Off The Hook - 2006-01-04

[00:22.860 --> 00:26.120]  [SPEAKER_06]: And it's just past 7 o'clock on WBAI in New York.
[00:26.340 --> 00:27.200]  [SPEAKER_06]: Time for Off The Hook.
[01:39.640 --> 01:41.780]  [SPEAKER_06]: And the program is Off The Hook.
[01:41.900 --> 01:42.380]  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm Mike.
[01:42.540 --> 01:44.120]  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm joined in the studio by Jim.
[01:44.260 --> 01:44.560]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hello.
[01:44.860 --> 01:45.540]  [SPEAKER_06]: And Walter.
[01:45.820 --> 01:46.260]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hi.
[01:46.540 --> 01:48.120]  [SPEAKER_06]: Ken Gale is behind the board.
[01:48.120 --> 01:50.660]  [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know if he has the technology to say hi.
[01:51.000 --> 01:51.820]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hi, everybody.
[01:52.040 --> 01:52.260]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hi.
[01:52.720 --> 01:54.260]  [SPEAKER_06]: And we have Bernie S.
[01:54.360 --> 01:54.860]  [SPEAKER_06]: in Philadelphia.
[01:55.360 --> 01:56.680]  [SPEAKER_14]: Greetings from Philadelphia.
[01:57.040 --> 01:59.380]  [SPEAKER_06]: And we have Emmanuel, who's somewhere.
[02:00.900 --> 02:03.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, I am in Amsterdam.
[02:04.040 --> 02:04.880]  [SPEAKER_06]: That's somewhere?
[02:05.460 --> 02:06.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: It is.
[02:06.420 --> 02:06.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: It is indeed.
[02:06.920 --> 02:07.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: Indeed.
[02:07.240 --> 02:14.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: We are wrapping up after the 23rd CCC Congress, Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin.
[02:14.740 --> 02:16.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: We broadcast from there last week.
[02:17.060 --> 02:22.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: It was incredibly successful, one of the most fun hacker conferences that exist on the planet.
[02:22.800 --> 02:26.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: And we'll be talking a little bit more about that this hour as well.
[02:26.540 --> 02:33.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: And in addition, we're coming to you tonight for the first time over a rather different kind of technology, something known as Skype.
[02:33.440 --> 02:35.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're talking to you completely through the Internet.
[02:36.220 --> 02:40.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: And we have the ability, through Skype, of conferencing in all kinds of people.
[02:41.020 --> 02:50.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: Right now, I'm sitting in a building in Amsterdam, but I'm going to be able to call other people as well and bring them into the conversation.
[02:51.540 --> 02:54.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: I should also point out that we're coming to you on a phone line.
[02:54.900 --> 02:57.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: Skype has the ability of using a computer.
[02:57.500 --> 02:59.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm holding a microphone right now, and I'm not talking on a telephone.
[02:59.980 --> 03:04.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: And that microphone is plugged into my computer, and I'm talking to you over the Internet.
[03:04.560 --> 03:12.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, what we could also do is we could have the program set up in the radio station as well, and that would be completely free.
[03:12.520 --> 03:15.420]  [SPEAKER_05]: It would not cost even the three cents a minute that I'm paying right now.
[03:16.220 --> 03:22.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: And it would sound almost as if I was right there in the studio or in a different studio.
[03:22.760 --> 03:24.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: So it's really kind of cool.
[03:25.500 --> 03:32.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: What I'm going to do, I'm going to bring in a couple of people in other parts of Amsterdam that are hanging out with us right now.
[03:33.220 --> 03:35.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm conferencing in Redbird right now.
[03:35.680 --> 03:38.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's see, I've got to click on his name here.
[03:39.820 --> 03:41.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: And then I click on Invite to Conference.
[03:42.060 --> 03:44.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: And in a second, you should hear the voice of Redbird.
[03:45.420 --> 03:46.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's see if this works.
[03:46.060 --> 03:46.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: How quick was that?
[03:47.340 --> 03:47.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: Good evening.
[03:49.420 --> 03:51.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: Can you hear him over there in New York?
[03:51.240 --> 03:52.480]  [SPEAKER_06]: We can, over here in New York.
[03:53.140 --> 03:53.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[03:53.880 --> 03:56.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: So I just clicked one button instantly.
[03:56.540 --> 03:57.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: I was connected to him.
[03:58.260 --> 04:00.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now I'm going to do the same thing for Juintz.
[04:00.120 --> 04:06.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the only reason you're hearing a pause here is because I'm a bit of a klutz as far as figuring out how to get everybody in.
[04:06.760 --> 04:10.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: But, okay, I found Juintz's name now, and I'm going to invite him to the conference now.
[04:10.840 --> 04:12.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: And you should hear him in a second.
[04:14.640 --> 04:16.080]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's been a second, I would say.
[04:16.280 --> 04:17.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: It really has been.
[04:17.460 --> 04:19.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't see anything changing by his name.
[04:19.760 --> 04:21.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: His name is there, but it's not doing anything.
[04:22.000 --> 04:23.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, there.
[04:23.080 --> 04:23.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, he is there.
[04:23.740 --> 04:23.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[04:24.660 --> 04:26.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't say in progress for you for some reason.
[04:27.220 --> 04:27.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: I should know.
[04:28.200 --> 04:28.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[04:28.460 --> 04:30.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: But, Juintz, you're there, and Redbird, you're there.
[04:31.680 --> 04:32.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, I'm there.
[04:33.020 --> 04:33.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, great.
[04:34.400 --> 04:42.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: And now what I'm going to do as a final trick is conference in Rop, who is actually sitting right next to me, which might cause some delay issues.
[04:42.940 --> 04:46.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if that's the case, we'll move him somewhere else.
[04:46.420 --> 04:48.440]  [SPEAKER_06]: Wouldn't you rather conference in a rabbit or something?
[04:49.300 --> 04:49.960]  [SPEAKER_05]: Here we go.
[04:50.840 --> 04:51.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: Rop, are you there?
[04:52.440 --> 04:52.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm here.
[04:53.000 --> 04:53.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: How are you there?
[04:54.220 --> 04:56.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, I hear Echo because he's sitting right next to me.
[04:56.540 --> 04:59.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: But do you guys in the radio station hear Echo?
[04:59.780 --> 05:01.080]  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, yeah, we do.
[05:01.180 --> 05:09.000]  [SPEAKER_01]: And, in fact, the sound quality seemed to start degrading with Juintz and is getting even worse with Rop.
[05:10.460 --> 05:12.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, Rop, do you have an explanation for that?
[05:13.940 --> 05:19.500]  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, we are the conference master, and we are on a pretty fast AVSL, so that shouldn't be the problem.
[05:19.840 --> 05:22.000]  [SPEAKER_06]: Rop really does not sound good.
[05:22.820 --> 05:27.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, you know, I think part of the problem is that I am sitting so close to him.
[05:27.280 --> 05:28.680]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, move away from each other.
[05:28.740 --> 05:29.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: You're hearing feedback.
[05:29.560 --> 05:30.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, yeah, we're hearing.
[05:30.400 --> 05:30.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right, we're going to have to do that.
[05:31.160 --> 05:33.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: What I'm going to do is, Rop, I'm going to drop you.
[05:33.600 --> 05:35.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: No offense, but I have no choice.
[05:37.360 --> 05:40.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: And we can move him someplace else where there won't be quite as much feedback.
[05:41.860 --> 05:43.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right, but everybody else is here.
[05:44.080 --> 05:44.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[05:44.820 --> 05:45.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[05:46.800 --> 05:48.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Rop, do you have another place to go?
[05:48.820 --> 05:49.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: Or would you like to come over here?
[05:49.940 --> 05:51.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: You can come over here and talk on my microphone if you want.
[05:53.080 --> 05:55.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: We can't hear you all the way through there.
[05:56.060 --> 05:58.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: You'll have to either come over here or go somewhere else.
[05:58.600 --> 06:00.560]  [SPEAKER_12]: The microphones are obviously very wide.
[06:01.040 --> 06:01.860]  [SPEAKER_12]: You hear it off the hook.
[06:01.860 --> 06:03.920]  [SPEAKER_06]: We do not ever make phone calls the easy way.
[06:04.200 --> 06:06.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: Guys, we have not talked over each other.
[06:06.880 --> 06:08.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: Rop, tell me what you want to do.
[06:09.140 --> 06:10.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: Rop came over here.
[06:10.040 --> 06:10.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: He's coming back now.
[06:11.800 --> 06:19.380]  [SPEAKER_03]: Call me on the Skype, and then I'll turn off my microphone, and then I'll come over to your microphone if I want to talk, but then I can hear over the headphones.
[06:19.800 --> 06:20.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, that sounds like a good idea.
[06:21.200 --> 06:22.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: So we're going to add him again.
[06:24.800 --> 06:25.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: And hang on.
[06:26.740 --> 06:27.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: Write him to the conference.
[06:28.620 --> 06:30.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right, Rop is now part of the conference again.
[06:31.440 --> 06:34.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: And turning off your microphone so there shouldn't be any feedback.
[06:34.280 --> 06:34.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[06:34.980 --> 06:35.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're all here.
[06:36.120 --> 06:38.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Sorry for the confusion, folks, but this is new technology.
[06:38.140 --> 06:41.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's exciting technology, too, because there's a lot that you can do with this.
[06:41.700 --> 06:47.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: And actually, that's something that I'd like Rop to talk about is what you can do with Skype.
[06:47.200 --> 06:48.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: What, Rop isn't with us?
[06:50.000 --> 06:51.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, we're really having some technical issues here.
[06:52.180 --> 06:53.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: I did add you to the conference, Rop.
[06:53.680 --> 06:54.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know why you can't hear anything.
[06:55.500 --> 06:56.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right, well, he figures that out.
[06:57.820 --> 07:03.240]  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's maybe, Redbird, you can talk a little bit about Skype, because you're the one that actually got all this together for this show.
[07:03.940 --> 07:11.500]  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I've been using it for almost the entire time I've been here, mainly as a way to make cheap phone calls to the U.S.
[07:11.900 --> 07:19.220]  [SPEAKER_02]: But what Skype basically is, is just a pretty well done, as far as I'm concerned, voice-over IP service.
[07:19.440 --> 07:23.140]  [SPEAKER_02]: And you can make free phone calls from Skype to Skype and whatever.
[07:23.180 --> 07:24.220]  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really nice for that.
[07:24.320 --> 07:27.520]  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's also a gateway to the standard telephone network.
[07:27.520 --> 07:29.580]  [SPEAKER_02]: And they do it very cheaply.
[07:29.760 --> 07:35.940]  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's really only three cents a minute or so for most landline calls, including all calls to the U.S.
[07:36.040 --> 07:39.380]  [SPEAKER_02]: So I've been using it to stay in touch with quite a few people at home.
[07:39.500 --> 07:41.100]  [SPEAKER_02]: And it just comes in really handy.
[07:41.840 --> 07:48.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: So according to what I'm looking at on my screen, there's 2,702,303 users online right now.
[07:49.120 --> 07:53.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if I knew their IDs, I could simply hit a button and connect any one of them.
[07:53.960 --> 07:56.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: And of course, they would have to choose to pick up the phone and talk to me.
[07:56.480 --> 07:58.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: And if I did that, it wouldn't cost me a penny.
[07:58.820 --> 08:00.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: And they could be anywhere in the world.
[08:00.060 --> 08:02.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: And that's really pretty incredible.
[08:02.140 --> 08:08.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: If you add on top of that the fact that I can call a phone number anywhere in the world, someone's making a lot of noise.
[08:08.680 --> 08:11.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: So please, whoever's doing that, you're going to have to turn off your mic.
[08:11.860 --> 08:15.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: And part of the problem with Skype is that it picks up all kinds of sound in the background.
[08:18.900 --> 08:22.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: So the potential is simply incredible, what you can do with this kind of technology.
[08:22.520 --> 08:23.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: And this is only the beginning.
[08:24.180 --> 08:27.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: The day is coming when this is how we will communicate all the time.
[08:28.080 --> 08:30.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: And the days of the phone bill will be at an end.
[08:31.080 --> 08:37.800]  [SPEAKER_06]: There's also a number of other voice-over IP technologies, some of which are a bit more open than the Skype protocol.
[08:39.420 --> 08:47.160]  [SPEAKER_06]: A lot of work has been done on this protocol called SIP, which if you make a phone call, it might be connected over the Internet and you might not even know.
[08:49.020 --> 08:50.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's good, too.
[08:51.620 --> 08:53.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: So we've been playing around with this quite a bit.
[08:53.940 --> 09:01.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: And again, it would be great if we were able to actually talk computer to computer, because I think you'd see...
[09:01.520 --> 09:06.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: What we've been talking about over the years is how phone calls still don't sound all that good.
[09:06.780 --> 09:09.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: In fact, they sound worse than they did years ago.
[09:09.600 --> 09:10.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: Isn't that right, Bernie?
[09:11.220 --> 09:20.300]  [SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, I think people are just sort of being dumbed down on the quality of service for their phone calls.
[09:20.840 --> 09:29.720]  [SPEAKER_14]: You know, back in the day when it was analog, public switch telephone network with analog switches, you had a good, clear analog signal.
[09:29.900 --> 09:34.220]  [SPEAKER_14]: And then it just started getting chopped up in bits and more and more digitized.
[09:34.920 --> 09:35.880]  [SPEAKER_14]: And now there's latency.
[09:36.220 --> 09:38.860]  [SPEAKER_14]: And we're all not even hearing actual voices.
[09:38.860 --> 09:43.140]  [SPEAKER_14]: We're hearing sort of mathematical models replicated by things called vocoders.
[09:43.380 --> 09:44.960]  [SPEAKER_14]: And it's just...
[09:45.440 --> 09:47.820]  [SPEAKER_14]: I fear in 10 years how much worse it's going to get.
[09:50.120 --> 09:54.460]  [SPEAKER_06]: It will be interesting to see how the technology evolves.
[09:55.540 --> 10:04.440]  [SPEAKER_14]: It might get better, but my guess is the trend over the past 10 years is the fidelity of most telephone calls you make has gone downhill.
[10:04.440 --> 10:09.580]  [SPEAKER_06]: Part of the issue is that we no longer ever make phone calls just from one landline to another.
[10:10.000 --> 10:19.920]  [SPEAKER_06]: If you do, I'm sure you'll find that it sounds just as good as ever, but if not better, as more and more things get connected digitally.
[10:20.180 --> 10:26.220]  [SPEAKER_06]: But these cell phones and these weird Internet calls and all this stuff uses a lot less bandwidth.
[10:26.220 --> 10:28.760]  [SPEAKER_06]: And in the process, you lose a lot of quality.
[10:30.560 --> 10:31.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: But it's still understandable.
[10:32.880 --> 10:41.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: It is understandable, but I mean, it's not just get better over time and cheaper as well.
[10:41.260 --> 10:44.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: So in a way, this is something that we've been fighting for for a long time.
[10:44.280 --> 10:48.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's just a way to communicate with people all around the world for next to nothing.
[10:49.920 --> 10:50.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: So that's...
[10:50.640 --> 10:55.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, Rob's having trouble with his computer, so I'd like to just give him the microphone for a moment so he can address these issues.
[10:55.940 --> 10:58.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: Because he really has been playing with Skype for quite some time.
[10:58.460 --> 10:59.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it's...
[10:59.380 --> 11:06.380]  [SPEAKER_05]: We consider it a new technology because it's something that we haven't really been using at the radio station, but it's been around for quite some time, actually.
[11:07.240 --> 11:14.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think he can speak to the history of Skype and things like it, but also to the future and what that's all about.
[11:14.660 --> 11:19.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: And what I'm going to do is I'm going to hand you the microphone and my headphones so you can hear the guys back in the studio.
[11:19.520 --> 11:20.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: Here's Rob.
[11:20.820 --> 11:21.420]  [SPEAKER_03]: Hello there.
[11:21.660 --> 11:22.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hi, Rob.
[11:22.820 --> 11:26.340]  [SPEAKER_03]: I've been playing with Skype for a while, as Eric just said.
[11:26.520 --> 11:30.180]  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's a lot of interesting aspects to it.
[11:30.620 --> 11:31.840]  [SPEAKER_03]: It's free, for one.
[11:33.060 --> 11:34.980]  [SPEAKER_03]: It gives you excellent sound quality.
[11:36.100 --> 11:38.000]  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a way to use the Internet.
[11:38.200 --> 11:40.700]  [SPEAKER_03]: There are even nicer ways to use the Internet for telephony.
[11:41.400 --> 11:44.100]  [SPEAKER_03]: There's something called SIP, which...
[11:44.680 --> 11:46.700]  [SPEAKER_03]: The Session Initiation Protocol.
[11:47.540 --> 11:55.540]  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a wide range of SIP telephones, both in software and in hardware, that you can hook up, and then you can talk to other SIP telephones on the Internet.
[11:55.900 --> 11:57.800]  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not such a nice...
[11:57.800 --> 11:58.680]  [SPEAKER_03]: Sorry?
[11:58.860 --> 12:01.160]  [SPEAKER_06]: I was going to say, I've been experimenting with some of those.
[12:01.560 --> 12:04.780]  [SPEAKER_06]: We're installing new phone systems at my workplace.
[12:05.140 --> 12:08.300]  [SPEAKER_06]: And some of the SIP phones are quite good.
[12:09.820 --> 12:16.860]  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and there's a whole private exchange called Asterisk, which is completely in software.
[12:16.860 --> 12:20.900]  [SPEAKER_03]: So you can actually run this Asterisk software on any Linux machine.
[12:22.680 --> 12:29.100]  [SPEAKER_03]: And then that acts as a PADX for a whole set of SIP phones.
[12:29.280 --> 12:35.320]  [SPEAKER_03]: And then you can hook that up to this telephone system, these providers that will offer you IP telephony.
[12:35.600 --> 12:55.920]  [SPEAKER_03]: So you can basically take this little Linux box somewhere, tell it to get connectivity over the Internet, and then route in, like, a block of 100 phone numbers and use SIP phones to distribute it within your building or within anywhere in the world, possibly putting encrypted VPN underneath.
[12:56.420 --> 13:05.260]  [SPEAKER_03]: So you can actually have secure telephony that spans the world on your own sort of internal phone system, which is nice.
[13:06.260 --> 13:12.380]  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's even a project, which is called the Free World Dial-Up, which connects all these asterisk boxes together.
[13:12.600 --> 13:14.800]  [SPEAKER_03]: So everybody gets their own little prefixes.
[13:15.200 --> 13:17.040]  [SPEAKER_03]: And you can actually all dial each other.
[13:17.180 --> 13:22.200]  [SPEAKER_03]: And then everybody starts offering the calls that they can make for free from their local exchange.
[13:22.540 --> 13:25.140]  [SPEAKER_03]: Like all the calls within an area code or a city.
[13:26.380 --> 13:28.240]  [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody's sharing what they can dial for free.
[13:28.340 --> 13:29.600]  [SPEAKER_03]: And then it becomes even more interesting.
[13:30.120 --> 13:33.220]  [SPEAKER_06]: Will this ever be integrated, do you think, with the crypto phone?
[13:34.320 --> 13:46.680]  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh yes, there's work in progress offering products that do IP telephony, not just by us, but all the vendors of secure telephony are working on the same thing.
[13:47.540 --> 13:53.480]  [SPEAKER_06]: You think they'll be interoperable with each other or everyone will have to buy their own kind of secure telephony?
[13:55.280 --> 14:01.740]  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, interoperability doesn't seem to be the interest of many secure telephony vendors because they all want to do proprietary crypto.
[14:02.960 --> 14:12.980]  [SPEAKER_03]: Lots of secure telephony vendors happen to be owned by the same people that also sell the interception hardware or run some country's interception service.
[14:15.140 --> 14:17.580]  [SPEAKER_06]: That would be, for example, Verizon, yes.
[14:18.660 --> 14:19.740]  [SPEAKER_06]: The phone company.
[14:20.980 --> 14:31.460]  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's more the intelligence bureaucracies that try to sell secure telephony to their customers, but they also want to make sure that their customers can still listen to everybody else.
[14:31.740 --> 14:34.880]  [SPEAKER_06]: See, that's why Europeans are not as advanced as Americans.
[14:35.120 --> 14:45.060]  [SPEAKER_06]: Here in the States, we have the phone companies do the wiretapping for the government, which puts it in the hands of the private sector, which they would have us believe is more efficient, whatever that means.
[14:45.880 --> 14:53.400]  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, there's plenty of wiretapping going on here, and the phone companies are very happy to provide assistance to whoever wants phone tapping done here as well.
[14:54.240 --> 14:57.080]  [SPEAKER_12]: How fast of an Internet connection do you need to...
[14:57.080 --> 14:59.740]  [SPEAKER_12]: an outbound Internet connection do you need to use this?
[15:04.100 --> 15:11.000]  [SPEAKER_03]: I think Skype itself, if you have just one voice connection going on, takes something like 40 or 50 kilobits.
[15:11.760 --> 15:23.180]  [SPEAKER_03]: But you want a little bit of headroom so that not the first little bit of extra data that comes along on the first web page which somebody in your house browses, messes things up.
[15:24.900 --> 15:32.160]  [SPEAKER_03]: So, I would say any ADSL line, no matter how small it is, would do the trick.
[15:32.340 --> 15:37.940]  [SPEAKER_03]: But any modem connection is actually on the edge or just not enough.
[15:39.480 --> 15:43.260]  [SPEAKER_02]: According to Skype's web page, it's 3 to 16 kilobytes per second.
[15:44.980 --> 15:48.100]  [SPEAKER_03]: That's not what we've seen.
[15:48.100 --> 15:51.020]  [SPEAKER_03]: We've seen it take more like 30 or 40 kilobits.
[15:52.300 --> 15:56.520]  [SPEAKER_12]: Can you adjust the quality by assigning more bandwidth?
[15:57.320 --> 16:00.840]  [SPEAKER_12]: Because actually, I mean, I'm not really impressed with the quality.
[16:01.080 --> 16:03.720]  [SPEAKER_12]: Particularly, I think, you said you were on a fast connection.
[16:04.800 --> 16:07.880]  [SPEAKER_12]: But Redbird and Junts, to me, sound very distorted.
[16:10.930 --> 16:12.210]  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know why that is.
[16:12.330 --> 16:12.730]  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't...
[16:12.730 --> 16:14.230]  [SPEAKER_03]: I can't test that right here.
[16:14.630 --> 16:15.870]  [SPEAKER_03]: They sound fine to me.
[16:16.670 --> 16:17.950]  [SPEAKER_06]: That's kind of strange then.
[16:18.310 --> 16:23.470]  [SPEAKER_06]: So it seems like the technology for integrating with the phone network is maybe not up to par.
[16:25.150 --> 16:26.110]  [SPEAKER_03]: This is...
[16:26.110 --> 16:30.530]  [SPEAKER_03]: This may be the case and it's also maybe the case that we are the conference master for this Skype.
[16:30.870 --> 16:37.870]  [SPEAKER_03]: So any two parties hearing each other through us may experience less quality than us hearing the party.
[16:38.150 --> 16:38.930]  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, that makes sense.
[16:41.250 --> 16:43.630]  [SPEAKER_06]: Anything else you wanted to share with us, Rob?
[16:44.770 --> 16:45.810]  [SPEAKER_03]: No, not right now.
[16:45.810 --> 16:47.230]  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll just give you back to you, Manuel.
[16:47.670 --> 16:47.850]  [SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[16:47.930 --> 16:48.710]  [SPEAKER_06]: Always good to...
[16:48.710 --> 16:58.650]  [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, I'd like to just ask a question or two concerning not so much Skype but the event that has just finished the Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin.
[16:59.870 --> 17:04.210]  [SPEAKER_05]: We were at that last week for this show and now it's over.
[17:04.690 --> 17:13.090]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think it was one of the more successful of the 23 German conferences that have been taking place in December every year since 1994.
[17:14.110 --> 17:14.990]  [SPEAKER_03]: I liked it.
[17:15.150 --> 17:15.930]  [SPEAKER_03]: I liked it a lot.
[17:16.050 --> 17:17.310]  [SPEAKER_03]: The building wasn't as full.
[17:17.530 --> 17:28.410]  [SPEAKER_03]: They had a really good smoker policy which basically asked smokers to go outside whenever they could which really helped because last year we had almost 4,000 people in that building.
[17:29.030 --> 17:30.110]  [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody was smoking.
[17:30.310 --> 17:33.530]  [SPEAKER_03]: You have to understand German hackers are 90% smokers.
[17:33.810 --> 17:37.330]  [SPEAKER_03]: So the air in that building was so fake you could actually cut blocks out of it.
[17:38.830 --> 17:42.730]  [SPEAKER_03]: And that was much better this year and there was just fewer people there.
[17:43.670 --> 17:48.650]  [SPEAKER_03]: I heard that overall there wasn't so many fewer people because it was 4 days instead of 3.
[17:48.810 --> 17:49.790]  [SPEAKER_03]: It was always 3 days.
[17:52.450 --> 17:56.030]  [SPEAKER_03]: Lots of people didn't come for all 4 days but they came for 1 or 2 days.
[17:56.810 --> 18:02.670]  [SPEAKER_03]: So overall the number of people was sort of the same but at any given time there was fewer people in the building.
[18:03.010 --> 18:13.630]  [SPEAKER_05]: But just the fact that you would even consider that having fewer people would make it more successful I think that puts you very much in a different position than most conferences.
[18:13.950 --> 18:15.270]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I feel the same way about Hope.
[18:15.570 --> 18:16.970]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't want it to get much bigger.
[18:17.090 --> 18:24.850]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to have 4,000 or 5,000 people at the conference center in New York when we do these things but I think we sort of lose the community feel.
[18:25.190 --> 18:37.870]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, you know, maybe we could hold a few more people but I think at a certain stage where enough already let's do what we came here to do have fun and not worry about crowd control so much.
[18:38.930 --> 18:48.890]  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, the what the heck you did last summer could have done with 1,000 more people but that's because we had so much space and there was so much so many different things going on in different corners of the field.
[18:49.290 --> 18:59.470]  [SPEAKER_03]: But if you want people to sort of all be part of the same experience all go sit in the same room or tent then yes, a few thousand people really is enough.
[18:59.690 --> 19:00.650]  [SPEAKER_03]: You don't need many more.
[19:00.850 --> 19:03.370]  [SPEAKER_03]: It becomes this mass thing.
[19:03.930 --> 19:24.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, we talked about the network last week and the ridiculous amount of bandwidth that was going into that building in Berlin and in fact what later came out I believe at the closing ceremonies which I wasn't at was that the bandwidth going to the hacker conference in Berlin was more than the bandwidth for the entire continent of Africa.
[19:24.650 --> 19:25.830]  [SPEAKER_05]: Is that correct?
[19:26.230 --> 19:27.230]  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's correct.
[19:27.430 --> 19:29.790]  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a pretty sad statement but it's actually true.
[19:30.670 --> 19:46.610]  [SPEAKER_03]: We overdid it and we overdid it on purpose because we had lots of contacts in the provider scene in Berlin so we could easily get all this bandwidth and peering sponsored also as an experiment to see if we could actually saturate the bandwidth needs for such a hacker conference and we did.
[19:46.970 --> 19:50.030]  [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, we did by a factor I think by a factor of more than 10.
[19:52.130 --> 20:00.470]  [SPEAKER_03]: I think at its peak the conference used 1.3 gigabits and we had 16 gigabits of actually available upstream.
[20:00.770 --> 20:05.450]  [SPEAKER_03]: We had 20 gigabits link but we had 16 gigabits available upstream ready.
[20:06.150 --> 20:12.270]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, you know, that's gotten me wondering is it even possible for us to approach anything like that in New York for Hope?
[20:12.950 --> 20:30.250]  [SPEAKER_05]: What you guys are able to do over here is simply what it seems to us in America as completely impossible and I want to bring something back from here back to the States where, you know what, it's not impossible we can do this but how in God's name can we pull something like that off in the States?
[20:31.110 --> 20:32.710]  [SPEAKER_03]: It all depends on the contacts.
[20:33.130 --> 20:36.210]  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we used to get our Internet link from New York.
[20:36.950 --> 20:42.810]  [SPEAKER_03]: Amsterdam was this tiny little thing off the May East which was located in New York.
[20:43.510 --> 20:45.770]  [SPEAKER_03]: So, there must be bandwidth there.
[20:46.010 --> 20:51.150]  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just a matter of talking to the people having the contacts and making sure you can plug into it.
[20:51.150 --> 21:12.830]  [SPEAKER_06]: Now, what I don't understand Rob is it seems like if we tried here in New York we could get some ISP to donate us a sizable amount of bandwidth but the issue is getting that bandwidth from the ISP to the conference facility and that involves this company which you've heard us talk about called Verizon and they are not very friendly.
[21:13.290 --> 21:17.350]  [SPEAKER_06]: Is the situation different in Europe or do you just know someone at the local phone company?
[21:18.750 --> 21:19.990]  [SPEAKER_03]: Were you able to hear that?
[21:20.290 --> 21:21.410]  [SPEAKER_03]: I was able to hear that fine.
[21:21.570 --> 21:32.830]  [SPEAKER_03]: The situation is different here because the hacker community and the technical people at the providers are often the same people or they're in very close contact.
[21:33.390 --> 21:37.970]  [SPEAKER_03]: We know people at all the providers and we have our contacts.
[21:38.290 --> 21:46.750]  [SPEAKER_06]: I guess maybe my question isn't clear because it seems to me the hard part is the so-called local loop which goes from the provider to your site.
[21:48.250 --> 21:58.310]  [SPEAKER_03]: In most European cities cities there's many different companies that have fiber running between buildings fiber running between exchange centers manholes.
[21:58.890 --> 22:02.310]  [SPEAKER_03]: There's lots of different ways to go from A to B.
[22:02.470 --> 22:02.910]  [SPEAKER_05]: I see.
[22:03.030 --> 22:03.270]  [SPEAKER_05]: Choice.
[22:03.630 --> 22:04.170]  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[22:04.550 --> 22:05.470]  [SPEAKER_05]: Choice is a good thing.
[22:06.330 --> 22:09.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, now let's talk about other highlights of the conference.
[22:10.050 --> 22:12.770]  [SPEAKER_05]: Redbird, Juintz, anything that you'd like to focus on?
[22:15.610 --> 22:16.010]  [SPEAKER_04]: No?
[22:16.210 --> 22:17.650]  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not sure who's going to talk here.
[22:18.530 --> 22:32.690]  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, well, I mean, the aspects of the conference that I most enjoy is mainly, and this sounds weird coming from, you know, hackers, is the social aspect of it because you get to talk to all sorts of people from all over the place who have different ideas about everything.
[22:32.950 --> 22:40.270]  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you could be working on a project and get into a discussion about it and, you know, all sorts of ideas pop up that you may not have even thought about previously.
[22:40.630 --> 22:43.870]  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's always the aspect about it that I really enjoy.
[22:44.070 --> 22:57.910]  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it applies to the CCC, it applies to What the Hack, it applies to all the Hope conferences, you know, it's all really great to kind of be able to throw ideas back and forth in person and really get very interesting responses from people from all over the place.
[22:59.330 --> 23:00.170]  [SPEAKER_02]: Juintz, how about you?
[23:00.610 --> 23:08.570]  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I think this time I actually got to enjoy a conference instead of being stuck behind the table most of once.
[23:08.770 --> 23:28.830]  [SPEAKER_04]: So I went to as many talks as I thought were interesting and I got to look around and see the types of people that show up at a German hacker conference and it's an interesting mix of people, very friendly, everyone seems kind of laid back and everything worked well at this conference,
[23:28.990 --> 23:32.470]  [SPEAKER_04]: it seemed, everything was well oiled and organized and efficient.
[23:32.870 --> 23:39.470]  [SPEAKER_04]: So I think that was just the best part, just it was very relaxing and we got to flow through the whole event without any hassle.
[23:40.130 --> 23:52.230]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, we always come here and get inspired to do things back home so I'm hoping that you guys coming here, you'll be inspired to do some really cool things for Hope, which is coming up in July in New York City.
[23:52.230 --> 23:55.310]  [SPEAKER_05]: So more Americans need to go to these things.
[23:56.030 --> 24:00.710]  [SPEAKER_05]: Next year, there'll be a, hopefully, a German hacker camp someplace.
[24:00.710 --> 24:05.250]  [SPEAKER_05]: There'll be information about that in the summer of 2007.
[24:05.910 --> 24:09.030]  [SPEAKER_05]: But this summer, the event is Hope in New York City.
[24:09.210 --> 24:12.630]  [SPEAKER_05]: So maybe we'll figure out a way to get huge amounts of bandwidth.
[24:12.770 --> 24:19.170]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if we'll get more than Africa or more than even Rob's house here.
[24:20.130 --> 24:21.110]  [SPEAKER_05]: Probably not, right?
[24:21.110 --> 24:23.650]  [SPEAKER_05]: You probably have more bandwidth than we had at the conference in your house.
[24:24.250 --> 24:27.430]  [SPEAKER_03]: I have an 8-megabit ADSL, which is quite normal here.
[24:29.310 --> 24:32.290]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's pretty depressing for Americans, anyway.
[24:33.590 --> 24:36.250]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, Bernie, you've been at these things too in the past.
[24:36.270 --> 24:37.650]  [SPEAKER_05]: I guess you regret not being here, huh?
[24:38.270 --> 24:39.430]  [SPEAKER_14]: I wish I could be there.
[24:39.570 --> 24:41.770]  [SPEAKER_14]: I had other obligations here in the States.
[24:42.010 --> 25:05.490]  [SPEAKER_14]: But listening to you, I was sort of nostalgic for the other conferences I've been to, where there's just such an amazing free-flow, real-time social network going on with just so many fascinating ideas, with kindred spirits who are just interested in a lot of different things that seem to overlap.
[25:06.270 --> 25:09.630]  [SPEAKER_14]: And it's just like nothing else I could describe.
[25:10.650 --> 25:17.250]  [SPEAKER_14]: So, you know, all our listeners really need to try to make it to one of these conferences, either here in the U.S.
[25:17.250 --> 25:24.570]  [SPEAKER_14]: or especially in other parts of the world, and try to learn stuff that you don't even know that you don't know.
[25:26.330 --> 25:27.050]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well said.
[25:27.570 --> 25:28.730]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's not like something Rumsfeld once said.
[25:28.830 --> 25:34.470]  [SPEAKER_05]: But, yeah, it's something that it's hard to put into words because you really have to experience it to know.
[25:34.690 --> 25:45.030]  [SPEAKER_05]: And that goes for so many things over here, and I think Jim's going to attest to that, where you're just in a city, whether it be Amsterdam, whether it be Berlin, or just Europe in general, you're at a hacker conference, you're meeting with these people,
[25:45.110 --> 26:02.390]  [SPEAKER_05]: you're seeing how things are put together, and you realize that it can be done differently, it can be done well, it can be done effectively, and hopefully we can bring something back to the States where we can figure out ways of making it work better and having more fun at the same time.
[26:06.140 --> 26:07.060]  [SPEAKER_06]: Sounds like a good...
[26:07.060 --> 26:08.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: When are you all coming back?
[26:09.540 --> 26:10.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're coming back tomorrow.
[26:11.060 --> 26:14.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: So we're probably good and depressed by this time tomorrow night.
[26:14.760 --> 26:18.240]  [SPEAKER_06]: So I guess this is as good a time as any to remind people that you will be...
[26:18.240 --> 26:19.450]  [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, one of the...
[26:21.640 --> 26:27.700]  [SPEAKER_06]: I was just saying this is as good a time as any to remind people that you will be at the 2600 meeting, which is this Friday.
[26:29.360 --> 26:32.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: The 2600 meeting is this Friday, that's correct, so hopefully we'll see a lot of you there.
[26:33.940 --> 26:40.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, Rob, anything further because you don't have your own Skype set up right now, so it's a little inconvenient because we have to listen to my headphones through my head.
[26:41.700 --> 26:47.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Any other final words you'd like to say about the conference, maybe hopes for New York or anything like that?
[26:47.520 --> 26:51.880]  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just looking forward to seeing everybody this summer at Hope and see you all there.
[26:52.740 --> 26:53.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, great.
[26:54.520 --> 27:01.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, folks, do we have some news that we'd like to get to this week before we actually try and bring more people in by taking phone calls?
[27:01.160 --> 27:05.420]  [SPEAKER_06]: I hope we have that technology, but we have a lot of news about this.
[27:05.600 --> 27:12.060]  [SPEAKER_06]: There's been a lot of publicity about this domestic spying program that the NSA has been going.
[27:12.060 --> 27:14.200]  [SPEAKER_06]: The fallout just continues and continues.
[27:15.980 --> 27:16.540]  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[27:17.060 --> 27:28.520]  [SPEAKER_06]: The Justice Department is opening an inquiry into the issue, but they're not opening an inquiry into the people who actually broke the law, namely the president and the NSA and the subordinates.
[27:28.740 --> 27:35.720]  [SPEAKER_06]: No, they're interested in investigating the whistleblowers who told the public about the program, which is kind of frightening.
[27:36.220 --> 27:43.320]  [SPEAKER_06]: The investigation, apparently, according to the New York Times, began in recent days following a formal referral from the agency regarding the leak.
[27:43.520 --> 27:48.160]  [SPEAKER_06]: Federal officials said on condition of anonymity, so maybe they'll be prosecuted, too.
[27:49.780 --> 27:50.860]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's really...
[27:50.860 --> 28:02.100]  [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, we've seen this sort of thing before from the Bush administration and presumably other administrations where they're not interested in stopping the actual bad acts that go on.
[28:02.200 --> 28:07.300]  [SPEAKER_06]: Their primary problem is that we know about the bad acts, and I don't...
[28:07.300 --> 28:08.760]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's very strange to me.
[28:09.040 --> 28:41.700]  [SPEAKER_14]: There's an irony going on, you might have heard about it, Mike, and that is the Justice Department that's supposedly investigating this leak is headed up by none other than Mr. Gonzalez, who apparently, as reported by the New York Times, was at the former Attorney General's bedside trying to get him to sign a document to extend permission to do this illegal wiretapping of American citizens without
[28:41.700 --> 28:42.200]  [SPEAKER_14]: a warrant.
[28:42.740 --> 28:44.160]  [SPEAKER_14]: How many years ago was that?
[28:45.300 --> 28:49.040]  [SPEAKER_06]: It was after September 11, 2001.
[28:49.040 --> 28:51.420]  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm not sure of the exact year.
[28:51.520 --> 28:52.240]  [SPEAKER_06]: I don't have it here.
[28:52.920 --> 29:07.780]  [SPEAKER_06]: But yeah, the Justice Department, in a rare show of Backbone, may or may not have failed to approve this program, but the man at the helm of it now certainly seems to be a supporter of the program.
[29:10.020 --> 29:10.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: Stanch.
[29:11.680 --> 29:16.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, I think Bush said some pretty interesting things pretty recently.
[29:17.980 --> 29:20.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: I think he said something...
[29:21.920 --> 29:37.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: Bernie, I think you sent us mail about this, where he says frequently law enforcement methods don't work in anti-terrorism efforts, yet he claims he was talking about using warranted law enforcement wiretaps against terrorists in 2004, not warrantless wiretaps.
[29:38.360 --> 29:39.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: Can you explain that a little better?
[29:40.620 --> 29:41.520]  [SPEAKER_14]: Well, yeah.
[29:42.320 --> 29:48.180]  [SPEAKER_14]: I think it really shows some hypocrisy and some sort of shell game going on here with this administration.
[29:48.180 --> 30:05.900]  [SPEAKER_14]: What's happening is, you know, we've all heard this administration, this president saying that conventional law enforcement methods and checks and balances with our three-like system here don't work well for fighting terrorism.
[30:06.620 --> 30:30.600]  [SPEAKER_14]: And, you know, he's frequently said they just don't work, yet now he's claiming that when he said that, I think it was, what was it, last week, the president said that, what was he saying, he was saying, the enemy is calling someone and we want to know who they're calling and why.
[30:31.680 --> 30:51.480]  [SPEAKER_14]: And, oh, he said something at a press conference about a year or so ago, that when we're talking about wiretaps, and I'm paraphrasing, when we're talking about wiretaps, we're talking about court-ordered wiretaps to wiretap people and so forth, and now he's saying that that's not necessary to do this.
[30:51.540 --> 30:53.560]  [SPEAKER_14]: So he seems to be playing both sides of the fence.
[30:54.110 --> 30:56.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: He did something really tricky.
[30:56.920 --> 31:02.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: He said, well, you know, I was talking about the PATRIOT Act then, and I wasn't talking about the secret program that I wasn't telling you about at the time.
[31:03.540 --> 31:07.700]  [SPEAKER_06]: I have to disagree with you a little bit, Bernie, and you say that there's hypocrisy here.
[31:07.780 --> 31:09.640]  [SPEAKER_06]: I think there's absolutely no hypocrisy.
[31:09.640 --> 31:16.180]  [SPEAKER_06]: I think the Bush administration has been very consistent in their position, which is effectively, we can do whatever we want.
[31:18.190 --> 31:19.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: But they still are lying.
[31:19.960 --> 31:21.720]  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, well, yeah, but, you know, whatever.
[31:22.200 --> 31:23.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: Give them that.
[31:23.160 --> 31:24.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: They are still liars.
[31:24.690 --> 31:25.380]  [SPEAKER_06]: They can have it.
[31:25.380 --> 31:31.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, well, now we're lapsing into what some callers or listeners will complain is politics, I suppose.
[31:31.660 --> 31:34.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: In fact, I'd like to read a couple of pieces of mail, and I don't know if we have any other news stories.
[31:34.880 --> 31:35.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: We can get to those as well.
[31:36.740 --> 31:39.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: But here's one entitled, Stick to Technology.
[31:40.280 --> 31:45.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm a programmer and a strong conservative, and I have a problem with the highly liberal rhetoric contained on your show.
[31:46.140 --> 31:47.880]  [SPEAKER_05]: That aside, I have a question for you.
[31:48.060 --> 32:02.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: If the government stops monitoring its citizens' contact with foreign peoples, and an American joins with a foreign terrorist to detonate a nuclear bomb in New York and succeeds due to the government not knowing it is coming, would you blame the Bush administration for not doing enough to stop the catastrophe?
[32:02.560 --> 32:03.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Sorry, Nathan.
[32:03.540 --> 32:04.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: Bernie, do you have an answer for this?
[32:07.380 --> 32:12.420]  [SPEAKER_14]: It's kind of hard to argue with people.
[32:13.240 --> 32:29.700]  [SPEAKER_14]: But it's just such a strange hypothetical to begin with, just to use this, you know, to nuclear, you know, if you don't wiretap American citizens, then we risk, you know, being blown up by a nuclear weapon in this country.
[32:30.020 --> 32:30.760]  [SPEAKER_14]: I don't know.
[32:30.760 --> 32:38.960]  [SPEAKER_12]: I think all Americans should be monitored and listened to at all times to prevent any possible terrorist act ever.
[32:39.160 --> 32:39.520]  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
[32:39.560 --> 32:42.060]  [SPEAKER_01]: The problem with that, Walter, is that it won't work.
[32:42.400 --> 32:54.300]  [SPEAKER_01]: There are plenty of lone wolves out there who really are just being indoctrinated by what they see on the Internet and on television and really never talk to any terrorist groups.
[32:54.500 --> 32:55.960]  [SPEAKER_01]: And they would be acting alone.
[32:56.100 --> 33:10.500]  [SPEAKER_01]: So consequently, what the government should do to prevent this is actually break into everyone's house in the United States and make sure that there's absolutely nothing in the houses that could be used for a terrorist act at all, including paring knives,
[33:10.740 --> 33:12.480]  [SPEAKER_01]: fingernail clippers, everything.
[33:13.060 --> 33:14.580]  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, don't just stop that.
[33:14.960 --> 33:17.000]  [SPEAKER_01]: Don't just look for that at airplanes.
[33:17.300 --> 33:18.560]  [SPEAKER_01]: Look for that in people's houses.
[33:18.800 --> 33:25.360]  [SPEAKER_01]: We should... I mean, if you want to guarantee this, it takes, you know, extreme measures.
[33:27.560 --> 33:30.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: And, of course, there's no way to guarantee anything like this.
[33:30.500 --> 33:30.800]  [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[33:31.500 --> 33:32.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's smoke in mirrors.
[33:32.460 --> 33:34.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's just a way of making people feel secure.
[33:34.840 --> 33:40.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: But the intelligent people in the crowd will know that there's no way to be 100% secure.
[33:40.200 --> 33:41.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: You'll never achieve that.
[33:41.260 --> 33:42.940]  [SPEAKER_05]: There's no way to stop terrorism completely.
[33:42.960 --> 33:44.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't mean you're endorsing it.
[33:44.120 --> 33:45.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: It just means you're being realistic.
[33:47.240 --> 33:52.800]  [SPEAKER_06]: This related bit of news for any of our listeners who are looking for a job.
[33:53.040 --> 34:08.780]  [SPEAKER_06]: There's an opportunity at Verizon for a position processing court orders and providing immediate assistance in according with company policies and procedures, as well as state and federal laws, such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the FISA Act,
[34:08.840 --> 34:09.760]  [SPEAKER_06]: and the CALEA.
[34:09.900 --> 34:24.520]  [SPEAKER_06]: And the agreement between Celco slash Vodafone slash Air Tech slash Bell Atlantic and the Department of Justice slash Department of Defense and FBI to 911 or other life-threatening emergency calls from law enforcement.
[34:24.800 --> 34:29.220]  [SPEAKER_06]: Must submit to and pass Verizon wireless background check.
[34:29.520 --> 34:30.800]  [SPEAKER_06]: Position is confidential.
[34:31.160 --> 34:37.300]  [SPEAKER_06]: This position is responsible for maintaining the highest level of confidentiality and is on call 24-7.
[34:37.680 --> 34:43.480]  [SPEAKER_06]: Act as liaison between company and the law enforcement community, and so on.
[34:44.560 --> 34:50.300]  [SPEAKER_06]: This is an excellent job opportunity if you would really like to know how the wiretapping programs are going.
[34:50.840 --> 34:52.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: I have a question.
[34:52.320 --> 34:54.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: What does it mean the position is confidential?
[34:54.800 --> 34:56.060]  [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know exactly.
[34:56.820 --> 34:58.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: Because you just talked about it, so I don't know.
[34:59.260 --> 35:00.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: What does that mean they can't?
[35:00.620 --> 35:01.680]  [SPEAKER_06]: There's a URL.
[35:01.890 --> 35:02.370]  [SPEAKER_06]: Bernie S.
[35:02.600 --> 35:03.580]  [SPEAKER_06]: actually sent this to us.
[35:03.700 --> 35:10.480]  [SPEAKER_06]: There's a URL where you can go to get this, or you could go to get this job opportunity listing.
[35:10.800 --> 35:15.870]  [SPEAKER_06]: But if you click on it now, it says the listing has been removed at the request of the company.
[35:16.500 --> 35:17.460]  [SPEAKER_06]: So maybe it is.
[35:18.840 --> 35:19.200]  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe.
[35:20.450 --> 35:24.320]  [SPEAKER_01]: I would think confidential means you wouldn't be able to tell anyone that you have this job.
[35:24.460 --> 35:25.870]  [SPEAKER_01]: You wouldn't be able to talk about your work either.
[35:27.760 --> 35:31.260]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, we can talk about other people's work because we don't have the job, right?
[35:32.040 --> 35:34.220]  [SPEAKER_01]: Some of us have no job, but that's another story.
[35:35.410 --> 35:35.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[35:35.870 --> 35:36.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: Here's another letter.
[35:36.560 --> 35:39.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: Dear Off The Hook, I'm a longtime fan of the radio show and magazine.
[35:39.300 --> 35:40.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't much care about the recent discussions.
[35:40.820 --> 35:42.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: I seem to hear more and more on politics.
[35:43.180 --> 35:46.350]  [SPEAKER_05]: For what it's worth, the magazine is not a true representation of the radio show.
[35:46.540 --> 35:47.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, it's not supposed to be, actually.
[35:48.260 --> 35:49.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's my opinion.
[35:49.160 --> 35:50.870]  [SPEAKER_05]: I do not wish to stir up any trouble.
[35:51.240 --> 35:52.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's your first mistake.
[35:53.000 --> 35:55.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: Of course, you should be stirring up all the trouble you can.
[35:55.890 --> 35:59.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: Anyway, the reason why I'm writing is this link, www.
[35:59.890 --> 36:01.200]  [SPEAKER_05]: Actually, you don't need the www.
[36:01.720 --> 36:07.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: tinyurl.com slash 9A as in apple, 4B as in boy, Y.
[36:07.600 --> 36:08.850]  [SPEAKER_05]: Note the PDF file.
[36:09.000 --> 36:11.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: I know you discussed the rights of photographers in the past.
[36:11.740 --> 36:12.850]  [SPEAKER_05]: Perhaps it will have some use.
[36:12.950 --> 36:15.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is basically the legal rights of photographers.
[36:16.540 --> 36:21.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: And that's signed Corndog Charlie and the Eleven Sisters of Soul.
[36:21.450 --> 36:22.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: P.S.
[36:22.080 --> 36:22.890]  [SPEAKER_05]: Verizon sucks.
[36:23.680 --> 36:38.620]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, Charlie, I should point out that talking about the legal rights of photographers would be considered a political issue by many people who are activists trying to get rights of photographers to be respected, to be protected.
[36:38.960 --> 36:44.450]  [SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, it's really hard to decide what is politics and what is not.
[36:44.680 --> 36:52.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, we can't always be talking about some kind of technical system or the latest virus that's gotten out or some kind of security hole.
[36:52.960 --> 36:54.430]  [SPEAKER_05]: It all ties together.
[36:54.600 --> 36:58.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: And very often, social issues are part of the whole equation.
[36:58.850 --> 37:00.910]  [SPEAKER_14]: There's some good news on the photography front.
[37:01.890 --> 37:02.580]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's right.
[37:03.460 --> 37:04.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you have this, Bernie?
[37:04.850 --> 37:05.390]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you want me to read it?
[37:05.560 --> 37:07.370]  [SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, actually, I do have this story.
[37:08.430 --> 37:12.480]  [SPEAKER_14]: One of our listeners, Michael Finfer, was kind enough to forward this to us.
[37:12.980 --> 37:41.890]  [SPEAKER_14]: Apparently, the director, the executive director of New Jersey Transit, the top guy, George Warrington, apparently received so many public comments about the proposed rule changes to basically make it illegal for anyone to take pictures of New Jersey Transit facilities that he decided that this was just completely unenforceable based on all the calls and letters and emails he received.
[37:42.460 --> 37:59.220]  [SPEAKER_14]: And he's saying effective immediately, and I'm quoting, we will return to our historic practice, which enables hobbyists and other non-commercial photographers to take pictures in public areas throughout the New Jersey Transit system without obtaining permission or providing prior notice.
[37:59.580 --> 38:06.020]  [SPEAKER_14]: There will also be no... there will also continue to be no restrictions on journalists in public areas of the system.
[38:06.390 --> 38:16.950]  [SPEAKER_14]: Now, this is really refreshing because I was threatened with arrest just two or three months ago by a police officer in a New Jersey Transit facility when I was taking pictures of just the lobby.
[38:17.390 --> 38:20.910]  [SPEAKER_14]: Nothing like some secret track or something.
[38:21.100 --> 38:22.850]  [SPEAKER_14]: It was just the lobby.
[38:23.410 --> 38:26.910]  [SPEAKER_14]: And he said, if I take another picture, he'd have me locked up.
[38:27.160 --> 38:36.320]  [SPEAKER_14]: And I asked him to... this is a Sergeant Leonard, I believe, and with the Delaware Report Authority, although he was guarding a New Jersey Transit facility.
[38:36.600 --> 38:39.040]  [SPEAKER_14]: I asked him to what law this was he was citing.
[38:39.320 --> 38:41.720]  [SPEAKER_14]: And he said, well, there's a law.
[38:41.850 --> 38:43.540]  [SPEAKER_14]: And I had him call into his command.
[38:43.540 --> 38:45.100]  [SPEAKER_14]: And they said, well, they couldn't find the law.
[38:45.260 --> 38:48.450]  [SPEAKER_14]: But he assured me that there was a law.
[38:48.560 --> 38:49.320]  [SPEAKER_14]: It just wasn't in writing.
[38:49.870 --> 38:51.800]  [SPEAKER_14]: So we had a good argument about it.
[38:51.910 --> 38:56.300]  [SPEAKER_14]: And he finally let me take a couple more pictures after I convinced him that I wasn't a threat.
[38:56.450 --> 38:59.060]  [SPEAKER_14]: But I just didn't like being threatened with prison.
[38:59.180 --> 39:02.540]  [SPEAKER_14]: And now, well, it's good to carry around one of these letters and hand it to someone who does that.
[39:02.580 --> 39:06.260]  [SPEAKER_14]: But we shouldn't have to carry around letters of permission to take pictures of public facilities.
[39:06.850 --> 39:18.850]  [SPEAKER_06]: It sounds like this law or this rule was defeated in a similar way to how, as far as I can tell, the New York City transit rule against photography was also defeated.
[39:19.020 --> 39:26.980]  [SPEAKER_06]: And that is there's these really kind of small time bureaucrats at these agencies who are responsible for these rule changes.
[39:27.320 --> 39:39.950]  [SPEAKER_06]: And I think if they get as many as, you know, 10 letters on a subject, that is considered to them a massive public outpouring of something, because no one really ever pays attention to what these people do.
[39:40.160 --> 39:46.260]  [SPEAKER_06]: So I think if they get, you know, 10 or 100 letters, they seize up, they don't know how to respond.
[39:46.560 --> 39:49.950]  [SPEAKER_06]: So I think that's really how these things got stopped.
[39:50.320 --> 39:51.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, this is actually the director.
[39:52.980 --> 39:53.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: Go ahead.
[39:54.460 --> 40:07.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, it's just that, you know, you see these petty bureaucrats, people on a fairly low level, who take it upon themselves to go an extra step above what the homeland security is doing, because they want to feel even safer.
[40:07.680 --> 40:13.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: So they're going to make up some kind of law that says, well, let's not allow photography on trains anymore.
[40:13.580 --> 40:18.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's, you know, add all these extra security precautions that are completely unconstitutional.
[40:18.780 --> 40:21.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, we want to we want to feel safe.
[40:21.160 --> 40:23.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: So we're going to just bypass that anyway.
[40:23.850 --> 40:25.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: And yeah, you're right.
[40:25.680 --> 40:30.820]  [SPEAKER_05]: When when people object to that, and it's on a smaller scale, so fewer people can make more of a difference.
[40:31.220 --> 40:35.850]  [SPEAKER_05]: It really, it really can stop something bad from happening, something really bad.
[40:35.980 --> 40:44.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think it's a testament to the people who use New Jersey Transit and like to take pictures of trains and train stations and things like that.
[40:44.410 --> 40:47.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: They spoke up and they were able to get their voice heard.
[40:47.240 --> 40:51.930]  [SPEAKER_05]: And as a result, they're able to save a little bit of our rights, at least in that particular area.
[40:52.140 --> 40:56.980]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's why it's so important to act locally, because it does affect things on a national scale.
[40:57.950 --> 41:17.260]  [SPEAKER_14]: If anyone wants a copy of the New Jersey Transit executive director's letter saying that this rule has changed, because I'm sure they haven't gone around and educated all their enforcement officers on this new rule, this new announcement, you could email us at oth@2600.com.
[41:18.140 --> 41:24.480]  [SPEAKER_14]: And we will send you a link where you can print out the letter for your own handy carrying around.
[41:25.410 --> 41:31.180]  [SPEAKER_05]: I'd like to read one more letter and then maybe we can take some phone calls at 212-209-2900.
[41:32.020 --> 41:36.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: This listener writes in, first of all, I cannot express how much I enjoy your shows.
[41:36.260 --> 41:41.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: Your perspective on things going on around us is very valuable and entertaining, so this is not an angry email.
[41:42.540 --> 41:42.950]  [SPEAKER_05]: Shucks.
[41:43.260 --> 41:49.700]  [SPEAKER_05]: However, I'm concerned because on the 28th, one of the speakers gave out two numbers, one to the NSA, one to the White House.
[41:50.350 --> 41:56.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, I want to make the calls just out of curiosity to find out if my line is being tapped by the NSA.
[41:56.960 --> 42:04.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: It is frightening to think that my phone could possibly have been tapped at some point, but it's not all that surprising.
[42:04.180 --> 42:06.500]  [SPEAKER_05]: It does not really affect me too much since I have nothing to hide.
[42:06.870 --> 42:13.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: However, although most people think I'm white, many people wouldn't know that my family is, in fact, Middle Eastern and I'm currently stationed at an Air Force base in North Dakota.
[42:14.450 --> 42:27.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: Considering all this focus on the Middle East, the fact that my grandparents come from that region, a couple with the fact that I serve in a nuclear base, there's very little doubt in my mind that my phone has been tapped.
[42:27.540 --> 42:31.390]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hell, I've been in this dorm for two years and they've recently installed a surveillance system.
[42:31.800 --> 42:35.450]  [SPEAKER_05]: Three floors, two cameras per floor, one per day room, three per floor total.
[42:35.980 --> 42:37.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: And why not, right?
[42:37.260 --> 42:44.410]  [SPEAKER_05]: My question to you is, would you suggest I satisfy my curiosity and make the calls, or now that you understand my situation, suggest otherwise?
[42:44.720 --> 42:45.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: Thanks for your time.
[42:46.260 --> 42:50.140]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, I don't think your curiosity will, in fact, be satisfied by calling.
[42:50.370 --> 42:56.140]  [SPEAKER_06]: I highly doubt that they'll tell you if your phone is tapped or not, but it might be a worthwhile experiment.
[42:57.540 --> 43:01.140]  [SPEAKER_14]: If you call them using Skype, will they know who you are?
[43:02.720 --> 43:05.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I sure confused Mike when I called him with Skype before.
[43:05.660 --> 43:06.450]  [SPEAKER_05]: What did you see, Mike?
[43:06.760 --> 43:15.540]  [SPEAKER_06]: I received a telephone call from, let me, you called me on my cell phone to, you know, inform me that you would be calling the studio.
[43:16.960 --> 43:28.410]  [SPEAKER_06]: And the number that you called me at was 0-0-0-0-1-2-3-4-5-6, which is not a number that I think I could call you back on, for instance.
[43:29.020 --> 43:34.870]  [SPEAKER_05]: No, I think what that is is somebody being lazy and not programming the number.
[43:35.100 --> 43:38.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: You don't really need to program the number since you're coming from the Internet anyway.
[43:38.800 --> 43:44.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: But, yeah, that's, if you get that kind of caller ID, that's probably somebody on Skype.
[43:44.940 --> 43:46.940]  [SPEAKER_06]: All right, shall we take some phone calls now?
[43:47.380 --> 43:48.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's take a couple.
[43:48.460 --> 43:52.240]  [SPEAKER_06]: Our number again is 212-209-2900.
[43:54.100 --> 43:55.680]  [SPEAKER_06]: And, hello, you're on the air.
[43:57.940 --> 43:58.420]  [SPEAKER_07]: Hi.
[43:58.420 --> 44:00.020]  [SPEAKER_07]: I'm so glad that I got on.
[44:00.140 --> 44:10.300]  [SPEAKER_07]: And I doubt the person who sent in that letter about the hypothetical situation about someone launching a nuclear attack against us is listening.
[44:10.580 --> 44:21.420]  [SPEAKER_07]: But it's idiots like that and mindless boobs that, you know, that continue to put people in office like George Bush, who have the whole world hating us.
[44:21.560 --> 44:26.380]  [SPEAKER_07]: This hatred against the United States government did not come out of nowhere.
[44:26.380 --> 44:27.900]  [SPEAKER_07]: It did not come out of thin air.
[44:28.060 --> 44:36.060]  [SPEAKER_07]: It came out of our policies that have us thinking we can do whatever we want to invade countries, overthrow leaders.
[44:36.280 --> 44:38.380]  [SPEAKER_07]: And this dates back, you know, a long time.
[44:38.560 --> 44:40.220]  [SPEAKER_07]: We overthrew Mossadegh in 53.
[44:40.920 --> 44:42.920]  [SPEAKER_07]: We put the Shah of Iran in power.
[44:43.260 --> 44:48.020]  [SPEAKER_07]: You know, these people still live with the fallout from everything we've done over the years.
[44:48.320 --> 44:58.680]  [SPEAKER_07]: So for the boobs who want to, you know, paint us as being totally innocent and everybody in the world that hates us, I think they should learn how to read books.
[44:59.220 --> 45:00.200]  [SPEAKER_07]: That's my comment.
[45:00.340 --> 45:02.640]  [SPEAKER_07]: I'll hang up and I'll listen to whatever you have to say.
[45:02.760 --> 45:03.180]  [SPEAKER_07]: Thank you.
[45:03.180 --> 45:03.580]  [SPEAKER_07]: Very, very much.
[45:03.580 --> 45:04.240]  [SPEAKER_07]: Sure you call.
[45:06.500 --> 45:10.080]  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, what is that noise?
[45:10.760 --> 45:11.600]  [SPEAKER_06]: That's the B.A.I.
[45:11.760 --> 45:11.840]  [SPEAKER_06]: phones.
[45:14.600 --> 45:17.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: Are we back in planet Earth?
[45:18.020 --> 45:18.740]  [SPEAKER_05]: We're all here.
[45:19.080 --> 45:19.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
[45:19.700 --> 45:20.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: Whoa.
[45:21.780 --> 45:23.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: I hope that doesn't happen every time we take a call.
[45:23.600 --> 45:30.340]  [SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, you know, this this caller is probably going to be accused of contributing to the political discussions that we have here on this radio show.
[45:30.420 --> 45:31.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: But you know, it happens.
[45:31.380 --> 45:32.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's part of life.
[45:34.140 --> 45:36.240]  [SPEAKER_06]: No, no further comment than that, I guess.
[45:37.320 --> 45:38.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't think any further comment is needed.
[45:39.220 --> 45:40.740]  [SPEAKER_06]: All right, then we'll take another call.
[45:42.280 --> 45:43.260]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hello, you're on the air.
[45:44.280 --> 45:44.640]  [SPEAKER_07]: Yes.
[45:44.800 --> 45:46.380]  [SPEAKER_07]: Did you get my email, Bernie, about this?
[45:46.740 --> 45:47.100]  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[45:47.800 --> 45:49.220]  [SPEAKER_13]: Did you get to take another call?
[45:49.680 --> 45:50.180]  [SPEAKER_13]: Yes, I did.
[45:50.380 --> 45:50.980]  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, that's good.
[45:53.160 --> 45:54.240]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hello, you're on the air.
[45:55.300 --> 45:55.460]  [SPEAKER_13]: Hi.
[45:55.580 --> 45:55.680]  [SPEAKER_13]: Yeah.
[45:57.020 --> 46:03.360]  [SPEAKER_13]: I was wondering if you guys recommended any other cell phone companies besides Verizon for the New York greater area?
[46:04.840 --> 46:05.740]  [SPEAKER_12]: They're all terrible.
[46:06.140 --> 46:07.700]  [SPEAKER_12]: When did we recommend Verizon?
[46:08.640 --> 46:09.760]  [SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, when did we do that?
[46:11.420 --> 46:12.660]  [SPEAKER_13]: Sorry, besides Verizon.
[46:13.240 --> 46:20.140]  [SPEAKER_13]: If there's a good one to sponsor, you know, if you're going to boycott the big guys, they're one to promote.
[46:20.140 --> 46:21.040]  [SPEAKER_13]: They're all big guys.
[46:21.060 --> 46:24.860]  [SPEAKER_05]: There are no small cell phone companies that I'm aware of in New York.
[46:25.680 --> 46:26.040]  [SPEAKER_13]: Excellent.
[46:26.160 --> 46:26.380]  [SPEAKER_13]: Thank you.
[46:27.700 --> 46:33.320]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, well, I'm sure it's not the answer you wanted to hear, but I don't know.
[46:33.520 --> 46:35.000]  [SPEAKER_05]: Who do we recommend?
[46:35.120 --> 46:36.040]  [SPEAKER_05]: Did we ever recommend anybody?
[46:37.460 --> 46:38.120]  [SPEAKER_12]: I didn't.
[46:38.240 --> 46:39.460]  [SPEAKER_12]: If we did, it was a mistake.
[46:39.720 --> 46:41.740]  [SPEAKER_12]: I wouldn't recommend any of them.
[46:42.940 --> 46:45.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: There have been weeks where we haven't condemned one of them.
[46:45.680 --> 46:48.100]  [SPEAKER_05]: That could be seen as a recommendation, I suppose.
[46:48.400 --> 46:49.800]  [SPEAKER_05]: It's about the closest we get.
[46:51.020 --> 46:55.080]  [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe we should suggest a GSM company, something that works outside of the States.
[46:56.360 --> 46:58.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, here's the thing.
[46:58.240 --> 47:05.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: A few of us are using GSM providers like T-Mobile or was it Singular?
[47:05.820 --> 47:06.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: Singular.
[47:06.720 --> 47:12.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: But I kept my SIM in my phone because I haven't been making a whole lot of phone calls.
[47:12.720 --> 47:17.900]  [SPEAKER_05]: Other folks here have gotten Dutch SIM cards or German SIM cards.
[47:18.080 --> 47:19.560]  [SPEAKER_05]: How has that worked out for you guys?
[47:20.280 --> 47:22.000]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's worked out great for me.
[47:22.340 --> 47:31.140]  [SPEAKER_04]: I haven't used it for voice, but for SMSing, it's not a bargain, but it's not terribly expensive.
[47:31.440 --> 47:33.500]  [SPEAKER_04]: I can still keep in contact with people that way.
[47:33.840 --> 47:38.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: And that wouldn't be possible using your SIM from the United States?
[47:38.460 --> 47:44.480]  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I could, but I think it's actually cheaper for me to SMS with his Dutch number.
[47:44.500 --> 47:45.580]  [SPEAKER_04]: I think I figured it out.
[47:45.700 --> 47:48.860]  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not much cheaper, but on the order of 10 or 20 cents less.
[47:49.520 --> 47:53.220]  [SPEAKER_05]: And you also had to pay something to get the SIM in the first place, right?
[47:53.500 --> 47:54.040]  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, yeah.
[47:54.200 --> 47:59.440]  [SPEAKER_04]: We had to purchase the SIM card and that came with a certain amount of credit on it, but it was a small amount.
[47:59.540 --> 48:02.940]  [SPEAKER_04]: We had to buy a refill card immediately to add more credits to it.
[48:03.140 --> 48:10.300]  [SPEAKER_04]: But all in all, I'm actually glad I got it because I didn't add international roaming to my card until later on.
[48:10.420 --> 48:12.520]  [SPEAKER_04]: And I have yet to see if it actually worked.
[48:12.680 --> 48:15.240]  [SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't working almost a week after Christmas.
[48:15.700 --> 48:17.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: You're talking about your SIM back home.
[48:17.640 --> 48:19.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: You didn't have international roaming on that.
[48:19.340 --> 48:19.600]  [SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[48:19.740 --> 48:19.880]  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[48:19.980 --> 48:22.740]  [SPEAKER_04]: I added that after we got here thinking, well, let me try that instead.
[48:22.960 --> 48:24.080]  [SPEAKER_04]: And it didn't work out.
[48:24.580 --> 48:27.580]  [SPEAKER_04]: So this is the only way for me to communicate.
[48:28.020 --> 48:28.260]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[48:28.440 --> 48:28.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[48:28.620 --> 48:35.280]  [SPEAKER_05]: So I guess in that regard, it makes a degree of sense, but still we're talking about an investment of what, $20, $30 that you had to make just to get the thing?
[48:35.700 --> 48:36.100]  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, yeah.
[48:36.440 --> 48:43.080]  [SPEAKER_04]: But for communications for me, I think that's what other people may disagree, but... Well, I'm just to get an idea.
[48:43.300 --> 48:43.800]  [SPEAKER_02]: Go ahead.
[48:43.860 --> 48:56.940]  [SPEAKER_02]: Just to get an idea, it's about 75 euro cents to call the United States per minute using these prepaid phones, which isn't all that bad because what I found is it's a similar price from the public telephones.
[48:57.940 --> 49:08.760]  [SPEAKER_02]: But when you have access to the Internet, everywhere you're going, like we did, it's certainly not worth it not to use a service like Skype, which again is only 3 US cents per minute.
[49:08.940 --> 49:10.760]  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's really, really worth it.
[49:11.080 --> 49:16.740]  [SPEAKER_02]: But when you're walking around the streets, having a device that's able to SMS, you know, is certainly worth it.
[49:16.820 --> 49:20.440]  [SPEAKER_02]: So just for the SMS capability, I would say the prepaid SIMs are worth it.
[49:20.580 --> 49:21.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hang on one second here.
[49:21.440 --> 49:26.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: You're saying it costs 75 euro cents to call the United States using a Dutch SIM?
[49:27.300 --> 49:28.120]  [SPEAKER_05]: Per minute, yes.
[49:28.120 --> 49:31.080]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's almost exactly what I pay using my American SIM.
[49:34.420 --> 49:35.300]  Oh, well...
[49:35.300 --> 49:38.160]  [SPEAKER_05]: My American SIM is just under a dollar.
[49:38.400 --> 49:42.680]  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, you know, it's a little more, but I figured it would be a lot more.
[49:42.860 --> 49:52.080]  [SPEAKER_06]: Let's not be under the illusion that paying a dollar a minute to make a phone call between two sort of industrialized nations is a good deal.
[49:52.620 --> 49:53.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: No, it's not.
[49:53.500 --> 49:59.060]  [SPEAKER_05]: And considering we're paying three cents a minute right now to have all these people together online, I think we need to look at alternatives.
[49:59.960 --> 50:13.620]  [SPEAKER_14]: Couldn't one use a purchase of prepaid calling card in Germany there or in the Netherlands and call in as a local call from the GSM phone and then call the U.S.
[50:13.620 --> 50:15.260]  [SPEAKER_14]: that way much more cheaply?
[50:16.640 --> 50:24.320]  [SPEAKER_02]: I tried purchasing a prepaid card for, you know, public telephones and it was about a euro a minute on that as well.
[50:24.440 --> 50:30.480]  [SPEAKER_02]: I got a 10 euro card and was able to talk for about 10 minutes before it just, you know, all the funds are depleted.
[50:31.140 --> 50:32.740]  [SPEAKER_14]: Wow, I found much cheaper ones.
[50:32.920 --> 50:34.480]  [SPEAKER_14]: That's that's kind of strange, but.
[50:37.200 --> 50:40.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, let's let's move on and see if we can take another phone call.
[50:41.600 --> 50:42.580]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hello, you're on the air.
[50:44.120 --> 50:45.380]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hi, what's on your mind?
[50:46.240 --> 50:47.980]  [SPEAKER_09]: It's like a pre-screening.
[50:47.980 --> 50:49.340]  [SPEAKER_06]: No, no, no, no.
[50:50.140 --> 50:50.880]  [SPEAKER_09]: Is that alive?
[50:51.340 --> 50:53.720]  [SPEAKER_06]: You're live on the air, so say something.
[50:55.040 --> 50:56.240]  [SPEAKER_09]: You're completely... really?
[50:56.820 --> 50:59.420]  [SPEAKER_09]: All right, maybe I'm getting a delay off of the shoutcast, I guess?
[50:59.720 --> 51:00.000]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yes.
[51:00.220 --> 51:00.440]  [SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[51:00.600 --> 51:10.700]  [SPEAKER_09]: Well, nonetheless, I want to know how you guys feel about Microsoft's response to the Windows metafile vulnerability and how they've yet to really release a patch for that.
[51:10.800 --> 51:18.480]  [SPEAKER_09]: And how do you think that large companies such as Microsoft, who support so many users, take so long to deal with large vulnerabilities?
[51:19.060 --> 51:21.680]  [SPEAKER_06]: You asked us for our opinion on Microsoft's response.
[51:21.800 --> 51:23.460]  [SPEAKER_06]: I was unaware that there had been a response.
[51:23.780 --> 51:25.180]  [SPEAKER_09]: No, there is no response.
[51:25.340 --> 51:26.100]  [SPEAKER_09]: I apologize.
[51:26.380 --> 51:26.620]  [SPEAKER_09]: I'm sorry.
[51:27.280 --> 51:27.460]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[51:28.020 --> 51:29.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: Are you referring to the...
[51:29.660 --> 51:32.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: You're referring to the flaw found in Windows?
[51:33.100 --> 51:34.460]  [SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, they said they...
[51:34.460 --> 51:34.800]  [SPEAKER_09]: Go ahead.
[51:35.020 --> 51:37.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, they hope to have a patch ready next week.
[51:37.540 --> 51:40.440]  [SPEAKER_05]: I think that was their only response so far.
[51:40.580 --> 51:42.080]  [SPEAKER_09]: How do you feel about that kind of stuff?
[51:42.280 --> 51:49.520]  [SPEAKER_09]: Like, you know, 90% of like the world will maybe not 90%, but a large portion of the world like uses this product, right?
[51:49.660 --> 51:52.160]  [SPEAKER_09]: And they can't even support a...
[51:52.160 --> 51:54.100]  [SPEAKER_09]: Okay, they can't even support it with live patches, right?
[51:54.880 --> 52:20.240]  [SPEAKER_01]: I've read something, although I didn't understand it well, and maybe somebody in Europe can help me with this, that apparently this sort of problem where you look at or open a picture in your mail or on a web page is very difficult to get a patch for it because it takes advantage of a feature in the operating system rather than a flaw.
[52:22.880 --> 52:24.300]  [SPEAKER_01]: Anybody have any technical?
[52:24.540 --> 52:33.140]  [SPEAKER_09]: Well, I was reading a post recently, today, and they said that somebody, actually third parties were releasing patches before Microsoft was.
[52:33.140 --> 52:36.560]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yes, there are third-party patches available.
[52:37.760 --> 52:40.160]  [SPEAKER_09]: So, I mean, doesn't that kind of defeat anything?
[52:40.300 --> 52:46.420]  [SPEAKER_09]: Like, if third-party people are patching operating systems that a large company can't protect or can't support, right?
[52:46.900 --> 52:47.720]  [SPEAKER_09]: Is that a bit of a problem?
[52:47.800 --> 52:50.540]  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I would at first think, who are these third parties?
[52:50.680 --> 52:58.900]  [SPEAKER_01]: Because, gee, if you're a hacker and somebody else posts an exploit, wouldn't it be brilliant of you to put a patch up?
[52:58.900 --> 53:05.340]  [SPEAKER_09]: Well, let's just take into consideration that not everyone is out for an evil way, I guess.
[53:05.500 --> 53:06.620]  [SPEAKER_01]: That's true, that's true.
[53:06.620 --> 53:11.260]  [SPEAKER_01]: But the point is, without knowing who these third parties are, can't really comment on that.
[53:11.440 --> 53:16.400]  [SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, Jim's point is that, you know, a lot of large businesses won't trust third-party patches like this.
[53:16.520 --> 53:19.800]  [SPEAKER_12]: They only depend on Microsoft and only trust Microsoft.
[53:20.060 --> 53:22.700]  [SPEAKER_12]: And they have to cover themselves in these cases.
[53:22.760 --> 53:25.820]  [SPEAKER_12]: So, they won't be applying it.
[53:26.920 --> 53:30.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, Microsoft did say something of value.
[53:30.780 --> 53:36.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: They said, until they release their patch, users should be careful not to visit unfamiliar websites.
[53:37.300 --> 53:37.480]  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[53:38.900 --> 53:41.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I think that, you know, that's something we could all live by, isn't it?
[53:42.140 --> 53:43.260]  [SPEAKER_09]: Well, I don't know.
[53:43.600 --> 53:44.760]  [SPEAKER_09]: Thanks for taking the call, guys.
[53:44.760 --> 53:47.780]  [SPEAKER_09]: I really appreciate you guys talking about something besides the politics, you know.
[53:48.780 --> 53:52.280]  [SPEAKER_09]: It's good to hear you guys talking something a little technical, even though I had to bring it up, right?
[53:53.020 --> 53:54.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, well, that's what we need our listeners for.
[53:55.040 --> 53:55.480]  [SPEAKER_09]: Thanks for calling.
[53:56.760 --> 54:08.860]  [SPEAKER_01]: And speaking of large companies, there's a rumor going around that Google is going to come out with a cheap, off-the-shelf computer in the $200 range.
[54:11.260 --> 54:12.620]  [SPEAKER_11]: I heard that wrong rumor.
[54:14.060 --> 54:16.120]  [SPEAKER_06]: Anyone have anything insightful to say?
[54:17.940 --> 54:19.560]  [SPEAKER_12]: Google has denied the rumor.
[54:19.560 --> 54:21.300]  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, well then.
[54:21.500 --> 54:38.780]  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab has come up, of course, with that cheap $100 computer with the wind-up handle for Africa and other third-world nations, and the open-source software within it.
[54:39.240 --> 54:47.780]  [SPEAKER_01]: And allegedly, it's going to be sold by them in the United States at $200 to $300 to subsidize it for the emerging economies.
[54:48.120 --> 54:50.380]  [SPEAKER_01]: So this may or may not be related.
[54:50.620 --> 54:52.120]  [SPEAKER_01]: High speculation in all this.
[54:53.280 --> 54:53.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
[54:53.940 --> 54:55.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: Do we have time for any more phone calls, Mike?
[54:56.480 --> 54:58.260]  [SPEAKER_06]: Maybe if it's very, very brief.
[54:58.840 --> 55:03.460]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, because I'd like to give out the address first, and then with a phone call if that's possible.
[55:03.480 --> 55:04.640]  [SPEAKER_06]: We've got a call, sorry.
[55:05.100 --> 55:06.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, let's take the call, then do the address.
[55:07.380 --> 55:08.860]  [SPEAKER_13]: Hey, it's Bruce from the Bronx.
[55:08.920 --> 55:09.500]  [SPEAKER_13]: How you doing, guys?
[55:10.420 --> 55:10.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: Hi.
[55:11.320 --> 55:12.740]  [SPEAKER_13]: Listen, I have a whole question.
[55:13.140 --> 55:14.480]  [SPEAKER_13]: Do you nerds ever get any pussy?
[55:17.240 --> 55:20.520]  [SPEAKER_05]: We should give out the address first, like I planned on, Mike.
[55:20.720 --> 55:21.080]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yes.
[55:21.960 --> 55:22.360]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[55:22.940 --> 55:30.780]  [SPEAKER_05]: If you would like to write to us at Off The Hook, you can do so by sending an email to oth@2600.com.
[55:31.240 --> 55:38.600]  [SPEAKER_05]: Our snail mail address is Off The Hook, care of WBAI 120 Wall Street.
[55:39.380 --> 55:40.660]  [SPEAKER_12]: Tenth floor.
[55:41.770 --> 55:42.720]  [SPEAKER_05]: New York.
[55:43.520 --> 55:44.300]  [SPEAKER_05]: New York.
[55:44.860 --> 55:48.920]  [SPEAKER_01]: 1-0-0-0-5.
[55:50.400 --> 55:52.920]  [SPEAKER_05]: Boy, the audio sure sounds weird to this thing.
[55:53.360 --> 55:58.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, well, do we have any time for any more calls at all, intelligent or not?
[55:58.280 --> 55:58.860]  [SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
[55:58.980 --> 56:00.700]  [SPEAKER_06]: We're running very close to the edge.
[56:01.460 --> 56:01.760]  [SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[56:01.920 --> 56:03.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's see if we can take a 20-second call.
[56:05.240 --> 56:05.820]  [SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[56:06.040 --> 56:08.180]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hello, you're on the air, but only for 20 seconds.
[56:08.440 --> 56:09.700]  [SPEAKER_07]: I won't talk about anything political.
[56:10.140 --> 56:11.020]  [SPEAKER_06]: No, you won't talk.
[56:11.160 --> 56:12.980]  [SPEAKER_06]: That's a true statement from Rebel.
[56:13.940 --> 56:16.140]  [SPEAKER_06]: He will not talk about anything political.
[56:17.660 --> 56:18.060]  [SPEAKER_06]: Hello.
[56:18.360 --> 56:20.380]  [SPEAKER_06]: We have a very brief moment to talk to you.
[56:20.580 --> 56:21.360]  [SPEAKER_08]: Hey, how are you doing?
[56:21.580 --> 56:22.120]  [SPEAKER_08]: Great show.
[56:22.180 --> 56:22.760]  [SPEAKER_08]: I love your show, guys.
[56:23.660 --> 56:25.400]  [SPEAKER_08]: But I work for a very large telco.
[56:25.520 --> 56:29.400]  [SPEAKER_08]: I want to share some information about some of the, what we call trapping and tracing for call intercepts.
[56:29.460 --> 56:30.100]  [SPEAKER_08]: You got a minute for that?
[56:30.660 --> 56:31.220]  [SPEAKER_08]: Oh, boy.
[56:31.340 --> 56:33.660]  [SPEAKER_01]: If we run out of time, call us next week, for sure.
[56:34.140 --> 56:35.760]  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but quickly, please, very quickly.
[56:36.360 --> 56:37.760]  [SPEAKER_08]: Okay, well, basically, we can.
[56:37.920 --> 56:39.520]  [SPEAKER_08]: You know, I work at a not for a large telco.
[56:39.540 --> 56:44.220]  [SPEAKER_08]: We can do what are called trap and traces for both void calls and traditional TDM calls.
[56:44.860 --> 56:54.540]  [SPEAKER_08]: As long as your call gets switched on the PSDN, on the traditional phone network, we can fulfill and we do fulfill, you know, FBI requests and stuff like that.
[56:54.700 --> 56:57.800]  [SPEAKER_08]: So, you know, if I had more time, I can get more into it.
[56:57.880 --> 56:58.660]  [SPEAKER_08]: But it's pretty cool.
[57:11.660 --> 57:12.420]  [SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[57:12.420 --> 57:14.100]  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, so we're just about out of time.
[57:14.880 --> 57:15.600]  [SPEAKER_06]: We'll see.
[57:15.780 --> 57:17.700]  [SPEAKER_06]: You'll be back in the studio next week, Emmanuel?
[57:18.180 --> 57:19.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: I hope to be.
[57:19.240 --> 57:21.660]  [SPEAKER_05]: And I hope to be at the 2600 meeting in New York on Friday.
[57:22.200 --> 57:27.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: Check www.2600.com/meetings to see if there's meetings in your area this Friday.
[57:28.580 --> 57:29.140]  [SPEAKER_06]: All right.
[57:29.840 --> 57:31.840]  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, we have a special song, right?
[57:32.360 --> 57:32.580]  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[57:33.460 --> 57:34.640]  [SPEAKER_05]: You want to tell us something about this?
[57:34.900 --> 57:35.680]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's German.
[57:36.560 --> 57:37.360]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's called...
[57:38.980 --> 57:40.260]  [SPEAKER_06]: I forget the title.
[57:40.420 --> 57:41.140]  [SPEAKER_06]: It's some German word.
[57:43.020 --> 57:46.860]  [SPEAKER_06]: Die Warterschleife, which means the hold music or the hold pattern.
[57:47.620 --> 57:53.160]  [SPEAKER_06]: And I think, you know, I think that people should just listen to it and maybe learn German.
[57:53.660 --> 57:55.400]  [SPEAKER_05]: Mike, you found this song.
[57:55.460 --> 57:57.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: This is what we played last week by accident on hold.
[57:57.700 --> 58:01.140]  [SPEAKER_05]: But the funny thing is, some of the lyrics say things like, you're in a hurry.
[58:01.320 --> 58:02.540]  [SPEAKER_05]: That's not my problem, though.
[58:02.920 --> 58:05.020]  [SPEAKER_05]: Great hold music to hear, especially if you know German.
[58:06.940 --> 58:11.500]  [SPEAKER_10]: But no one is ready for you.
[58:14.340 --> 58:36.780]  [SPEAKER_10]: I'm the Warterschleife And I'm the Warterschleife And I'm the end of life I'm the Warterschleife And she's on the
[58:47.440 --> 59:07.400]  [SPEAKER_10]: Warterschleife And she's on the Warterschleife Telefonieren Sie mobil Ach, das kostet wirklich viel Und jetzt hängen Sie hier fest Ja, das ist ein Nerventest Jetzt haben Sie sich ja schon eine Krise
[59:18.880 --> 59:23.020]  [SPEAKER_10]: Please hold the light.
[59:24.140 --> 59:28.220]  [SPEAKER_10]: I am the warteschleifer.
[59:30.200 --> 59:34.940]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I am endless light.
[59:37.400 --> 59:42.080]  [SPEAKER_10]: I am the warteschleifer.
[59:43.000 --> 59:51.140]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I am the warteschleifer.
[59:51.140 --> 59:51.540]  [SPEAKER_10]: And I am the warteschleifer.
[59:53.000 --> 59:58.120]  [SPEAKER_10]: I am so endless light.
[59:59.960 --> 01:00:06.420]  [SPEAKER_10]: I am the warteschleifer.
[01:00:06.420 --> 01:00:09.560]  [SPEAKER_10]: And we are back.
[01:00:25.240 --> 01:00:26.640]  [SPEAKER_11]: Adios.