[00:00.000 --> 00:01.700]  In New York, I'm Dorian Marina.
[00:13.820 --> 00:16.640]  And you're listening to Radio Station WBAI New York.
[00:16.780 --> 00:18.200]  The time is 7 o'clock.
[00:18.400 --> 00:19.480]  Time for Off the Hook.
[02:08.480 --> 02:09.480]  And good evening to everybody.
[02:09.560 --> 02:10.580]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:10.640 --> 02:12.880]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[02:12.940 --> 02:14.640]  And we've got a big crowd tonight.
[02:14.640 --> 02:17.300]  I'm not exactly sure why we have so many people.
[02:17.840 --> 02:20.120]  But we're joined by Mike.
[02:20.500 --> 02:20.820]  Hi.
[02:21.100 --> 02:21.700]  And Jim.
[02:22.200 --> 02:22.460]  Hi.
[02:22.840 --> 02:23.260]  Dotret.
[02:23.620 --> 02:23.880]  Hello.
[02:24.200 --> 02:24.660]  Rob T.
[02:24.780 --> 02:25.260]  Firefly.
[02:25.480 --> 02:25.860]  Good evening.
[02:26.080 --> 02:26.560]  Voltaire.
[02:26.800 --> 02:26.980]  Hey.
[02:27.160 --> 02:29.400]  And we have a bunch of guests tonight.
[02:29.520 --> 02:30.300]  We have Lexicon.
[02:30.600 --> 02:30.860]  Hello.
[02:31.380 --> 02:32.640]  We have RenderMan.
[02:33.020 --> 02:33.540]  Good evening.
[02:33.560 --> 02:34.760]  We have Gray Frequency.
[02:35.040 --> 02:35.400]  Hey there.
[02:35.940 --> 02:38.320]  And down in Philadelphia, of course, we have Bernie S.
[02:38.800 --> 02:39.920]  Greetings from Philadelphia.
[02:40.280 --> 02:43.680]  You know, I guess we all have about 30 seconds tonight to say something.
[02:43.680 --> 02:44.580]  And then we're out of time.
[02:45.320 --> 02:45.760]  Wow.
[02:45.880 --> 02:46.040]  Okay.
[02:46.160 --> 02:49.660]  So everybody here, everybody in the room is involved in the HALP Conference in some way.
[02:49.720 --> 02:52.620]  So I guess that's sort of why we're together tonight.
[02:52.620 --> 02:56.280]  Because we had this kind of flurry of organization.
[02:56.500 --> 02:57.980]  I think it started at the meeting on Friday.
[02:58.640 --> 03:01.180]  And we're just kind of putting things together.
[03:01.180 --> 03:03.360]  We have the wiki running.
[03:03.460 --> 03:07.960]  And we have all kinds of websites and tweets and Facebook things.
[03:08.120 --> 03:12.400]  And who wants to dive in and update people on some things that are going on?
[03:12.980 --> 03:18.060]  Well, maybe I should say first, at the HALP Conference, Hackers on Planet Earth, it's taking place this July.
[03:18.060 --> 03:19.180]  It's our eighth conference.
[03:19.520 --> 03:21.020]  The Next HALP, we're calling it.
[03:21.180 --> 03:21.780]  When in July?
[03:21.980 --> 03:23.760]  July 16th, 17th, and 18th.
[03:23.840 --> 03:25.440]  That's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
[03:25.440 --> 03:27.140]  And a lot of people have been asking.
[03:27.320 --> 03:28.640]  It's taking place at the Hotel Pennsylvania.
[03:28.800 --> 03:30.660]  A lot of people have been asking about room rates.
[03:30.860 --> 03:32.080]  Do we have discounted room rates?
[03:32.300 --> 03:34.680]  The news is, yes, we will have discounted room rates.
[03:34.800 --> 03:36.980]  We're in negotiations with the hotel right now.
[03:37.100 --> 03:38.820]  I've been speaking to them over the past couple of days.
[03:38.840 --> 03:40.000]  We should have something this week.
[03:41.000 --> 03:44.180]  So stay tuned to the website, www.hope.net.
[03:44.640 --> 03:46.200]  What other websites should we give out?
[03:46.400 --> 03:46.860]  The Twitter.
[03:55.440 --> 03:57.620]  And there will be all kinds of other things.
[03:57.740 --> 04:00.960]  You can also subscribe to 2600 on Twitter.com.
[04:01.580 --> 04:03.200]  What hashtag will we be using?
[04:03.380 --> 04:04.660]  What hashtag will we be using?
[04:04.720 --> 04:06.540]  I think it's TNH, right?
[04:06.600 --> 04:07.080]  The Next Hope.
[04:07.140 --> 04:07.280]  TNH, yeah.
[04:07.420 --> 04:07.640]  Yeah.
[04:08.120 --> 04:10.100]  Or just The Next Hope spelled out.
[04:10.320 --> 04:10.500]  Yeah.
[04:10.640 --> 04:18.960]  And if anyone out there is more tied into the whole social networking thing, please give us a shout because we can certainly use all...
[04:18.960 --> 04:19.020]  Help!
[04:19.020 --> 04:22.880]  Yeah, we're kind of drowning in a sea of social networks here.
[04:22.880 --> 04:25.680]  And I know there are ways to reach many, many people.
[04:25.860 --> 04:27.980]  And we're very busy coordinating things.
[04:28.100 --> 04:30.160]  We've got all kinds of projects.
[04:30.420 --> 04:32.340]  Lex, you want to maybe tell us some of the projects?
[04:32.800 --> 04:33.240]  Yeah.
[04:33.240 --> 04:34.080]  We're not giving away too much.
[04:34.140 --> 04:46.740]  Well, from last time, we have the Hackerspace Village coming back, which is all these groups that are around the world that have hackers kind of getting together to build their own lab and collaborate on projects.
[04:47.560 --> 04:53.340]  We're doing a thing where they can come together and hang out and meet each other all in the same place at the conference.
[04:53.540 --> 04:57.160]  And they'll have a space assigned to that kind of specialized group.
[04:57.180 --> 04:57.260]  Face-to-face.
[04:57.380 --> 04:59.700]  Face-to-face for the hackerspaces, yeah.
[05:00.780 --> 05:03.880]  And then Radio Statler is coming back, which is our...
[05:03.880 --> 05:04.820]  Radio Statler.
[05:04.960 --> 05:08.180]  Now, of course, Statler was the name of the hotel before it was Hotel Pennsylvania.
[05:08.360 --> 05:08.460]  That's right.
[05:08.460 --> 05:10.000]  The original name was the Statler Hotel.
[05:10.240 --> 05:10.380]  Yeah.
[05:10.380 --> 05:16.820]  And this is a historic hotel across the street from Penn Station right there on 7th Avenue and 32nd Street.
[05:17.380 --> 05:19.100]  So Radio Statler is...
[05:19.100 --> 05:21.260]  It's related to the Waldorf Astoria.
[05:21.520 --> 05:23.180]  It's the same group with...
[05:23.180 --> 05:28.600]  If you've seen the Muppets, Statler and Waldorf are the guys always heckling the Muppets from the...
[05:28.600 --> 05:29.400]  Is that true?
[05:29.560 --> 05:29.760]  Yeah.
[05:29.940 --> 05:32.600]  Those are the guys, and they're named after the two hotels.
[05:33.020 --> 05:33.660]  Such history.
[05:33.740 --> 05:33.920]  Wow.
[05:34.160 --> 05:34.300]  Yeah.
[05:34.480 --> 05:37.020]  So now we're running a radio station.
[05:37.300 --> 05:38.900]  Well, is it an actual radio station?
[05:38.900 --> 05:43.620]  No, no, it's an internet streaming audio, internet radio.
[05:43.800 --> 05:48.760]  We don't have permission to run a transmitter and to actually broadcast to the streets below.
[05:49.280 --> 05:54.600]  Yes, we do not have like $50 million to bribe someone to give us an FM channel.
[05:54.780 --> 06:09.360]  At Hacking at Random, which took place last summer in Holland, the campsite was amazing, they had a radio station, Horror FM, and they did a tremendous job, and they had an actual license, a temporary license, to broadcast to the entire region.
[06:09.580 --> 06:13.840]  And it was just so cool to be able to turn on a radio and hear their voices and know what's going on at the conference.
[06:13.940 --> 06:14.160]  Voltaire?
[06:14.340 --> 06:18.000]  I suppose that's one of the advantages of being in a rural area as opposed to the middle...
[06:18.000 --> 06:21.360]  That's the advantage of being in a Dutch area because I don't think...
[06:21.360 --> 06:21.480]  Yeah.
[06:21.580 --> 06:23.800]  You'd have the same problem in Wisconsin.
[06:23.900 --> 06:28.980]  You just can't get on the FM dial unless you've got a lot of political capital.
[06:28.980 --> 06:33.200]  I could be in the middle of a great lake and I wouldn't be able to get a license to broadcast even though there's nobody there.
[06:33.340 --> 06:36.220]  It's a little bit easier now with low-power FM stations.
[06:36.460 --> 06:39.160]  If somebody has a means of doing it, we're open to that as well.
[06:39.160 --> 06:40.500]  No, it's not available in New York.
[06:41.340 --> 06:43.620]  And the temporary permits are very hard to get.
[06:44.120 --> 06:45.580]  Well, maybe there's a different frequency we can use.
[06:45.640 --> 06:48.060]  Maybe we can beam microwaves to people.
[06:48.480 --> 06:48.960]  I don't know.
[06:49.020 --> 06:51.700]  We're open to all sorts of ideas, but tell us more about Radio Statler, what it's all about.
[06:51.900 --> 06:58.500]  Well, Radio Statler is going to be a 24-hour live radio station from the middle of the expo floor.
[06:58.580 --> 07:01.600]  And we're really trying to do a lot of physical projects.
[07:01.880 --> 07:06.620]  You know, normally Hope is lots of talks and, you know, people just hanging out.
[07:06.740 --> 07:09.060]  But this is people actually doing things.
[07:09.880 --> 07:12.500]  And Radio Statler is going to kind of be the middle of that.
[07:12.620 --> 07:21.740]  And we're going to try to do a lot of live news updates about what's going on at the conference and try to get the word out about everything that's going on.
[07:21.840 --> 07:27.980]  Because really there's so much going on at a Hope conference that nobody knows what exactly is going on in all the different parts.
[07:28.240 --> 07:44.280]  And so we're going to try to have a central place with the information desk and Radio Statler to get the word out and couple that with the website so that we've got all that information kind of swirling together and we can get all the information out there so people know what's going on.
[07:44.300 --> 07:54.000]  It really is incredible to see the community build at these conferences because we have the information desk and that's sort of the focal point where all the information is dispersed or people come to find out certain things.
[07:54.000 --> 07:54.240]  Theoretically.
[07:54.500 --> 07:55.880]  We're hoping to improve it.
[07:56.220 --> 07:58.300]  Yeah, well, there's always room for improvement on all these things.
[07:58.320 --> 08:01.160]  And we need so many volunteers to get all this stuff done.
[08:01.280 --> 08:02.500]  We have a tremendous amount of space.
[08:02.640 --> 08:03.780]  That's what a lot of people don't realize.
[08:04.000 --> 08:06.620]  It's a mass... It used to be the largest hotel in the world.
[08:06.720 --> 08:10.060]  Yeah, we don't have the entire hotel, but we do sort of take it over.
[08:10.180 --> 08:12.580]  Yeah, we've got basically two and a half floors.
[08:12.840 --> 08:13.300]  We really do.
[08:13.400 --> 08:15.720]  Two and a half floors in the middle of Midtown Manhattan.
[08:15.860 --> 08:18.160]  If you've never been to a HALP conference, this is something to see.
[08:18.620 --> 08:22.040]  We have the entire 18th floor, which is a few ballrooms.
[08:22.320 --> 08:22.900]  Massive ballrooms.
[08:22.900 --> 08:26.600]  Yeah, and then we have what used to be a sports authority...
[08:26.600 --> 08:28.000]  Big box store in the middle of Manhattan.
[08:28.320 --> 08:30.660]  A huge store on the first and second floor.
[08:30.920 --> 08:33.860]  That's all, as you said, expo space.
[08:34.020 --> 08:36.160]  And we have all kinds of cool things going on.
[08:36.260 --> 08:37.380]  We've got Segways running around.
[08:37.480 --> 08:39.100]  We've got Lockpicking Village.
[08:39.140 --> 08:42.180]  We've got the Hackerspace Village and all kinds of other things.
[08:42.340 --> 08:43.940]  And really, you know, we're open to more.
[08:44.120 --> 08:46.380]  And the RFID project is coming back.
[08:46.500 --> 08:53.980]  That's our attendee metadata, which is we get a little bit of information about someone and we assign it to a radio tag.
[08:54.180 --> 08:58.160]  And we track them as they walk around the hotel, with their permission, of course.
[08:58.340 --> 09:00.020]  They can take the battery out at any time.
[09:00.800 --> 09:02.640]  Well, this is still being developed.
[09:02.740 --> 09:06.800]  I do know we have the coolest badges ever at this conference coming up.
[09:06.900 --> 09:10.440]  From what I've seen people working on, it's going to blow your mind.
[09:10.460 --> 09:16.140]  We have a lot of donated electronics that have never been put to this purpose, I believe.
[09:16.140 --> 09:20.480]  Yeah, and we're dealing with all kinds of things all around the world, putting this together.
[09:20.700 --> 09:22.480]  All sorts of people are pitching in.
[09:22.540 --> 09:28.080]  But of course, I mean, this is a fraction of what's coming in terms of technology that's being used by security companies.
[09:28.300 --> 09:38.700]  You know, they have cameras everywhere and they have systems for combining all the information that thousands of cameras capture and, you know, tracking somebody walking through a city.
[09:38.700 --> 09:40.820]  And they can actually do it already.
[09:41.020 --> 09:48.080]  And once you couple that with a radio tag that tells you where exactly someone is, if that's even an implant or something, that's really scary.
[09:48.220 --> 09:49.960]  So we want to get the message out.
[09:50.160 --> 09:50.220]  Right.
[09:50.420 --> 09:53.560]  I mean, this RFID project isn't just for fun.
[09:53.680 --> 09:54.900]  It's something we're going to...
[09:54.900 --> 09:56.040]  Well, we have the ability.
[09:56.280 --> 09:58.780]  What you're describing is what's happening in society.
[09:58.880 --> 10:06.360]  But we have the ability to use those same toys and have fun with them, experiment with them, see what they do under certain situations.
[10:06.360 --> 10:08.160]  And it's really...
[10:08.160 --> 10:13.640]  Where else do you get a chance to do that, to play with something and see if you can break it?
[10:13.800 --> 10:21.040]  I mean, not break it, physically break it, but see if you can confuse it and make it not see something it's supposed to see or just get false information.
[10:21.200 --> 10:22.180]  This is how you learn.
[10:22.320 --> 10:26.940]  This is how you improve things or show that they're nonsense and they shouldn't be used in the first place.
[10:27.360 --> 10:33.940]  The real question, though, is if we will be implanting people with RFID chips underneath the skin at the conference.
[10:34.400 --> 10:35.720]  No, they're going to do that.
[10:35.720 --> 10:38.140]  Yeah, but that is a bond of contention.
[10:38.260 --> 10:40.280]  We can't afford the insurance.
[10:41.700 --> 10:44.100]  And making the badges small enough costs more money.
[10:44.320 --> 10:45.480]  So it's all financial.
[10:45.660 --> 10:50.960]  I mean, if we could implant everyone's spine with an RFID tag just for fun, we would do it.
[10:51.020 --> 10:57.320]  So if you are a very wealthy person who would like to see a whole bunch of hackers have RFID tags in them, get in touch.
[10:57.860 --> 10:58.220]  Absolutely.
[10:58.620 --> 11:00.780]  And this is an example of how nothing's out of bounds.
[11:02.360 --> 11:02.720]  Wow.
[11:03.280 --> 11:03.620]  Yes, Daret.
[11:03.620 --> 11:14.380]  Also, as you're hearing about these projects, if you're interested or didn't maybe get to hear everything, you can also go to the wiki, which we now have up and running again.
[11:14.520 --> 11:18.060]  And as we start to get this information out, you can actually find it.
[11:18.120 --> 11:23.300]  Like we have articles on the AMD project, Radio Statler, and even the hotel and so on.
[11:23.300 --> 11:25.800]  The main site is www.hope.net.
[11:25.800 --> 11:27.240]  Now the wiki is what?
[11:27.440 --> 11:30.000]  That is wiki.hope.net.
[11:30.100 --> 11:30.820]  How do you spell that?
[11:31.280 --> 11:34.060]  W-I-K-I dot hope.net.
[11:34.180 --> 11:34.400]  Okay.
[11:34.640 --> 11:37.940]  And for people maybe not familiar with what a wiki is.
[11:38.200 --> 11:43.360]  Well, a wiki is basically a centralized means of collecting information.
[11:43.360 --> 11:46.820]  So we will put up articles and other people can come.
[11:46.820 --> 11:50.000]  And if they see things that are missing, they can add more information themselves.
[11:50.240 --> 11:57.060]  It's basically a collaborative means to contribute all the information about whatever it is you're interested in talking about.
[11:57.060 --> 11:58.200]  And how is that different than the website?
[11:58.200 --> 12:06.360]  Well, in this case, we can update it almost immediately as changes happen.
[12:06.780 --> 12:09.160]  People who are coming to it, they can contribute themselves.
[12:09.360 --> 12:13.360]  If everyone can work together on it.
[12:13.400 --> 12:14.580]  It's a communist website.
[12:14.780 --> 12:16.120]  That's what wiki is.
[12:16.560 --> 12:18.780]  I was trying to stray away from that word, but all right.
[12:18.880 --> 12:19.580]  That's what I was getting.
[12:19.760 --> 12:19.900]  Okay.
[12:20.380 --> 12:23.000]  And then in addition to that, we also have the forums, right?
[12:23.200 --> 12:23.420]  Yes.
[12:23.720 --> 12:25.400]  So that's talk.hope.net.
[12:25.440 --> 12:26.160]  What's that all about?
[12:27.100 --> 12:37.280]  Well, that's a place for people to go and kind of collaborate ahead of time and make travel plans and kind of figure out who's going on the same train to New York at the same time and...
[12:37.280 --> 12:38.520]  Where New York is, how to get there.
[12:38.640 --> 12:39.180]  Where New York is, yeah.
[12:39.580 --> 12:41.620]  How to navigate once they get here, that sort of thing.
[12:41.860 --> 12:47.360]  Now, I have to say, and I think we bear some of the responsibility for this, it's kind of slackened off a little.
[12:47.440 --> 12:47.840]  Is that right word?
[12:48.340 --> 12:49.020]  Slacked off a little bit?
[12:49.300 --> 12:49.400]  Yeah.
[12:49.400 --> 12:54.460]  It isn't as much conversation on there as one might expect for something coming up like this.
[12:54.460 --> 13:03.900]  And what we need to do is jump in there and start communicating with each other, us included here in this particular room, and you, the listener, and people coming to the conference.
[13:04.020 --> 13:04.220]  Voltaire.
[13:04.320 --> 13:08.440]  So are you saying that everybody on IRC right now should go and talk on talk.hope.net?
[13:08.440 --> 13:08.640]  Yes.
[13:08.640 --> 13:11.780]  Everybody on IRC in the world, yes, should go on there right now.
[13:11.820 --> 13:12.200]  All 12 of them.
[13:12.200 --> 13:12.780]  Not just...
[13:12.780 --> 13:13.000]  Wait.
[13:13.160 --> 13:14.860]  No, not just people on our channels.
[13:15.020 --> 13:15.960]  Everybody in all channels.
[13:16.180 --> 13:16.580]  Because...
[13:16.580 --> 13:17.360]  All 15 of them.
[13:17.440 --> 13:18.380]  It's a fascinating...
[13:18.380 --> 13:20.480]  No, there's millions of people on IRC right now.
[13:20.580 --> 13:22.920]  If they all came to the Hope forums, that would be something.
[13:22.920 --> 13:24.020]  Is this really what you want?
[13:24.180 --> 13:24.900]  I don't know.
[13:25.060 --> 13:25.220]  Yes.
[13:25.740 --> 13:26.940]  You know, I'd like to...
[13:26.940 --> 13:27.540]  Bring your IRC home.
[13:27.540 --> 13:28.440]  I'd like to see what happens.
[13:28.740 --> 13:29.400]  Bernie, yes, go ahead.
[13:29.700 --> 13:33.600]  I just wanted to point out, too, that there's a call for papers out for Hope.
[13:33.600 --> 13:35.680]  You know, I totally forgot about the speakers.
[13:35.860 --> 13:36.480]  Yeah, of course.
[13:36.500 --> 13:38.340]  That's a major part of the conference, are the talks.
[13:38.520 --> 13:39.180]  You know, tell us about that.
[13:39.180 --> 13:52.800]  Well, there's a speaker committee that's formed now, and we are evaluating people who have submitted abstracts of talks they would like to present at the Hope conference, either individually or as a panel discussion.
[13:53.320 --> 13:58.980]  And there are some really great ideas coming in and some really fantastic proposals.
[13:59.960 --> 14:06.480]  It's kind of hard to discard any of them because they're all so good, but we only have room for about 100 or so speakers for the three days.
[14:06.480 --> 14:08.420]  Only about 100 or so speakers.
[14:08.680 --> 14:09.860]  Only about 100 or so speakers.
[14:10.020 --> 14:10.500]  And you know what?
[14:11.340 --> 14:14.640]  That's not even the half of it because we also...
[14:14.640 --> 14:18.280]  That's not counting the unscheduled room, which we have a fourth track.
[14:18.500 --> 14:25.040]  And then there's all kinds of spontaneous things that happen on the second floor, and sometimes we even get additional space in other places.
[14:25.540 --> 14:30.580]  And sometimes people give impromptu lectures at the bar around the corner, so anything is possible, you know?
[14:31.280 --> 14:33.100]  100 talks is the minimum, I guess.
[14:33.360 --> 14:35.500]  So if people are injured, maybe you can...
[14:35.500 --> 14:46.260]  Since you're intimately involved with the speakers situation, Emmanuel, how would people who are interested in submitting a proposal to give a talk at Hope, how would they do that?
[14:46.400 --> 14:50.900]  Well, what they do is they would email us at speakers at hope.net.
[14:51.460 --> 15:08.300]  And in that email, just tell us what it is that you want to talk about, tell us who you are, give us the best summation you possibly can, explain to us why this would be of interest to a thousand hackers that might be watching you, and be imaginative.
[15:08.620 --> 15:11.860]  And remember, you know, you don't have to have a whole lot of experience.
[15:11.860 --> 15:13.820]  You don't have to be somebody with a title.
[15:14.260 --> 15:23.160]  You can be, you know, any age, as long as you can communicate and express yourself and share your enthusiasm about a particular subject.
[15:23.160 --> 15:25.700]  We want to hear about what it is you're involved in.
[15:25.700 --> 15:33.800]  And the Hope conferences have a tradition of opening the door to people who have never spoken before in front of a crowd, but have something interesting to say.
[15:34.220 --> 15:37.500]  And then people know about what it is they're talking about.
[15:37.580 --> 15:38.660]  They know who the person is.
[15:38.760 --> 15:40.240]  And it's an incredible thing.
[15:40.340 --> 15:41.220]  It's a life-changing thing.
[15:41.280 --> 15:41.520]  Voltaire.
[15:41.800 --> 15:51.280]  I should also remind people that it's not just, we're not only looking for technical speakers, it's anything that would interest a quote-unquote geeky audience.
[15:51.280 --> 15:55.780]  Yeah, I mean, we do have technical talks, but Mike, I'm sure you would weigh in on this.
[15:55.920 --> 16:00.800]  We also have all kinds of social talks and a variety of things, right?
[16:01.220 --> 16:09.540]  Yeah, I don't know exactly what we're going to have this year because the proposals are still coming in, and I guess we haven't confirmed anyone yet.
[16:10.020 --> 16:11.820]  Probably in May we'll start doing that.
[16:12.000 --> 16:17.760]  But in the past we've had talks about food, about new frontiers in preparing food.
[16:18.160 --> 16:20.440]  Like basically hacking your kitchen or something.
[16:20.440 --> 16:27.940]  Yeah, I just, I don't, I personally don't like the trend that anyone who's not a talk like about technology feels the need to insert hacking into the title.
[16:28.140 --> 16:31.320]  Like I think if you're there, it's related and you don't need to...
[16:31.320 --> 16:32.300]  We're proud of the word though, you know?
[16:32.340 --> 16:33.360]  Yeah, okay.
[16:33.720 --> 16:42.540]  But so it was a good talk and we've had the yes-men speak about how they sort of influence society by lying to people.
[16:44.200 --> 16:57.900]  And we've had just so many talks over the years and I really hope we get some new people this year that have something that even I would never think to put at a hacker conference, but they submit the talk and it's really, we see that and we're like, ooh,
[16:58.020 --> 16:58.540]  we want that.
[16:58.680 --> 17:10.700]  We've had Adam Savage, we've had Steve Wozniak, we've had Jello Biafra, Aaron Magruder, all kinds of people from Negative Land, all kinds of cool people show up, but all sorts of people that you may not have heard of show up and they're as cool.
[17:10.840 --> 17:19.240]  Yeah, I think really a lot of our best talks are from not famous people and who just know about some specific thing and they want to tell us about it.
[17:19.520 --> 17:44.900]  This wasn't at a HOPE conference, but at the CCC last December they had one of my favorite talks, I wasn't there, but I listened to them, was the talk Here Be Dragons about, basically about skepticism and rumors that are spread through chain emails about cosmonauts and stuff like that.
[17:45.020 --> 17:49.340]  I saw that, I was actually at that particular talk and I thought that was pretty interesting they were talking about...
[17:49.960 --> 17:51.140]  Urban legend, stuff like that.
[17:51.500 --> 18:03.120]  Things like the Soviet government making up cosmonauts or stories about cosmonauts who never came back down, who just kept going out into space and various things like that.
[18:03.160 --> 18:04.560]  And it was eye-opening.
[18:04.680 --> 18:07.780]  Some things were pretty weird, some things seemed pretty logical.
[18:08.160 --> 18:08.580]  It was interesting.
[18:08.660 --> 18:08.800]  Rob?
[18:09.280 --> 18:13.200]  And I just want to point out that not only are we looking for speakers, we also have a call for projects open.
[18:13.340 --> 18:13.520]  Oh, yes.
[18:13.520 --> 18:25.660]  So if you'd like, if you have an idea for a project to throw in, you know, we have our hackerspace village, we have our lockpicking village, we have our projects that, you know, we can expect, but we also want to hear your ideas and we want to hear what you can do because HOPE,
[18:25.720 --> 18:29.560]  more than any other hacker conference I've been to, HOPE is a product of its community.
[18:30.000 --> 18:32.260]  And that means you, if you're listening to this.
[18:32.480 --> 18:36.160]  So, you know, get involved, get on the forums, submit your proposals.
[18:36.340 --> 18:38.480]  And I believe the address, do we have, what's the address on that?
[18:38.560 --> 18:39.640]  Is that projects.hope.net?
[18:39.900 --> 18:40.540]  Projects.hope.net.
[18:40.540 --> 18:40.680]  Okay.
[18:41.080 --> 18:45.180]  And so if you have a talk, speakers.hope.net, projects.projects.hope.net.
[18:45.560 --> 18:49.120]  If you want more information, go to the website, www.hope.net.
[18:50.260 --> 18:53.680]  And I guess we should also mention we'll have space for vendors.
[18:53.820 --> 18:58.720]  We haven't quite started coordinating that yet, but if you want to just get your name in there, vendors at HOPE.net as well.
[18:58.960 --> 19:03.340]  And we also have something that we started last time, which is the installation art.
[19:03.460 --> 19:10.200]  We're going to have technology artists doing actual art installations as if the expo floor is part gallery.
[19:11.000 --> 19:12.140]  It should be part gallery.
[19:12.280 --> 19:13.040]  We have so much space.
[19:13.240 --> 19:14.600]  Yeah, we have a massive amount of space.
[19:14.600 --> 19:27.160]  You know, we have so many people that show up to these things, but every single time I say, you know, we could use so much more of this space because with some creativity, you can just simply fill it in and it'll never seem crowded.
[19:27.780 --> 19:28.180]  Yeah.
[19:28.300 --> 19:30.020]  Well, we hope to fill it up.
[19:30.780 --> 19:34.140]  But we're definitely looking for artists who play around with technology.
[19:34.220 --> 19:42.020]  If any of the listeners know someone who doesn't listen to this radio show, tell them about it because we really want to bring interesting people.
[19:42.020 --> 19:51.940]  You know, I got to say, on the subject of filling it up, I think that this is something I've learned over at the European conferences at HAR and at the most recent CCC in Berlin.
[19:53.020 --> 19:57.520]  They like to have sort of an upper limit on how many people come to the thing.
[19:57.620 --> 20:03.560]  So it's not about packing as many people in as possible because once you get over a certain amount, it becomes rather impersonal.
[20:03.840 --> 20:06.300]  So I'm very happy with the amount of people that we get.
[20:06.420 --> 20:09.920]  We usually get about 2,500, maybe 3,000 people show up to these things.
[20:09.920 --> 20:13.340]  If it got to be much more than that, I think it might start to...
[20:13.340 --> 20:14.060]  We'd have to move.
[20:14.340 --> 20:15.160]  Well, we might.
[20:15.300 --> 20:17.540]  I don't think we've run out of space so much, but I just think...
[20:17.540 --> 20:19.120]  In the main ballroom, we usually...
[20:19.120 --> 20:19.140]  Oh, yeah.
[20:19.460 --> 20:20.020]  You'd have to...
[20:20.020 --> 20:21.720]  During the keynote speakers, you can't get in that room.
[20:21.760 --> 20:24.620]  You'd have to watch talks on a video screen.
[20:24.740 --> 20:26.180]  And I think that sort of takes away the fun.
[20:26.960 --> 20:31.480]  So yeah, you know, it's not about getting thousands and thousands of people to show up.
[20:31.540 --> 20:34.560]  It's about basically getting the right number of people.
[20:35.620 --> 20:38.880]  And, you know, I think we've done that for all the conferences.
[20:39.040 --> 20:46.240]  That was a complaint about the early TED conferences, was that they charged the same amount of money for a simulcast room then as for the main room, which was kind of...
[20:46.240 --> 20:46.920]  Right.
[20:47.000 --> 20:48.480]  TED conferences are the...
[20:49.140 --> 20:50.440]  Technology, entertainment, design.
[20:50.660 --> 20:53.080]  Don't they cost like $10,000 to go to or something?
[20:53.140 --> 20:53.340]  They do.
[20:53.340 --> 20:55.400]  And hope is a lot less.
[20:55.400 --> 20:57.120]  Hope is a fraction of that amount.
[20:57.340 --> 20:57.500]  Yes.
[20:57.500 --> 21:01.420]  We can't give out the exact price over the air because I think we have some kind of regulation about that.
[21:01.540 --> 21:02.480]  How much was it last time?
[21:02.480 --> 21:04.020]  Well, we can't do that either.
[21:04.100 --> 21:05.480]  That's a tricky way around that.
[21:05.880 --> 21:06.640]  Nice for trying.
[21:06.820 --> 21:08.200]  How much are the Canadian dollars?
[21:08.920 --> 21:09.760]  Listen, it's cheap.
[21:09.920 --> 21:11.380]  It's as cheap as you can possibly get.
[21:11.480 --> 21:11.760]  It's a lot of doubloons.
[21:11.760 --> 21:24.180]  When you consider that you're going into a hotel in the middle of Midtown Manhattan across the street from Penn Station, having access to all of this space, having basically a place that will be your home for an entire weekend, that in itself is a hack.
[21:24.180 --> 21:29.520]  The fact that we can pull this off and manage to have this amount of space to ourselves.
[21:29.520 --> 21:34.980]  Well, no, CarolinaCon is coming up in two weeks, and that's only $20 for the entire weekend.
[21:35.200 --> 21:37.500]  But that's not quite the scale of Hope.
[21:37.500 --> 21:38.200]  This is exactly what I just said.
[21:38.340 --> 21:40.860]  We can't say the price is over the air, and you just did that, you see?
[21:41.020 --> 21:41.720]  So that's...
[21:41.720 --> 21:44.000]  Yeah, but I'm not advertising it.
[21:44.000 --> 21:44.860]  I'm just saying that.
[21:44.860 --> 21:46.360]  Although, what is the website for CarolinaCon?
[21:46.360 --> 21:46.900]  It can be vague.
[21:47.140 --> 21:47.340]  Okay.
[21:47.940 --> 21:48.300]  Go ahead.
[21:48.660 --> 21:54.160]  Now, if people are wondering, where exactly would they go if they want to register for Hope?
[21:54.440 --> 21:55.260]  If they want to come.
[21:55.460 --> 22:01.980]  Well, they'd go to www.hope.net, and I believe there's a registration button on that.
[22:02.040 --> 22:02.280]  Is that right?
[22:02.360 --> 22:02.840]  Yeah, it's big.
[22:02.900 --> 22:03.560]  It's on the right.
[22:03.740 --> 22:03.980]  Yeah.
[22:04.120 --> 22:04.660]  You can't miss it.
[22:04.920 --> 22:05.080]  Yeah.
[22:05.180 --> 22:06.800]  And if you look at the...
[22:06.800 --> 22:07.440]  You know what?
[22:07.440 --> 22:09.700]  I don't think we have something on the main 2600 page yet, do we?
[22:09.860 --> 22:11.660]  A button for the next talk.
[22:11.700 --> 22:15.740]  I don't know if we have that technology, but we'll send our engineers on task.
[22:15.760 --> 22:17.220]  Yeah, as you can see, we need help with some things.
[22:17.220 --> 22:23.680]  So, if you want to volunteer, and again, this is another thing that we have to give out, is the volunteer address, volunteers at hope.net.
[22:24.160 --> 22:37.160]  If there's something that you think that we could use now that you can give us, by all means, send us an email, volunteers at hope.net, and we'll definitely be happy to consider your expertise.
[22:37.580 --> 22:40.140]  We certainly need a lot of people to volunteer at the conference.
[22:40.260 --> 22:46.160]  In fact, at the conference itself, we like to think everyone is a volunteer of some sort because we're all looking out for each other.
[22:46.160 --> 22:51.900]  We're all making sure the space is kept in a good way, and things function smoothly.
[22:52.020 --> 22:52.560]  And they really do.
[22:52.720 --> 22:54.020]  They really function very smoothly.
[22:55.200 --> 23:00.440]  We're still developing the API for the RFID project for the MD project.
[23:00.960 --> 23:03.960]  You realize what you said just went way over the heads of most people listening.
[23:03.960 --> 23:15.040]  We're looking for computer programmers who can make applications because this thing collects a lot of data, and we want to get it out to people, and you can do a lot of playing around with it.
[23:15.200 --> 23:16.480]  And we're going to make that available.
[23:16.640 --> 23:31.420]  The data that's coming out of the RFID system, not the personal information about the people in the conference, but their locations and probably their age and sex and that sort of information will be distributed right out of the system.
[23:31.520 --> 23:31.740]  Okay.
[23:31.780 --> 23:39.100]  But for those people who are freaking out hearing about all this information, this is not something that is going to be required or...
[23:39.100 --> 23:40.100]  No, it's all optional.
[23:40.340 --> 23:41.000]  It's opt-in.
[23:41.660 --> 23:45.600]  Unlike what is coming in the future from the federal government, this is opt-in.
[23:45.880 --> 23:46.000]  Right.
[23:46.160 --> 23:46.500]  Yeah.
[23:46.560 --> 23:47.440]  And that's important to learn.
[23:47.600 --> 23:48.100]  It's a game.
[23:48.320 --> 23:48.480]  Yeah.
[23:48.720 --> 24:03.960]  Now, you'll learn all kinds of things about privacy, about technology, about various other things that I guess the mainstream doesn't really want you to know about because then you'll ask a lot of questions and you might stop the plans that are coming down the pike.
[24:03.960 --> 24:04.880]  But Red Hack is here.
[24:05.040 --> 24:05.240]  Welcome.
[24:05.700 --> 24:05.940]  Hello.
[24:06.240 --> 24:06.500]  Sorry.
[24:06.740 --> 24:07.380]  Bike issues.
[24:07.660 --> 24:08.280]  Bike issues.
[24:08.540 --> 24:08.680]  Yeah.
[24:08.900 --> 24:10.380]  Riding a bike in the streets of New York.
[24:10.380 --> 24:13.160]  It's difficult to ride when one of the wheels doesn't work.
[24:13.260 --> 24:16.700]  It's difficult to ride when the streets aren't paved, but that's another issue.
[24:16.760 --> 24:18.560]  Well, that's true, but that wasn't my problem.
[24:18.660 --> 24:18.860]  Okay.
[24:19.460 --> 24:20.160]  So what's up?
[24:20.620 --> 24:21.140]  Not much.
[24:21.220 --> 24:22.240]  Oh, I thought you had something to say.
[24:22.320 --> 24:24.360]  No, I did, but you went over it already.
[24:24.420 --> 24:24.660]  Okay.
[24:24.920 --> 24:25.180]  All right.
[24:25.380 --> 24:26.300]  In terms of the conference.
[24:26.460 --> 24:30.380]  So as far as things that we have, we're planning.
[24:31.180 --> 24:33.400]  Well, Renderman, you're here from Canada.
[24:34.220 --> 24:36.120]  And you've been, have you been to all the HOPE conferences?
[24:36.640 --> 24:41.200]  I wasn't at the first two, but I've been at every one since and I've spoken at most of them.
[24:41.740 --> 24:42.060]  Okay.
[24:42.320 --> 24:44.720]  And any memories that you'd like to share?
[24:45.340 --> 24:46.460]  I met my wife there.
[24:46.900 --> 24:48.500]  Oh, and your wife is right here.
[24:48.600 --> 24:48.700]  Yep.
[24:48.780 --> 24:48.920]  Right?
[24:49.080 --> 24:49.260]  Okay.
[24:49.980 --> 24:51.740]  You want to tell us a little bit about that?
[24:52.160 --> 24:54.960]  I don't know if she wants me to or not, but...
[24:55.440 --> 24:55.760]  Well...
[24:55.760 --> 24:56.060]  Gossip.
[24:56.340 --> 24:57.080]  Yeah, go ahead.
[24:57.220 --> 24:57.420]  Go ahead.
[24:57.600 --> 24:59.460]  This is the kind of thing that's possible at a HOPE conference.
[24:59.460 --> 24:59.960]  Yeah.
[25:00.160 --> 25:03.260]  I mean, it's, I feel very, very lucky.
[25:03.940 --> 25:10.660]  Basically a room of 2,000 guys and, you know, six women in attendance, which the number of women attending has been growing over the years.
[25:10.780 --> 25:14.980]  But at this particular one, I only remember seeing six women and somehow I ended up with one.
[25:15.140 --> 25:17.840]  And I consider myself very, very lucky.
[25:18.640 --> 25:19.980]  Well, you tell the story beautifully.
[25:21.320 --> 25:22.840]  And, wow.
[25:23.340 --> 25:27.560]  But yeah, like you said, I think the ratio has changed over the years.
[25:27.920 --> 25:27.960]  A lot, yes.
[25:27.980 --> 25:31.220]  Way back in the early years, there was that kind of ratio.
[25:31.420 --> 25:32.840]  Maybe, I don't know, about 1,000 to six.
[25:33.300 --> 25:38.320]  But now it's, I think it's, I don't know, if I want to give a guess as to what it is.
[25:38.460 --> 25:41.840]  You know, I want to say 40-60, but maybe that's a bit optimistic.
[25:41.980 --> 25:43.060]  It's still not close enough.
[25:47.840 --> 25:52.200]  You know, it might be somewhere between 30 and 40, but that's, you know, that's pretty close to half.
[25:52.380 --> 25:53.160]  Percent, not total.
[25:53.380 --> 25:53.420]  Yeah, percent.
[25:53.560 --> 25:53.940]  Okay, yes.
[25:54.160 --> 26:06.500]  Well, I think also, I mean, a lot of things you have in the hacker culture, it's not just limited to things that were primarily, you know, male-centric activities and things that generally guys would be doing.
[26:06.520 --> 26:08.200]  And you've got this kind of opening up.
[26:08.320 --> 26:14.240]  So I know, you know, at NYC Resistor, we have, we don't have, it's not anywhere near 50-50, but we have a fair percentage of women.
[26:15.200 --> 26:19.200]  And, you know, they're doing, some of them are doing electronics, some of them are doing programming.
[26:19.480 --> 26:34.080]  I mean, there's a lot of women in those fields now, but you also have other things that, things I'm not interested in, but we have, for example, like we have a craft area now, which is something that maybe normally is more of a woman's kind of activity.
[26:34.380 --> 26:38.400]  So, you know, you have, it is a kind of hacking, and you can do a lot of cool stuff with crafting.
[26:38.400 --> 26:42.760]  Now, do you think that this, this change over the years, is that, is that us, or is that society?
[26:43.960 --> 26:44.780]  What's changing here?
[26:44.900 --> 26:57.160]  Well, I think you have a bit of, you know, society going on, society is realizing that, you know, especially over the past, you know, generation or so, that, you know, just because you're a man or woman doesn't mean that there's many things that you can't all do,
[26:57.360 --> 26:58.740]  regardless of your gender.
[26:58.740 --> 27:08.400]  Uh, and one thing that, uh, is definitely great is that people who come to the conference seem to be realizing that, and now we have, uh, and it's getting better, but we have a really good ratio between.
[27:08.900 --> 27:19.100]  Yeah, and that, that's something about the Hope Crowd, is that there's just such an eclectic mix of, uh, people of any persuasion coming from all these different walks of life, and, uh, people are enjoying things that they might not have enjoyed otherwise,
[27:19.140 --> 27:21.220]  that they might not have thought where that was their, uh, thing.
[27:21.220 --> 27:31.960]  Um, a certain person in this room, who I won't name, but it rhymes with, uh, Faye Grequently, um, wasn't so sure when I wanted to take her to her first hope, uh, that she'd be into it.
[27:32.060 --> 27:36.760]  But, um, you know, I think, I think she was, and now she's involved, and she also has a husband.
[27:36.760 --> 27:39.520]  So you're responsible for, for, for this marriage here.
[27:39.740 --> 27:41.580]  Wow, that's, that's, that's pretty incredible, too.
[27:41.580 --> 27:41.980]  For my sins, yes.
[27:42.560 --> 27:45.460]  Well, uh, you know, here, here's something I'd like to, uh, yeah, Felter, quickly.
[27:51.220 --> 27:53.380]  You know, random shout-outs, I don't know.
[27:53.500 --> 27:56.420]  No, it's a, it's a good site for, uh, feminist geeks.
[27:56.560 --> 27:57.520]  Okay, all right.
[27:58.060 --> 28:17.780]  Uh, basically, as far as, um, um, people traveling to the Hope Conference, um, I hear a lot of, um, of, uh, concern from people coming from other countries about, uh, being, um, being searched, maybe, or fingerprinted as they come into the country, having their picture taken.
[28:18.240 --> 28:20.460]  Does anybody have any kind of, um, response to that?
[28:21.220 --> 28:21.840]  We're sorry.
[28:22.140 --> 28:24.520]  But once you get past the border guards, we're very nice.
[28:24.700 --> 28:24.960]  Uh-huh.
[28:25.320 --> 28:26.260]  Are you going to call Bernie back?
[28:26.360 --> 28:26.960]  I will, yeah.
[28:27.500 --> 28:29.720]  I can't, I can't do six things at once.
[28:29.760 --> 28:30.900]  Well, do one thing at once, then.
[28:31.220 --> 28:34.180]  Uh, I want to get Bernie's, uh, opinion on this as well.
[28:34.520 --> 28:34.960]  Uh, yes.
[28:35.360 --> 28:39.620]  Uh, basically, as a, you know, Canadian who comes down to the U.S., a fairly, fairly large amount.
[28:39.940 --> 28:40.940]  Um, yeah.
[28:40.980 --> 28:42.840]  You don't get your picture taken, though, every time you come in, do you?
[28:42.920 --> 28:43.060]  Okay.
[28:43.420 --> 28:45.020]  Canadians are exempt from that thing, thank God.
[28:45.160 --> 28:45.320]  Right.
[28:45.640 --> 28:55.580]  Um, no, generally, it's, the only issues I have, typically, are with just the, the airport, security, you know, the, the TSA people, and they're going through your bag, and they're like, what the heck is this thing?
[28:55.880 --> 28:58.860]  You know, all the weird crap they end up bringing, uh, along with them.
[28:58.860 --> 29:00.520]  Well, I mean, I get that, too, and I'm an American citizen.
[29:00.800 --> 29:03.040]  You know, they, they, they do that when I, uh, when I come in sometimes.
[29:03.220 --> 29:04.100]  But here's the thing.
[29:04.200 --> 29:13.340]  You know, I, I speak to a lot of people overseas, and, and usually, um, if they're, if they're doubtful about coming, it's, it's even more so than financial issues.
[29:13.980 --> 29:20.640]  It's, uh, it's, it's being worrying, worrying too much about, um, what customs is going to say or do when you come into the country.
[29:20.640 --> 29:35.720]  And I just think, you know, is that really a valid reason to not show up at all, because of the challenge that somebody who, um, who really doesn't, uh, understand what it is you're all about, because they're going to be somewhat negative towards you.
[29:35.740 --> 29:38.100]  Is that a reason to not show up in the first place?
[29:38.300 --> 29:39.240]  I think that's a challenge.
[29:39.360 --> 29:41.640]  I think that's something that we in the hacker community, every time.
[29:41.780 --> 29:45.700]  Yeah, we in the hacker community should, should appreciate this as something to, to get over.
[29:45.700 --> 29:47.700]  And then once you're over that, you're with friends.
[29:47.900 --> 29:57.040]  And it's a community that will welcome you and you can share whatever story you have, but don't let that stop you because otherwise the customs agents win.
[29:57.520 --> 29:58.660]  It's so much fun to play with.
[29:58.700 --> 29:59.180]  Yeah, go ahead.
[29:59.300 --> 30:03.680]  Well, I think it's unfortunate, obviously, that we have this in the first place because we didn't used to.
[30:03.820 --> 30:07.400]  You didn't used to get fingerprinted in your picture taken and all that coming into the country.
[30:07.620 --> 30:14.440]  And as to whether it actually helps or accomplishes anything, I think is up in the air or inconclusive.
[30:15.980 --> 30:21.640]  But at the same time, like you said, you know, it's definitely worth traveling to and any of these are.
[30:21.780 --> 30:27.500]  You know, if two years from now, the conference in Germany, the Germans said, we're going to take your picture coming in.
[30:28.340 --> 30:30.780]  I mean, I would do it because it's worth it.
[30:30.960 --> 30:31.520]  Yeah, you know what?
[30:31.800 --> 30:33.100]  I would still go to Germany.
[30:33.360 --> 30:44.300]  If Germany made a new rule saying when you come into the country, we're going to slap you across the face once, you know, I would still want to go to the CC.
[30:45.340 --> 30:46.060]  Congress is.
[30:46.140 --> 30:47.260]  I still want to go to the camps.
[30:47.440 --> 30:51.060]  You know, I take that slap in the face because it's worth it afterwards.
[30:51.460 --> 30:53.960]  Now, we're not at the stage where we're doing that yet.
[30:53.960 --> 30:55.560]  Our country is doing that to you when you come in.
[30:55.680 --> 30:57.220]  Some people might feel like it's that.
[30:57.300 --> 31:03.080]  But the thing is, it's a bit of negative enforcement, I suppose.
[31:03.320 --> 31:04.980]  But it's something everybody is going through together.
[31:04.980 --> 31:06.780]  So you have that sort of communal misery.
[31:07.140 --> 31:13.660]  And then once you get to the conference, you're able to talk to other people about it and observe it in ways that most other people can't observe it.
[31:13.660 --> 31:23.300]  You know, I think it's interesting because generally when we go abroad to CCC and CCC camp and all that, we spend a lot of time on the radio talking about how great an experience it is and how people in the U.S.
[31:23.680 --> 31:25.680]  really should go and experience it.
[31:25.740 --> 31:28.640]  And I think the same is true the reverse in this case.
[31:28.640 --> 31:32.460]  I mean, if you're already in the U.S., good, come, because it'll be worth it, absolutely.
[31:32.760 --> 31:40.580]  And if you're outside of the U.S., it's the same reason we travel to the Netherlands and to Germany and to Austria and all these different places to go to conferences.
[31:40.860 --> 31:49.060]  Yeah, and not to mention that those of us who are already inside this country, who are citizens, aren't always aware of what it's like to come in from outside and what you're going through.
[31:49.180 --> 31:52.960]  So if you come to this conference and you go through whatever happens, we want to hear about it.
[31:53.000 --> 31:53.640]  We want to know about it.
[31:53.680 --> 31:54.940]  We want to know what's being done in our names.
[31:55.080 --> 31:59.400]  One thing I'd like to do is have a panel of people that have had interesting experiences coming into this country.
[31:59.400 --> 32:04.820]  And if you have a particularly egregious experience of some sort, then we'll put you on the panel.
[32:04.980 --> 32:08.400]  Yeah, and you'll get to share your story with a whole lot of people.
[32:08.560 --> 32:09.240]  Do you have a story?
[32:09.240 --> 32:14.960]  Well, just recently, coming back from Norway, we ended up kind of accidentally creating an international incident.
[32:15.180 --> 32:15.920]  Oh, tell us, tell us.
[32:16.660 --> 32:21.740]  Basically, through scripts, not our fault or anything like that.
[32:21.840 --> 32:26.480]  Me and Gray and our traveling companion, Deviant, coming back from a conference.
[32:26.620 --> 32:28.840]  Traveling with somebody named Deviant and you wonder why you have trouble.
[32:29.020 --> 32:29.340]  Oh, yeah.
[32:29.560 --> 32:29.940]  All right.
[32:31.880 --> 32:37.580]  Basically, there's a whole regulation that if the passenger doesn't make it, their baggage is supposed to come off the plane.
[32:37.940 --> 32:42.200]  Well, that didn't happen and our bags went to Newark and we were stuck in Copenhagen.
[32:42.400 --> 32:42.980]  Oh, wow.
[32:43.100 --> 32:49.560]  So there was a lot of people running around, you know, swearing up and down that, you know, your bags have to be here.
[32:49.640 --> 32:50.380]  Your bags have to be here.
[32:50.460 --> 32:51.300]  They couldn't have gone to Newark.
[32:51.620 --> 32:53.900]  Three hours later, they had to admit that they did.
[32:54.040 --> 32:58.900]  And basically, every federal agency along the way is pretty pissed because it's not supposed to happen.
[32:58.920 --> 32:58.960]  Well, no, wait.
[32:58.960 --> 32:59.800]  You were in Copenhagen.
[32:59.960 --> 33:00.240]  Yeah.
[33:00.240 --> 33:03.700]  So, who are you talking to in Copenhagen that was saying that your bags have to be here?
[33:05.360 --> 33:08.240]  A certain airline, you know, with initials of SAS.
[33:08.660 --> 33:08.940]  Uh-huh.
[33:09.420 --> 33:09.740]  Okay.
[33:10.280 --> 33:12.340]  That was swearing up and down that they were there.
[33:12.660 --> 33:12.980]  Okay.
[33:13.080 --> 33:13.960]  But it was an airline.
[33:14.040 --> 33:15.720]  It wasn't customs officials.
[33:15.720 --> 33:18.280]  No, it was the airline misdirected thing.
[33:18.280 --> 33:19.520]  This sounds like a typical trip.
[33:19.700 --> 33:20.760]  I mean, where luggage gets lost.
[33:20.760 --> 33:21.880]  It happens more often than I'd like.
[33:21.900 --> 33:24.680]  Red Hack, didn't that happen to you where your luggage wound up in a different...
[33:24.680 --> 33:26.820]  No, it was a tent, I think, that wound up going someplace.
[33:26.820 --> 33:27.660]  Oh, yeah, that was fun.
[33:27.820 --> 33:27.980]  Yeah.
[33:28.200 --> 33:29.240]  Yeah, that ended up...
[33:29.240 --> 33:31.500]  Well, we never got the tent back, but...
[33:31.500 --> 33:32.960]  You got paid for it.
[33:32.960 --> 33:33.320]  Got paid for it.
[33:33.320 --> 33:34.300]  Yeah, you got paid well for it, actually.
[33:34.300 --> 33:38.420]  Well, it was interesting because, you know, I gave it to my friend to bring back.
[33:38.540 --> 33:38.700]  Mm-hmm.
[33:38.760 --> 33:40.800]  And he and Air France lost it.
[33:40.880 --> 33:42.920]  And then it was a whole big fiesta.
[33:43.020 --> 33:48.920]  These are potentially negative things, but we can have a positive spin on them because it's part of the adventure.
[33:49.080 --> 33:53.300]  When I was just traveling more recently in Europe, there are all kinds of things.
[33:53.300 --> 33:56.040]  Running for the bus in Prague, you know.
[33:56.040 --> 34:02.600]  It was a crazy adventure, but it was fun in the end because it was an experience and one to share with a lot of people.
[34:02.800 --> 34:07.280]  So never think of the potential negative things as a reason not to participate.
[34:07.420 --> 34:11.480]  Well, actually, it could be positive because I lost a pretty bad tent and got money for it and bought a better one.
[34:11.640 --> 34:11.780]  Yeah.
[34:11.880 --> 34:13.680]  That's always a positive spin.
[34:13.920 --> 34:14.220]  Dot Red.
[34:14.640 --> 34:27.900]  Anyone who's hearing about this and, you know, like our friends overseas are hearing about this and are, you know, getting kind of worried or don't know exactly what they have to experience, we do have a lot of the important information and links to the customs website online.
[34:28.060 --> 34:31.740]  So, for instance, you could go check the wiki and you'll come across that.
[34:31.960 --> 34:32.160]  Right.
[34:32.200 --> 34:38.780]  And because it's a wiki, it's, again, like you said, if people want, we want people to tell us about their experiences.
[34:38.780 --> 34:43.840]  So if they've experienced something extremely important that we missed, they can do it and then everyone will know.
[34:44.020 --> 34:44.140]  Yeah.
[34:44.260 --> 34:50.540]  And that's sort of the Wikipedia effect where everyone piles in their own experiences and expertise.
[34:50.620 --> 34:53.620]  And before you know it, you have something that's really pretty accurate.
[34:53.900 --> 34:54.060]  Exactly.
[34:54.220 --> 34:54.360]  You know?
[34:54.540 --> 34:57.000]  Bernie, I know you've had some traveling experiences.
[34:57.000 --> 35:00.720]  Any words that you'd like to say to our overseas friends to encourage them to come?
[35:01.240 --> 35:13.160]  Well, I want to make it clear to our overseas friends who managed to go through the gauntlet to get to the United States, to the HOPE conference, which I'm sure is worth it, that they will be welcomed with open arms.
[35:13.520 --> 35:29.600]  And we'll be very interested in hearing about their experiences and we'll thank them for coming and we will make them feel warmly welcomed, just like most other countries welcome Americans, surprisingly, despite our foreign policy.
[35:29.800 --> 35:47.040]  So it's really worth coming to the HOPE conference if you're not in the United States because the people here will appreciate the hurdles that you had to go through at the hands of our government that we don't seem to have much say in the policies that are set in stone by.
[35:47.720 --> 35:48.280]  Okay.
[35:48.900 --> 35:52.720]  So yeah, again, more information will be at www.hope.net.
[35:52.900 --> 35:53.700]  There's information there already.
[35:54.260 --> 36:03.740]  And registration information, ways of volunteering, submitting talk proposals and project proposals and things like that.
[36:04.200 --> 36:12.500]  And we'd like to open up the phone lines to people all over the world if they want to tell us if they feel like they're going to come or if they have any questions about the conference.
[36:12.500 --> 36:13.660]  This is the time to ask.
[36:13.820 --> 36:17.340]  This is the time to see just what's possible.
[36:17.560 --> 36:20.980]  And also, we were talking about the expense of traveling.
[36:22.040 --> 36:26.560]  It's possible to find some really good deals if we collaborate, if we share information.
[36:26.560 --> 36:32.380]  And the forums at talk.hope.net is one place to do this if people pitch in information.
[36:32.380 --> 36:37.260]  This is how you can find out how to get to New York at that particular time of the year from your particular city.
[36:37.920 --> 36:45.800]  And I think there might be another Hackers on a Plane project, which Nick Farr usually runs, maybe from Europe this time.
[36:45.940 --> 36:47.220]  So there's all sorts of possibilities.
[36:48.480 --> 36:52.000]  So I wouldn't write it off and say, well, airfare is going to be too expensive.
[36:52.120 --> 36:53.020]  You don't know that for sure.
[36:53.160 --> 36:54.420]  You don't know how expensive it's going to be.
[36:54.420 --> 36:56.380]  And there are all kinds of deals that people can find.
[36:56.600 --> 36:59.400]  So our number is 212-209-2900.
[36:59.880 --> 37:02.540]  We're going to go to the phones in just a couple of minutes.
[37:02.560 --> 37:06.900]  But I wanted to ask if anybody else had any other things that we might not have covered.
[37:06.940 --> 37:07.800]  I think we've covered a lot.
[37:08.840 --> 37:21.160]  I think the amazing thing is that we've taken like 35 minutes to summarize the planning for Hope, and it's still so months out, which just goes to show you how much stuff we'll have when it actually happens.
[37:21.320 --> 37:23.100]  And look at how enthusiastic we are.
[37:23.100 --> 37:28.740]  I mean, this is kind of scary, actually, because this is, it's March, early March, and the conference is in mid-July.
[37:28.940 --> 37:33.540]  And yet we're still, we're bouncing up and down here with anticipation of all the things that we're going to be doing.
[37:34.140 --> 37:34.660]  It's incredible.
[37:34.800 --> 37:35.880]  Imagine what we're going to be like in June.
[37:36.660 --> 37:36.980]  Yeah.
[37:37.160 --> 37:38.380]  Probably very harried.
[37:38.700 --> 37:38.820]  Yeah.
[37:38.920 --> 37:40.420]  Well, no, that's July and August.
[37:41.540 --> 37:41.860]  Yeah.
[37:42.480 --> 37:47.120]  That's why we do this every two years, because otherwise we just go completely for Cirque.
[37:47.700 --> 37:49.720]  Um, okay, another announcement.
[37:49.880 --> 37:50.640]  This is important too.
[37:50.920 --> 37:51.600]  Uh, guess what?
[37:51.660 --> 38:05.420]  There's going to be a second Club Mate Day, which, uh, basically, remember last July, we took the 2600 van and we started, um, uh, bringing, uh, bottles of Club Mate, the German caffeinated beverage that all the hackers go crazy for over there.
[38:05.420 --> 38:09.900]  Do you know they drank 11,000 bottles at, uh, the CCC in December?
[38:10.380 --> 38:10.680]  Yeah.
[38:10.920 --> 38:11.620]  That's not healthy.
[38:11.780 --> 38:12.440]  11,000.
[38:12.540 --> 38:17.160]  I mean, that's more than I think we've ever had, uh, because a pallet has 800, right?
[38:17.180 --> 38:17.700]  And that's a lot.
[38:17.700 --> 38:22.860]  And I think we, we went through, uh, what, four pallets at, at, at, at the last hope.
[38:23.740 --> 38:24.960]  It's, uh, it's incredible.
[38:25.280 --> 38:29.160]  In Germany, I guess it's a lot, uh, a lot more of a lifestyle choice.
[38:29.580 --> 38:45.540]  Uh, but, uh, what we're going to be doing, uh, in, on March 20th, the first day of spring, we're going to be, uh, taking the 2600 van, uh, to people's homes or offices, wherever it is that they want us to bring cases of the, uh, Club Mate beverage and,
[38:45.700 --> 38:48.380]  uh, and spreading joy in that particular way.
[38:48.560 --> 38:52.900]  You know, we did this the first time in July before, uh, it was really available in this country.
[38:52.980 --> 38:54.760]  Now we do have it available on our website as well.
[38:55.020 --> 38:59.180]  Uh, but in this particular, uh, method, you'll be able to get it delivered to your home.
[38:59.300 --> 39:06.600]  You'll see the 2600 van pull into your driveway and, uh, you'll also get the original cases, which have, uh, 20 bottles, I believe, not 12.
[39:07.200 --> 39:09.960]  And, uh, it'll be, it'll be fun for one and all.
[39:10.200 --> 39:20.960]  Now, for information on this, uh, you can email us, contact at clubmate.us, and that's C-L-U-B dash M-A-T-E dot U-S.
[39:21.300 --> 39:26.200]  And there will be information on that website as well, uh, clubmate.us, uh, with specifics.
[39:26.520 --> 39:26.900]  Yes, Red Hack.
[39:27.020 --> 39:29.440]  You're like some sort of new age hacker milkman.
[39:29.660 --> 39:30.700]  Yeah, you know what?
[39:30.700 --> 39:35.240]  Uh, that's, you're not the first person to say that, but yeah, you walk up the driver with the bottles clinking against each other.
[39:35.600 --> 39:40.480]  Uh, the visions of milkman of, uh, of past years definitely come into your mind.
[39:40.900 --> 39:41.960]  It's kind of spooky, isn't it?
[39:42.440 --> 39:43.460]  So yeah, that's going to be fun.
[39:43.520 --> 39:45.080]  That's, uh, in about a week and a half.
[39:45.240 --> 39:46.860]  And that's only in New York area.
[39:47.040 --> 39:47.820]  Well, here's the thing.
[39:47.900 --> 39:48.780]  We've expanded.
[39:49.000 --> 39:49.680]  We've expanded.
[39:49.900 --> 39:55.100]  Now we're also going to do Northern New Jersey, 201 area code and 914, uh, part of Westchester.
[39:55.320 --> 39:55.700]  So yeah.
[39:56.400 --> 39:57.260]  So I think New York area.
[39:57.260 --> 39:58.340]  Well, yeah, okay.
[39:58.340 --> 39:59.340]  You're not driving to California.
[39:59.560 --> 40:04.660]  But you know, last time, last time we didn't do Staten Island, we didn't do New Jersey and we didn't do Westchester.
[40:04.920 --> 40:06.560]  So, uh, we've expanded a bit.
[40:06.740 --> 40:11.520]  We've done all of Long Island and Brooklyn, Queens and, uh, the Bronx and all that.
[40:11.760 --> 40:12.400]  Of course, Manhattan.
[40:13.320 --> 40:13.700]  Yeah.
[40:13.940 --> 40:14.160]  All right.
[40:14.340 --> 40:16.840]  Uh, 212-209-2900 is our telephone number.
[40:17.120 --> 40:20.260]  Um, any other, um, any other bits of, uh, information?
[40:20.420 --> 40:21.000]  Any news stories?
[40:21.200 --> 40:25.380]  We had the, we had the corporate war that took place over the, you guys know about this, right?
[40:25.680 --> 40:31.620]  Uh, we talked about it on the show last night, but, um, uh, those of you who, uh, Rob, I know you, you're on Long Island.
[40:31.800 --> 40:32.440]  You have Cablevision.
[40:33.100 --> 40:34.800]  Yeah, but I, I don't really watch it.
[40:34.920 --> 40:35.440]  I don't either.
[40:35.540 --> 40:38.040]  But I was, I was watching this because it was, it was, it was fun.
[40:38.100 --> 40:38.680]  I learned a lot.
[40:38.820 --> 40:46.520]  I learned a lot about what corporations do when they get into fights with each other and they, they make little propaganda films and, and send them out to the people and try to get them to take their side.
[40:46.520 --> 40:51.560]  Uh, ABC got into a, a, a fight or Disney actually got into a fight with, uh, Cablevision.
[40:51.740 --> 40:53.840]  They wanted to charge them money to carry Channel 7.
[40:54.120 --> 40:54.740]  More money.
[40:54.900 --> 40:55.500]  Yeah, more money.
[40:55.780 --> 40:57.020]  Yeah, I guess they're charging something already.
[40:57.400 --> 41:02.400]  Uh, and what happened was, uh, on, on Sunday at midnight, they, they took their signal off the air.
[41:02.480 --> 41:06.720]  Now, I didn't know that, um, that they fed their signal directly to Cablevision.
[41:06.800 --> 41:10.400]  They didn't just take it off the air, uh, but they were able to turn the signal off.
[41:10.400 --> 41:22.720]  Before they did that though, they sent a message saying that Cablevision has betrayed you again and, and now you're going to lose your, your, your beloved Channel 7 because, uh, they're not playing fair or something like that.
[41:22.820 --> 41:32.040]  So they took their signal off and then Cablevision replaced that with a propaganda film saying that, uh, ABC was simply trying to, uh, um, steal money from you and various things like that.
[41:32.300 --> 41:32.940]  It went back and forth.
[41:33.220 --> 41:33.800]  Here's what's interesting.
[41:33.940 --> 41:42.000]  When you turn your cable box off and turn it back on again, it was programmed to go to Channel 1,999 and play another propaganda film.
[41:42.500 --> 41:42.860]  Yeah.
[41:42.920 --> 41:44.380]  I didn't know they had this kind of power.
[41:44.600 --> 41:52.220]  And now, now that the fight is over, and by the way, we're not allowed to know what the deal is after all this, after being exposed to all the different sides, we're not allowed to know what the settlement is.
[41:52.320 --> 42:03.920]  I mean, imagine you're in World War II or something like that and you're taking sides and then it's announced that the war is over, but you can't find out what happened, you know, what, what the actual settlement was and who won and who lost.
[42:04.060 --> 42:07.160]  You're not allowed to know that you're just allowed to fight and die for their cause.
[42:07.160 --> 42:14.860]  Don't you think it's maybe a little bit unfair to compare this stupid argument between two companies to a war where people are shot and killed?
[42:14.980 --> 42:16.240]  No, I try to compare everything to that.
[42:16.300 --> 42:18.120]  I try to compare everything to World War II at some point.
[42:18.840 --> 42:20.880]  You're getting awfully close to Godwin's Law.
[42:21.220 --> 42:23.100]  No, I do the opposite of Godwin's Law.
[42:23.200 --> 42:27.800]  I try to bring Nazism into everything as quickly as possible and equate it to that.
[42:27.980 --> 42:30.540]  So that's Goldstein's Law there.
[42:31.480 --> 42:32.560]  But here's the thing.
[42:32.760 --> 42:39.320]  Now that the war is over and you turn your cable box on and off, off in Cablevision land, it goes to Channel 5.
[42:39.580 --> 42:40.360]  Yeah, I noticed that last night.
[42:40.360 --> 42:40.760]  Wait, wait, wait.
[42:41.240 --> 42:41.680]  Sorry, go ahead.
[42:41.880 --> 42:42.800]  I noticed that last night.
[42:43.280 --> 42:47.740]  I had it set to Channel 103 to Euronews.
[42:47.780 --> 42:48.280]  Euronews, yes.
[42:48.420 --> 42:50.900]  And I'd always turn it on in the evening.
[42:51.340 --> 42:56.900]  And a couple, like last week, they changed the default on me to this propaganda film, as you said.
[42:57.080 --> 43:00.020]  And then I changed it back, the default, and then they changed it again on me.
[43:00.220 --> 43:00.440]  Yeah.
[43:00.640 --> 43:05.100]  Well, if it gets turned off, they can reset it, too, and make it go to that default station.
[43:05.100 --> 43:10.040]  And somebody in Cablevision has the power to decide what the default channel is.
[43:10.220 --> 43:12.240]  And I wonder if Channel 5 is paying them to do this.
[43:12.520 --> 43:13.820]  Channel 5 being Fox.
[43:14.040 --> 43:18.500]  I wonder if maybe, maybe the person who has that power listens to us.
[43:18.600 --> 43:25.780]  And if we could request that they turn to Channel 103, which is the channel you're watching, Euronews, which nobody else carries, and it's a really cool channel.
[43:26.180 --> 43:28.740]  Why not have that channel come up as a default?
[43:28.860 --> 43:30.820]  And then everybody could see European news for a change.
[43:30.940 --> 43:32.020]  You know, it would be kind of cool.
[43:32.020 --> 43:35.060]  I didn't know they had that kind of power to do this.
[43:35.240 --> 43:35.400]  Rob?
[43:35.640 --> 43:45.020]  You know, if they could actually produce Grama as gripping in their fiction departments, as they have in their negotiation departments, I might not have given up on American television.
[43:45.020 --> 43:46.600]  Well, no, there is a movie coming out.
[43:46.940 --> 43:52.560]  Yeah, there's definitely a movie, the great Cablevision, ABC War of 2010.
[43:52.680 --> 43:52.900]  Yes, right.
[43:53.000 --> 43:57.760]  I think it's interesting because probably the fact that they have this power stems from the fact that everything is digital now.
[43:57.760 --> 44:04.380]  You know, when you're back tuning into a frequency, you had a piece of hardware and it tuned to a certain frequency, and you know, you've got picture information from that.
[44:04.520 --> 44:12.980]  But now you've got this kind of two-way communication system where your box can talk to them and their box can talk to you and send it commands or whatever.
[44:13.240 --> 44:17.100]  I mean, it's basically like having their own little internet that they're in control of.
[44:17.100 --> 44:27.000]  And also, this is now digital television era, so basically what Cablevision was saying to people was, well, you can watch Channel 7 for free, just go and get an antenna for your television set.
[44:27.060 --> 44:36.300]  What they weren't telling you was that if you had just a normal television set that was using a digital box, you wouldn't be able to watch a digital signal without a converter as well.
[44:36.460 --> 44:38.520]  And all the converters, of course, were sold out.
[44:38.840 --> 44:43.220]  It was mayhem and craziness, and I just loved watching people freaking out over this.
[44:43.220 --> 44:45.060]  It was, you know, this one little channel.
[44:45.300 --> 44:48.820]  Of course, it was the Academy Awards night, so I guess some people were freaking out more than others.
[44:48.940 --> 44:50.560]  Please not talk about digital TV again, though.
[44:50.600 --> 44:56.660]  Yeah, well, I'm just wondering, though, did that make it a lot harder for people when they were trying to tune in?
[44:56.740 --> 44:57.020]  Yeah, start right.
[44:58.080 --> 45:02.400]  Well, that depends, because you said normal TV, but, you know, that's normal old TVs.
[45:02.480 --> 45:04.720]  A lot of new TVs today already come with that capability.
[45:05.860 --> 45:09.760]  So it may have been hard for a lot of people, and it may or may not have been.
[45:09.940 --> 45:10.560]  It may have only been a few.
[45:10.820 --> 45:11.840]  Maybe no one even tried.
[45:11.840 --> 45:13.700]  Well, yeah, I think they will try.
[45:13.780 --> 45:14.100]  Yes, Bernie?
[45:14.640 --> 45:26.940]  I just want to say, listeners who are really concerned about cable companies having dictatorial control over the cable boxes and, like, tuning channels, like when you turn it on, forcing you to see some propaganda, I mean, that really concerns me.
[45:27.060 --> 45:28.780]  I'm not a cable subscriber anymore.
[45:29.020 --> 45:50.720]  But there's been various unsuccessful moves over the years, legislation, to force an open standard that would allow private individuals to purchase their own hardware that would allow them to watch the encrypted cable broadcasts in a way that the cable company could not control what channel you're on.
[45:50.720 --> 46:15.040]  So I suggest listeners who are concerned about this to contact their federal legislators and ask them to consider sponsoring legislation that would require the FCC to force cable providers to open up the system so that people could purchase hardware that would allow them to watch the channels they want without being forced to have propaganda jammed down their throat by their cable carriers.
[46:15.660 --> 46:15.780]  Okay.
[46:16.240 --> 46:18.380]  Again, our phone number is 212-209-2900.
[46:18.500 --> 46:19.640]  We're going to take some phone calls.
[46:19.720 --> 46:26.000]  But Redhack, you reminded me that we have a... going back to the HOPE conference, we have a brand-new ticket system.
[46:26.080 --> 46:27.100]  How exactly does this work?
[46:27.300 --> 46:28.940]  You sort of have brains behind it.
[46:28.940 --> 46:43.500]  So basically, we've kind of done what the HAR conference that we went to this summer did in that when you pre-purchase your tickets, this wouldn't matter at the door, but when you pre-purchase your tickets, what we're doing is we're sending you an email.
[46:43.760 --> 46:48.320]  And that email contains a number of PDF files equal to the number of tickets you've ordered.
[46:48.980 --> 46:54.800]  And each one, you print it up, and it's got a big QR code in the middle of it, just a big kind of 2D barcode.
[46:55.420 --> 47:05.040]  And so when you show up at the conference, instead of us having to look through folders and find your name, and you have to look for whatever letters, whatever we did in the past, we're just going to have a barcode scanner.
[47:05.460 --> 47:08.760]  And one, you know, scan, and we give you your badge.
[47:09.020 --> 47:11.800]  So it should make things really fast, really efficient, and...
[47:11.800 --> 47:14.980]  No, I'm just... you said we'll send a PDF file.
[47:15.140 --> 47:18.880]  Do people have to have any particular type of expertise to be able to read that?
[47:19.140 --> 47:23.060]  Most computers these days have a PDF reader built in.
[47:23.540 --> 47:28.260]  If yours doesn't, you go, I guess Adobe would have a reader on their website that you can download.
[47:28.520 --> 47:30.760]  What if you just want to have your ticket mailed to you?
[47:30.800 --> 47:31.440]  Can you still do that?
[47:31.440 --> 47:36.900]  If you tell me, I'm sure we can, you know, we can generate it and mail it to you.
[47:37.000 --> 47:41.020]  But if you have an email address, that would be much, much easier and much, much faster.
[47:42.240 --> 47:44.700]  Yeah, but I know there are some people who resist these things.
[47:44.700 --> 47:46.460]  And yes, we're completely open to that.
[47:46.540 --> 47:47.440]  So you just have to let us know.
[47:47.580 --> 47:55.280]  The thing to remember is to actually print it out and bring the piece of paper with you to the conference or else we'll be very, very mad at you and growl and glare and not let you in.
[47:55.500 --> 48:00.440]  Yeah, I don't know if we won't let you in, but we're definitely going to be confused.
[48:00.440 --> 48:03.700]  It will make it a lot harder and slower if you do not bring it.
[48:03.860 --> 48:09.920]  So just before you leave the house, print it up, bring it with you, and, you know, then you'll get into the conference fast.
[48:10.000 --> 48:10.880]  Let's get to the phones.
[48:11.000 --> 48:12.920]  212-209-2900.
[48:13.340 --> 48:13.960]  Good evening.
[48:14.120 --> 48:14.840]  You're on Off the Hook.
[48:15.680 --> 48:16.040]  Hi.
[48:16.220 --> 48:16.480]  Hi.
[48:16.480 --> 48:16.980]  What's on your mind?
[48:17.880 --> 48:21.140]  I'd like to give you some radio news from the Hudson Valley.
[48:21.720 --> 48:22.080]  Okay.
[48:22.140 --> 48:23.840]  Does that have anything to do with what we've been talking about today?
[48:24.100 --> 48:27.980]  Well, you talked about it earlier about the cost of getting a radio station on a year.
[48:27.980 --> 48:45.200]  And the FCC opened a major allocation in Rhinebeck, New York at 102.5, and apparently a well-known progressive Woodstock group got its act together and applied for it.
[48:45.300 --> 48:45.860]  Okay.
[48:45.860 --> 48:50.740]  And their major competition is a Baptist church.
[48:50.980 --> 48:51.420]  Okay.
[48:51.780 --> 49:12.300]  And there are four or five other Baptist broadcasters up here already on the air, and they're doing this all over the country trying to stifle progressive voices by trying to get all of the allocations so they can broadcast their religious bigotry and such over the air.
[49:12.300 --> 49:30.140]  So if anybody's interested to look up at the FCC website and see what's going on with Channel 273 in Rhinebeck, New York, there's going to be a classic battle between a progressive group and a bigoted homophobic religious group.
[49:30.340 --> 49:30.700]  Okay.
[49:30.820 --> 49:35.100]  Well, I'm not sure which side of the fence you fall on there, but thanks for letting us know that.
[49:35.280 --> 49:39.860]  Thanks for letting us know, and we'll be able to follow that particular thing.
[49:39.940 --> 49:41.500]  It really doesn't mean to do what we're talking about tonight.
[49:41.500 --> 49:42.120]  Good evening.
[49:42.320 --> 49:43.120]  You're on Off the Hook.
[49:44.180 --> 49:44.760]  Speak up.
[49:46.080 --> 49:46.440]  Okay.
[49:46.480 --> 49:47.420]  You have to talk when you call us.
[49:47.500 --> 49:48.360]  That's another rule there.
[49:48.440 --> 49:48.740]  Good evening.
[49:48.920 --> 49:49.540]  You're on Off the Hook.
[49:50.620 --> 49:50.980]  Hi.
[49:51.200 --> 49:51.680]  How are you?
[49:51.840 --> 49:52.120]  Okay.
[49:52.140 --> 49:52.580]  What's on your mind?
[49:53.140 --> 49:54.660]  Oh, let me just make sure my radio's off.
[49:54.760 --> 49:54.960]  Okay.
[49:55.020 --> 49:55.220]  Hello?
[49:55.760 --> 50:02.200]  If you were talking about cable, then there's something really, really, really interesting happening on cable out here in Queens.
[50:02.880 --> 50:03.440]  Okay.
[50:03.680 --> 50:10.920]  And that is that semi-governmental, foreign governmental stations have gone on the air.
[50:11.500 --> 50:18.480]  And the two most interesting are China's, which was on for months, and then it went off, and Russia's.
[50:18.580 --> 50:22.640]  China's was called B-O-N network, or Blue Ocean Network.
[50:22.640 --> 50:24.840]  This is on what cable network?
[50:25.180 --> 50:27.360]  This is a Cablevision in Queens.
[50:27.900 --> 50:28.100]  Okay.
[50:28.100 --> 50:31.720]  So this is a Chinese network and a Russian network.
[50:31.900 --> 50:32.960]  Both went on...
[50:32.960 --> 50:33.620]  Right.
[50:33.740 --> 50:41.660]  And unlike Sinovision, which is Chinese-American, B-O-N is clearly like, this is Beijing, this is the government.
[50:41.820 --> 50:44.460]  And Russian is very, very huge.
[50:45.260 --> 50:46.880]  I think you have a bad connection there.
[50:47.540 --> 50:47.780]  Oh.
[50:48.480 --> 50:50.960]  The Russian network is called RT.
[50:51.740 --> 50:53.300]  Yeah, RT, well, here's the thing.
[50:53.300 --> 51:01.040]  In Manhattan, we get CCTV, which is definitely Chinese government TV, and RT, which is Russian government TV.
[51:01.180 --> 51:02.780]  Yeah, it's not that unusual.
[51:05.120 --> 51:06.640]  But just a couple of things.
[51:06.920 --> 51:12.940]  Like, the contrast, like, B-O-N was all about recruiting Americans to come work in China.
[51:13.120 --> 51:13.860]  That was, you know...
[51:13.860 --> 51:18.440]  And they hired a bunch of very inexperienced young Americans, Aussies, and Brits.
[51:19.440 --> 51:25.640]  And the funny thing is, it was, like, all about where to go drinking and hook up with other foreigners, so it wasn't that effective.
[51:25.900 --> 51:28.720]  But the Russian is, like, all these...
[51:28.720 --> 51:36.220]  I mean, what might be called conspiracy theories, there's so much 9-11 stuff on the Russian RTV.
[51:36.520 --> 51:38.060]  I mean, do you find that a little odd?
[51:38.520 --> 51:50.580]  Not at all, actually, because I've noticed that a lot of people in Europe seem to buy into that, and it's interesting, and I'm not quite sure why, and it's something we could talk about for a long, long time.
[51:50.680 --> 51:55.740]  But let's move on and see if anybody wants to talk about the HOPE Conference, which is what we were sort of spending the hour on.
[51:55.820 --> 51:56.120]  Good evening.
[51:56.240 --> 51:56.860]  You're on Off the Hook.
[51:57.340 --> 51:57.660]  Hi.
[51:57.660 --> 52:02.020]  I don't know if you can help me with this, but I have a very, very basic cable.
[52:02.140 --> 52:06.560]  I won't even mention the name of it, but I don't pay much per year because of my budget.
[52:06.560 --> 52:17.420]  But I am not bilingual, so the few stations that I get, about half of them are Spanish, in the Spanish language.
[52:17.760 --> 52:19.040]  So you shouldn't watch those ones, then?
[52:19.140 --> 52:20.880]  It's horrible, you know?
[52:21.280 --> 52:21.960]  What's horrible?
[52:22.300 --> 52:30.440]  It's horrible that most of it is in Spanish, and so that cuts down, for me, on my cable, what I can see.
[52:30.560 --> 52:32.760]  Well, you probably have about 500 channels to watch, don't you?
[52:32.860 --> 52:33.220]  I mean, if...
[52:33.220 --> 52:34.120]  No, no, no, no, no.
[52:34.140 --> 52:35.360]  I have about 15.
[52:35.360 --> 52:36.940]  I mean, mine is very basic.
[52:37.220 --> 52:37.460]  Okay.
[52:37.900 --> 52:44.000]  Well, you know, I'll tell you, there aren't any fewer basic channels that speak in English than there were 20 years ago.
[52:45.760 --> 52:46.120]  Really?
[52:46.340 --> 52:46.500]  Yeah.
[52:46.680 --> 52:54.320]  I don't think you really have that much to worry about, but you always have BAI, and we do speak Spanish sometimes on BAI, but radio is so much better than television.
[52:54.620 --> 52:55.680]  Okay, thanks for that.
[52:55.920 --> 52:58.480]  You know, I guess this is what we get for talking about cable TV, right?
[52:58.560 --> 52:59.900]  Everyone's going to want to talk about that.
[53:00.120 --> 53:00.500]  Lo siento.
[53:00.720 --> 53:01.240]  Estoy muy triste.
[53:02.220 --> 53:04.200]  I just hope that means what I think it meant.
[53:04.300 --> 53:04.620]  Good evening.
[53:05.360 --> 53:05.600]  The Hook.
[53:06.320 --> 53:07.080]  Yes, hello?
[53:07.320 --> 53:07.980]  Hi, what's on your mind?
[53:08.060 --> 53:09.560]  Yeah, I'm Tom from the Bronx here.
[53:09.560 --> 53:09.920]  Hi, Tom.
[53:10.220 --> 53:19.200]  I'd like to say, did they ever bring back TV radios that can pick up cable, can pick up the news stations?
[53:19.680 --> 53:21.480]  You mean pick up digital television?
[53:21.880 --> 53:22.940]  I don't think so.
[53:22.960 --> 53:23.840]  Bernie, do you know anything about that?
[53:24.680 --> 53:27.840]  Are you talking about portable TVs that can pick up digital television now?
[53:28.260 --> 53:29.100]  Uh, yeah.
[53:29.680 --> 53:30.300]  In other words, yeah.
[53:30.700 --> 53:31.400]  They said radio.
[53:32.400 --> 53:39.280]  Yeah, I mean, there were, I mean, you mean like the, it used to be the really expensive portable radio slash TV combinations, is that what you mean?
[53:39.360 --> 53:41.120]  Yeah, the radio TVs.
[53:41.760 --> 53:48.960]  Yeah, it's a really good question, because that was a, you could get them for like 50 bucks, but now you can't, because the whole digital television transition...
[53:48.960 --> 53:57.180]  Well, I know that they're useless, I mean, the TV radios they had, and I had one, they're useless now.
[53:57.700 --> 54:00.240]  Yeah, you can only use them as a radio now, you can't watch the TV part.
[54:00.520 --> 54:08.620]  There are portable digital TVs now you can get for under $100, but they're very, very sensitive to how you position them.
[54:08.740 --> 54:11.400]  I mean, you can move like two inches and then lose the signal.
[54:11.600 --> 54:14.420]  It's just one of the problems with digital television technology.
[54:14.420 --> 54:16.580]  In other words, then there's no radio out there.
[54:16.600 --> 54:17.260]  Yeah, there's no radio.
[54:17.260 --> 54:22.140]  I've not seen any combination of radio, digital TV on the market.
[54:22.300 --> 54:28.660]  Ideally, I'd like to see a digital radio slash HD radio combination, but that's another failed technology.
[54:28.860 --> 54:35.760]  So the technology that was mandated by our government is making it harder for you to get that kind of material anymore.
[54:35.760 --> 54:37.200]  Okay, we're going to move on.
[54:37.320 --> 54:37.560]  Thanks.
[54:37.620 --> 54:38.440]  Thanks for that call.
[54:38.600 --> 54:42.800]  You're listening to Consumer Corner here on WBAI, formerly known as Off the Hook.
[54:43.440 --> 54:46.320]  Anybody have any questions about the Hope Conference?
[54:46.460 --> 54:46.740]  Give us a call.
[54:46.860 --> 54:48.380]  212-209-2900.
[54:48.560 --> 54:48.880]  Good evening.
[54:48.900 --> 54:49.860]  You're on Off the Hook.
[54:50.720 --> 54:55.560]  Hey, I'm so sorry that a lot of people aren't talking about hope just yet.
[54:55.660 --> 54:55.900]  Okay.
[54:56.280 --> 54:59.920]  But if you guys plan on having a hope parade... A hope parade.
[54:59.940 --> 55:14.820]  I want to let you know that the NYPD just made another parade law that goes into effect after St. Patrick's Day that says that parades are all going to be 25% shorter in their routes, and they're only going to be five hours long.
[55:15.460 --> 55:18.740]  Well, we can probably work with that, but we'll see.
[55:18.740 --> 55:22.580]  But how do you cram all those people into 25% less?
[55:22.580 --> 55:26.820]  We were going to have a parade, actually, for Beyond Hope in 1997 by the Puck Building.
[55:26.940 --> 55:32.660]  It's a little alleyway that's about half a block long, and we were going to have a big parade down that little alleyway, but we never could get it together.
[55:33.220 --> 55:34.900]  But, yeah, we can try.
[55:35.120 --> 55:39.140]  So 25% of no parade is still no parade.
[55:39.160 --> 55:39.620]  That's true.
[55:39.820 --> 55:40.040]  We're in trouble.
[55:40.460 --> 55:40.940]  Good evening.
[55:41.040 --> 55:41.540]  You're on Off the Hook.
[55:42.420 --> 55:42.780]  Hello.
[55:43.080 --> 55:43.740]  Can you hear me?
[55:43.840 --> 55:44.500]  I can hear you fine.
[55:46.060 --> 55:49.260]  I have a fairly simple question you touched on.
[55:49.520 --> 55:51.840]  I have a dear friend who lives in Long Island.
[55:52.000 --> 55:52.380]  Mm-hmm.
[55:52.520 --> 55:55.280]  She has an antenna on the roof.
[55:55.400 --> 55:55.620]  Oh, boy.
[55:55.620 --> 55:56.020]  That's it.
[55:56.460 --> 55:57.040]  Okay.
[55:57.480 --> 56:06.060]  She was able to pick up Channel 21, Channel 13, and a whole pile of crapola stuff, frankly.
[56:06.140 --> 56:07.560]  That's non-commercial television, yes.
[56:07.900 --> 56:08.120]  Yeah.
[56:08.520 --> 56:14.740]  And now she can only pick up 21 and variations on the theme of 21.
[56:14.740 --> 56:15.500]  Uh-huh.
[56:16.320 --> 56:24.520]  And she picked up Channel 13 beautifully for about a week and a half, and then Kaputsky.
[56:25.260 --> 56:26.040]  Yeah.
[56:26.300 --> 56:28.400]  So it shows they can do it.
[56:28.400 --> 56:44.720]  I have a bit, if you'll excuse me for saying, of a conspiracy theory, being that they could do a lot better than they really are pretending they can to get people to go cable or digital, excuse me, or dish.
[56:44.720 --> 56:45.220]  Okay.
[56:45.400 --> 56:46.840]  I'm sorry, but we're out of time.
[56:47.040 --> 56:56.880]  But, yeah, you know, these things do happen with new technology, and the important thing is to let people know about it, and we'll look into it and see if we can figure out what's going on there.
[56:56.940 --> 56:58.980]  Thanks for all the calls about cable TV.
[56:59.100 --> 56:59.280]  Wow.
[57:00.020 --> 57:00.380]  Okay.
[57:01.300 --> 57:05.440]  If you have any questions about the HOPE Conference, please, www.hope.net.
[57:05.560 --> 57:05.900]  My God.
[57:06.980 --> 57:09.740]  And we'll be back next week, probably talking about it some more.
[57:09.900 --> 57:14.440]  And you can write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
[57:14.980 --> 57:16.180]  We'll see you next week.
[57:16.520 --> 57:16.800]  Good night.
[57:22.810 --> 58:01.610]  I was using my computer the other day I was using my computer in the usual way With my hand on the mouse and the mouse on the pad And something happened, something that was really bad My cat ate the mouse, but it's more complicated than that Now I can't use my mouse Unless I also use my cat Now when we want to play computer games It's different at our house We all use a cat Where ordinary people
[58:01.610 --> 58:16.410]  use a mouse I'm a skull kitty kitty and hope she will come And using my computer is no longer fun It is hard to get kitty to lie down and rest And it is harder still to push the cat around
[58:23.070 --> 58:28.310]  Now I can't use my mouse, unless I also use my cat.
[58:30.840 --> 58:36.520]  Now when we want to play computer games it's different at our house.
[58:37.580 --> 58:39.980]  We all use a cat.
[58:40.500 --> 58:43.740]  Our ordinary people use a mouse.
[58:44.120 --> 58:47.460]  It is highly inconvenient for us and for her.
[58:47.680 --> 58:50.820]  And it's difficult to point and click through all of that fur.
[58:50.960 --> 58:57.600]  All the same I must say how thankful I am that you didn't drive a bigger prey and swallow the ram.
[58:57.760 --> 59:01.960]  My cat ate the mouse but it's more complicated than that.
[59:04.320 --> 59:08.860]  Now I can't use my mouse, unless I also use my cat.
[59:11.540 --> 59:17.260]  Now when we want to play computer games it's different at our house.
[59:17.680 --> 59:20.500]  We all use a cat.
[59:21.120 --> 59:23.820]  We all use a cat.
[59:24.560 --> 59:27.300]  We all use a cat.
[59:27.780 --> 59:31.340]  We're ordinary people use a mouse.