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May 30, 1997 - Art Bell
58:18
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Keith Rowland - Interview (hour 2)
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Call Art Bell today!
West of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
West of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
1-800-618-8255.
1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033.
This is the CBC Radio Network.
We are the ones.
Good morning everybody.
Open lines all night long, except for this hour.
This hour is going to be very special.
The man who brings you my website, who does all the work on the website, which is quite considerable, Keith Rowland, is going to be my guest for this hour.
Now, The first reason that we're bringing him on is to explain the April Fool's situation, and the FBI, involvement with the FBI in the State Department, and what happened, how it happened, and where we now stand, and whether we will all have to collectively send Keith Rowland a file and a cake.
So that coming up, and then we will allow you to ask Keith Rowland questions about the website.
It is a gigantic one now indeed.
So all of that coming up in a moment on 669.
Alright, that's 1-800-659-2669.
Ah, only I can interrupt myself.
Silly, huh?
I mean, I get the commercial ad, I know when it's over.
Alright, um, April 1st was a strange day on my website.
And let me begin by telling you, That I had no idea myself what was about to occur, and innocently, as I always do in about the first hour or two of the program, I pulled up my website and damn near had a heart attack.
As a matter of fact, I almost did have a heart attack.
Keith, welcome to the program.
Hello there.
Hi.
From non-smoking Mesa, Arizona.
That's us.
Here is Keith Zieroland, who runs my website www.artbell.com.
Now, tell them, Keith, you didn't tell me you were going to do that, did you?
No, I didn't tell anybody what I was going to do, so I could pull one on you too.
I'll paint a picture for anybody who didn't get in on the joke.
Normally the web page is a nice black background with different colored headers and stuff, and it lists the items of the day, new items, and the different pages of the website.
There's a nice graphical picture of you at the top of the page, and this basically announces itself quite well.
And so everybody's used to going up there every day and seeing the same picture and same looking background and all of a sudden one day you click on that and you get this big white screen with the U.S.
Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation logo sitting up in the top left hand corner and it's showing a press release from Washington, D.C.
and it's dated for immediate release April 1, 1997.
Now if you were really sharp that would have caught you right there, but this is what the notice said on the page.
Keep in mind the timing of when this happened.
It was right after Heaven's Gate.
Yes.
It said, quote, the Art Bell website, www.artbell.com, has been removed pending an investigation initiated by the San Diego field office.
Commander John was a joker.
Lead special agents are conducting the investigation as fast as possible into the connections to the Heaven's Gate suicide case.
We will return the website into operation after determination of the amount of involvement of the parties who operate this website and the material presented.
If you have any information pertaining to the involvement of the website operators and the Heaven's Gate membership, please contact Special Agent Ms.
May-I-Pull-Your-Leg at our San Diego field office.
For more information on this case and others, see our website.
I gave that address.
I gave the address of the San Diego FBI building.
And then at the bottom I said, P.S.
If you're still with us, You'll be happy to know that this is really a joke, and you can click here to visit the real homepage.
Now, having said all of that, Keith, even so, uh, when I saw it, um, with all the names in there, and with the, uh, even the disclaimer at the bottom, I still just about had a heart attack, and I can tell you so did a lot of my audience, because, of course, you only sort of, you quickly read something, no, no doubt, something you were depending on, And you get shocked, and it worked very well indeed, and I had hundreds of messages.
I camouflaged the names so that if you're reading them, you don't know what they are, but if you actually speak those names, as in, was a joke, or may I pull your leg, then you kind of get the picture.
You do, but you get it later in my case.
And of course the little announcement at the bottom is probably scrolled off your screen while you're reading this so you don't see it right away.
You specifically talked about the San Diego Field Office.
Yeah, well I've only mentioned that because at the time That's where the server was at or had been hosted and so I picked that location.
That's where the Heaven's Gate case was being handled and things like that.
So what I had done is I had taken basically the layout of another FBI press release and just kind of copied the layout of their press release so it looked very much like theirs.
Sure.
And I took their logo off their website and I doctored it up a little bit, kind of blurried it up and obscured it a little bit so it wasn't an exact copy but it looked like an official looking seal, kind of a generic looking seal.
Yes.
And so that got posted up there and we had it up there for the day for 24 hours and then we took it down.
Then I took all of the email comments that you and I had collected and I posted it on
the page below this.
I put a link up there and said, here was our April Fool's page joke with all the comments
that we had.
I had probably 30, 40, 50 email messages of people describing the shock and disbelief
and comments that they were making as they had read the page.
We put that up there for about a week.
Then I removed the link off of the home page so that you couldn't see it anymore.
But I did leave the page up on the website on the file server.
And then you got a letter of thank you from the FBI, who really got a kick out of that, down to San Diego, right?
Approximately 30 days later, dated May the 9th, we got a letter sent to Myron, who is my partner in the operation here, who was the official name that was on the domain name at the time.
And they wrote a letter to him, Dear Mr. McLeod, on April the 1st, 1997, an altered news release depicting the official seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigations had been downloaded and altered to appear on the Art Bell website as an April Fool's joke.
So they knew all about it here.
Yes.
Your name appears as the administrative contact to the Art Bell page.
Please be aware, regardless of intention or the appearance of a disclaimer, misuse of the FBI name and or seal without authorization of the FBI is punishable by law.
Apparently I should have asked permission.
Although the aforementioned joke can no longer be reached via the homepage, it is accessible at and they give the direct address.
And should be removed immediately to avoid further contact from the FBI.
And they say they close with the U.S.
Attorney's Office, San Diego, has also been appraised of this matter, apprised of this matter.
And it's signed by a special agent in charge.
So, my plan was, okay, I will remove the April Fool's joke page and I will post their letter because now I no longer have to take it from their website.
I actually posted the one they sent me.
So, in other words, that letter is up there now for all to see.
Yes, it is.
Since they've officially sent it to me, I can certainly post that up on the website.
It's an official use of their logo.
That's true, isn't it?
Now the real logo's up there.
Now the real logo's up there, that's right.
By the way, I need to say hi to the people in the chat room here that I'm with.
They don't believe it's me.
Really?
I have that problem all the time.
I go into chat rooms and nobody ever believes it's me.
I'll say hello to Silkwood.
She's been a real helper in the chat room for me.
We do have some chat room up on the web page.
It does require the Java type browser.
We have a bulletin board service up there, which also does work with web TV, by the way.
Just keep trying to grow and getting bigger and bigger.
Got into a little bit of trouble, but we'll get by.
Trouble's my middle name and I know yours now too.
Oh, it was lots of fun.
Was there ever a moment when you thought a couple guys in suits with badges would show up and cart you off to someplace?
Well, actually I didn't believe it for a while because they went and contacted Myron in San Diego and I'm here in Arizona and I'm the official webmaster.
I would have at least expected an email to me or a phone call to me, but they kind of just cut to the official administrative name and sent it that way.
When I got this email from them telling me what they had said, I had a hard time believing it.
I'm going, you've got to be kidding!
Well, I guess, you know, it's kind of like this radio program, so large now, and so is the website, that anything you do brings a ton of comment.
Now, we've had, I think, about 2.6 million visitors to the main page website since the beginning of the year.
That's right.
So, a lot of people are there, and any little tiny thing you do is magnified.
And when you do a big thing, it's really magnified.
Yes, I'm learning the power of the webpage.
It's reaching lots of people and I have to be very careful what we do and say.
I like to post what's out there and let people go and see what's there.
Okay, we should tell everybody, it has become so large, the website.
That we had to finally install a search engine and that is there.
In other words, if you want to find something, this is really a good piece of advice to give because I get so much email saying, where is this?
Where is that?
I look for it.
I can't find it.
There's a place on the website where you can go and just enter a word or two and it will go find what you're after, right?
That's correct.
Right.
Yeah, we have a lot of different pages.
We broke it up into smaller chunks, and we tried to list an index of all of the pages on the home page.
So if you scroll down the home page, you'll get an idea of all the different pages we have.
But within each one of those pages, there's lots of material on them, and you may not know which page I put something on after I've had it on the website for a little while.
Because initially, when we get new things, we put them up on the top of the page saying, here are the new items.
So temporarily for the first week or so you can go to the new stuff immediately by clicking
on them.
But after a while they are not new anymore and they find a permanent home on a page somewhere
and if you want to come back at a later time, you are not sure where it was, you can type
in a couple of words or phrases or something and let it do the searching and it will come
back and give you a list of all of the pages that have those particular words on them and
give you the hot links to them.
So then all you've got to do is kind of look at the right one.
It gives you a little sampling of the text that's on those pages, and then you can click the one that you think it is, and it'll take you right to the page.
All right.
I want to ask your opinion on something, because we're both hams, and hams over the years have somewhat looked askance at Seabeers.
And in that same sense, when Web TV came along, I thought, boy, this is going to be like the CB compared to Ham Radio.
But in fact, Web TV is quite incredible, isn't it?
Yes, I was very impressed with it.
I've looked at it at the local stores down here and went into the store and called up our web page and it looked rather good.
And I was real impressed.
It was very easy to use and fairly fast.
Yeah.
And I really like the way it looks.
Yeah.
I mean, before, of course, I advertised anything, they sent it to me.
So I've got Web TV here, and gosh, it's using a 33.6 modem.
It connects incredibly quickly.
It allows me real audio, so you can listen to archive shows, that kind of thing.
And, uh, it's really all there.
Now, obviously you do get more with a computer, uh, with storage, but WebTV is extremely impressive.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, even as a secondary access to the net, it would still be worthwhile to have it, even if you had a computer.
It does work very well.
The pictures come up nice.
All the links get highlighted in a square box.
You sequence down.
You know exactly where you're going.
You click a button.
When you click on the images, it automatically centers them up on the screen.
I think they've done a real nice job with it.
So do I. I'm very impressed.
And for somebody who's not into computers, and that takes a little while.
There's a real love-hate relationship between computers and human beings, at least for me.
Web TV is so simple.
I think what it'll do is it'll get people involved in the net to the point where they're going to save their pennies and buy a real computer in the end.
You think so?
Yeah.
I think, you know, it'll get them online cheap enough and get them used to it and they'll like it and then if they want more capabilities they'll They'll upgrade it, I'm sure.
For a lot of people, it may be enough, because, I mean, there's, on the one I marketed, for example, there's a printer port, and you can be able to attach a color printer to it.
Yeah, that's very nice being able to print it, because I don't think you can save any of the files, but you can go to a web page and print it out on paper.
That's what a lot of people do.
I should know, I had a lot of complaints about printing on our web page, if you recall.
Do you want to tell people why that is and how they can cure it?
Because we changed the background color to a black background on white because somebody I know prefers that.
That's me.
I like the black background.
Yeah, so I picked the color scheme that I had seen at another website and picked the colors in the background and so it looks kind of nice.
But when you print it on a color printer or a printer that wants to Even if it is a black and white monochrome printer that
wants to print approximately the colors, it wants to print all of the black letters on
paper and so sometimes you will get an all black page and that is kind of a wasteful of ink.
On the other hand, if a printer situation is set up that prints the text only and ignores
the background, well we have white letters on black background.
When you print white letters on white paper in your printer, you don't see nothing.
And that is the problem.
They don't print the black background, but they print the white letters.
So there is a way to cure it then?
There is a couple ways to cure it.
Microsoft Internet Explorer seems to be smart enough in most cases to ignore the white color
and go ahead and print it in black or you can configure it that way. In Netscape there
are some parameters in some of the setup that you can tell it to print all text in black
and ignore the colors. So I have a browser printing tips page on our website that goes
through the step-by-step instructions on how to configure your browser to be able to print
it correctly.
Good.
It's good to say that because I'm the same way.
I get a new little toy, handheld scanner, something like that, and I will sit there for at least two hours I'm getting angry and frustrated that I can't do what I want to do before I pick up the manual and read.
Yeah, I have a Frequently Asked Questions page also up there that I'm constantly referring people to.
It's a link at the bottom of every page, FAQ, and if they click on that they can get a lot of answers about the website and real audio and transcripts and all the typical questions I get.
You know, one thing you could do for me, my biggest complaint I get is the guest lineup.
I'd like you to tell them why I don't have a guest lineup for next week.
The reason he doesn't is because I haven't given it to him because I don't know who's going to be on.
Sometimes I know ahead of time who I'm going to schedule.
A lot of times I don't know until an hour before the program whether I'm going to have somebody on, whether I want to have somebody on.
In other words, I don't know so Keith can't know.
And that also applies to a lot of things.
In fact, even most of the things involve on the website.
For example, I'll get up in the evening, peruse my email,
find something absolutely incredible, send it to Keith about 30 minutes before airtime,
and he's in a scramble to get it up there just before airtime.
I would say that occurs about 70% of the time, wouldn't you?
Yes, if there's a phone call here between 10 and 11, it's generally you.
And generally, you have been in a state where you stay up during the program.
Well, yeah, my work schedule previous to even getting involved with the web page was working late into the night as a lot of programmers like to do, and so that's how I picked up listening to you, and so it just kind of naturally developed and evolved over time, and so I'm up anyway, and now that we're doing the web page, I stay up the whole duration of the show the best I can.
I now tape record the entire show on video tape.
I have those instructions on the webpage so that if there's any particular excerpt or special call or special event that happens, I can go back through my tape recording and grab it and convert it to real audio and put it on the website.
For example, the Area 51 call and when good old JC calls and things like that.
It's kind of nice to go back and grab those segments and put them up on the website.
All right.
When we come back from the bottom of the hour, I have one more thing that I want to address that will keep us from having consistent headaches, and that is real audio.
In other words, the archived programs or the ability to listen to the show live on the Internet.
A lot of people think That we are the ones who are in control of that, and I would like to tell the story so they know what's going on.
I'll explain that when we get back.
And then we will take some calls for Keith Rowland.
So, if you have any questions for the master of the web, Keith Rowland, call now.
I'm Art Bell, and from the high desert, you're listening to ZBC.
I'm Art Bell, and from the high desert, you're listening to ZBC.
ZBC.
Art Bell is taking calls on the wild card lines.
That's 702-727-1295.
First-time callers can reach Art Bell at 702-727-1222.
702-727-1222.
Now, here again, Art Bell.
702-727-1295. First time callers can reach Art Bell at 702-727-1222.
702-727-1222. Now, here again, Art Bell.
All right, coming shortly, the FBI's favorite webmaster, Keith Roland, from Mesa, Arizona,
If you have questions for Keith, come now.
We're going to discuss real audio here in a moment and answer a few questions about that that will prevent endless email.
Maybe.
High five.
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America's trusted name in private hard assets.
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Just smart.
That's right.
All right.
Back now to Keith Rowland and subject real audio.
What's called real audio, which allows you to listen to my program live on the Internet worldwide.
Or even listen to archived shows.
Now, there's a big misunderstanding about who provides real audio and why, when something goes wrong, we can't respond to complaints.
Keith?
Hi there.
Hi.
Well, a couple, let's get some of the terminology, I guess, out of the way.
RealAudio is a software program that you can download into your web browser, your computer, and allow you to listen to streams of audio coming over your modem and listen to them on your sound card.
Right.
A company called AudioNet has taken that technology, purchased the server software, They have gone out and recruited different sources of
material and provide them on the net.
They are like a big provider of programming.
They use the real audio technology and they provide programming.
They have gone and recruited different radio stations from talk to country to rock and
roll and put them on the net.
They have special programs.
They even have some internet only programs that are available.
have some internet only programs that are available.
It is a really nice way to have access to programming all over the country and all over
So it's a really nice way to have access to programming all over the country and all over
the world without having to be trying to tune it in on your radio.
the world without having to be trying to tune it in on your radio.
So what happened about, oh gosh, it must have been a year ago, several of the radio stations
What happened about a year ago, several of the radio put them on the net, they have special programs, they even
that you were carried on were also on the AudioNet system.
And so if you went to the AudioNet site, you could listen to a certain radio station who
was carrying you and we could hear you.
So if you didn't have in your own town, you could pick it up that way.
Well as that popularity grew and grew, AudioNet decided, well, the bandwidth of the signals
coming from these radio stations was just not high enough to handle the amount of users.
And so probably six months ago, they decided to get their own satellite network feed and
provide a direct Art Bell circuit right there on the AudioNet site.
So, in other words, it comes direct to Dallas.
They're in Dallas, I believe, by satellite, and they couple it directly in.
Exactly.
They put it right on their server and right to the internet from the network feed rather
than going through a particular server or through a particular radio station.
They also increased the bandwidth and dedicated some servers just for us because as it turns
out I think the Art Bell program is the number one listen to AudioNet program on their whole
system.
The arrangement is for those who don't know is AudioNet does that free of charge to us
and we don't pay them for the service and they don't pay us for the programming.
Right.
A lot of the things on the internet is kind of a share and share alike type situation.
They will take the programming and put it on the internet for us and we have that ability to spread your program to people that don't get it.
Right.
In return, they have a business to operate and they want to sell advertising on their website and they'll generate their revenue through people visiting their website and looking at their ads and so on.
On our website, which is also sponsor driven and is paid for solely by the advertising
on the webpage, we want people to come to our webpage and look at our ads.
Now the arrangement that we have with AudioNet is such that we don't have or have agreed
not to have a direct link to the actual feed itself.
We've agreed to have our page link to their page and then once you're on their page you
can then link and look and listen to a show in the archive or the real feed.
In turn, they don't put descriptions of all the programs on their page, they'll have
People have to come back to our page to look at the descriptions to figure out which program you want to look at.
So we kind of have a webmaster's agreement that we're letting people go to both websites and we're maximizing the exposure of both websites.
So we're helping each other out.
It's a great arrangement.
Right, and I really am thankful for what they do.
It's very amazing that they can do what they do and provide that service for the people on the internet.
Now occasionally, with all technical things, and this is a brand new technology, they will, for some reason or another, miss a program or a part of a program or something, and when that happens, It's like the world comes crashing in on you, I know, and certainly on me, email-wise, and they say, how can you let this happen?
Yes.
Well, there's a crew of people that work at AudioNet throughout the night that are in charge of taking care of the program, but from time to time, various glitches do occur.
I'm sure people have had their computers hang and crash in the past themselves.
The same is true in big time internet servers.
They do have their glitches from time to time, too.
And occasionally somebody will either forget to throw the switch, or a hard drive might crash, or the hard drive fills up at times.
Such is the nature of coverage.
A variety of things can happen, and it's strictly an honest mistake that will happen from time to time.
And considering the number of programs that do get done correctly, I think the number of mistakes are rather small and they should be commended for what they are doing.
You're absolutely right.
By the way, I've also noticed that whenever a program is missed, everybody who writes email accuses either Audionet or us of intentionally, conspiratorially eliminating a specific program because of some nefarious reason.
I'm here to say that I have not received any FBI letters to tell us to remove a certain Audionet program.
I want to say one thing before we get to the phones.
I want to thank everybody who provides the material for the webpage.
I could not do this all myself.
I have lots of people out there who are scavenging around the internet and find a lot of these
links and web pages and send them to me.
Then I review them and put them up on the site.
I have a lot of people send us images and pictures, as you know, and we get them and
put them up on the website.
So there is a lot of work being done by the listeners out there who are finding a lot
of these things and provide them to me.
I can't respond to every one of them in email, but I hope they appreciate the fact that I
do appreciate that they are doing that and I do put the information up on the site when
I can.
We have some great logos that people have submitted in.
We have some great artwork up on the page.
The cat pictures are just great stuff and the listeners are just really impressed.
They also seem to favor the Darwin Award page heavily.
That seems to be a popular one, yes.
Alright, let's take some listener questions.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Keith Rowland in Mesa, Arizona.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you for taking my call, Art.
Hi, Keith.
Hello there.
I have a quick question.
I emailed you about a month ago.
I'm a regular visitor to the Art Bell website, and I wanted to make use of his chat rooms, but you need a password, and I need to get it from you.
And then I recently emailed you again to get password requests, and haven't heard back from you yet.
Okay, this is a problem that comes up from time to time.
Right now, our bulletin board system and our chat rooms are by registration only.
It is a free registration, it's just that we want to know who you are and an email address to contact you.
And that goes into the little database and we save that.
We have a little form on the webpage that you just fill out and put in your name and email address and click it and it emails it directly to me.
Now, I will take that name and I'll register it and then I have to send back through email your password that I assigned you.
If by any chance that the email address you've given me is bad, wrong, goes to the wrong place, I can't contact it, then I can never get back in touch with you to give you that password.
And then you'll come along a couple weeks later and send me another request and I'll say, okay, fine.
I go into there, I'll look you up, I say, oh, you're already registered.
I'll try to send you back another note saying, You're already registered or somebody else has your same name.
You may have registered before, but your email address was bad and I could not get in touch with you.
But I have processed all, I generally try to process all of the registrations every day.
And so if you don't hear anything back in a day or two, double check your return address that you're entering in and make sure it's a working address.
All right.
And again, the reason we have a registration system is because in chat rooms, people already know it.
There is a small group of people like in a classroom when you're a kid.
One kid can disrupt an entire class and we try to keep the language relatively clean
and anything goes pretty much, but we don't want people intentionally disrupting an otherwise
intelligent chat.
Is that about right?
That's about right.
There are plenty of other places on the internet that you can be totally anonymous and say
whatever you want.
There is the Usenet system that you can post anything you want.
There is IRC that is pretty much open to anything you want to do.
So what we are trying to do is establish a separate section on the webpage that and not
be afraid of getting attacked or having bad language on the bulletin board and also in
the chat rooms if people are personally attacking people or being nasty or using bad language
we want to be able to eject them from the system and they are not welcome back.
Put simply, we are trying to make it a reflection of what we do on the program.
Pretty much.
Sure.
Art lets anything go on the air and then why don't you let anything go?
And I tell him that's correct.
Nobody's going to get on the radio and just start personally cutting down somebody or start throwing around swear words or going ad nauseum.
That's one topic.
That's right.
There is some filtering that goes on and so it's just, you know, it's just simply mind your manners and you're welcome.
That's all.
Yeah, that's it.
Good.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Where are you calling from, please?
Yeah, this is Wayne in Austin.
Hi, Wayne.
Hi, Art and Keith.
I just wanted to say that I visit the website almost every day, and I wanted to thank you for putting the link up for the Austin Chat Club.
If anybody wants to attend our next meeting, they can go to that link and click on it and find out when our next meeting is, or if they're in the Austin area, they can call 603-CHAT.
I wanted to mention that I happen to have WebTV myself.
And I have a 52-inch color TV, so it's pretty convenient for that.
And being a programmer, I can verify that they did a really outstanding job.
Boy, they really did.
I mean, it's just amazing how good web TV is.
All right, well, thank you very much, and I appreciate the call.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi.
Hi, how you doing?
Okay, where are you, sir?
I'm going to Plains of Maryland.
I don't claim to be the most artful webmaster in the world, pun intended, but I'm there and I try to keep it updated the best I can.
I love how you keep the web page up.
Thank you very much.
I don't claim to be the most artful webmaster in the world, pun intended, but I am there
and I try to keep it updated the best I can.
I try to keep it simple and easy to get around in.
I also try to make sure that even people with lesser capable browsers can still get to the
the information and be able to view the website.
I try not to put a whole lot of bells and whistles on there just for the sake of bells and whistles.
I get a lot of email that people appreciate that.
And we have to make it fast to load.
We have a lot of users, so we don't try to waste a whole bunch of bandwidth on needless fancy stuff.
But we try to make it practical and easy to get around as we can.
Pretty much up to date.
All right, my friend.
Thank you very much.
West of the Rockies.
You're on the air with Keith Roland.
Good morning.
Hi there.
Hi.
I have a question for Keith about the chat rooms.
All right.
A lot of people I know that were in the old parachat rooms were sort of complaining about you putting a password system.
Really?
We just covered that.
I'm glad we have done it.
This is Art saying that.
We had intended all along, when we first put out, to have it be a registered system.
It's just that the Parachat software was very costly to do that, and we found an alternative one, but it was always intended to do that.
I mean, the BBS system went on the website, and it was a registered system.
You know, if we had a lot of trouble in the parachat room, you may not have seen it, but I would say on a daily basis we had people coming in there and being vulgar and attacking people, and that's just something that we don't want in our chat room.
And there's plenty of other chat rooms on the internet that you can do that.
This one's just not going to be one of them.
Now, when you register for the chat room, Only I know your name and your email address.
You can still go into the chat room, you can pick whatever alias name you want, whatever nickname you want, and nobody can figure out who you are.
In fact, you can't even track down their IP address like you could in Parachat.
So, our room is in fact more anonymous than the Parachat system, yet I have the ability to kick out any troublemakers, and that's all I want to do.
You know, again, you mind your manners, you're welcome to come in there as often as you want.
Well, unfortunately, while you were sort of separating the wheat from the chaff, as it were, a lot of the wheat went with the chaff.
And some people have sort of accused of being a quote-unquote fascist in those... Well, look, they accuse me of being fascist, too.
That's the way it is.
There are certain... Look, I'm no Howard Stern.
I don't want that kind of material on the air, and I don't think that kind of material has to be on the air.
Uh, for the show to be popular.
In fact, I have now proven that.
And it's exactly the same in the chat rooms.
Uh, there can be conversations.
It can be hot and lively without using vulgar language.
And, um, we intend for it to be a place like that.
And you can call it fascism if you want.
Uh, but, um, as Keith pointed out, you can go to, um, lots of, uh, Usenet locations and be as vulgar as you want.
But you're not going to be doing it That's pretty much it.
Now, if I have mistakenly banned someone from the room who was misrepresented somehow, I would certainly be listened to by any argument and reinstate somebody.
Generally, when people use different names and come and impersonate other people, sometimes you mistake people, and so there's a lot of people in there.
And so I apologize if somebody got booted out that wasn't worthy of that, but I'll try to make amends where I can.
Is that like the argument against the death penalty?
Let's have a stay of execution.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Keith Rowland, hi.
Hi, this is Adam.
Hi Adam, turn your radio off.
Okay.
And tell us where you are.
Orange County.
Orange County, alright.
I also have a web creation company with my friends, and we make sites and stuff.
And uh, the printing problem, there's like, I have a solution to that.
Uh, what you should just do is highlight the text and just copy and paste it into like a Word uh, it's like a notepad and just print it out there.
Copy and paste into a word processor.
Yeah, just highlight the text.
Yeah, you can, anything that's on your web browser screen, you can highlight it with your mouse and, you know, cut, or copy, and then call up any one of your favorite editors or word processing programs, paste it in it, and then use that program to print it.
That's right.
It takes a little more know-how.
A little more time, you know, a little more to do.
Sure.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Good morning.
Oh, hi.
Good morning.
This is Dan.
Yeah, good to talk to you.
Quite a job you're doing.
I want to say I really appreciate Keith and what he has done.
Hi Dan, it's the first time we have spoken.
Oh yes.
A lot of email between us but good to hear you.
Yeah, good to hear, good to talk to you.
Quite a job you are doing.
I really like your website.
We just recently put a chat club page up on our website to start listing all the chat clubs that will be forming.
Dan started up the original Denver chat club page and gathered some of the information.
So now we've decided that we'll give him a home on our page and he can send us the information regarding the different chat clubs.
He can concentrate on the stuff that's happening in Denver and all the other webmasters can concentrate on what's happening in their different cities and you'll be able to branch off to all these different chat clubs and see what's going on.
Oh, it's gone crackers.
Right, we're getting a lot of email and a lot of mail and a lot of calls.
A lot of people are setting up chat clubs around the country.
It's amazing.
And a lot of inquiries from outside the country too.
Very, very much.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hello.
Well, hello, Art Bell.
How are you today?
Fine.
Where are you?
I am in Medina County, Ohio.
That's Chippewa Lake.
All right.
Keith, how are you doing?
Very good.
Boy, it's wonderful to get through.
I can't hardly believe that.
All right.
I'm listening and I hear about this WebTV concern.
I'm interested in the applications of this Uh, what do you call the real talk, the uh... Web TV, or at least the one I am marketing, gives you real audio.
Real audio?
Real audio.
In other words, you can receive my program.
Right.
Now, can you do that on the Web TV?
Yes.
Yes, that's what I just said.
Okay, now if you did that on Web TV, then you could take that down, you could download that or go to VCR then.
Sure.
Record your program.
Absolutely.
Oh boy, that's interesting.
I think somebody told me that if you are not touching any keys on the keyboard or something after a certain period of time, it may time out on you.
So you might have to occasionally do something on the unit.
But pretty much it calls up a little Real Audio window and you can access the page.
Listen, we're coming to the top of the hour.
You really ought to give us 30 more minutes for calls.
These people really want to talk to you.
Okay.
Let's see if we can do a fast one.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Roland.
Hi.
Hey, I want to ask about the malfunction with the real audio server.
You touched on it earlier, but I noticed that Last November, when you were talking about Hale-Bopp, the whole month went away.
Yeah, here we go.
That is a really quick answer.
The hard drive that contained those particular programs crashed.
They did not have a backup, and they could not recover them.
Can I ask, Art, do you back up any of your shows?
We back up all of the shows, sir, and you can get them on tape, of course.
We give out an order number for that, so you can still get any of those November shows on tape.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
Alright, Keith Roland is my guest.
We're talking about the website.
We'll be right back.
AM1500.
Go, Art Bell.
West of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033.
1-800-825-5033.
This is the CBC Radio Network.
It sure is.
8255 1-800-618-8255 East of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033 1-800-825-5033 This is the CBC Radio Network.
It sure is. My guest is my webmaster, Keith Rowland, the FBI's favorite webmaster.
If you have any questions about the Internet, specifically our website,
Or computers in general, he's your guy.
Keith Rowland, back in a moment.
4627, in the pane now.
And by the way, tell him Art Bell told you to call.
1-800-557-4627.
Alright, here is a quick message or question for Keith by email.
Art, I have a suggestion for Keith with regard to an addition to the website.
No, I do not know exactly how you'd feel about it, Art.
I think it'd be great if you would allow a real-time feel of a video image that would refresh at three to four minutes.
The image could include your studio and allow those of us who are curious to see just how you do what you do.
And that's a good question.
Keith, what's going on?
Yeah, well, we've been talking about that for several months now, haven't we?
Yes.
Yeah, we want to do that.
There are several things that had to come into play before we could do that.
We needed to have our web server increased in bandwidth capability, which we've done.
We needed to get your phone connection in Pahrump improved to the point where it was reliable.
The last step is to find the appropriate piece of software to run over there at your computer
to continuously send images up to our web server and then we will be able to do that.
So in other words that would mean people would be able to go up to the website and see a
Yeah, maybe a 5 to 15 second, 30 second delayed image of what's going on over there.
Sure, why not?
Alright.
So it is in the works, folks.
We're just a little slow getting some other things going first.
Alright.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi.
Hi, I have two questions.
Alright, where are you, by the way?
Orange County.
Okay.
First question, what HTML editor do you use on your page?
I use Hot Metal Proof.
Call us toll-free at 1-800-618-8255.
Well, I don't have too many complaints.
Well, you can get front pages like 57 times better.
Well, everybody's... I have a feeling that the design of a page is in the design of the webmaster, not necessarily the editor.
You can make your webpage look whatever you want to look like using whatever editor you want.
That's right.
Well, that's all you computer people.
What other questions do you have?
None.
East of the Rockies, that's right, just like in the job room.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi, Art.
Hello.
Keith, I was just wondering as far as Computer technology has increased.
How much farther do you think it will continue to increase?
How much what?
How much farther do you think computer technology will increase?
Well, I'll tell you, you know, when I had my four megahertz PC, I thought we'll never have a hundred megahertz chip.
So I don't know.
It's going to keep going, I suppose.
I keep saying that the hardware is more than capable of doing the job.
And it's a matter of writing the appropriate software.
Even a couple of years ago when Pentium 75s and 100s were coming out.
The hardware was plenty up for the chore.
We needed to get some people to write some good software.
And I think now that the platforms are well, that we'll get some inventive people to write some nifty software.
And we've seen some of that stuff on the internet with, you know, the video telephone stuff.
Sure.
Things like that.
So it's all in the creativity of the software that really makes the computers play.
And I think the hardware is more than up for the job.
All right.
First time caller on the line.
You're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Hi, Keith.
Thanks for taking my call.
I'm looking forward to seeing the video update.
That'll be great.
Where are you?
I'm calling from New Orleans.
New Orleans.
And, in fact, you might have heard about the Bourbon Street camera we have down here.
Oh, yes.
I have that bookmarked and check it out all the time.
My question is about recording off of real audio.
Uh-huh.
In fact, I've got it up and running now, and it streams great.
It sounds wonderful, but it won't let me record.
There's recently, as of maybe a week ago or a few days ago, somebody gave me some instructions on how you can do it and it's up on the web page.
Oh, that's been useful.
You basically bring up the player, and then if you have the encoder, you can encode it back onto your local hard drive.
Oh, okay.
So you're using the player to play it, and another encoder to record it back on your hard drive in a real audio format.
Uh-huh.
Check it out.
Click stream to stream.
All right.
Thank you very much.
That was a good question.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Keith Roland.
Hi.
Hi.
This is Carrie from Seattle.
Hi there, Carrie.
I need to know how I can get in on the chat line because I go to the library to use their
computer because my computers are dead.
I don't have an email address anymore.
I realize that you guys are asking for one, but what about us people who don't have a
computer and we'd like to get in the chat rooms too?
Yeah, I don't have a fast answer for that and I understand the situation.
Can't you make a page, like, say, put in your address and phone number and all that, and you'll either snail mail us a password?
You know, that may be what I could do.
The trick is getting the password back to you.
I suppose.
I don't know if you have a fax number or something like that.
It's a very time consuming... Not unless I use my kid's school fax.
Alright, if people want to do that, then they could send you a self-addressed stamped envelope.
Hey, there we go.
That would work.
Why don't we do that?
I would solve all the problems because then I would have an address for them and I know how to get in touch with them and I can send them back a password.
Oh, that's a good idea.
Can you put up an address they can send that to?
Sure.
Okay, good idea.
I'll make a note.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi.
Yes, Art.
I have a quick question for you.
Sure.
You're real live, not audio, but video?
Yes.
With MMX technology and computers that are coming out here, is that going to be something in the future that you might be getting?
Yes, we just addressed that.
We're working on that.
How far do you think we might be from that, Keith?
Uh, it's a matter of just cleaning some projects off the table here and doing some research into the software.
Let me just, I'll specify, tell everybody what I'm looking for and somebody can probably send me an email tonight and tell me where to find it.
Alright.
What we need is a piece of software that will run on Art's Windows 95 machine.
That will just snap an image, grab an image and save it to a GIF file or a JPEG and upload it to a site through FTP or some kind of a connection to our website and just have it sit there and like every 30 seconds grab an image and upload it, grab an image and upload it.
And then what we'll do on the website is have a page that when you go to it, it will grab the latest image and display it on your screen.
And then if you want an update, you click it again and you'll get an update.
You click it again, you get an update.
And that is the best way to save bandwidth because a lot of these technologies, you can
get nice, wonderful streaming audio like those internet cams that come out there and you
click on them and you've got this continuous data feed of video.
And that's wonderful when you've only got three or four people going to a particular
site and looking at a camera.
But as you know, with the popularity of our website, when we say we have real live video
on the site and 20,000 people go to the site to look at it, it's just going to suck all
the bandwidth out of the internet.
So boom.
Right, so we have to think of a practical way of doing it that doesn't consume a lot of bandwidth and is still, you know, kind of nice to see.
We're looking for some software to reside there at your end.
To upload it to the site, because you're in Pahrump, the web server's in Phoenix, I'm in Mesa, so it all has to work over the internet and not tie up too much bandwidth.
All right, so what you need is a piece of software that will accomplish that.
If somebody out there has it, they could email you.
Just contact me through the web page and let me know where it is.
Well, why don't you give out your email address?
Well, yeah, it's linked on the web page, but it's KeithRKeithR at PrimeNet.com.
I have a few websites that I've built over the last few months.
In fact, I didn't know anything about it until last November, and I started doing it.
I have a few websites that I have built over the last few months. I didn't know anything
about it until last November and I started doing it. I would recommend it to any of your
listeners who have anything to share with the world, any kind of information, any kind
of thing they want to put up on a website, some information they would like to share.
The sheer fact that it really helps to learn how to manipulate all the files, to use the
program manager, to rename things, just knowing the little bits helped me feel a lot more
comfortable about doing things on my computer, just building the site, which I thought was
pretty fun. I find myself spending quite a bit of time building websites now. I have
done quite a few. I have even sponsored one of my sites on your page.
No? Well, it's a steep learning curve.
There's no question about that.
In fact, computers, period, represent a very steep learning curve when you jump into them for the first time.
So when you begin jumping into the world of website creation, Keith, is it going to get easier to create websites?
I mean, right now, you've got to deal with all kinds of HTML code and all those sorts of things.
There are some good software programs out there that are what's called WYSIWYG, where you can just come up with a screen and you can drop an image on it and write some text and move things around and draw some boxes and things like that, and it will automatically generate the HTML for you.
And then you can upload it to a site.
So it is getting easier and easier because the software is getting better and better.
The tricky part is having that software create HTML that works with all of the browsers.
We still have a little war going on between Microsoft and Netscape.
There are still some incompatibilities between them.
Things get tricky when you try to do a website that's compatible with the most amount of people.
You have to watch all the little details.
Some of these editors might not handle it that well.
The lower level you go in writing HTML, The more compatibility you can get.
But you can put up a webpage with a fairly simple program and get it published.
It may not be all that complicated, but it can be done.
And it's not going to be any more complex than calling up a nice word processor and typing stuff in.
Well, that's good.
The other thing is we are always staying on the very cutting edge, I like to think, on this program and on the website.
You know, we're always exploring new territory, and sometimes things go right, and sometimes they don't.
That's the way life is.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi.
I have two questions.
With the Netscape browser, can you, with the Web TV, use Pointcast Network to get a constant, consistent download of news, sports, and weather items?
I can tell you that, yes.
I have a lot of blind people that are using text-based web browsers.
I am a blind person and I can't see.
Is there any kind of system that the web TV has to turn text into voice synthesis?
Oh, that is a good question and I am not sure of the answer.
Do you know, Keith?
I have a lot of blind people that are using text-based web browsers.
One in particular is called Lynx.
And they appreciate the fact that my web page is well compatible with that.
So they will have their normal text-to-speech processor on their computer
and they can go to the website and browse through there and read all the material.
And it is very compatible for them.
So it can be done if the webpage is done right, and I choose to make sure that it is done right to handle that.
Good.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi.
No, you're not.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Good morning.
Oh, Keith is still on.
Ah, yes he is.
Alright, I just wanted to update on Bob Dylan.
Alright, well, you'll have to call after Keith is off.
The update is he's, as far as I know, he's still alive.
It is a fungal infection, not a virus.
But as far as I know, he's still alive.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi.
Hey Art Bell.
Hi.
I've been trying to get you for eight weeks, day and night.
Well, you've got me, and you've got Keith.
Well, I just need you.
Well, then you'll have to call, I'm afraid, after Keith is off, which will be about ten minutes.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
And another eight weeks.
Yeah, that's right.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi.
Oh, good evening.
How you doing?
Fine.
Head and answer, first of all, for the guest that called regarding getting a hold of a password, although she doesn't have an email account.
Right.
There are a couple of free email sites on the web.
It's a web interface to pick up your mail.
Yeah, but see... Let me explain that one.
The problem with that is right now is that anybody can go to those and use any name they want and get their mail.
And then when they can register with our system, abuse it all they want, we boot off them, they can go back
to one of these email services, use a different name, get a different address and register
again, and they can just keep irritating and irritating and irritating me, and there's no
security in that method.
So currently I'm not allowing email addresses that are aliased like that because basically
you don't have to be a real person when you join them. So in fact, we don't know who you are either.
And again, we want this to be a place regarding the chat rooms and the BBS and the site itself
where families can go, where children even can go without having to see and hear
a lot of things that are elsewhere on the internet.
There's too much smut and bad sites out there now.
It would be nice to have a place where you don't have to be afraid to go to the Arkansas website.
Exactly.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Keith Rowland.
Hi.
Hello, first time caller.
I have a question about email security.
Alright, where are you?
Evansville, Indiana.
I think we just recently signed up with you.
Oh, okay.
And I wondered, how secure is it for users?
As far as, I had posted to a news group, and in the process of copy text, doing copy text, they appear to have changed my email defaults.
Interesting.
I'm not sure I understand the problem now.
Well, I thought with that, see I'm a web TV user, and I've been very happy with the system.
And now I can exactly figure out what happened.
It's a good question.
various hacker buddies, they had said that email in and of itself was not necessarily
secure and that if someone could say figure out your code in general, they could even
go into your email and check it.
Alright, it's a good question.
Security on the net as...
Yeah, there is a lot of impersonations that can go on in the net.
She mentioned Usenet, the news groups, and that's separate from email.
But when you set up your email program and you set up your newsreader program, you program your name and your address in it.
And so anybody can program any name and any address into their email program and into their newsreader program and go to these news sites or send email to people and actually look like they're somebody else.
It's been done to me countless times.
and the information and the tracking header information that comes along with a piece
of email you can kind of backtrack and figure out where it came from.
But there is a lot of impersonations that can go on.
Now if you post something to a news group somebody can get your email address and then
go and use that and post on the same news group and impersonate you.
It's been done to me countless times.
I am impersonated in chat rooms, email messages, Usenet messages, and the same thing has occurred
to you hasn't it?
Yeah, it runs amok.
Well, Keith, I want to thank you publicly for all you do, because you're there, you know, it's kind of a symbiotic relationship between the radio program and the website, and that's only possible because of your constant You're very welcome.
It's a pleasure to do it.
It's a pleasure to work with you.
something we can instantly get it up there for zillions of people to see and I really
do want to thank you for that.
You're very welcome.
It's a pleasure to do it and it's a pleasure to work with you.
I think we get along just fine and it's been real nice being able to do that.
It does work together real well on the radio.
Thank you for coming and answering many questions that many have been answering, asking.
I'm sure I'll be talking to you later.
Take care, Keith.
OK, good night.
All right, that's Keith Rowland.
He's my webmaster.
And let me tell you, we just answered a lot of questions for a lot of people and probably created others.
Anyway, there it is.
He's the guy who does what he does.
That magic up on the net.
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