive writing
is definitely out of fashion.
But I think people that are writing shorthand and quickly...
Shorthand.
...tend to use, like, bits of both printing and cursive.
Oh, that's another one, shorthand.
I don't know how that works.
But I imagine that's an endangered language as well.
Yeah.
But I also think that it's really,
there's a sense of style to your handwriting.
And I think that it's intrinsically linked to art
in a lot of ways, no matter, I mean,
forever will be in a lot of ways,
wherever it goes in the future.
So I don't know.
I think it's a really powerful form of expression.
Whether it should be mandatory, I don't know.
All right, Rob.
So this leaves you.
Can you write your, you're a painter.
You must be able to sign your name in cursive.
I am.
I am an artist.
And, you know, I can look at something
and paint a pretty good representation of it
or draw a good representation of it or even sculpt.
But I realized recently this past week
when I had to write a note in longhand for somebody
that my handwriting is terrible.
Oh, yeah.
Granted, my handwriting is awful.
I realized because I had to write a note
for one of my roommates,
and I don't own a printer currently.
So I realized, okay, I've got to leave a note.
I've got to do it in longhand.
And I took a look at this thing
after I'd finished writing it
and realized it hurts to read
because my writing is that terrible.
And it was in my normal handwriting,
which is sort of a weird mix of printing and cursive.
And yeah, I missed my fonts
and my digital layout software.
Yeah.
I found in one of my old dressers
letters from my grandfather.
And he didn't often write letters.
But when he wrote letters, they were in cursive.
And it's just, it's very, very serious
when you see that,
when you see those words written
in what you knew was his handwriting.
He was saying something that he wanted you to listen to.
And if you were smart, you did.
I just wonder, will we have the same impact
by checking out grandpa's email in the future
and seeing how much respect that commanded?
It speaks a lot to, I think,
how much cheaper in every way
that communication itself is these days.
Because you go far back enough,
just a couple of generations maybe,
and someone writing a letter, that was a big deal.
You didn't write a lot of letters.
But when you did, it was relatively expensive.
It was something that you didn't do all the time.
It was an occasion.
And the same with phone calls.
Before they became sort of a mainstream thing
everyone had access to,
someone making a phone call would make sure
they had their business straight
and what they wanted to say beforehand
because it was expensive.
Now, when you can just mash a keyboard
and say whatever you want to whoever you want in the world
for free or negligible cost,
we sort of have this different attitude
toward communicating at all.
And also, when you add in that
they want you to keep it as short as possible,
as succinct as possible,
as abbreviated as possible,
you're not really saying anything.
This is true.
In these days of sort of micro-blogging and stuff.
But past generations had telegrams
where you also had to keep it as short as possible
because there was a real cost if you didn't.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Interesting parallel there.
Telegrams and Twitter.
Two things that you had to keep really, really short
but for totally different reasons.
But I am curious.
And it's amazing that...
Bernie, go ahead.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I just wanted to say
we can get back to technology a little bit too.
And I'm going to date myself here.
But I think it was around 1980 or 81,
there was a company called Centronics
that made printers.
They were famous for the Centronics parallel printer port
that lived on beyond the company.
The Centronics made a printer called the StyleWriter,
I think it was called.
And it used a stylus and it wrote in cursive.
And you could connect it to your computer
and with a word processing program
have the printer write out in cursive
onto a piece of paper that was wrapped around a platen
like in a typewriter.
And I just thought that was an amazing thing.
Unfortunately, it failed.
They never really got it to work well.
There were a lot of returns.
But it's just sort of...
It was like the last stab of cursive
in the technology world.
Okay, that's only cool if you use your own font
that's your cursive.
Okay, I don't think you could.
I think you just had to use...
There was just one font in different pitch sizes
or point sizes.
But anyhow, I just thought it was an amazing thing
that it was like this printer.
It looked like a regular printer
but it wrote in cursive with a pen
with ink on a piece of paper
wrapped around a platen.
I imagine those things are probably worth a lot of money these days
if you can find a Centronics StyleWriter.
There's a similar thing with plotters.
Vinyl cutting is done with plotters
and they can hold stylus as well, I think.
Yeah, and I think there are certain types of printing
you could do with a plotter as well
when it's drawing a line in vectors
as opposed to a raster-based printing method.
Well, okay.
But anyway, to get back to the beginning
of this going off the track
on this particular subject,
I am very curious as to whether or not
kids still learn cursive in school
or even if they learn how to print in school.
You know, I'd like to know that.
Maybe they just drop these things.
It's just something that a lot of us grew up with
and we were just thinking about it the other night
that, you know, when's the last time you wrote something in cursive?
There are some letters that I never quite got
like a capital Q.
I never could do a capital Z in cursive.
But I always was very fond of the small S and the small F
because they just looked very different
than their printed counterparts.
Most everything else looked about the same.
So, yeah, the Southwest article,
bringing it back around,
Yes, all the way around.
is, it's true, you really, it's amazing.
I think that this is, it's worth being said
that companies cannot deal sometimes.
I think that's because their systems are set up
in a certain way,
but they're not going to go and disconnect a printer
from their array of check-in computers and so on
and repurpose it to make some kiosk.
There's no, I mean, they can barely,
do they have a locksmith even?
I mean, do they have any kind of in-house anything?
I didn't say they had to disconnect anything.
Go down to Best Buy and buy one
and bring it back and everybody will be happy.
They'll be your friend.
Do managers think that way?
No, they don't.
I don't think they do.
They're like, I'll file an equipment something or other.
I mean, it's not even a thought.
That's what they need hackers for.
That's why, whenever you hear a situation like this,
you got to run down there and try to help them out
with innovative ideas.
Exactly.
I just find it, it's very,
it's amazing how much disarray occurs without innovation.
And what are you, you're salaried
and you can't come up with some innovative,
pen and paper logging system or something really,
even using technology, use your administrative powers
to disconnect a printer and set up a laptop or something.
The other thing I was wondering.
It would never happen.
It would never happen.
That's what I'm saying.
I was just wondering though,
okay, they had to go back and write things out
with pen and paper.
Why did it take so much longer?
That's the way things used to work.
So why is it that when we move ahead with technology,
things just don't go faster and more efficiently?
When we have to go back to the way it was,
shouldn't it go the same speed as it used to go
rather than really, really slow?
Is it just because we're not used to it?
Well, I mean, the computers are faster,
but they didn't use the time savings to save customers time.
They used the time savings to hire fewer employees.
Right, these are all the messy parts of their process.
The actual moving of humans and putting,
waste out, fuel in, bags on, bags off.
That is the messiness of their thing.
And even that gets delayed if bags get slowed down or lost
and things stack up on each other.
If it's a security thing,
or weather even is a great example.
So they're all going quite fast,
but they've optimized as many things as they can
in the process up to and including
getting you checked in and everything.
But after that, it really does take real time
and other kind of extenuating things,
including weather and other problems,
technical or otherwise, would slow them down a lot.
And you'd get people confusion,
especially if they can't communicate
and tell people where to go
without the systems they're relying on and stuff so heavily.
This makes me think though,
basically, do they still do this with,
I know I'm asking a lot of questions
about what they do in school these days,
but they still do this thing where
they test out the back door of the bus occasionally.
This is drill day.
You jump out the back
and you see if you can do that successfully.
And if so, then okay, you must be safe.
I think they should do something similar
to businesses in this country
and every country too,
where all of a sudden your technology stops working.
Can you survive?
Can you figure something out?
Can you survive without your modern phone system
or your cell phones or your computers?
Can you still run a business?
If you can, I think you probably have a pretty good business.
I think that would be fantastic,
either team building or breaking,
but it's a good exercise.
And the thing is,
I remember doing that with the emergency exits on the bus.
I didn't ride the bus, but-
Wait, how did you do it then?
You had to get on the bus and jump off?
No, all students were required to because of field trips.
Oh, field trips.
Yeah, you got to know how to get off the bus anyway,
even if you're not a normal day-to-day rider of the bus.
But it's important
and it gives you a sense of how things work.
And if you're exposed to that situation,
you'll at least have had some concept
of how not to panic
and how to maybe coordinate some resources.
And maybe even how your system works,
how your business works.
So that's an idea.
I would be happy to help some companies out
and without warning,
because it's got to be something that they are prepared for,
just yank their power and their computer connectivity
and everything like that.
They could call me the Johnny Appleseed
of destruction or whatever.
I don't care,
but it would be an educational thing, I think.
I think you need a better name.
Yeah, well, I just thought of it now.
Give me a break.
We'll come up with something together.
Anyway, it's 746 now, 747.
We spent almost 20 minutes talking about this
based on just one story.
Boy, what a tangent we went off on,
but that's the kind of thing we can do here
on a non-commercial radio station.
And if you support that,
give us a call, 212-209-2950.
Pledge whatever you can afford
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Good thing we brought two stories.
We did bring two stories
and we're trying to stretch it out as much as possible.
No, actually, we brought a whole lot of stories
and a bunch of listener mail as well.
We could go on.
We could do this show for eight hours if we had to.
We'd get mighty uncomfortable in here.
You hear?
But we could do it.
We really could.
You know, there are things to talk about
in this culture of ours, in the hacker culture,
that are just fascinating.
And that's something that our listeners
bring to the table as well.
And are we going to try to take phone calls later?
Do you think maybe in the second hour sometime?
Yeah, sure.
Do you have this little gizmo here?
Yeah, it'll still work the way it has
and it might be a bit of a carnival,
but we'll see.
It'll be fun.
Carnival, radio, or something.
It'll be fun, but it won't be optimal.
We will take your calls on the air later,
but right now we can take your calls
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212-209-2950.
Any amount you can pledge is great,
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That's the Control Your Environment package.
If you have more money than that,
pledge more money than that.
Keep us on the air.
Keep us on the air.
It would be great.
All right.
Rob?
And, of course,
any of those pledge levels
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You become a member of the station
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You're not just throwing money at it
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You are becoming part
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So, 212-209-2950
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That support is absolutely essential
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We've got a couple different items.
It's really not about that, though.
Any kind of pledge level,
anything that works for you,
we would greatly appreciate it.
If as many people call in
as have been drag racing
down Atlantic Avenue
in the last few minutes,
we will be doing pretty well.
212-209-2950.
Keep off the hook.
Keep WBAI on the air.
Hey, guess what?
We have a second story.
You have something else, Mike?
I mean, I'm just going to say
that's pretty unlikely
that everyone racing down
Atlantic Avenue is going to pledge
because...
No, I didn't say they were going to pledge.
They're driving.
They shouldn't even be calling.
Well, that's good advice.
I hope our listeners
don't call while driving,
but look, not everyone
wants to hear a hacker show.
Not everyone who wants
to hear a hacker show
knows they want to hear
a hacker show.
They'll just be turned off,
but WBAI is the kind of place
that will give us,
not just give us a chance,
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for more than two decades.
No other radio station
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If this is the only show
on the station that you like,
212-209-2950,
and of course,
if there's lots of shows
on the station that you like,
then you really have
a good spot to call.
Yeah, that's a good point,
because when you listen
to a place like this,
you're going to hear things
that make you happy.
You're going to hear things
that make you angry.
You're going to be frustrated
with the way things
even work here,
and that happens
when you get very involved.
When you become somebody
who works here,
you get kind of cynical sometimes
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a rock uphill.
It really can be a challenge,
and my hat's off to people
who put in so much time
getting things to work here,
but that's no reason
to give up.
That's no reason to say,
well, because I don't like
the way things are all the time,
I can't support this.
If there is just one thing
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I think.
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It's incredible.
All right, second story.
Let's see how much of a tangent
we can get off on here.
We were talking about
Volkswagen last week,
and apparently it's just
the tip of the iceberg
because there are
other companies too.
A couple of weeks after
Volkswagen was laid low
by the discovery that
some of its diesel-powered cars
cheated on emissions tests,
Samsung is facing an accusation
that its televisions
appear more energy efficient
under test conditions
than in everyday use.
Imagine that.
Now, a test conducted
by Compliant TV,
which is a testing group
funded by the European Union,
spotted a discrepancy.
That's according to
The Guardian last Thursday.
However, Samsung strongly denied
that it's gaming the system
to make its products
look better in regulatory lab tests.
At the heart of the matter
is a feature in Samsung TVs
called motion lighting.
It's designed to reduce
screen brightness,
and thus energy consumption,
when the picture on the screen
is in motion.
Compliant TV has said
that motion lighting
is only activated during tests.
Laboratories observed
different TV behaviors
during the measurements,
and this raised the possibility
of the TVs detecting
a test procedure
and adapting their
power consumption accordingly.
Such phenomenon was not proven
within the Compliant TV tests,
but some tested TVs
gave the impression
that they detected
a test situation.
This finding heightens concerns
that as computers spread
into many more nooks of our lives,
products might be adapting
their behavior to conditions
in ways that are nefarious,
not just clever and helpful.
Most people carefully cultivate
their appearance on Facebook
and job applications
to put themselves
in a favorable light.
Interesting parallel here.
But we're not used to computers
being so crafty.
What do you guys think of this?
I'm just curious how they did it
because, I mean,
emissions testing equipment
is big and expensive
and most people don't have it,
but you can buy a wattmeter
for like 20 bucks.
I bought one actually
just recently
and see how much energy
your appliances are using.
Yeah, it does seem a little
more nebulous here
as far as how to actually
figure out that they're cheating
and what they're cheating at.
Samsung says motion lighting
is not a setting
that only activates
during compliance testing.
On the contrary,
it's a default setting
which works both in the lab
and at home,
delivering energy savings
and helping us to reduce
our environmental impact,
et cetera, et cetera.
It shouldn't be a surprise, though,
to find observers
taking a skeptical stance right now.
Volkswagen, after all,
just lost their chief executive
nearly half the market value
after admitting they used
defeat device software
to clamp down on emissions.
Samsung itself
has used special modes
during testing in 2013.
It, among several
smartphone makers,
basically were found
to use software
that detected when people
were performing speed tests
and revved up system performance
at that time.
That, to me,
is a bigger scandal.
Yeah, I mean,
that seems a lot more,
I don't want to say easier,
but more practical
to get away with.
You can detect software
that's part of common benchmarks
and optimize for it.
And, of course,
it wouldn't shock me
to learn that Samsung
is doing precisely that.
All these companies
are completely untrustworthy,
and many of them
would be willing
to be our sponsors,
and we wouldn't be able
to say that about them anymore.
We wouldn't be able to say
Samsung sucks.
It's hard to say,
but we can say that.
I think a lot...
Yes, Bernie.
I'm sorry,
I keep directing you guys.
I have a little latency
out here on the cell phone.
I think this sort of
technological cheating...
Yes, Bernie.
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
Hello, go ahead.
Yes, I hear you.
Can you hear me?
The technological cheating,
I think,
has spread into
a lot of other things.
And I think a friend of mine
was talking to me
the other day.
He works for a company
that does services
for a big investment
banking company.
And he discovered
that this company
was not using
a firewall
for some kind of
SEC compliance,
Security Exchange Commission,
because it added
some latency
to the trading,
which, you know,
microseconds
can translate
to millions of dollars
in some of these
investment banking trades.
So they just left
the thing disconnected,
and they knew when the SEC
was going to come
and do their compliance testing,
so they just reconnected
the firewall
when they knew
the SEC was coming.
So I think this is
probably pervading
so many areas,
so many companies
and industries
are probably turning
to technological cheating
because the regulators
may not have the skills
to detect
this sort of thing.
So I think this is
a good example
of why hackers
and people like them
are needed
to watch
what's really going on
and to work in compliance
industries to make sure
that there's not
technological cheating
going on.
It really affects
all of our lives,
you know,
like the Volkswagen thing
causes a lot of air pollution
and can kill people.
Bernie,
I want to disagree slightly.
I think in many cases
it may be
incompetent regulators,
but in many cases
it is not
incompetent regulators,
but it is
defunded regulators.
It is,
a lot of these
requirements
are supposed to be
self-enforced.
There's absolutely
no one regulating them
in most cases
or very, very few people
regulating them.
And this is not
a coincidence,
you know,
the big corporate interests
have lobbied
to cut regulatory funding
in all sorts of industries.
So, you know,
it doesn't require
a big conspiracy.
I don't think there's like
three people in a room
saying that this is
how the world
is going to work,
but it is a very deliberate
push by entities
that don't want
to be regulated
to reduce the effectiveness
of the regulators
so that they can say
the regulators are ineffective
and cut them even further.
And we see this
especially in the
financial industry,
but also the car industry
and just all kinds
of industries.
And we need to be
on the lookout for it.
Oil and gas exploration?
Oh, of course.
Does that ring a bell?
Yeah.
Well, the thing to remember
is that we can't blame
the computers for this
because people program
the computers,
people program technology
to cheat.
And that's what
we're seeing here.
You need to program
other bits of technology
to find the cheaters.
It's interesting, Bernie,
you said that hackers
should be the people
to do this,
and I agree.
Hackers are in a great position
to uncover things like this.
But in the mainstream,
which is every other
radio station on the dial,
hackers are seen
as the problem,
as the ones that are doing this,
which I think is really funny
when you look at
who the perpetrators are,
corporate executives
and people with tons of money
that want even more.
Not exactly hackers, right?
No.
They're criminals.
It's a difference.
Absolutely.
Okay.
We are coming up
to our first hour,
our first hour break here.
WBAI New York,
where Off The Hook
usually signs off
about this time.
We're staying on
for another whole hour
because we're doing
a two-hour program tonight
and we're asking
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That's our telephone number.
Please call us
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that we are offering tonight.
Mike, what are those things again?
If you pledge 212-209-2950,
you pledge $50,
you can receive,
as a token of our thanks,
the TV Be Gone,
which can turn off
any television
or almost any television.
You can receive
the Trippy RGB Waves Kit,
which is a great way
to learn to solder,
a great project
if you already know
how to solder.
You can, you know,
amaze your friends
by waving your hand
over this board
and controlling the light.
You can amaze your friends
even further
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you want it to do.
If you pledge $75
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Control Your Environment Package,
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212-209-2950.
Well, I want to add something
to this TV thing.
And since we have more time,
I can add to this.
Please.
As I sit here,
I'm thinking about it
and it's so funny.
First of all,
those settings
aren't really spectacular.
I mean,
if you want to save energy,
turn your TV off,
you know,
make sure...
We can help you do that.
Yeah, yeah.
This kit will help you do that.
Just to be clear,
the TV Be Gone
is not a kit.
It is pre-assembled.
The Trippy RGB Waves
is a kit.
True.
One is a kit.
One is pre-assembled.
All you have to do
is go out
and find some TVs.
But I think really
what's going on here
is marketing.
They, after all,
are trying to sell TVs.
So they've got this
thing they can do
in software
that basically,
more or less,
looks like it's
saving energy.
But I think
it's just marketing.
Really,
it's useless.
To modify content
you're watching
with whatever processing
they're doing in the TV
really degrades
the work
that the people
that created
that content
put into it.
And if you're
trying to sell
that content
and if it's
in the name of
saving a fraction
of a watt
somewhere...
Anyway,
I would argue
that a lot of those
motion flow,
a lot of those
optimizing things
your TV is
telling you
that it can do
for your life
and your content,
it is all
complete
boulder dash.
It is useless.
Set your TV.
Calibrate it
to the right picture
and color levels.
Stuff you're
comfortable with there.
But all this other stuff
is just
a total waste.
It's really
marketing
and a complete
distraction
from the myriad
of other things
you can do
to save energy
and be efficient
and so on
in your life.
You know something
that doesn't take
a lot of energy?
Radio receivers
are low energy devices.
Radio is
a low energy medium.
So,
on your end,
on the listener's end,
it's a very low
energy medium.
On our end,
we have a lot of power
that we need to
put through a lot of machines
in order to get
what we're doing
out there to you.
And the only way
we can keep that switched on
and keep the lights on
and keep all these
little boards fueled
with electricity
so we can fuel them
with noise,
that's by calling
212-209-2950
or going to
give2wbai.org
and supporting
off the hook,
supporting WBAI
and keeping us going.
Rob,
I have to interrupt you here
because it is
8 o'clock.
Actually,
it's 8.01.
You are listening to
WBAI New York
and as per FCC regulations,
we must air
30 seconds
before we go to work.
Wow,
I played that
at the worst possible time,
didn't I?
Okay,
you know,
that would have worked
any other time
in that whole set
except for when
they faded out like that.
Let's play 15 more seconds.
Okay.
And you are listening to
Off the Hook here
on WBAI.
You're not listening
to The Personal Computer Show
because it's not on tonight.
It will be on
next week
at this time,
maybe other times as well
and we'll be back
in two weeks.
We're usually on
on from 7 to 8 every Wednesday, but tonight we're on from 7 to 9, because we are bringing
you a special program, a special fundraising edition.
Yes, this is Off the Topic, and um...
Is that the name of the show now, Off the Topic?
Yes.
Okay.
That's good, I like that.
I like that.
We are, uh, Emmanuel here, Kyle over there, Rob T. Firefly, Mike.
I don't think our listeners can see you pointing.
Well, I'm pointing to you to make you say hello.
You're pointing down to Bernie now.
I'm pointing down to Bernie.
Bernie, say hello.
Hello from Philadelphia.
Alright.
Uh, and we are going to try and take phone calls in our, uh, in the style that we have
here.
Um, we have to set some things up.
I had to basically...
We have a browser open, but I almost, um, I almost assigned a phone number to somebody
on staff, and I didn't want to do that, I had to open a different browser.
Wow.
Uh, okay, so, uh, you know what?
I even have a third story here that we can focus on a little bit as well, and that is
the story of, uh, Julian Assange, a continuing story of Julian Assange, uh, in the Ecuadorian
embassy.
On Monday, the London Metropolitan Police announced that they would be ending their
permanent guard at the Ecuadorian embassy where WikiLeaks found that Julian Assange
has been taking refuge for the last three years.
It's simply incredible.
Um, now they're not saying why exactly they're doing this, but of course it's got people
just a little bit nervous as to if something else is being planned instead.
I don't think anybody doubts that the embassy is not still being watched quite carefully.
I doubt he can just, um, hop out over to pub or something like that.
It's not gonna, uh, really, um, uh, go that easily.
But it was insanely ridiculous that for all this time, they wasted, what was it, 12 million
pounds in, in police overtime just standing around watching the embassy, um, when, uh,
they certainly don't put that kind of effort into, um, anybody else that, uh, they're looking
at for, for the kinds of, um, offenses he's accused of.
Bernie, any, any, uh, thoughts or predictions?
Well, I think it's a safe bet that, uh, U.S. intelligence agents, uh, who I think really
want to get their clutches on, uh, Julian Assange for having something to do with, uh,
uh, leaking the, uh, the, the Clinton, uh, uh, the, uh, the State Department, uh, cables.
Like, a lot of the, uh, really interesting, uh, secret communications that during when
Hillary Clinton was, uh, Department of State, um, but this cost, this has cost British taxpayers
about $17 million, uh, equivalent.
That's, that's a huge amount of money, and you're right, this is, uh, uh, I'm not gonna
dismiss the charges he's being charged with in Sweden, but frankly, um, this is a highly
disproportionate level of, uh, of, of attention that the British government has been giving.
I'm sure it's at the behest of the U.S. government to some guy holed up in an embassy for charges
that could be handled, uh, very simply in Sweden.
I think he's still waiting to be interviewed by the Swedish authorities in the Ecuadorian
embassy in London.
I think he's been waiting, like, three years for that.
Why don't they do that?
So, Bernie, now, let, let's take it a step further.
Do you think this is an effort to kinda entice him, get him to be brave enough to maybe step
out a bit enough to get caught?
Maybe.
Maybe it's a trap.
I'm, you know, it's, it's, just putting that out there.
Yeah, you know, he wasn't born yesterday.
Oh, I know.
And when you spend three years inside an embassy eluding the authorities, I don't think you're
gonna do something stupid and, uh, and immediately get caught, um, or, or, or snagged by them.
It's, the whole thing has been so insanely ridiculous and, and embarrassing to them as
well.
Um, but it's, it's just fascinating to see the story.
You can't predict where the story is going to go, um, but at some point, something has
to change.
So you heard it here first.
They're backing off.
Well, that's what they want us to think, anyway.
Visually.
I, I mean, like, again, without dismissing the, the magnitude of what, uh, Julian is
accused of, there are many other, um, sexual assault victims in the UK and Sweden who I'm
sure wish their, their respective governments would spend tens of millions of, of pounds
on prosecuting those cases.
Which tells me, and I'm sure it tells a lot of other people, that this has nothing to
do with sexual assault.
This has got something to do with WikiLeaks, with, uh, with, uh, the thorn in the side
of the US government that, uh, this guy has been for years now.
And uh, you know, a part of me wants to say, Julian, uh, you know what, why don't you just
walk outside and see what happens?
But, you know, how can you ask somebody to sacrifice themselves like that?
But wow, I'm curious, I want to know, you know, will they actually be that flagrant
about it where they'll say, yeah, you can go to Sweden, no one's going to bug you.
And then all of a sudden, you know, you're on the Midnight Express to, uh, Guantanamo.
Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's something that we'd like answers to, but I think we're going to
have to wait a lot longer.
Yeah, it's, uh, it's definitely this kind of weird situation where, you know, if he
could walk outside and, you know, get himself arrested, what, uh, what would happen next?
I mean, we're seeing what happens to whistleblowers.
We're seeing what happens to Chelsea Manning, um, where she's, she's now in prison for what,
what will likely be the rest of her life.
Um, we have Edward Snowden who's in exile for who knows how long that's going to last.
Um, you guys happened to see that, uh, Snowden was brought up in the debates last night.
I did not.
Did anybody watch the debates?
No.
No.
Oh my gosh.
Wow.
Bernie?
I listened, I listened to part of it, but I didn't catch that part.
What was said about it?
Yeah.
Well, okay.
One of the questions, uh, was that Anderson Cooper asked, I think it was Anderson Cooper
was, is Edward Snowden a hero?
It was several layers to it.
Or a traitor.
Yeah.
Those lines.
Yeah.
And what would you, what would you, uh, what would you do?
What would you be in favor of?
And some of the answers were rather interesting.
What was the most interesting?
Oh, you want us to tell you now?
The spoiler alert.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, you can spoiler the debate that already took place.
I think that's fair.
Well now who, um, yeah, but people say that about, you know, the latest episode of Game
of Thrones too, and they get angry.
Someone dies.
10 years later.
Yeah.
Well, um, okay.
So maybe three and a half weeks earlier.
Let's, let's look at that.
Um, so predictably Hillary Clinton was not very much in favor of having him come back
and not face charges.
Uh, she, she said he, uh, betrayed the law.
He has to face the music, the music.
That's what she said.
Yes.
Uh, Bernie, Bernie Sanders was a bit, um, a bit more, um, reasonable.
Is that the word?
Oh yeah.
I think he thinks that, uh, there needs to be more reform.
I think he used the word reform that you, and he would, first thing without a doubt,
he would, uh, dismantle what has been done with the NSA and will reform it.
Uh, no question.
He, he basically, he said that, um, uh, yes, he broke the law and there should be some
penalty.
Right.
But he brought, I mean, I'm talking like him now, he, he, he actually, uh, uh, did a service
to everybody in the United States by showing them something that the government was doing
that was illegal.
I, I just think that was, you know, you, you can't just go out there and say, and expect
most of America to, to, um, uh, support you that, yeah, he should come back and face no
penalty whatsoever.
The way he said it, I think is the, is the most open door policy that, uh, that anyone
has presented so far.
What are the other three say?
I always, I'm mixing those three up, but, uh, I don't think they, they said anything
really of, of substance that, uh, was any different than anything we heard so far.
And as we've said before about, uh, Hillary Clinton's idea that he should just come back
and face the music, there is no way that he can come back and face the music in any sort
of, uh, in any sort of justice bearing manner.
The, the system does not allow for him to, um, defend himself or, um, or justify his
actions in any way.
Um, it would just, it, he would just, uh, be made to disappear and that's not going
to help any side, no matter what you think.
If you think what he did was wrong or right, there is still no way for him to be tried
by it.
Uh, it would just, it would just be a matter of him being made to go away.
I mean, I think it's really actually clever of, uh, Clinton and her friends to focus the
debate on if Snowden should be in jail or not, uh, because we're not talking, I can
guarantee you no one at this debate asked, should the head of the NSA be thrown in jail
who committed far greater crimes than Snowden did under any reasonable standard.
Um, so, you know, hats off to them for, for framing the debate as they have.
You know, I think, I think, uh, the other Bernie asks would, would, would get there
in time, but no, he, he, uh, it would be political suicide to suggest something like that at
this point.
But I think, you know, the dialogue is being moved in a good direction.
Yeah.
But I mean, because of Snowden, but, uh, yes, but it's, it's slow moving.
Yeah.
And as Mike said, framing is key.
I mean, you have got to step back from the way the conversations are constructed and
the venues and how and, and so on and so forth, but anyway, to continue spoiling, um, their
conversation basically trailed off into who voted for the Patriot Act and when and where
and all that.
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's basically the rest of it.
Well, um, okay.
So you guys didn't see the debate, uh, but, uh, y'all watch Homeland at least, right?
What?
What, what is that?
What is that?
It's a reality show.
I don't watch it.
No.
Well, I, I need to, I need to hang out with cooler people.
All right.
Homeland is, is the series about, you're just now realizing about saving, saving America.
It's kind of like 24 plus, you know, except it's on Showtime.
Um, and it's, it's about this, uh, ex CIA agent who's always right and everybody else
is always wrong.
And she's protecting America from those evil foreign terrorists.
That's basically it.
Yeah.
There's like more beards and she's insane too.
Yeah.
Well, at least she acts insane.
It's on Showtime.
So I presume there's nudity.
Is that the, the draw?
Well, not as much as you might like, but there's, there might be a little bit.
I mean, that's the first question you asked me.
Is there nudity?
I mean, you just said it was on Showtime.
Talking about national security.
No, you're not.
You're talking about like fictionalized weird television.
Well, let's see how fictionalized this is, uh, in this particular, um, uh, series now,
uh, it takes place in Berlin in, in Germany.
And that's a real city.
This computer hacker has broken into the CIA and gotten all of this information and has
leaked it to a journalist named Laura, who is now, who is now releasing that information
in the form of, of various newspaper articles and has just been, um, uh, arrested illegally
by the German authorities in question before being, um, uh, released by her lawyer.
That's a cool story.
I can't believe her name is actually Laura.
Of course, we're talking about Laura Poitras, uh, who, uh, who made, um, uh, a citizen for,
uh, lived in Berlin for some time and of course was the person who, um, um, uh, was contacted
by Edward Snowden.
It's, you know, they, they not very creative as far as writing original stories.
There's so much here that seems to be based on reality.
Of course, it's very different in many ways, but I think what they're, what they're obviously
trying to do, and if the previous way of doing things in this series is any indication, uh,
they're going to make her out to be somebody who is a hopelessly naive as far as what freedom
actually is.
And one day she will wish that the CIA was there to help save her because of all those
evil people that she inadvertently helped by releasing all of this information that
was hacked by the hacker who, by the way, will meet an unfortunate end because he's
got a beard and nobody really is attached to him emotionally.
I think Glenn Greenwald raised an excellent point on Twitter that I saw this morning about
the debates last night.
People are accusing Snowden of having put American lives at risk.
There's no evidence for this, but even just assuming for the moment that is true, the
people who voted for the Iraq war, there's no question they put American, American lives
were definitely lost because of that.
And, and, uh, Snowden is, is the one they're accusing.
It's just, it's nuts.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's the way they, they, they spin the story and that's something we always
are focusing on here, both at this radio station and in the hacker world because we
question authority.
That's kind of what we do and we don't know how not to do it.
Okay.
Our phone number two one two two zero nine two nine five zero.
Please call with your support.
Um, we are doing a fundraising show tonight.
We're on for two hours, only another 45 minutes.
We have some amazing things for you to question authority with, uh, including a way to, um,
to shut the authorities up sometimes when they really start annoying you.
Let's say you're, um, let's, okay, here's, here's my best example because I know it bothers
people when, uh, you know, you, you go behind them and turn off their television set and
they're watching it.
Yeah, I know that that's annoying.
It gets old fast.
Uh, and even, you know, if, if people are in a bar and everybody's watching the same
game and you keep turning it off, you're a bit of a jerk.
I know that.
But there are many situations where you're in a place like a restaurant or something
like that and they, for some reason decides a good idea to have a big TV set on sometimes
even with sound that's just really distracting, annoying and uncivilized.
And you now have the ability, the freedom to turn that thing off when you feel like
it.
And I've done this many times, uh, in places like this and, and usually a couple of different
things happen.
Uh, the best scenario is nobody notices and everybody just goes on about their lives.
The second scenario, much more likely is that the, uh, restaurateur will notice, Hey, the
television set went off and we'll drop whatever he's doing to go over there to figure out
what went wrong.
Turn it back on.
Uh, then he goes back to his duties.
You do it again.
Once again, he, he forgets about his customers or anything else important and tries to figure
out what's going on with the television set, gets to work a second time.
But the third time when you turn it off, he gives up, he gives up, stops going back, says
he's going to deal with it later after the place closes and people start conversing amongst
each other just like, well, of course, with the smartphones, you still have that problem.
For the most part, people stop watching the television set at least.
And, uh, it's, it's a, it's a small victory.
So that's what the TV begun can get you.
And that's what you can get tonight for a pledge of $50.
It's also a lot of fun.
One of my favorite things to do with the TV begun is, uh, when I have to go out to say
a big box retailer that has shelves and shelves of televisions, um, it's fun to just walk
past those, hit the button on the thing and watch them all turn off at various times because
they're all different brands.
And it, it's just, uh, it's just a really entertaining thing to do.
And it's not, it's not in a fashion that hurts anybody or that causes anyone an actual loss.
It's just something that, well, it does cause, I mean, somebody got in trouble for that,
uh, in Berlin.
I remember at one of the chaos, uh, Congresses, yeah, but they, they were eventually acquitted
because it's not actually damaging televisions to turn.
They tried to make it seem like it, because it was a big television.
They might try to make it seem like when you turn that off, you cause damage or something
like that.
I remember at a circuit city once, uh, turning a bunch of them off and causing all kinds
of confusion.
That wasn't why they went out of business, but you would think it would have been because
of, of how seriously they take things like this.
I guess they're selling the things they want to make sure they, they stay on.
Uh, but, um, it can be fun and can be, it can be a public service.
It can be a useful tool and you can get yours tonight by calling 212-209-2950, pledging
$50 and asking for the, the TVB gun.
They get mad at those stores because they have to go and find every single remote for
every single different TV.
They don't have it all in one device and a nice, neat little table like, uh, this, uh,
microcontroller, uh, TVB gun device, uh, has access to.
So, um, they can't just press a button on the TV.
They have to press it.
Uh, remote.
Well, they're all different TVs presumably, right?
So, you know, they should have one of these.
If they were smart, they would call in and, uh, see what they could do about getting one
of these TVB guns.
It would make, uh, turning them all on and off, uh, at the end and beginning of the day
is easy.
So if you run a big TV showroom, uh, you might want to consider getting a TVB gun so that
you can make it a TVB on.
Because again, as I said, uh, once they're off, this button also will turn them on.
It goes through all the codes of every TV set and finds the one that's in front of you
and either turns it on or off, whichever position it's not in.
Some of the best televisions have separate codes so you can't turn them on and that,
that makes me happy, but very few.
This also works on TVs that are being used to, uh, monitor surveillance cameras.
That's, that's true as well.
I'm not sure how that will help people exactly, but, uh, it's good to know.
Bernie, yes.
Um, I got a good TVB gun story a few weeks ago, uh, our friend Mitch Altman was, uh,
visiting friends here in Philadelphia and I picked him up, he was at a, uh, open source
hardware conference.
It's pretty interesting stuff.
And, uh, I drove him back to where he was staying and, uh, we went past a big planet
fitness, uh, exercise gym and, um, there were this huge line of big screen TVs in
front of all the, uh, the treadmills that people were jogging on and Mitch said, Oh,
pull up here.
Just, just pull up.
I'm like, sweet.
He whipped out his TVB gun and he got about, we must turn off at least a dozen of them
right through the windows.
We were probably 50, at least 50, 60 feet away from these TVs and through the windows
we were parked.
Just parked at a park in a parking spot and he was just zapping all the TVs, turning them
off.
Some people stopped jogging on their, on their treadmills, oddly, like that would, like the
TV goes off and you can stop jogging.
Very strange.
But anyhow, he got almost all of them.
Uh, he is very skilled at this cause he's had, he designed the thing and these are the
last of the TVB guns.
You will not be able to purchase one soon.
He stopped making them.
So if you want one of these things, uh, that Mitch has donated to us very generously called
212-209-2950 for a $75 pledge, you can get a TVB gun also, or a Trippi RGB Waves kit
for $75.
If you want them both pledge, what is it?
I think the Trippi RGB Waves kit is also a pledge of $50.
If you want both, the control your environment package is $75.
That's a great deal.
That's an amazing deal.
212-209-2950.
And, uh, the real, the real power of a TVB gun is starting that conversation because
if you're in an environment where everyone just, the TV is accepted background noise.
It's an accepted part of the, uh, of the physical and mental environment that everyone shares.
It's really interesting to see what happens when you switch that off because people don't
expect that.
People aren't quite sure what to do when that happens.
Um, and you wouldn't think, you know, okay, the TV has been switched off.
That's going to really upset people to any degree or really mess with, uh, what everyone,
what everyone is doing with themselves at that point.
But it really does shake people up and it makes people re-examine the place that TV
has in all our lives.
That's the discussion that Mitch was trying to start when he made the TVB gun.
Um, that's the discussion that's been going on for a while now and it's a discussion that
you can be part of making happen with this gadget, with the TVB gun, which you can get
hold of for just a pledge of $50 to 1, 2, 2, 0, 9, 2, 9, 5, 0, or give to WBAI.org.
The police are coming.
I hear them.
Wow.
I think they heard me turn the TV off.
I think, uh, yeah, you guys might have to hide me.
Yeah.
Um, well, it's living on the edge here at WBAI, um, again, uh, 2, 1, 2, 2, 0, 9, 2,
9, 5, 0.
And you know, you can write to us too if you have comments on anything that we've said
tonight.
Uh, we'd love to hear from our listeners.
In fact, we're going to go into a section where we, um, hear some listener letters,
uh, and maybe some phone calls in a little bit.
Uh, OTH at 2600.com is our telephone number and, uh, we're always happy to, um, uh, to
hear what, um, what, uh, listeners have to say.
Not everybody's happy to hear what, uh, what you have to say.
You know that, right?
Uh, people sometimes react the wrong way.
Sometimes they don't really want feedback of any sort.
If you contact the CEO of AT&T, you may very well hear back from that CEO's lawyer.
Yes.
Now AT&T's code of business conduct declares that our customers should always know we value
them and that we listen to our customers.
But according to this article from David Lazarus of the LA Times, you might want to think twice
before offering suggestions to the company's chief executive, whose name is Randall Stevenson,
about, about how AT&T can improve its internet and wireless services.
El Sereno resident, Alfred Vowrey, found himself in the crosshairs of a top AT&T lawyer after
recently emailing Stevenson with two simple ideas for improving customer satisfaction.
Uh, those two ideas were, um, unlimited, uh, data for DSL users and a thousand text messages
for $10 a month.
Um, this is actually what he wrote.
You know, you have to be fair with these stories.
You have to basically present, uh, what was actually said so you can see why it got this
kind of a reaction in the first place.
I don't want to be too, uh, unfair here.
So, uh, giving AT&T their, their, their, their time.
It's good to give the listeners the information they need to reach their own judgment about
this tense situation.
Yeah.
So this is, this is what this guy had the audacity to go online and, um, and, and write
to the CEO of AT&T.
Hi, I have two suggestions.
Please do not contact, uh, contact me in regards to these.
These are suggestions.
Allow unlimited data for DSL customers, particularly those in neighborhoods not serviced by U-verse.
Bring back text messaging plans like 1000 messages for $10 or create a new plan like
500 messages for $7.
Your lifelong customer, Alfred Vowrey.
Wow.
The nerve of that guy.
Hey, I can't believe, can we, can we even read that stuff on the air?
Well, I just did.
I wonder now if that was a good idea.
You know, I mean, no, I have to disagree with you here.
I think there's a perfectly acceptable email.
Well, that's exactly the kind of thing I would expect you to say.
Yeah.
Uh, but, uh, predictably the CEO was outraged to hear these suggestions being, uh, uh, sent
to his, um, email.
Uh, and, um, what happened, uh, was that, uh, he received a, um, uh, a letter from AT&T's
legal department saying AT&T has a policy of not entertaining unsolicited offers to
adopt, analyze, develop, um, uh, license or purchase third-party intellectual property
from members of the general public.
Uh, therefore we respectfully declined to consider your suggestion.
Yeah, they can, they, they won't even consider the suggestion.
Um, now here's the thing, according to Georgia Taylor, who's a company spokeswoman, uh, and
in this article, uh, you're expecting it to end with, oh, we had no idea.
We didn't know, uh, that, uh, they were sent out by mistake, et cetera, et cetera.
We're so sorry.
No, that's not what AT&T is about.
AT&T stands by what it says and what it does.
And she says in the past, we've had customers send us unsolicited ideas and then later threatened
to take legal action claiming we stole their ideas.
That's why our responses have been a bit formal and legalistic.
It's so we can protect ourselves.
So friends, when AT&T seems, you know, a bit hostile or intimidating to you, it's because
they're afraid.
It's because they are trying to protect themselves against your ideas that are a big threat to
them.
So show a little mercy.
I almost feel bad for what's the PR person's name who has to write this Georgia something
who has to write this nonsense and, and pretend to believe it.
So now you're getting inside Georgia's head and saying that she doesn't believe the things
that you're going to hear from Georgia's attorney, who probably is the same attorney, but it
might be a different one.
She's in the legal department.
So I'm not sure even she needs an attorney.
It's a risk I might have to take.
But anyway, that's, that's what corporate America does.
That's what you can expect when you suggest things to other companies, but not to us.
I feel like it's a, it's a form response and that there's a slight possibility they still
looked at the suggestion at least in part or pieces of it or considered it hypothetically.
But for whatever reason, they've, they've got their loyalties to their current plan
and so on with, with whatever it is, SMS packages was one of the things he suggested
and so on.
So it's entirely possible that they read it, but then sent this as sort of a preventative,
something that would allow them to accept the suggestion, but cover them like legally.
It seems like a overreaction, but in case it's a, an attempt to sort of extort them
through some sort of legal entanglement with an idea.
That's what I don't understand.
What legal entanglement are they worried about?
Intellectual property is a big deal and it's a big deal for this company, right?
So they're extremely sensitive to it, to their ideas and what is created internally
and how they interact with the public.
They definitely want their customers to stay customers.
And like this kind of suggestion, I think is something they would, it's sort of a pat
on the head in other words, and you know, basically like, yeah, why don't you apply
for a job?
Even so, like I've, I personally have worked at a few different places, some large, large
concerns and some smaller ones, but every one of them pretty much wanted to hear from
their customers what they thought of the service.
Maybe they weren't going to adopt every idea that was thrown at them and nobody should,
but there was a general sense of them at least being interested in what their customers had
to say, especially if like in the case with this fellow, it was a lifelong happy customer.
Those are the people you want to hear from if you're, if you're in a trade, if you're
providing a service, if you're doing something that depends on your clients being happy with
what you're doing.
So to just bite his head off like this and threaten to stick the lawyers on him is kind
of nuts.
It's certainly a cold reading of his good faith suggestion and quite cynical.
But anyway, RS2982 at AT&T.com, if you have a suggestion for Mr. Stevenson, the CEO of
AT&T.
You just gave out his email address on the air?
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Now people know who not to email with their suggestions for AT&T.
He doesn't want them, but if that's the email, just if you have a suggestion for AT&T, I
guess our advice should be don't send them.
Now wait.
They could use a lot of suggestions actually.
Hold on.
No, wait a sec.
I wish you had told me about that.
Just say that one more time.
That email address.
Just to be clear.
The email address to not send your suggestions to.
No, no.
Just say that.
Don't give them suggestions.
But yeah.
RS2982 at AT&T.com.
Okay.
If you find yourself writing email to that address, please separate yourself from us
so that it doesn't seem as if we are the ones who got you to write the email.
So if you were writing a letter to this guy, again, the address?
RS2982 at AT&T.com.
Check your out folders or whatever, or scan the internet and see if that address shows
up in anything you're interested in, and if you're writing an email, just make sure that
you don't say our names.
Fair enough?
Bernie, how about you?
Daniel?
Yes.
Yeah.
I already wrote a suggestion to the CEO of AT&T, suggesting that they not lash out at
customers for submitting intellectual property when they haven't done so anyway.
There's nothing in this guy's suggestions that constitute intellectual property.
He was just suggesting unlimited data for DSL customers, or offer a thousand text messages
for $10.
I mean, that is not intellectual property.
No court in the land would rule, oh, that's protected intellectual property.
So I think AT&T was way off base.
There's no method described, or technique, or something proprietary new, and something
that has not been established before.
New work is not created there.
It's a new way of them maybe reconfiguring their work, the work that they do, but it's
in vague terms at the most.
Yeah.
I mean, I think we can clearly establish this, but if the lawyer was asked, what intellectual
property in question?
Intellectual property is not a legal term.
You have either patent law, or trademark law, or copyright law.
If you ask the lawyer, which of those three do you think you might get in trouble for
here if you hadn't sent this email, there's no way you could possibly answer, because
none of these suggestions are patentable, trademarkable, or copyrightable, obviously
even to a non-lawyer like me.
But they invented this vague umbrella term, intellectual property, so that you have to
think about it just for half a second to realize it doesn't qualify.
They even have, I think a parent company is kind of akin to this large search engine
changing their name.
I think there's an AT&T intellectual property.
I've seen it on some of their handsets and packaging materials.
So AT&T, this is what you get when you do something like this, us talking about it for
20 minutes, and probably a lot of other people talking about it as well, and corporations
of America should do well to pay attention to this.
Can you imagine what would happen if we had sponsors and AT&T was one of our sponsors?
Well, you know, they wouldn't be one of our sponsors after tonight's show, that's for
sure.
I don't think any company would be, because they never know what we're going to say and
how we'll unleash against them.
Maybe they should patent being a big fat copper pig sitting on everyone's access to information.
Oh, that's one way of, that's actually, you know, that could be an advertising campaign
right there.
All right, we mentioned the email address because we do want to hear from you.
In addition to calling our fundraising line and pledging right now, 212-209-2950, we also
value your cards and letters and emails and whatever else you feel like sending us, oth
at 2600.com is our email address.
Here's a letter from our friend Pyro who is responding to one of the things Kyle and I
were talking about from Maker Faire with the segues that didn't have the handles.
They're called hoverboards.
You steer them like a skateboard by shifting your weight from left to right, and like a
segway, you lean forward to go forward and back to go back.
Only problem is because you have nothing to hold on to when you step on them, they take
off on you.
You basically have to be very, you have to have very good balance, otherwise you will
break your neck.
Yeah, I don't know if I can ever get on those things.
Just seems kind of scary just to look at.
I just take issue with them being called hoverboards because they're not hovering.
Yeah, I'm with you on that, Rob.
Yeah, they're not hovering, are they?
Also, I think it's akin to any kind of traditional skateboard.
They tend to kind of go out from under you if you're not careful, if you don't step directly
on top of it.
So, I don't know.
We'll have to try it.
We'll have to get some experimenting to see if there are certain techniques to avoid them.
But these ones have a motor, so they go faster.
Right.
Yeah, so when they step out from under you, all kinds of things can happen.
I wouldn't be jumping on one very quickly.
I'd have to spend some time evaluating it, maybe on one of those rubber tracks.
Yeah, you won't see those soon at Hope, I don't think.
I think we're going to stick to the regular Segway, where the traditional fun can be had.
Here's another letter from Jeff.
Hi there.
I just wanted to relate a quick story about rotary phones.
I'm 32.
By all rights, should have never come into contact with a working rotary phone.
Sounds like maybe you did.
I'm sorry to hear about that.
My grandparents didn't move on to touch-tone phones until sometime in the early 90s.
So I spent a good amount of time early in my life dialing a rotary.
The funnier thing is that the line was still set up to recognize a rotary dial, and for
a good year or so, until someone noticed a switch on the phone's base, each press of
the button was followed by a corresponding number of pulses, saving no time whatsoever.
Well, Jeff, that's interesting.
Sounds like what you had there was a touch-tone phone that had a rotary switch, so when you
pressed the button, it would dial the number.
Those were useful in situations where phone companies were greedy and charged people extra
for using touch-tones, and were able to use sophisticated circuitry to disable touch-tones
so that they didn't cut the dial tone of the phone company.
That has gone away for the most part, but you'll find that phone lines today still are
able to recognize rotary pulses.
They are designed that way.
In fact, we even met a couple of people at Maker Faire that are involved in making those
work on VoIP, making rotary pulses work on VoIP connections.
Yeah, you can do that with an analog telephone adapter or interface, and it's pretty interesting.
You can even use partially the landline for maybe local calls, and then have it switch
automatically for long-distance stuff.
Also, if you're fortunate enough to still have an actual landline, and not like a cable
modem phone or something like that, but an actual old-fashioned landline still connected
to your house, you can still use pulse dialing even without a rotary or pulse-compatible
phone if you just flick the switch hook really quickly for each number.
One flick for one, two for two, and right up to ten flicks for zero.
If you get the timing right, you can dial your numbers without ever touching the keypad.
That does sound fun.
Yeah, I thought it was fun back in the day.
It sounds like somebody doesn't know how to do it.
That's what it sounds like to me.
I learned that as a kid, and I was very proud of myself figuring out that dialing ten zeros
got you an operator, or ten pulses got an operator.
It's fun typing in someone's name and then clicking on it, and then you talk to them.
Well, you're easily amused, then, if that's fun to you.
Yeah.
Okay.
What's that, Bernie?
Go ahead.
Back in high school, all the classrooms had telephones, rotary phones in them, but there
was a lock, a mechanical lock on the dial, and only the teacher had the key to.
But I knew the trick, so I was dialing companies and friends and stuff from the classroom phones
and people walking in.
How are you talking on that phone?
How did you call anybody?
Those are the kind of tricks that don't really come in that handy anymore.
Yeah, you say only your teacher had the key.
In my case, my teacher didn't have the key, and I was the one to show her how to bypass
that lock, and I became much more popular in her eyes as a result of that.
Hey, do you want to try doing our magical trick of taking phone calls when we have no
phone lines here at the radio station?
Yes.
All right.
Let's try this again.
Folks, I have to caution you.
Turn down your radio.
Try to speak loudly, as loudly as you can.
And even then, it's not going to be good enough.
We're going to have problems.
We're going to have difficulty hearing you, and it might sound a little awkward on the
air.
But keep in mind, we have no phone here, although you were investigating something, Kyle.
Did you find a wire in the back?
Yes.
It looks to be a telephone wire, a bundle of many wires that would connect into a keyed
telephone system, which I believe is the same ... Well, our old phone system at BAI had
a similar keyed phone plug in the back.
So it had a lot of phone lines.
So this might actually be compatible with the old BAI phone.
Where does this wire go?
That is a good question.
I believe it goes somewhere where there's all kinds of action.
We can follow it right now.
It's on the floor right behind me.
That's right.
That's the end of it, but that would go into the handstand.
And is that just lying, not connected to anything?
It's lying unconnected behind you, but it goes up through the ceiling and into the abyss.
So one can only hope that that is progress.
It must be something, because just having a big wire like that lying from the ceiling
would be unusual.
So, okay, maybe our phone system is coming.
I'm going to make it an encouraging sign.
Yeah.
We're optimistic here at Off the Hook.
We try.
We have to be.
All right.
So our phone number for you to call is the unusual area code of 331 and the phone number
of 223 WBAI.
That's 331-223-9224.
Now, again, we're using Google Voice, and sometimes it doesn't work properly.
Last time it forwarded everybody to voicemail, and we got 50 voicemails inside of a minute.
It was great to see how many listeners we had, how many people wanted to talk to us.
But yeah, sometimes it doesn't actually go through.
If it goes through in this...
Oh, it's coming through right now.
We have somebody who has blocked their caller ID, and now we're going to try and take this
call and see if we can hear them.
Hello, caller.
Are you on the phone?
Yes, I am.
Hey, I hear them.
Can you hear me?
Obviously you can.
Yes, I can hear you great.
Okay.
I only hear you through my left ear, but you know what?
I've got two ears.
I'm not going to be greedy.
Me too.
Yeah.
Where are you calling from?
I'm calling from Hoboken, New Jersey.
Okay.
Okay.
And what's on your mind today?
I'm sorry about the call waiting tones.
I forgot to turn the thing off.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Last night, I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and I flipped on
the radio.
And I heard the most amazing thing that I'm going to tell you, just the very simplistic
version of it, but it was very detailed, and I really had to stretch my imagination.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
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And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
And I'm going to tell you what it was.
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And I'm going to tell you what it was.
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I rarely use.
I tell people it's my appointment only.
I normally don't carry it around.
I just leave a message and let me get to a landline.
I normally don't carry it around.
I just leave a message and let me get to a landline.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
Right.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
Right.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
Right.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
I normally don't carry it around.
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I normally don't carry it around.
I mean, look, I think regular listeners to this program know I'm not like an unquestioned
fan of any new technology is automatically better.
But I think modern telephony is like clearly better than the rotary phone with the slamming
down ability.
And I think, and like billions, literally billions of people around the world agree
with that position.
Yeah.
But they don't agree that it sounds better.
I mean, it might be better as far as speed with which things can be processed, but it's
not better as far as the actual sound quality of the voice you were trying to hear on the
other side.
It's a trade-off, but I think the trade-off is well worth it.
Does it have to be a trade-off?
I think like the ability to keep a call going, you don't get that with cell phones, even
on Wi-Fi, Mike, like come on, to maintain a call and not like run through corporate
phone systems and get transferred all over the place.
You can't do that on a cell phone.
You'll get disconnected for bad reception or whatever, have some network error.
I feel like a landline's a lot harder to just kind of shove off your cue when you're
trying to do work, like actually get through to someone and have them hear you.
Again, I don't think it has to be a choice.
I think we can use both technologies, but not simply dismiss one of them, because I
think you're always making a mistake when you dismiss the old technology or you dismiss
a new technology out of hand.
Bernie, I know you have something to say on this.
Yeah, I just wanted to ask our listener.
Are you still on the line?
Maybe not.
Oh, you're good.
You said you never got rid of your rotary phone.
Are you still renting it from the telephone company?
Am I still what, with the phone company?
He's asking if you're still renting your phone from the phone company.
Oh, no, no, no.
Actually, I did that for a lot longer than I should have.
But no, I did that for a number of years.
Yeah, the old AT&T thing, but no, I actually, someone gave this one to me, so I'm not doing
that.
But there is one other interesting fun fact, is that one of the problems with a rotary
phone is, of course, you can't call everybody, because some systems don't accept a rotary
call.
And one entity that I cannot call with a rotary phone is Verizon.
Wait, I'm not sure I understand.
You can't call because you have to press buttons?
If you call 1-800-VERIZON, you have to press buttons, so I can't call Verizon with this
phone.
That's my phone company.
You want a challenge?
Try to find a corporate operator at Verizon.
Yeah, we did that once.
Good luck.
We did that once.
Wasted a whole show trying to get an operator.
But one other thing I think that is also being missed in this is latency and delay.
I mean, it's a huge problem.
You're right.
I'm sorry.
I can't stop doing that.
But yeah, it's really, it's an annoyance.
In fact, you know, people might not know this, on old phones, you could have bi-directional
conversations.
We could both hear each other at the same time.
Full duplex.
You know, I tell somebody, like a Gabby friend of mine, that, hold on a second, you know,
the kitchen's on fire.
I'll have it out in just a moment.
I'll be right back.
And, you know, I take care of all that.
Come back.
They're still talking.
They didn't even hear me say that, and they just keep on going.
I find I have certain people in my life, family members even, that I cannot talk to cell phone
to cell phone, because we just talk over each other the whole time.
It's completely useless.
Hey, Caller, thanks so much for the interesting conversation.
Yeah, thank you.
Great show, guys.
All right, we're going to try to take one more phone call, because we are running out
of time.
Believe it or not, time goes by really, really quickly.
We can take many more phone calls, though, on 212-209-2950, if you wish to pledge your
support to the station and get some great thank you gifts.
Yes.
And among those are, of course, the TV-B-Gone, and the, what, the hippy-dippy, what's it
called again?
The Trippy RGB Wave Kit.
Yeah, which basically does what again?
It's an awesome kit.
You can solder together.
Very, very simple to put together.
And you can control an LED to make any color you want in various interesting ways.
You can learn how to put together electronics.
You can learn how to program using this.
It's a very neat toy and a very neat tool.
And you can get it for a pledge of $50 at 212-209-2950, or give to WBAI.org.
Okay.
Pledge $75.
You'll get both.
Yeah, you'll get the whole thing.
And if you enjoyed the show tonight, if you enjoyed the show in general, why not pledge
$75?
Why not get a few of these as gifts, 212-209-2950?
It all helps.
It all goes to making this a better place.
All right.
Our phone number 331, our call-in number is 331-223-WBAI, 331-223-9224.
We're going to try and take one more phone call.
Apologies for the low audio.
Kyle, what you're doing here is like brain surgery as far as getting it to come into
the board at all.
We're using a cell phone.
We're using Google Voice.
I don't know what you're talking about.
It sounds great.
It's enabled by modern cellular technology.
Oh my God.
Because we don't have an analog telephone.
I wish we did.
Oh my God.
That'd be so great.
And, what, like a Web 2.0 voice calling platform, plus modern telephony, plus a bunch of AV cables.
We have a caller on the line.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Speak up, please.
Let's try this one.
Hola.
Good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Wait, is anybody there?
I think we lost them.
We got to talk quickly when we pick up the phone.
People get confused.
Finish your comment.
I'm sorry.
Oh, well, no.
It's just as fine a setup as I think we could muster.
I haven't gone back to the drawing board to try to improve it at all from the original
version.
I'm sure I'm missing some things, and I could make it work in stereo and all that kind of...
And then there's also this thing in radio, mix minus and all that.
I mean, if I was really good, I'd thought that through, but I have no idea.
I'm not sure if Google Voice might not be working, if it might be forwarding everything
to voicemail.
Again, that's quite possible.
Please try and call us again, 331-223-9224.
We only have a couple of minutes left to hear your voices and get your opinions on various
things.
331-223-WBAI.
We'll keep this line open just for a little bit longer.
And again, the pledge line, 212-209-2950.
Bernie, I'm sure if you start talking, the phone line will start ringing, and I'll have
to interrupt you.
212-209-2950, get some great thank you gifts and support a radio station that plays something
you'd like to listen to for the past two hours.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
I don't think this is working right now, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to deactivate
it like that, and then I'm going to activate it like this.
And that's how you fix things these days.
You have to click and switch and various things like that.
So our phone number now might be working.
And there it goes.
That's how you do things.
Another call from New Jersey.
Good evening.
You're on Off The Hook.
Speak up, please.
Go ahead.
Yes.
You're on the air.
Somebody was saying that you couldn't call a digital system off an analog phone.
In the old days, what I was able to do was to just click the receiver the number of times.
So if you clicked it ten times, you'd get an operator.
If you clicked it nine times, you'd get a nine.
Yes.
You actually can interact with the digital system through the analog phone.
Now, we were talking about that, but I think you might have misunderstood what we were
saying before when we said we couldn't use a rotary phone to call Verizon.
It's not that we can't connect.
It's that once you do connect, they're telling you to press one for this, two for that, and
a rotary phone, that's not going to get you far.
Yes.
You just click it one, and you get one.
Is there a way to dial pound or star, though, if after that one or two, you have to do that
followed by a pounding?
Yeah.
I think that is...
Maybe that's 11 or 12.
I think that's where it gets you.
I don't know.
I don't know if it can do that or not.
Maybe, Rob, do you know?
No.
Also, these systems are set up to just listen for the tones, not the pulses.
The way the phone company did it, if you're dialing, say, star 69, and you didn't have
a star, you would dial 1169.
They figured that out.
Oh.
But that doesn't work on voicemail systems where you have to hit a pound at the end.
Yeah, they definitely...
Little challenges like that.
But it's a way of keeping people out of the conversation.
It's a way of shutting off access to those people that don't choose to go along.
I'm sure one of our listeners has an old RadioShack tone dialer that we can donate to the previous
caller to enable him to interact with Verizon without a phone in the last 30 years.
You could set up multiple extensions off your landline and presumably have tones join
the call as you press them in and have them access the call, just like another extension
would, but just be tones right there.
Another touch tone phone.
Then you continue to use your rotary phone.
I do that all the time.
The important thing is to set it up the way you want to set it up and use as much technology
as you're comfortable using and don't let anybody boss you around.
I could probably dig out my old RadioShack tone dialer, but I think it somehow ended
up with the wrong frequency crystal in it.
Yeah, that'll happen.
Any final words, caller?
Oh, no.
Thanks a lot.
All right.
Thanks for your call.
And, Bernie, any final words from you, because we're reaching the end of this program.
I think this is a great show.
I wish we had two hours every week, but in any case, I want to thank our listeners, and
this is your last chance to get a TVB gone before they're all gone, 212-209-2950 or a
Chirpy RGB Waves kit, or get them both.
Just call 212-209-2950 and support the station.
That's right.
A $50 pledge for each of the items, $75 for both of the items.
It's really a remarkable deal, and it's only available on this particular program on this
particular evening.
Thanks to Mitch Altman, who I ... If he started speeding in a train from Shanghai to Beijing
at the beginning of this show, I reckon he might be there by now, but they go pretty
... I went on one going the other way.
That was a number of years ago, and it was an overnight train, but every year they make
it faster, so it probably takes about 20 minutes now.
We'll find out, and we'll have Mitch on in future shows as well, and hopefully we'll
hear from our listeners in future programs in addition.
Write to us, othat2600.com.
We want to hear from you.
We won't be here next week.
We will not.
No, no, but we will be here in two weeks, and I think we're doing another two-hour show
in two weeks, so won't that be fun?
I believe so.
Wow.
Thanks to everybody who supported our fundraising tonight.
Yes, please.
Thanks.
If you have not called yet, do call, but I noticed a lot of calls were coming in, so
that's great to see.
Once more, the phone number, 212-209-2950.
For Kyle, for Rob, for Mike, for Bernie, for Mitch, and for all of you out there, it's
Emmanuel saying goodnight.
We'll see you all next time.
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