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May 1, 2005 - Art Bell
02:55:08
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Peter Cochrane - Future Technology
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From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good
morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's prolific time zones, every
single one of them covered by this radio program, Coast Coast AM.
I'm Art Bell, honored, and it is indeed my pleasure to be carrying you through the weekend.
And what a night it's going to be, coming up in the next hour, Peter Cochran and some uncommon Since we'll talk more about that on my webcam tonight is a shot of me at 13 years old 13 years of age and I just started thinking about this a little bit tonight I am going to repeat something about my big my hobby all my life since well since then I mean go look at that photograph that I was 13 and I will be 60 years of age in June so I just computed
That I have been a continuously licensed ham radio operator since I was 13, or almost 47 years.
I remember how I used to look up to old-timers when I was, well, when I was liking that picture there.
And now I is one.
So I've been around for a while.
At any rate, to repeat what I did last night, and I know this is somewhat of a narrow cast, it's for a lot of you ham radio operators out there.
And by the way, for a lot of you who would like to become ham radio operators, there is the American Radio Relay League.
And you can contact them and they will help you find a local club or something like that.
It's the very same organization I'm about to chat about a little bit here in a way.
There's been this giant advance in ham radio.
And by the way, through the years, all the years, ham radio has led the way.
Ham radio, you might want to know, ham operators were the first broadcasters, down on the broadcast band.
Did you know that?
The very same AM broadcast band you're probably listening to right now.
The hams were there first, because the government thought it was worthless territory, you know, worthless bandwidth.
But it wasn't.
And we proved it.
And when we proved it, they took it away.
And now you have the AM radio band.
And we have been cast into the shorter waves that they thought, again, were no good.
But the Hams, again, proved they were good.
And that you could, in fact, talk around the world on the short waves.
And then, of course, came the influx of shortwave broadcasters and everything else.
So Hams have always been first.
And they're first again.
There's something new under the sun.
It's that simple.
Big advance!
It's a gigantic advance in single sideband communications.
We used to have AM, like you're listening to on the AM band, and they decided, well, that was too wide.
Still, some do it.
But they decided that was too wide and single sideband would be the way to go.
And frankly, single sideband has always sort of sounded like Donald Duck.
You've probably seen movies, you know?
They, a lot of times, will show ham operators in movies and it sounds a little like Donald Duck, right?
Single sideband.
Well, guess what?
It doesn't have to.
It can actually sound good without taking up anywhere near the bandwidth of the old AM signals.
Hams have found that it can sound really good.
It's called ESSB.
That's what it's called.
ESSB.
Better sideband, if you will.
And indeed, to just the average ear, and I'll ask you all, you're about to get a demonstration and you tell me which is easier to listen to, which would be less fatiguing to listen to if you had to listen to it for a long time.
Both of these demonstrations, just for clarity, are me, my voice, recorded by the same station who's located about 900 miles away from me in Salem, Oregon.
Ben recorded this.
The first is standard, old-fashioned, single sideband at 2.4 kHz.
And frankly, it sounds a little tinny.
A little Donald Duck-ish, right?
But then the second one you're going to hear is this new ESSB, which, oh, granted, takes up a tiny bit more bandwidth.
Not much.
A little.
But it sounds so much better.
In fact, so much better it may induce some people to want to get into ham radio.
Listen to the difference.
Here's... Again, this is recorded 900 miles away.
My voice.
Here it is, the way it usually is broadcast.
I think you get the idea, right?
TINY!
brief recording at standard bandwidth of 2.4 hello test one two three four once
again this is a recording at standard bandwidth generally used I think you
get the idea right tinny all right here now is the way it can sound good
evening this is w6 Oscar Bravo Bravo located in Perth Nevada where it is a
beautiful evening at about 65 degrees right now on a Saturday night
Absolutely wonderful, and I'm giving you a demonstration of what audio at 3.6 sounds like.
So there you have it.
From Pahrump, Nevada, I'm Art Bell, W6OBB.
There you have it, all right.
So that's how it can sound, that way or better.
That was 900 miles away.
So, it's quite remarkable, it's exciting, and it has the whole ham community kind of jumping up and down, to be honest with you.
In fact, it's such a big advance that already, as usual, Ham's developed it, but now the FCC just authorized the shortwave broadcasters, you know, like Radio Brazil or whatever, Radio Moscow, whatever.
They're gonna start using it now.
Because it works so well!
Plus, you know, the FCC in a recent ruling said that it would not regulate ham radio by bandwidth, so we hope it doesn't.
I mean, what we want to happen here is nothing.
Here's the bottom line.
Ham radio is, and has always been, and must always be, in my opinion, an experimental radio service.
Hello out there!
Experimental.
And so this American Radio Relay League proposal to regulate by bandwidth is going to handcuff amateur radio operators.
Come on, folks, we're experimental here!
If you regulate us like you do broadcast stations or two-way services, then we can't experiment!
It cuts off part of our ability to experiment.
We don't want that.
So well-intentioned as it may be, The American Radio Relay League, this proposal of the FCC to handcuff the hams by cutting off their bandwidth is crazy.
Absolutely crazy.
And I hope they think better of it and just don't even submit the proposal.
That would be best of all.
But if they do, I don't think the FCC is going to pad.
They've already said they wouldn't do it.
Anyway, anybody interested in knowing more about this?
Here's one more thing, just before I leave it.
You know, in this proposal, it sort of forgets we're experimental.
I mean, what if two or three years from now we come up with this really cool, new voice, digital mode, but uh-oh, it takes four kilohertz.
Then we would have shot ourselves in the foot!
So all we're asking for is...
No new law, no new regulation.
Leave things as they are.
Hem operators have always gone along just fine in the bands, and they're gentlemen, they'll find a way to do it here.
And additionally, we're not talking about much more bandwidth, but just a little more bandwidth, right?
Just a little more makes so much difference.
And what you heard was recorded on a standard ICOM receiver, 3.6.
And the difference between this and between this.
Good evening, this is W6Oscar.
There you go.
So that's the difference.
And it's striking.
And hopefully you can hear it on your AM or FM radios.
One last thing, for anybody wanting to know more about ESSB, the better way to do sideband, I would like you to go to a website.
It's NU9N.
That's Nancy United N-U-9-N-A-N-C-E dot com.
Very easy.
You can do it right now.
N-U-9-N-A-N-C-E.
HiFi Audio and just click on MPEG-3, MP3 and it's pull down menu and you can hear
different examples of how much better sideband really can sound. So again, like
so many things these days, all we're asking is that nothing happens.
No new draconian rules or regulations or any of that be imposed.
And so I hope the average person was able to bear with me through this, and I hope the hams out there who heard it get excited and give it a try.
And again, if you want to, and you want to learn more about what it takes, NU9N, nancyunited9nancy.com is the place to go.
We'll be right back.
and we'll explore the, well, not wonderful world news.
Thanks for...
Again and one last time, amateur radio operators, Hamzer experimenters,
Don't change that.
A lot of technical advances have come our way because of experimenters and people who would change that.
I don't know.
All right.
Let's see.
A car bomb.
Almost always, when you start the news, you start this way.
A car bomb obliterated a tent packed with mourners at the funeral of a Kurdish officer in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing 25, wounding more than 50 in the single deadliest attack since the insurgents started bearing down on Iraq's newly formed government last week.
It's been several really bloody days in a row in Iraq, and one wonders when and if this will ever end.
On what was supposed to be her wedding day, Jennifer Wilbanks wore not a white veil, but an orange towel over her head to prevent the media from taking her picture instead of being led down the aisle by her dad.
She's led by police to an airplane that flew the runway bride home.
Now, officials say the 32-year-old woman's cold feet may have gotten her in hot water on Sunday, Gwyneth.
County District Attorney Danny Porter vowed to look into whether she had violated the law by reporting a crime that didn't exist.
I guess she said she was, you know, kidnapped and couldn't get married as a result.
Cold feet.
Bad move.
South Korea on Monday played down the significance of a North Korean missile test the day before, saying it involved a short-range missile without nuclear capabilities, and warning against linking that issue to a dispute over the North's atomic ambitions.
North Korea apparently test-fired a missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday, raising new fears.
about Pyongyang's nuclear intentions just days after a U.S.
intelligence officer said the secretive Stalinist state could arm a missile with a nuclear warhead.
So they're still at it every now and then they fire one off into the Sea of Japan.
Massachusetts highest court hears a bid Monday to halt same-sex couples from marrying until voters can weigh in on the issue In the contentious matter of gays getting married, a lawsuit filed by C.J.
Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, claims the marriages interfere with voters' ability to participate in the debate on a proposed constitutional ban of same-sex marriages.
Around 5,000 same-sex couples have married in that state since the Supreme Court Issued its landmark 4-3 ruling, that was back in November of 2003, allowing gay marriages.
The ruling took effect May of 2004.
Now last night, I made a very brief comment about Social Security, and I said it was my understanding that the President said that we would begin to means test for Social Security.
And I said, well, you know, That makes it sound like a welfare program.
Oh, that brought plenty of response.
In fact, like this.
One of them, anyway.
Mr. Bell, you sounded like a totally ignorant jackass with your reference to President Bush's social security program.
It has nothing to do with welfare.
You might want to understand what you are talking about before you start your mouth flapping.
My 12-year-old son understands a plan better than you do.
Robert in Tulsa.
Robert, you should have your son call and he can explain it to all of us then.
You see, perhaps what I said was an exaggeration, but maybe not.
When they began Social Security, it was kind of as an insurance policy for your older years.
They used the word insurance.
That makes one think of insurance.
And, uh, to be sure, you pay into it all your life, right?
All your working life, you pay all of that money into Social Security, so... it's your money.
Right?
And now, they're thinking that when people get to retirement age, they should be means-tested, and, uh, if they don't need the money, they don't get it.
If they don't need it, then they give it to someone who needs it.
Well, that turns it, uh, well, if you take from those who have and give to those who do not, Then what is that?
Well, it's a welfare program.
By even a fairly strict definition, that fits, right?
I think that's a poor idea.
Actually, you see, there'd be plenty of money for everybody in their retirement years if the government hadn't been stealing from the fund all the time and putting it into the general fund with sort of an IOU that nobody ever intended to pay back.
Come on.
That's why they're having trouble with Social Security, because they stole money from it.
And then you get these cockamamie ideas about putting money into the stock market, people's retirement money into the stock market.
That's a great idea.
If you're an elected official, it's a great idea, because if it fails, then you can say, oh, gee, see, you made a poor investment.
And you're off the hook.
Otherwise, when the whole system collapses, will anybody think about all the money stolen from it by our government?
No.
They'll think, oh, you made a poor investment.
Your fault, sorry.
So anyway, maybe I don't understand Social Security properly, and perhaps this 12-year-old needs to get on here and explain it to us all.
Hey Art, how about you put out a request for an alternative energy, or a XPRIZE, when somebody comes up with some sort of free energy device?
Let me say this.
It's an interesting idea, but you don't need to have an X Prize for somebody who comes up with a free energy device.
If they come up with a free energy device, then they're going to be an instant billionaire.
And so they will indeed get their reward.
Some scientists say humans can read minds.
I thought this was most interesting.
Empathy allows us to feel the emotions of other people, to identify and understand their feelings, and motives and see things from their perspective.
How we generate empathy remains a subject of intense debate in cognitive science.
Some scientists now believe they may finally have discovered its root.
We're all essentially mind readers.
They say the idea has been slow to gain acceptance, but evidence is mounting.
In 1996, three neuroscientists were probing the brain of a monkey when they stumbled across a curious cluster of cells in the premotor cortex.
That would be an area of the brain responsible for planning movements.
Now listen carefully.
The cluster of cells fired not only when the monkey performed an action, But likewise, when the monkey saw the same action performed by someone else, the cells responded the same way, whether the monkey reached out to grasp a peanut or merely watched in envy as another monkey or human might have done so.
Because the cells reflected the actions that the monkey observed in others, the neuroscientists named them mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons.
Later experiments confirmed the existence of mirror neurons in humans and revealed another surprise.
In addition to mirroring actions, the cells reflected sensations and emotions as well.
Wow!
A mirror neuron suggests that we pretend to be in another person's mental shoes, according to a neuroscientist at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine.
With mere neurons, we do not have to pretend, we practically are in another person's mind.
So, in other words, we're on to the beginning of what might be mind reading.
And it may well be that... I mean, here's another example.
Science beginning to close in on what the rest of us have always, you know, considered to be Something freaky, parapsychological, off in the world of strange, and now all of a sudden science is beginning to go, aha!
There may be something to it.
Remember yesterday I read a report indicating oil could well go to $380 a barrel by the year 2015.
Several people computed, almost all of them coming up with roughly the same figure of $14.
It would be $14 or so At the pump, that's rough, but several people came up with that.
Oh, here's a good one.
A state senate committee approved a proposal Tuesday that would put serial numbers on every handgun bullet made or sold in the state of California.
The measure cleared the Senate Public Safety Committee on a 4-2 vote over opposition from manufacturers, firearms dealers, and sports shooters.
The technology exists to, listen to this, laser cut the bullets with a number that police could then use to trace who purchased bullets used in a specific crime.
Purchasers would pay up to half a cent per bullet, half a penny, for each one of your bullets to fully record the number.
Vendors would pay about 50 bucks a year, and of course Attorney General Bill Locklear says we're going to solve a lot of crimes if this becomes law.
So there you have it.
Bullets with numbers on them.
Traceable numbers.
I don't know.
I've heard of worse ideas, really.
If it hits a target, so what?
If it hits a person, you've got a way to trace it.
Mart Bell.
Sal of the river, you're stopping your whole everything.
A band is blowing Dixie, double ball time.
You feel alright when you hear the music ring.
Well now you step inside, but you don't see too many faces.
Coming in out of the rain, they hear the jazz go down.
Competition in a...
You choose.
Mississippi in the middle of the dry spell.
Jimmy Rodgers on the victrola up high.
Mamas dancing with baby on her shoulder.
The sun is setting like molasses in the sky.
Without the sun you know what happened to everything.
Always wanting more, it ain't your longing for.
Black velvet and that little boy's smile.
Black velvet with that soul summoned style.
A new religion that'll bring you to your knees.
Black velvet if you please.
We'll certainly try to have something interesting as the evening progresses.
thing as the evening progresses.
Now, the numbers are a little different on the weekend as we get ready to head into open lines, so please listen very carefully.
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
code 775-727-1295. The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art
Bell from East of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-4111.
From west of the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
International callers may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing Option 5 and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
800-893-0903. From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM
It is indeed top of the morning, everybody.
Listen, I've got a lot of requests to do it, so here it is one more time.
That website on ESSB is NU9N.com.
Very simple.
NU9N.com.
Nancy United 9.
dot com very simple
and you know i mean dot com fancy united nine
nancy one of their individual pay
three pulled down menu and listen to some of that stuff It's pretty cool, alright?
It will be right back.
All right, let's rock with Open Line, shall we?
First time caller line.
Seems like a good place to start.
You're on the air.
Hi.
Oh, hi.
It's Gary from Pomona, California.
Morning, Gary.
Love your show.
Thanks for all the intellectual stimulation.
Oh, well, thank you.
My question has to do with something you talked about you were very interested in as a ham operator, but hasn't come up lately.
It has to do with the broadband over power lines, which... Ah, BPL.
Yes, which my understanding is was approved by the FCC.
That's right.
It was approved by the FCC.
Now, it would threaten all of the shortwave bands.
You know, if the power lines were radiating broadband internet everywhere, it would threaten all of the shortwave bands.
No question about it.
Now, here's what's happened since it passed, essentially.
A lot of companies have done startups.
You know, they've tried it.
And they've had so many interference complaints, and it's been such a... We think that broadband over powerline is going to fail for a number of reasons.
It's not... We don't think it's economically feasible, number one, because there's so many things in place now.
I mean, God, you can get cable, you can get satellite, you can get microwave, you can get all kinds of services.
And so I don't know that you need it over the power lines.
And two, it creates havoc.
So a lot of companies, I think, have chosen not to proceed until the atmosphere clears a little bit.
Let me put it that way.
OK, well, I think you've answered my question.
I wondered how that would affect how the average, if that became reality, how that would affect how the average person interacts with the Internet and so forth.
Well, it's really a good question.
There are even intrusive issues to talk about.
Thank you very much, BPL.
That would mean that there would be internet in all your electrical outlets and they would make machines that would be smart and would report when you needed more milk or something.
You'd get an email.
Your refrigerator says, please get some more milk.
You know, that sort of thing.
It would also be incredibly, possibly Intrusive in that all kinds of things could be reported from inside your house that you might not want reported.
Put it that way.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello, is it Art Bell?
Yes.
Hey, I finally got through.
Yes.
Real quick question.
It's kind of off the beaten path tonight of what you're talking about, a supernatural question there.
The Amityville house out there in Amityville, Long Island, what do you know about that?
Well, I know it's still standing, sir.
It is still standing?
Yes, and the rest of what I know about it will be broadcast May 7th.
We're going to have the George Lutz Show on May 7th.
Now, that's really important.
That's going to be what?
I think the 7th is a Saturday night, isn't it?
Yeah.
I've heard someone say that the man that owns the house now is conducting tours through it, and I guess pretty wild stuff happens while you're in there.
I don't know if there's any truth to that, but maybe we'll find out there on the 7th.
Well, I don't know about that.
I think there was some reference to the current owners, but the show, the real Amityville Horror, the movie is out again.
It's a big deal.
I had the good fortune to interview George Lutz, the guy right in the middle of the real McCoy, the real Amityville Hur.
And so we are going to re-air that show next Saturday.
That's something you want to make note of.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art?
Yes, hello.
Oh, hi, how you doing?
This is Joe from Michigan.
A few years ago, you had two pictures on your website.
One picture was of their crop formations, and I don't think it was either in England or here in America.
And, uh, NASA had sent out a signal into space in the mid-70s, and, uh, it decoded, uh, it would resemble a picture of a man, um, our DNA structure, and then dots along the bottom representing how we viewed our solar system.
That's right, yes.
Right.
And, uh, well, when it ended up coming, the crop formation showed up, they, I'm almost certain I read that the DNA structure, that it was changed just a little bit, and also the solar system was, and I was wondering, Maybe that had anything to do with the DNA God Code thing, because that was a very fascinating show.
It surely was.
Thank you very much.
I don't know is the answer to that question.
He refers, of course, to the crop circles that manifested and appeared to be an answer To the Voyager business, if not the transmitted signal from Arecibo.
Really, really fascinating stuff, no question about it.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air, good morning.
Hi, Art.
Hi.
First thing, that 12-year-old, before he explained it to us, maybe he should explain it to the President.
After that, that girl you had on about the, you know, the Girl that was talking about her near-death experience.
Which one?
Named Sarah.
Sarah, of course.
The problem I had with her, I heard your first interview with her, and the problem I had
was she said that after the accident she was in the hospital with a trach tube in and she
had to write messages down to the nurses and then after she got out she had to learn how
to read again, like starting with Dick, Jane, and whatever the dog's name was.
Right.
How could she write notes to the nurses if she had to learn to read and write again?
Afterwards.
I don't know.
It may be... A lot of times, sir, people have, when they're in the hospital for something as serious as she was in for, you know, nearly dying, while you're in the hospital, all kinds of things can happen.
You can have A stroke or a series of many... That's not how it came across.
Or a series of many strokes.
It came from the wreck.
Well, we didn't ask about that part, so that's the answer to your question.
But that's very common in a situation like that.
That if you're in for something very serious, you can experience a series of strokes, many strokes or a big stroke, and have trouble for some time.
Now, Sarah was... Sarah, I thought, was without question The most interesting near-death story, or actually I guess it ought to be called a death story, because clinically she was deader than a doornail that I've ever heard, bar none.
It just, you know, it just riveted me to the seat, and I hope one day you'll get a chance to hear it.
You're on the air coast-to-coast AM with Art Bell.
Good morning, where are you calling from please?
Hello?
Going once, going twice, gone.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Am I not pushing something?
Here we go.
Alright, now you're on the air.
Hi.
Oh my gosh, Art Bell, it's so good to talk to you.
I've been a listener for the last 11 years and I'm finally getting to talk to the man.
Well, here you are.
So I just wanted to, I caught a little of the show last night and It's kind of funny, because I started to get interested in ham radio, and I set foot into a ham radio store yesterday, and... Oh, you did?
Gentlemen in there were a little startled to see a woman.
Ah, it's true.
Interested in this, and I'm wondering what the deal is with that.
Well, you're absolutely right.
First of all, women are fairly rare.
However, I operate on 3840, on the 75 meter band, and we have Quite a number of regular women check in, so the answer is more and more women are getting into ham radio.
Don't let them intimidate you.
Actually, they were quite glad to see me.
Even the customers were helping me find books and everything.
There you go.
It was fun, but it's good to talk to you.
One last question.
Are you able to reveal the name of that PC game that your voiceover is on?
Pray.
Pray?
Pray.
OK, I'll have to check it out.
OK.
Nice talking with you.
Good talking to you, and good luck.
Go get that license.
And that goes for the rest of you, too.
You know, everybody says, well, you know, there's the internet now.
Oh, no, baby.
It's not the same as the magic.
Radio, to me, ever since that picture of me that you see there at 13 years of age, has always been magic.
You know, the magic of signals going through the air, signals going through wires, that's easy.
But signals going through the air, to the ionosphere and back to Earth, again and again, all the way around the world.
The magic of that just simply doesn't stand up to the Internet at all.
So, if you want to explore the world of ham radio, by all means, please do so.
Contact the American Radio Relay League, or ham groups in your area, or whatever, but get involved in it.
It's one of the most fun hobbies you'll ever do in your whole life, and it's been with me my whole life.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hello, Art.
Hi.
Yeah, this is Dan.
Can you hear me, Art?
Yes, Dan.
The phone kept cutting out on us.
Yeah, it's doing something weird now, as a matter of fact.
Okay, well, I'm in my office here now, so I've got a strong signal.
Okay, so what's up?
Well, I'm the one that fast-blasted you probably about three months ago or so.
I was telling you about the...
I was just waking up that morning, the morning of November 30th, and a deep, strong voice spoke, and I woke up, and it said you had 910 days left.
Ah, so how many does that give you now?
Well, I don't know.
I haven't been counting down.
I know I got a little over a year, but I knew that, you know, I instantly knew that it meant to live, and it worries me, and I guess pretty much what I'd like to know is You know, even if your callers could call in through the week, I listened, you know, during the first hour.
If anybody knows anything about that, I'd appreciate it if they could comment.
Well, how could they know about your dream?
Well, with the experience I had.
You mean if they had a similar experience?
Yeah, or if they would know possibly what it is.
If I can mention to you, I'm a Streamlink member, and I downloaded that hour because you read my Fast Flash.
Okay.
And right before you started speaking, something was captured, and it said, Here's Art.
Okay.
I don't know about that, because there's nobody to say, Here's Art.
I'm just here, all by my lonesome.
Save my beautiful wife in the adjacent room.
I'm all by myself.
East of the Rockies, here's Art.
Yes, sir.
How are you doing?
Help this old mind, in television broadcasting, and this word just cropped out of my mind, I don't know if I'm saying it right, they have vesicle sideband transmission.
Is this similar to what you're doing?
Well, in a vague way it is, in the sense that it's a sideband, but no, not precisely.
It would take quite a bit of explanation to bring you up to speed, you know, to bring a non-technical person up to speed, but here I guess I can try.
Originally we had AM, amplitude modulation, that's what hams used, just like you're on the AM band now.
And then it was discovered that if you eliminated the carrier and one sideband, That you ended up with something that was called Single Sideband, just one of the sidebands.
And it took up less space, and it was more intelligible over a greater distance, and it was a pretty neat way to go.
Trouble with it was that it sounded kind of like Donald Duck.
Made everybody kind of sound like Donald Duck in the demo I did a little while ago, right?
And now we have this new thing called ESSB.
It's an experimenter's dream, and for the first time, I mean, it's very exciting.
It's incredibly exciting for the first time.
Sideband, instead of sounding like Donald Duck, really can sound very good at a very tiny, larger amount of bandwidth, or space, if you will.
When I say the word bandwidth, you can think of it as space, just like bandwidth.
You know, you've got bandwidth on the Internet.
The more bandwidth you have, the faster you go, right?
Well, it's the same with radio spectrum.
You can think of it as space or bandwidth.
And so with just a very tiny amount of extra bandwidth, or in some cases no extra at all, you can sound good, really good, on sideband.
It's reminiscent, frankly, of the old AM amplitude modulated days.
And nobody wants to see it get stifled.
And that's what this is kind of all about.
The American Radio Relay League has a proposal that Is, I believe, misguided and would stifle this experimentation.
And again, we're a hobby.
We're experimenters!
We need to learn new things, and you don't put handcuffs on experimenters.
Not historically, and I hope not now.
Wester the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Yes, Art.
Hi.
Hi, this is Steve in San Diego, listening on The Big One, Kogo 600 AM.
It is a monster, yes sir.
Yes sir, and if you would, please, Check into San Diego State University's website.
They have the fastest and most efficient hybrid car now in the United States.
Really?
Oh, it does 0 to 60 in 4.3 seconds.
Holy mackerel.
And it can go from San Diego to Washington, D.C.
without refueling.
That seems so impossible.
And what method of propulsion is it using, Praytel?
It's a hybrid electric with fuel, alternating and rechargeable, but does not need refueling between here and Washington, D.C.
We have so got to get on to this, folks, and quickly, too.
As I mentioned a little while ago, we don't need an X-Prize.
Because whoever invents the more efficient way is going to get their own reward.
Billions of dollars, no doubt.
Somebody discovering essentially free energy is going to be an instant billionaire.
So we don't really need an X Prize, but we do need to get going.
If our government, in my opinion, is responsible for anything at all, they're responsible for our safety and welfare, right?
And our safety and welfare, in fact our whole existence, is based on the state of our economy.
And if we run out of energy, the state of our economy is going to be very bad.
And it's now past time, meaning peak oil and beyond, when we should be devoting almost a Manhattan-like project toward alternative energy, toward something new.
If we don't get it, there's going to be a period of great darkness descending on the Not a good economic time at all.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hello, my name's Erin.
I've listened to your show for years.
Me and my friend Bill listen to it all the time.
Where are you?
I'm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Pittsburgh, alright.
Yes.
How old are you?
I am 22.
22, alright.
Well, good to have the young ones.
So what's up?
Well, actually, Um, well, we just watched your Peter Jennings Show.
Oh, I forgot to mention that!
The Peter Jennings ABC Show ran on National Geographic, didn't it?
Yes, yes.
Right.
And, um, we watched that.
That was quite interesting, I have to say.
Then you know where I live, because they had shots of my house slash compound.
Yes, yes.
They called it a compound.
Anyway, so what can I do for you, hon?
Um, well, I just...
I'm just very curious in the whole, you know, UFO thing, and we both actually had a question for you.
Okay.
And it's a little off the subject.
Okay.
But we were wondering if you were aware of boxers or briefs?
I'm aware and familiar with both.
Both.
Well, sure.
Okay.
That's it, huh?
That's it.
That's what I've been waiting for forever to get through to talk to you about.
Really?
Yeah.
Why would you have expended that much energy to ask such a question?
Oh, well, you know... Nothing better to do, right?
Well, no, I do have nothing better to do.
Your show's quite an act.
No, I'm serious.
We listen to it all the time.
Alright, I'm a brief guy myself.
A brief?
Brief.
I pictured you as like... A boxer?
Boxer brief kind of guy.
Alright, well, back to whatever was occupying you before you decided to call and stir up such intense controversy.
Well, I was still listening to your show.
We're listening to it right now.
All right.
Have a good night.
I've got to go.
Okay.
Later.
All right.
We're going to take a break.
Then we're going all the way to Great Britain for some very uncommon sense.
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I want it back.
Suddenly I just want it back.
What happened?
Well, it's fine.
Best to let the future be.
I've got to tell the love you don't care about.
So you better beware of what happened.
When you're in love, you turn around.
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Baby, you'll see.
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But I'm too...
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Who's gonna love you?
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 7-8-8.
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 7-8-8.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing
Option 5, and dialing toll free, 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
It is.
Good morning, everybody.
How you doing?
One last time, because I'm getting so many requests on the, uh, on the Fast Last, uh, this ESSB that I've been talking about in the first hour, if you want to know more about it, go to, uh, a website called NU9N.
That's the letters N-U-9-N, as in Nancy.
9N as in Nancy. Nancy United 9Nancy.com.com. So it's easy.
NU9N.com and go up there to the MP3 area.
It's a pull-down menu and you can listen to what some of that stuff sounds like.
It's incredible!
Absolutely incredible!
Alright, coming up in a moment, Peter Cochran was head of British Telecom Research, this will fit right in, from 1993 to 1999.
from 1993 to 99. Then, in 1999, he was appointed chief technologist. In November of 2000, Peter
retired from British Telecom to join his own startup company called Concept Labs, which
he founded with a group of people from Apple Computers.
In 1998, Peter is a graduate of Trent Polytechnic in Essex University and was the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology at the University of Bristol.
From 1999 to 2000, Peter is a fellow of the IEEE Royal Academy of Engineering and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.
He has lectured widely on technology and the implications of it and was awarded an OBE, that's not out of body in this case, an OBE in 1999 for his contribution to international communications.
The IEEE Millennium Medal in 2000, and the City and Guides Prince Philip Medal in 2001.
In 2001, the fellow knows a lot about technology, and that's what we'll talk about in a moment.
And indeed, for this interview, we go all the way across the Atlantic to Peter Cochran in Great Britain.
Peter, welcome to the program.
Good morning, Al.
Good morning.
I understand we are to talk of technical matters, and I guess RFID.
RFID is very interesting.
Maybe you could begin by explaining exactly, for the layman if you're able to do it, what RFID is.
When you go and purchase anything today, It has a barcode.
If you have a passport, it has a barcode.
Most ID cards have a barcode.
All of those barcodes are going to be replaced by little radio transmitter receiver units that allow the item you purchase, the passport you carry, the ID card that you're wearing, to be addressed.
And that is, remotely, you will be pinged.
When you go to the cash out, the electronic point of sale, Instead of having to have that barcode scanner, a little radio unit will say, ah, you've just bought a shirt, a t-shirt, a pair of jeans, or whatever.
It will be logged and you will be charged.
Ultimately, that money may well be taken directly out of your mobile phone, or out of your electronic wallet, or directly from your bank account.
And this is accomplished by, I would take it, a little tiny receiver and transmitter unit in all of these items?
Indeed it is.
We can now print these things, believe it or not, using ink.
We have inks that allow us to produce electronic circuits in the crudest sense and in the most sophisticated sense.
Those circuits look pretty much like the chip that you very often now get on credit cards and They are so small and flexible that they can be just put into the collar.
Well, I have a question.
Are these devices active?
And by that I mean, is it actually transmitting a signal, or does it simply possess a signal that another device can scan?
Well, for the most part, they're passive.
Okay.
There are devices that can transmit all the time, or it will, but they tend to be used
for things like the seagoing containers and rather large items.
The things that you and I purchase in the stores are totally passive, but what you do
is you energize them with a radio beam and then they ping back a message to you.
Oh, well then, they're not really passive.
They're only passive until they're addressed.
Correct.
Oh, I've got you.
Okay, that's something I did not know.
Yep, so this is pretty much like the... You're going to walk around like an aircraft with an IFF system, identification, friend and foe.
When an aircraft is flying, it has a transponder.
And the radar system pings it and says, who are you?
And the aircraft says, I am.
I'm so-and-so.
I'm flight so-and-so.
And I belong to.
And it gives you all that data.
And it gives the height and direction.
So it's the human being equivalent of being an aircraft.
OK.
So you're going to walk around with all kinds of possible identifications, perhaps in your money.
In your credit cards, some people say, one day, embedded in your skin.
Yep.
We already have an awful lot of people, and I mean millions of people on this planet now, that have got embedded electronics, which includes artificial respiratory stimulators, artificial hearts, all kinds of pain relief modules.
Some of these have to be addressed anyway, electronically, to be tuned so if you have a pacemaker for example it has
to be set up for your body so to hit some reasonable medium whereby it can cope with
you jogging or walking fast or doing a bit of manual labor you no longer have the
sophistication of a real heart so you can imagine that you're now starting to get the
opportunity to place all kinds of chips in people it's not widely known but I think people would be
able to imagine that should we say diplomats and people who are really worried about things
like abduction can have small transponders fitted so that it's relatively easy to locate
and find them.
So you're saying, now let me be straight on this one, you're saying you could be implanted with a device that, should you be kidnapped or lost, Let's draw a direct analogy.
satellite or exactly how would you be located how would this device
let's draw a direct analogy right now in the united states if you've got a very
expensive vehicle for three hundred fifty dollars you can have
a small device fitted and secreted in that car whereby the police can ping the
car and they can find it
and uh... therefore avoid it being uh... dismantled and and taken abroad
Is this accomplished by a satellite?
Or what means?
For human beings, not a satellite.
It has to be more local.
But if you know, say if you know approximately where someone is, you can find them.
If you have someone with a mobile phone, you can locate them.
So everyone that has a mobile phone is locatable.
To a very small area.
Yeah, if you've got a cell phone, sure, they can pinpoint virtually wherever you are.
And that cell phone doesn't have to be on making a call for that location to be made, right?
Correct.
It just has to be on, because when it is on, it does communicate with the base stations, because the system has to know where you are so that you can receive calls at all times.
And so it depends on the sophistication of the system.
You can tell where someone is within A few tens of meters or 10 kilometers, it depends on the sophistication.
I was going to ask about that.
In other words, is it making use of some sort of GPS signal in combination with a cell phone location?
As a general rule, not yet.
But the telephones with GPS on board are coming rather rapidly.
They're coming.
And that would, of course, pinpoint your location right down to a A meter or so.
If you're inside a building and you can't see the GPS satellite system then it would give the last known location which would be on the entry of the building of course.
Do you view all of this technology as a good thing or bad thing or neutral?
Are you neutral?
How do you feel about it?
I think that providing that we have got the trust in our In our governments, then I think it happens to be a good thing.
You're saying, wait a minute, if we trust our governments, it's a good thing?
Yes, I think there are some regimes on this planet that you would be very worried about knowing absolutely everything about you.
The reality is none of us have had any privacy or secrecy for a long time.
If you're determined to do so, you can always find out where someone is.
You can always find out a lot of data about them.
Sure.
This raises the specter.
Of knowing that you and I buy the same running shoes in combination with the same shorts and t-shirts and things like that.
That could be useful marketing information, but you know, hey, that kind of information is actually available today.
You have loyalty programs, you have credit cards, and you have electronic tills.
The difference being, you could imagine having an RFID scanner in your mobile phone And being able to sit at a table next to someone and think, hmm, I like those shoes, I wonder what they are, and you could scan them and you could get details of their shoes.
Ha!
You're kidding!
No, I'm not kidding.
Now, that kind of thing worries people a lot.
So, where this seems to be going is in the direction of breakable RFID transponders.
That is, when you purchase the goods, either the chips are Moved, taken off, because they're on a tag with a piece of string or they're glued on and you rip them off and throw them away.
Or you snap them and that breaks them.
But if you look at this on several dimensions, when companies in the United States have manufactured, shall we say, trainers or clothing or anything else, When a million are shipped from South America into the U.S.
or from Southeast Asia into the U.S., there's a thing called shrinkage, and a large number of items disappear out of those orders.
So there is now, on the other side of the coin, Tremendous crime-busting capability.
So they were stolen?
You're talking about stolen?
Yeah, stolen, sure.
And now you can trace goods and say, you know, where did they go?
Where are they now?
That kind of thing.
Okay, well, how?
In other words, let's say you had a shipment of shirts.
Yeah.
And 500 of these shirts were stolen.
Yep.
Even if you had the RFID in the shirts, it would be a very localized thing.
I mean, it's not like you could say, well, those shirts are now in Mexico City.
Yep.
Let me paint you a picture.
Paint me.
Here's a picture.
The U.S.
government, in particular, are going to, at some point in the near future, lay down a minimum standard For all containers entering the United States.
And I'm talking about these 20 foot standard ship going in containers that you see on the back of trucks and you see them stacked to the dock side.
Now what you really want to know is who shipped this box?
Where from?
When was it opened?
What was it loaded with?
In transit, how did it arrive in the United States?
By what route?
Were the doors opened?
Was it tampered with?
Was anything extra put in?
Was anything extra taken out?
Is there anything in there that is making a noise?
Exhibiting peculiar chemical behaviors?
Does it contain nasty substances or anything else?
You then have a very interesting situation that you've got the entire history of the container to hand and the container will have the ability to communicate with the goods inside.
So if someone is able to break open the container, you will be able to identify when it was and what was removed and which items.
At the moment, if A couple of thousand shirts, or a couple of thousand trainers are removed from a container.
You don't know when it was opened, where it was opened, who was taking them, and where those trainers have gone.
Now, you will be able to say exactly where those trainers were removed, or those shirts were removed.
Alright, so it wouldn't necessarily track them down individually, but it would tell you when they likely got heisted.
Sure.
Now, when they appear on the black market, Most likely they'll come onto the black market and they'll either enter stores or they will enter the supply chain somehow.
Then you've got the possibility of being able to detect them being sold at an electronic point of sale or the people in the UK like the Customs and Excise or the Coast Guard in the US or whoever uh... would be able to
uh... scammers items and say uh... huh
they've been stolen uh... we know where they were stolen from what shipment and
that you can then close down the uh...
uh... on the people responsible for that shrinkage Well, I don't have any problem with any of that so far.
You know, I understand there's sensitive areas with this kind of IDing, but in the sort of thing you just described, I don't see a problem.
It's just going to make it harder for the terrorists and bad guys, so I'm all for that.
Absolutely, that's the upside of the technology.
The thing that people worry about is losing their privacy and their security or indeed being tracked.
I mean, there are opposite, you know, there's an opposite side of the coin and that is if the technology is not sufficiently thought through, if it's not sufficiently well engineered, if it's not controlled, then of course the bad guys could get an RFID reader and use it to identify Art Bell in the crowd and that you might worry about.
Well, I might.
So, So, why shouldn't I be worried about that?
Why isn't that a big hole in all of this?
That it might be used for the bad guys, or for that matter, the bad guys might figure a way.
To mislead the authorities about where those shirts got lifted from that container by changing the information.
We all know.
I mean, you know, we've got the people writing the nasty worms and viruses for computers, and we've got people fighting it.
It's a war going on.
The war would be involved in that kind of thing, too, wouldn't it?
Absolutely right.
The thing is to be, if you can, one step ahead of the bad guys.
Sad to say, sometimes we don't manage that.
We lag behind a little bit.
And very often that is because our fear about our civil rights and our freedoms actually get in the way.
And we, I think, have to get a little smarter in the way that society makes the decisions and the way in which we engineer systems.
We have got far smarter people.
On the good side of the line than the bad side of the line.
The thing that tends to get in the way, dare I say it, is liberty, bureaucracy, freedom.
We're loathe to give up a lot of things, and society is slow to make decisions about really important issues like this, whereas the terrorists, the bad guys, have no problem making a decision about what they want to do to us.
i understand that but i think that they do it sorry peter uh... look
uh... if we give these things up in favor of security then in some ways the bad guys have achieved their goal
the world.
you You could say that, yes.
I did.
Yep.
And I happen to agree with you.
On the other hand, if we do not do something, then the damage may be even greater.
So there is always a cost-benefit to everything, and it's a question of getting an acceptable balance.
And where do you think that acceptable balance lies?
I have an awful feeling it's going to be absolutely different for every society, which is going to make it rather difficult.
For example, right now in my country we have more cameras in the streets than any other nation in the world.
I'd heard that.
Yep.
They're all over the place.
It's difficult not to be on camera.
The British population in general, to my great surprise, don't seem to take any notice, don't bother, no one's worried.
The American population, on the other hand, are kind of alarmed by this Big Brother view.
But it has had a phenomenal effect on clamping down on petty crime, shoplifting, and violent crimes in the UK.
The sort of thing that people really object to over here are things like speed cameras on the freeways.
Peter, hold on, we're here at the bottom of the hour.
as being a safety feature of the road system and then rapidly turn into being a money-making
enterprise where they're fining drivers for going over the speed limit seems to become
some kind of sport which is, I think, very detrimental to the whole scheme.
Peter, hold on, we're here at the bottom of the hour.
Well, yes, and I can certainly agree with that.
Peter, we'll talk about that.
I mean, facial identification and cameras everywhere.
Peter says in Great Britain they do now have cameras everywhere and it's hard not to be on camera.
I wonder if that's where we're headed.
And I wonder if the American psyche can handle that.
You know, being identified wherever you are, having your picture taken wherever you are.
Could you all handle that?
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To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free 800-825-5033.
From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
his area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free
800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint app.
Peter Cochran is here.
pressing option 5 and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
Top of the darkness, everybody, from Great Britain, Peter Cochran is here.
He tells us in Great Britain there's cameras virtually everywhere,
and it's hard not to be on camera.
We're talking about, I guess, privacy issues, the state of electronics, and it's amazing what they can know about you.
And more and more every day, they know more and more about you, until eventually, they'll know it all.
Is that where we're headed?
Probably so.
we'll be right back and talk more about wonder how many of you are aware of that that uh... your
cell phone ideas you it tells you where
It tells the company, if necessary, where you are.
And that occurs whether or not you're actually making a phone call.
It's always staying in a sort of a ping-type configuration.
the cell site. So it does indeed identify where you are.
And if it were combined with GPS, which in some cases it may already be or is on the way, then they know exactly
where you are. Now, is that a problem? Well, no, not really.
Not if you're not doing anything wrong. But there is this privacy issue business. And so the further we go with this,
more of a problem we're going to have with it.
Peter, welcome back to the program.
Thank you, Don.
You know, on the one hand, it's always easy to say, well, you know, I'm not doing anything wrong.
I don't care.
But on the other, yes, Americans are, I don't know, we're, well, we've been rebellious ever since you people over there have known us.
That's where you came from in the first place, right?
That's right.
So, we do protect our privacy, and yet we live in a day and age where it may be necessary, really, to violate it, or our concept of it, to remain safe.
It's a constant tug of war and battle.
So, are you in on the design of these things, and can you tell us where it's going from here?
Well, let me turn the coin over again.
There are people who, in the UK, are paying for the information of where their children are from their mobile phone.
You have to imagine a population in the UK that is only 60 million people on a piece of land that is smaller than Texas, where 90 million mobile phones have been sold.
And 45 million mobile phones are operational every day.
So, you have most children above the age of 5 have got a mobile phone, and now we have the parents of teenagers in particular are now looking to track their children actively so that they know that they've gone on the same route every day to school, they've not deviated from the route, they are in school, or in the evening they have gone to their friends and what have you.
This is a function of the, if you like, the occasional abduction or crime against a young person.
And it gets heightened by society and people get anxious.
And now you have a service being offered where you can pay to have your loved ones tracked.
So there's another extreme view, if you like, where people have the choice.
And I think, in my mind, it is about choice.
Well, it doesn't seem extreme to me.
If you can know where your children are, then you have some peace of mind.
Your teenage son and daughter might not like that idea.
Well, that's a very good point.
But, you know, the heck with them.
They're not 21 yet.
I think the parents' right to know trumps the teenage raging hormonal situation.
Perhaps, and then perhaps the need for a government to protect its citizen trumps the individual's worry about, shall we say, trivial privacy matters.
Well, I'm not sure that trumping is as easy for those of age, those who have full constitutional rights.
There is another element to this in the UK, and that is Shall we say middle-aged sons and daughters who are worried about their older parents who may go out and get lost or be ill or have an accident who can now be located, can be found, who can be monitored, so that you know that they're not in some kind of trouble.
So we now have houses being equipped with monitoring devices that says every morning Between 7 and 7.30, this old lady, who lives on her own, opens the refrigerator door, she switches on the kettle, and she switches on the TV or the radio.
So if she departs from that routine significantly, someone gives a call or pops round to see her to make sure that she's alive and well.
Again, it seems innocent enough and very well might save lives.
Correct.
It sounds good.
The downside to it being?
I think individual worries.
It depends on your psyche whether you actually worry about this kind of thing or not.
My personal view is I am very happy for my children and for my wife to be on camera when they go into town at night.
So that I know that they are under observation, and that they are well, and not at any kind of risk.
Well, let me ask this.
You said that in Great Britain, or certainly in... Where are you in Great Britain?
Are you in London?
Oh, well, right now I'm at a delightful place called Culleton, which is in Devon.
If you think of the UK, you'd have to go south to the coast from London, and then head out west from London, that is, towards the United States.
I would assume then that most of this totally on-camera business is probably in London and then spreading to other cities.
Is that correct?
It's in the major towns and cities.
so it's a bright beautiful day and i'm in sailing country uh... all right well i would assume then that most of this
totally on camera business is probably in london and then spreading to other
cities is that it didn't it in the major towns and cities uh... in this place
i'm not seeing a camera at all but then again uh... i'm not seeing a policeman or a police car either
because the crime It's a community of just probably about 3,000 people, not very big at all.
Well, how long has this on-camera living been going on in the cities?
It's been going on for a long time.
It's been building up over the last 20 years.
For any of your listeners who get to the UK and they walk down Oxford Street in London, for the entire length of Oxford Street, you're always on camera.
Well, what has it done?
I mean, what's the record?
Has it caught criminals?
Oh yes.
It has a tremendous impact on stopping crime.
But here's an interesting thing that happens.
In the same way The zero tolerance programs on crime in the cities in the United States has pushed the criminals out of the cities and they're now moving out into the suburbs.
Guess what happens with the cameras?
It tends to displace crime from one place to another.
The only upside to that is that it displaces it to a place where the opportunity for crime is actually reduced.
So instead of all the shoplifting and car stealing and Well, I'm sitting here trying to think.
Would I object if in American cities, virtually everywhere, there were cameras?
And personally, really I wouldn't.
overall there is a reduction well i'm sitting here trying to think uh... what i object
if in american cities in virtually everywhere there were
cameras and personally
really i wouldn't uh... peter i don't think that i would object
i know that they're already working on sophisticated facial recognition
programs that uh... you know computer will be attached to the camera and it
will look for people who are wanted for crimes and that sort of thing and
alarms go off and buzzers sound when that person is found
Yep.
Now I guess the only thing I would want to be sure of is that the technology is sound, that it wouldn't be IDing me as somebody who just did something awful when it ought not.
I think that's my worry, too.
I think it is possible to do all of this, and it all works.
But at the end of the day, you finish up with human beings at the end of the decision-making chain who may decide that you are the criminal, and they pull a gun on you in the United States.
In the UK, of course, they'll just say, excuse me, sir, can I just have a word with you?
So it's a little different.
Once someone's pulled a gun, the prospect of serious damage has just gone up.
If it's a manual intervention, then it's slightly different.
So I think all of this is about relative risk.
If you look at the airport incidents, if you look at the things like the shooting crimes, terrorist incidents, A lot of the time, society knows who these people are, but has failed to spot them as they come into the country.
I always look at my passport and feel that the photograph in my passport is of someone else.
It definitely doesn't look like me.
It's a very poor representation of me, and yet a very simple thing to do.
Indeed, I travel into the United States a lot.
People who are listening who do not travel in and out of the United States, you now have your fingerprints taken and your face is recorded by camera as you go in to the United States.
No kidding, they're now fingerprinting?
You now have your fingerprinting.
I'll be darned.
Yep.
So you, and by the way, It's really slick.
It only takes a matter of seconds.
There is just an electronic pad, almost like a little liquid crystal display.
You put your forefinger on and roll it.
You take the forefinger of your other hand and you roll it.
You stand in front of the camera.
The agent just lines up the camera, presses click, and you are in the record.
They've already scanned your passport, so Your passport is on record and now you've got a photograph and a fingerprint associated with your passport.
So the next time you come in, that system is used to recognize you.
My only complaint about the system is I still have to wait in line to get into the U.S.
I would just like a system that said, oh, if Peter Cochran is here again, he's on business.
He's not being a terrorist for the last hundred times he came into the U.S.
He's not a terrorist today, let's just let him in.
That would be my idea of heaven when I'm traveling.
Well, I understand.
It's interesting, their fingerprinting.
They were not doing that when I last traveled.
At any rate, Peter, that's great.
Now, maybe you could tell me What technology we could use to equally secure our southern border, about 2,000 plus miles of border with Mexico that is like a sieve.
In other words, it's nice that we can know that Peter Cochran's a good or a bad guy as he comes into the country with a passport, but what if Peter just wades through the water and jumps the fence?
What do we do about that, Peter?
Well, there are a range of technologies.
One thing's for sure, the U.S.
doesn't have enough agents to patrol that border and seal it off.
And so you're going to have to rely on electronics.
So you can start with cameras and infrared cameras.
You can have remotely operated aircraft with cameras that fly up and down the border.
You can also use a range of sound and people-sensing devices.
These can be overt, they can be made absolutely visible like fence posts, or they can be made covert like rocks that are scattered on the ground.
They will detect people walking.
They will detect people talking.
They can detect thermal changes due to human bodies.
So that allows you to deploy your human resource to the point where the actual insurgents are actually coming across.
So you're saying we have plenty of this technology.
So what's the deal?
We just haven't deployed it?
Correct.
It's just a question of investment, I guess.
The technology exists.
A lot of it is being used by the U.S.
military already.
An awful lot of it is... The so-called, what I would call, the spy shops in town.
There are those electronic stores in most of the cities where you can buy miniature cameras, infrared cameras and everything else.
And you're not talking about a lot of money.
You're talking about a hundred bucks or so, or a couple of hundred bucks for a small electronic camera that runs off a battery for a long time.
It's got a little radio transmitter in it, so you don't even have to lay wires.
You can just lay out a network of these things.
And all of those technologies are around, so it's not a big deal to do it.
So it's only a matter of will, then, that we would control our own borders?
Correct.
Well, I wish we would give as much energy into doing that as we do people at the checkpoints.
Well, you have to imagine also, I mean, my country's got a very similar problem.
You've got a border with Mexico.
We've got a border all the way around.
We're an island.
Sure.
It's impossible to protect that coastline and people coming in and out by small boat all the time.
We have considerable problems with drug smuggling and other things where they come in and bypass the port.
You just get a small motor launch and you can be in and out of the coast Anywhere from Scotland to Land's End very, very easily.
Peter, I want to ask you about something else.
Actually, a number of devices sort of update us on what the latest is on some of these things, and the first thing I want to ask you about is cell phones.
Now, as a radio talk host, Peter, I many times take, you know, just random calls from the audience, you know, open lines.
And I would say it's getting to the point where about 50% of those calling are calling on cell phones.
Now, it's not the fault of the user, Peter.
However, we've gone from analog phones, which sounded, frankly, pretty good, and we've taken this giant leap forward, which actually is a giant leap in reverse.
And I've got to be honest with you, Peter, most cell phones these days sound like dog poop.
Now, I want to complain bitterly about this and ask you what's coming, whether anything is going to change for the better.
This is all a question of investment.
It's not a fundamentally technology-based problem.
It is all a question of choice.
That's my great surprise.
The U.S.
seems to be the most cost-conscious country I've been to almost anywhere with regard to mobile phones.
You're saying that's cheap?
The emphasis is on how much is it going to cost me, not what kind of quality I'm going to get.
So if we look at the U.S.
network and the U.K.
network, for example, a mobile operator in the United Kingdom, which is less than half the size of Texas, Uh, we'll install just over 30,000 cell sites.
Okay, 30,000 cell sites.
In the United States, for the whole of the United States, they install 22,000 or thereabouts.
So instead of having mobile phone cells that are of the order 1 to 15 kilometers max, that's
sort of, shall we say, half a mile to 10 miles across.
In the United States, you get cells that are 40 miles across, and so the signal becomes much more variable, and if you're in an automobile, or indeed walking, you find a lot of blank spots where the signal disappears.
Well, yes, but even when someone's close to a cell site, in many cases the digital signal is so poor, Peter, That it just... I can't understand why people put up with it, and why there is not more of a scream for better quality, because it could be done.
I have to agree.
If any of your listeners have used Voice over IP, that's Voice over Internet Protocol, and there are a lot of companies out there that are providing that service.
The one thing that you notice is the quality of the connection in terms of the speaker.
When the connection is established, it's like talking to someone on the radio, on the FM radio, or on a hi-fi circuit where you've got lots of bandwidth.
I always say of my own industry, the one thing that the telecommunications industry have still not figured out That Hollywood figured out straight off the bat.
And that is the emotional bits are the most important bits.
And what happens is, in Hollywood, they go to an awful lot of trouble to give you the full voice, the full music, the whole nine yards of the fidelity, so that it's a really good experience.
In telecommunications, they throw away that fidelity.
They throw away that bandwidth.
Oh, you're so correct.
More money.
Peter, you're so correct.
We're at the top of the hour.
You hear that in telecommunications?
They throw away the quality, throw away the bandwidth.
And that relates to what I was talking about in the first hour.
It all relates to bandwidth.
Good morning, everybody.
In the middle of the night, which is where we do biz, I'm Art Bell with Peter Cochran in Great Britain.
Don't touch that button.
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To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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From coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
It is.
Most of these wondrous new things that we're going to talk about, the conveniences of modern life, Mobile phones, cameras, camcorders, PDAs, MPEG-3 players, laptops, that sort of thing.
They're coming more and more, and there's really not a whole lot we can do about it.
Some of us enjoy the technology, some of us fear the technology, and I guess that's kind of what it's all about.
Peter Cochran is here talking about all of this.
this will get right back to us it's really quite remarkable that is to say what we were i
was talking with uh... all of you about in the first hour bandwidth
such an issue in this modern day and age and uh... how it related to him radio and how it relates to
cell phones You see, the way it works, folks, is this.
With a very skinny little bandwidth, with just a very little bit of room in which to send your signal, you have a sort of a Well, a squeezed together, poor sounding result.
And if the American people would kind of get together and say, look, we want quality, we demand quality.
After all, it's a market driven by what people want, right?
And if they're sick of the way cell phones sound, then they can go to their cell phone companies and say, you know what?
Your cell phone sounds like Choice of words there.
And you would like better quality.
If more people did that, then by golly, we'd get a little more bandwidth or a better digital encoding method and pretty soon it would sound like the good old days.
That's what I would wish for, Peter.
Me too.
Alright, I've got a question about cell phones while we're at it from Miller in San Diego who says, Art, my cell phone has a camera on it that can take pictures.
And I was wondering if Peter would comment on whether somebody could be viewing me using my own camera remotely and viewing me.
And if they could, do I have a right to know about that?
As far as I'm aware, the only way anyone could do that would be to get your mobile phone off you and modify it without your knowledge.
And certainly you have a right to know about it if they did.
I'm not aware of any way of actually doing that right now, without some kind of intervention in the phone.
That's not to say that it can't be done.
I'm just not aware of it, I guess.
The sort of thing you have to watch out for in the future is that these devils, literally, who do the viruses and infect our computers, are now starting to attack mobile phones, because mobile phones Have an operating system and they started to look more like computers and mobile phones.
So, in principle, there's no reason someone wouldn't be able to infect your mobile phone through a download and then have some kind of control over it at some point in the future.
I wouldn't really doubt.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, after all, if the mobile phone is connected to the internet, which it is, and has the capacity to take photographs, which it does, then heavens knows you might even be able to stream, which means they could watch a virtual motion picture of where you're going and what you're doing.
Yep.
The inside of my pocket is not very exciting, but once I take the phone out it gets interesting.
Well, it could, yes.
A lot of phones now have a camera on both sides.
It's kind of interesting that the clamshell phone and the chocolate bar that's used in Europe are now arriving with two cameras, one pointing to the user and one pointing to the outside world.
It's kind of an interesting prospect.
The camera slash camcorder, we now live in a very different world, Peter, that I guess was punctuated as beginning with the Rodney King trial here.
I mean, camcorders are just everywhere.
Where are we going with this technology?
It's getting smaller and cheaper and where is it going?
It's going everywhere.
A lot of automobiles now that you buy at the top end, in Europe certainly, and coming out of Japan, there are several cameras in the cars for spotting people who shouldn't be in the car recording their actions so you can film the thieves.
Systems are being worked on where you have cameras at six points in your car.
There's a sideward-looking camera on each side.
Uh, a forward and backward looking camera, and then there's a camera on each corner of the car looking outwards, and, uh, we're heading towards the black box, the flight recorder, black box in the automobile that records the last 15 minutes of a journey, and the next 15 minutes after the accident.
So, if you like, uh, the half an hour that is bridging some traffic incident, uh, your driving is recorded, the actual incident of the, uh, the accident itself is recorded, And then what ensues immediately after the accident is recorded.
So I think that it's not just in buildings and it's not just for pedestrians, but for drivers in every aspect of life, these cameras are starting to arrive and will be deployed.
And the reason is They don't cost thousands of dollars anymore, they cost five dollars, so they can be placed anywhere.
Little CCDs that just... Little CCDs, yeah.
That can go anywhere, all around your car, and all of that then gets recorded in some kind of black box in the car.
Oh my.
Yep.
Yep.
Also, there are systems being developed that will allow the police, on a chase, or on trying to apprehend a driver, Being able to look at the number plate, go onto a database, call up that car on a network and disable that car progressively and bring it to a halt.
The hand of Big Brother!
The hand of Big Brother indeed.
Are cars now rolling off the assembly line in Great Britain with that capability?
No.
The systems are being Engineered, prototyped, and dimensioned right now.
They would be put, of course, in the most expensive of vehicles because the boxes are going to be expensive in the first part, but if you think in terms of GPS in automobiles, we started off with several thousand dollars for a screen in your car so that you could see a moving map, and gradually that facility is coming down Uh, into cheaper and cheaper cars and ultimately all cars will have GPS and I think the same will happen with the black box.
It will go into, um, it'll go into the Mercedes and the Bentleys and the Cadillacs and then gradually it will come down and down to the cheaper and cheaper vehicles as that technology gets perfected and the cost Well, as all of this matures, and it's happening quickly now, is our privacy just going to disappear?
I mean, we're not going to understand, really, I guess, one day, what real privacy as we know it, sort of, now, existed.
I mean, we just won't remember a day when we weren't monitored.
Absolutely.
I always think now in terms of driving, for the listeners' benefits, let me reveal that I'm in my 59th year.
I've been driving in the UK since I was 17.
I've been driving in the United States for the last 30 years, and I've always felt relatively relaxed about driving.
You know, I try not to break the law.
I try to be a reasonable driver.
But increasingly, I'm finding it difficult to drive, I think, within the law in that as more and more cars, more and more automobiles have been put on the roads, especially in Europe and the UK, and it's become more and more crowded, there's more and more signage on the roads, there's more cameras, there's more restrictions, there's more controls, and I'm personally finding that it's getting increasingly difficult to drive within the letter of the law.
The new drivers that are coming along, the new, the young people who are 17 who are coming along, that is the norm.
That is where they start, so there are a lot of things that are analogous to that, where you say, well, when I was born there were no cameras, am I worried about cameras?
For the young people, they've never known a life without the cameras, so what's the big deal?
Um, the big deal is that... No, what I mean, Art, is for them.
Yes.
You and I know what the big deal is, but the question never actually prompts in their mind, I don't think.
That's what I'm trying to point out.
No, it's a good point.
It's a good point.
It's the norm for the society for them.
Yes, no, you're absolutely right.
I mean, they will grow up understanding that certain rights simply don't exist anymore on that old ancient document.
Correct.
The PDA now, the PDA in America is becoming, well, it's everywhere.
I mean, it's your personal little connection to the world.
And where are we going with that?
Are we eventually going to have PDAs virtually work everywhere?
Oh, without doubt.
I think at this point I should point out that there are now two worlds.
There's North America, and there's the rest of the world.
North America, 4% of the population of the planet.
4%.
North America is besotted by two technologies.
The personal computer, email, and the PDA.
You know, the Blackberry kind of device that allows you to do your email on the move, and have your diary with you, and all of that kind of thing.
The rest of the world is absolutely besotted by the mobile phone and text.
You will not find many people with a PDA in Europe compared to the United States.
And why do you think that is?
I think it's the speed at which the mobile phone got out into the environment in the rest of the world, and the mobile phone got a foothold.
It took over.
The United States has been slow with mobile phones.
But then the PDA has arrived.
The PDA has arrived in Europe and the rest of the world at a time when the mobile phone is dominant and text is actually dominant mode of communication.
I use a combination of a mobile phone and a laptop computer.
I don't have a PDA because it doesn't do the job for me.
Now, it depends on your business.
If I could run my business with a pencil and a piece of paper, I wouldn't touch technology, believe me.
I'd use the absolute minimum.
But it turns out, for what I do, that a laptop computer is essential and a mobile phone is, but a PDA isn't.
It doesn't do it for me.
So, I am very much a believer in appropriate technology.
What is it that does it for you?
Then just use it.
But I don't like using technology for technology's sake.
Where we're actually headed, is what I call the Swiss Army Knife solution.
You know, we're going to finish up with a mobile phone that's a PDA, that's a camera, that's a movie camera, that's a mobile music station, it's an MP3 or an iPod if you like, all in the one box.
My fear is, exactly like the Swiss Army Knife, it'll do absolutely everything really badly.
And what intrigues me is, what's the end point going to be?
Will we really give up A good quality camera for a camera that's not quite so good in a mobile phone.
Will we give up our iPod for an MP3 on a mobile phone?
I suspect that we may do that.
Well, we've already given up what I consider to be good quality phones for cell phones.
The trade-off being the convenience, obviously.
And that's one, apparently, we've been willing to make.
So again, do you think that people will demand quality along with the convenience?
Well, it's a real good question.
I mean, let me tell you that no engineer, no scientist, no marketeer or manager in the telecommunications industry could have guessed how much people would be prepared to pay for so little and such poor service as they do with a mobile phone.
After a hundred years, Worrying about the quality of connection and the clarity of connection.
All of that was abandoned at the shake of a stick for the mobile phone.
Because what people really value is the mobility.
And you see it everywhere.
If they're in an office there will be a telephone on the desk and they've got their mobile phone on their hip.
They will reach for the mobile phone always.
They never pick up the phone in the office.
The mobile phone call is more expensive, it's poorer quality, but they will use it because it's more convenient.
Well, you're my kind of guy.
I feel exactly the same way about them.
There was just a survey done.
I mean, we are in the computer age, after all.
My wife is a computer gamer.
She loves games.
I'm not a gamer, but she loves them.
And you've just done a survey, I think, in Britain about computer games, right?
Yep.
What is it?
Well, it's interesting.
There's a couple of reports out now that say, and it's causing quite a stir over here, that actually people who use computers and mobile phones a lot are actually smarter than people who read books.
Oh, really?
Yeah, which is an excellent outcome.
And boy, it's causing a little bit of a stir.
And I always worry about these kinds of surveys because you can never actually get down to the bottom of what was the basis of the survey.
But they're claiming that people can get an extra 10 or 15 IQ points because they use a computer and a mobile phone.
Isn't that great?
Oh, it is.
Have you looked at the survey?
Does it appear to be properly done?
I have not had time.
It only came out, actually, two days ago.
And I've been traveling, so I've not had time to dig down and find out what it is.
Does it make sense to you?
Does it make sense?
It does on one level.
I have to say, when I work with and collaborate with young people, they're extremely sharp.
They think quite quickly.
They've got this Mind-eye-thumb agility for texting on mobile phones.
On computer games, they tend to think not two-dimensionally, but three-dimensionally.
They've got a tremendous spatial awareness that I don't possess, so they come at things differently.
I would say that, perhaps on the downside, they're very, very active.
They tend to resort to the keyboard instead of resorting to thinking sometimes.
But as I look back in history, we've had to abandon, shall we say, sacred ground of education time and time again as the technology has progressed.
And I now find it very, very difficult to say, well, this is right and this is wrong.
I don't think that's applicable.
Just a couple of weeks ago I was judging a competition here of 16 to 18 year old school students who'd done engineering projects, and all of them were super projects.
The teams were excellent.
And what really amused me was that despite the fact that the students were taking advanced math and physics, In their projects, there was absolutely no quantification at all.
It was all flying by the seat of the pants engineering.
They'd built all kinds of things by trial and error, but had done no analysis whatsoever.
Whereas, if you like, an experienced engineer or scientist would sit down and think, they would do some calculations and some estimates, and then they'd build something.
And these young people had done exactly the reverse.
And I thought, well, this is kind of interesting, because this is the computer games.
Kind of mentality, you know, you don't sit down and analyze, you react.
So that's why I'm trying to figure out why computer gamers would come up with a 10 to 15 point increase in their IQ.
What is it about computer games, do you think?
I think it makes you think metaphorically on your seat.
You have to be really responsive, you have to be intuitive, and I happen to think that this is where it wins.
In games where strategic thinking Uh, is required where you have to allocate resource, where you have to make commitment really, really quickly on the basis of scant or no information.
And so what we're really talking here about is almost the virtual warfare kind of situation.
It turns out that the kids are really, really good at that.
And that is where they score, which funnily enough kind of mirrors the modern business environment because believe you me in business at the
moment you we seem to be at war every day it's a very very fast responsive reactive
kind of place and it's very very little time given to if you like rational
thought reasoning or deep consideration is usually reaction and that's where
they seem to score They are really, really fast at looking at a situation that's very complex and making a good value judgment.
They don't get it right all the time, but on average they get it right better than most.
Well, still, that is spectacular.
The fact that... Peter, hold on.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
The fact that those playing computer games are scoring a 10 to 15 point higher IQ is absolutely remarkable and kind of good news in a lot of ways.
Are you a computer gamer?
Uh, does it make sense to you that such survey would come out that way?
Want to increase your IQ?
Play computer games, is what that survey says, from the high desert in the middle of the night, which is truly where we do our best work.
This is revolutionary!
10 to 15 points in your IQ!
Just play computer games!
This is Coast to Coast AM.
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To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
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International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country Sprint Access number,
pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
It is, with RFIDs on the products you buy.
To tracking on the cell phone you use and cameras in your face as you walk down or drive down the street.
To all of this and all this technology we have today in the world.
Can you opt out of it?
Or...
Is it here and you have no choice whatsoever?
And how do you feel about it?
In a moment we'll be taking questions for Peter Cochran.
I'm allowing some of you to supply a little of your own input and questions.
So pick one of those numbers and line up and I'll put you together with the man on the other side of the Atlantic.
Doug in Colorado Springs asks a pretty good question of Peter and it is, I guess my question is,
does playing computer games actually make you smarter or do smarter people tend to play more computer games?
Bye.
That's an excellent question.
Causality.
You're absolutely right.
Also, does the nature of the IQ test actually lend itself towards people who play computer games?
Well, then it wouldn't be a good test.
It wouldn't be a good test.
I worry a lot about IQ tests in general.
They just tend to prove that you're good at doing IQ tests.
A lot of people who are very, very high intelligence, quotient IQ don't seem to do well in other spheres and vice versa.
It's an interesting observation.
I look at The society I live in, and I look in the United States, and I certainly see young people who don't mesh well with technology, and don't get on well with computers, and indeed tend to avoid using them.
They do other things.
However, I would say that the majority use the computers freely, without thought, without any worry about Getting into a problem area, and they have them as a tool.
Personally, Peter, I don't see how I could live in my world, and in fact I could not live in my world without them.
I use them to control all kinds of things, and I say that.
I control, not controlling me, but I control them.
Now, Pat in Phoenix, Arizona asks a relevant question.
Art, pressing an 800 megahertz cell phone transmitter, identical to a microwave oven in some ways, as you know, up against your ear may fry some precious brain cells, but will not raise one's IQ.
I'm sure you've had questions about this, Peter.
What about microwave radiation and the brain?
Well, I've yet to see any very definite evidence that there is a problem with a mobile phone and cooking the brain, and I have this problem.
The same listeners who worry about cooking their brain with a mobile phone Most likely use a cordless phone in their home and they don't worry about that, and the power coming out of the cordless phone is 10 times greater.
They will stand in front of their microwave oven with a power output that is 10,000 times greater and look through the mesh to see if their food is cooked.
And they never check if the door leaks, you know, if the door is not a good fit and microwave radiation gets out.
They will hold up a camcorder to the eye.
They will wear a Walkman or some other electronic device on the hip.
All of these things emit radiation of one kind or another.
Certainly, the microwave oven will do you a lot of damage.
If you were to do something silly like take the door off and stick your hands in and that kind of thing.
So, it's a relative risk.
I look at it like this.
If there was a problem with a mobile phone, you would have thought that it would have shown up now because people have been using mobile transmitters in the police and in the military of much greater power and we're talking a mobile phone at a maximum of half a watt compared to a military man pack radio or a police radio at something like ten to a hundred times more power.
And we've had no incidences of people being cooked.
With the mass usage of mobile phones, we really ought to be seeing a problem if there was one.
We've got now a history of using mobile radio devices that goes way back before World War II, and certainly after World War II.
It's been a very intense and rapid growth of mobile devices.
Of course you are.
Uh, almost a generation's worth of experience with no certain proof that we have got a problem.
So basically you're saying we have... Sorry.
Well, I was going to say, no, you're correct.
I mean, a generation, we ought to know by now.
You were about to say, on the other hand, though...
Lots of people have been saved by mobile phones.
If you look at the incidence of lives saved by having mobile wireless technology, it is vast.
Either through police and emergency services or through private individuals now with mobile phones.
People's lives are saved every day with mobile phones.
True statement.
The upside of the technology is you save lives.
The downside of the technology is people worry about the inconsequential.
Alright.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Peter Cochran.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Well, you guys are in a position to know if there's any way to change some of the things that's happening to us.
I'd like to comment on that to hear your comment on what we might do to change some of the things.
You mean to get away from it all?
Well, yeah, either get away from it or change it.
All right, well, Peter, suppose somebody Unlike that, doesn't want to be tracked, doesn't want to buy items with RFID tags, doesn't want to be tracked and photographed and all the rest of it.
They're just out of luck, aren't they?
Well, I think sort of, you are.
There is no way that you can get a mobile phone and the mobile phone company not know where you are.
I think if you're a good citizen you've not got a problem because It's equivalent to a wiretap.
At the present time, to get the information on someone's location, it's equivalent to the old wiretap.
The police and security services have to actually make an application to get the data on where you are from the mobile phone companies.
The mobile phone companies, per se, only use the data From a control point of view so that they can contact you when someone is calling you They need to know where you are in their network to be able to connect you to a caller So I think that there is that security now in the in the RFID space It's only being deployed right now in trials.
There are millions of these tags being tried in Europe right now and really They're on high-value items like suits of clothing that are, you know, like two or three hundred dollars, or entertainment items, that kind of thing, and the tags are taken off, but the tags could be embedded, the tags could be left in, so I would not be at all surprised that you and I will have the opportunity to purchase RFID Sniffers and we'll be able to find the tags and break them, if that is the case.
Do they yet make an RFID Sniffer?
They certainly do.
I've not purchased one.
It looks like a lot of the mobile phone companies, the phone makers are going to put them into their mobile phones so that you can actually use them in the stores and the supermarkets.
One, to check out the goods that you're looking at, and two, even locate the goods that you're looking for.
Imagine going up to a rack of clothing That's alright.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Cochran.
Hi.
a uh... i'm a uh... thirty-six ways to twenty nine so i'd like to know
Hello.
uh... is there a pair of pumps on this right of that's all is new hold of your
mobile phone and it is a no uh... you can you can walk on by a couple of them
that's all right uh... east of the rockies you're on the air with peter
cochran so hello
yes sir uh... there was a young man he was ten years old
california they got third-degree burns on his leg and his growing area from a cell phone
exploding in his pocket Ah, yes.
The exploding cell phone thing.
Yeah, and that was kind of bizarre to me, and is this, I mean, is this a Yeah, let's talk about that.
Peter, thank you, ma'am.
She's right.
There have been a number of stories recently of exploding cell phones.
Now, what's really exploding, I presume, is not the cell phone, but probably the battery in the cell phone.
It could be very disturbing, and they explode with quite a bit of vigor.
Yeah, you're walking around with a hand grenade on your hip, more or less.
I mean, these things have got an awful lot of power.
It's a very, very rare occurrence.
I can't think of an incidence reported in the UK press, but I know there have been one or two incidences worldwide where this has happened.
I'm not at all sure what fault has caused this to occur, but I do know that the mobile phone industry do have a test they call the Rapid Disassembly Test, which is where they effectively drive a nail through the battery and they have a look at the explosive force.
But what you've got is an awful lot of energy in a very, very compact space.
Well, people will notice, Peter.
For example, when you have a long conversation on some cell phones, you will notice the cell phone gets hot.
Of course.
Now, that's because of the very heavy current draw on the battery.
And it may be that if you have a defective battery under a very heavy current draw, yes, there could be an explosion, right?
There could.
No, but as I understand it, the really worrisome ones have been where people have actually had the mobile phone in their pocket.
Yes, that would worry me.
Yeah, and that's a real worry.
I mean, God forbid which pocket you've got it in, but you can imagine that if it's in the pants pocket, hopefully they've got it in the back, not the front.
If it's in a jacket... I get the idea.
Yeah, in the breast pocket, you know, the implications are really quite profound and very, very worrying.
But when you look at the millions and millions of mobile phones that are manufactured, it's a very, very small number.
Why?
There's probably a greater chance you'll get hit by lightning.
Yeah, or certainly if you try and cross the road.
I mean, the chance of being killed crossing the road in the UK is only about 1 in 6,000.
You crossed the road, there's a 1 in 6,000 chance you're going to get hit, which is a very, very high odds.
So the odds of a mobile phone hurting you are very, very small.
But that's not to say we shouldn't try and fix whatever problem that there is there with that.
But I don't know the details of the individual cases.
And I don't know how many cases there have been, but I've certainly heard about it in the U.S.
Any idea why the frogs there in Great Britain have been exploding?
Too much radiation, I guess.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Cochran in Great Britain.
Hello.
Hello there, Art.
How are you and Peter?
Just fine.
Good.
I have a question that I think might be very interesting and I'd like to hear his opinion on.
Uh, if he's familiar with George Orwell's 1984?
Of course.
Absolutely.
Okay.
Then, uh, I cannot believe that the Congress of the United States passed a law that high-definition TV was going to have to come in and nothing else after 2006.
after 2006 and the possibility that the government, as George Orwell said, was going to have a
chip in there that would be able to intrude and record anything being said or done in
Okay, well, these are separate items, I think.
With regard to high-definition TV, Peter, there is something about, in the next few years, I'm not quite sure they may have put off the date, but they're essentially going to turn off Sure, we've got the same rush in the UK, they want to do the same thing here.
television or high-definition if you will and that change is due to occur
here in the states I think pretty soon do you know about that? Sure we've got
the same same rush in the UK they want to do the same thing here people are
gradually being levered into buying extra boxes or new TV sets to to get
digital as quickly as possible and one of the reasons is there's a hell of a
rush for the the fixed spectrum that's being allocated to television which is
ideal for use for the mobile applications And so there's almost a gold rush for the spectrum and they want to move TV out of the way and put it someplace else so that they can get the spectrum for mobile applications.
That's one of the things that among the driving forces and it seems to be fairly
universal one of the the big problem is has been a bit of an arm wrestling contest
about the uh... international standards or by definition t v the uh...
europeans the americans and uh...
so i think you seem to want to go three separate directions and it would be
rather nicely for a change we have one standard for
by definition t v everywhere now really would be nice and uh... it and i don't
know why it is so impossible Do you?
Well, I think a lot of it is market protection.
You know, what actually happens is the rather large international companies that we have that manufacture all the boxes have just invested a whole lot of money in R&D to develop their version of high-definition TV, and they want their version to be International standard, and so you've got these forces all vying for different standards.
Well, Peter, without being too nationalistic on me here, which standard do you like the best?
I can't, to be blunt, I can't tell any difference when I look at the pictures.
There are some technical differences.
I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference.
It's kind of interesting as I look back in history, People say, hey, you know, the trains in the United States, they run on the same tracks as the trains that run in India and China and in the UK.
Wow, we got the standard right.
Well, the reason was, if you go back just over a couple of hundred years, there was only one nation in the world making anything, and that was the UK.
So we sold all the railways to China and India and Russia and America, and the world got the same standard for railways.
All over the world, and it's stock, so everywhere you go, all the railways are the same gauge.
Brilliant.
Well, unfortunately, it's got a little more complicated.
You come up to the radio era, and you find that pretty much the standards are the same, because of, one, Marconi and the early developments of radio spreading, and we got more or less a uniform standard.
Then you get the intervention of a period coming up to World War II where
electronics industry started to blossom in the United States, it was really
starting to blossom in in Europe and so you got two or three or four standards
for television and the US was fast off the mark and they came up with the NTSC system
which Europeans euphemistically call never twice the same color because that's a little bit of
an elbow dig because the system depends on the amplitude of the signal
and in the United States you
you see color variation with the signal amplitude changing It's...
In Europe, they went for a different system, which was PAL, Phase Alternate Line, which is based on, not the amplitude, but the phase of the signal, if you like, the time or cycle position of the signal, and therefore you don't get this variation.
Well, perhaps not, Peter, but I might say, from my American seat here, that when I watch PAL, I get a headache.
It flickers.
Oh, yeah.
And why, why, why?
The reason is that the scan rate in Europe is 50 Hz.
This is another interesting standards story.
And in the United States, it's 100 Hz.
That is, the wave bringing the power to you, the rotation of machinery down in the generation center, the power station, if you will.
In the United States, it's going faster by uh... ten cycles if you like compared to europe and that
was again about market protection
uh...
uh... went principally for two twenty volts uh... fifty hertz the united
states went for a hundred and ten volts sixty hertz and immediately you can
protect your market because goods in europe won't go to the u s and vice
versa you can't export and uh... those kinds of things
uh... give subtle differences uh... in in and so what has happened in europe is that they've they've doubled
the scam to a hundred hertz you know the safety of the same harmonic
of the of the fifty and and therefore you get rid of the flicker but
you're absolutely right you know these are really sort of just subtle changes
And of course, when you go onto the internet, what do you get?
You don't get 50 frames, you get 35 or 25 or something, and it's really bad.
Well, there you are.
Hold tight, we're at the top of the hour.
We'll be right back.
I'm Art Bell.
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The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
Indeed so.
I mean, just to be able to say that from coast to coast and worldwide on the Internet tells you where we are in our world.
Peter Cochran's book, Uncommon Sense, on the back says, Uncommon Sense.
It's a series of remarkable insights into work, communication, the family, communities, and just about everything else touched or yet to be touched by the world of technology.
It'll help you live in an increasingly digital world, which continues to move at an accelerating pace.
Make sense of the what and why of events created by the chaos of rapid and universal communication.
Use inverted, out-of-the-box thinking to see solutions and find value in life and business.
That previously seemed impossible.
Again, the name of the book is Uncommon Sense by Peter Cochran.
and we'll get right back to them.
Well we do live in a very different world from a technological point of view
There's no question about it.
I personally love it, as you might imagine.
I'm as into it as one might be probably too into it.
Barbara in Crisfield, Maryland says, Hey Art, what about some kind of cloaking device to prevent tracking?
That technology may be behind all the testing the public does.
on all the other technology for those behind it all.
So in other words, she's saying, isn't there some device made that can,
even if you don't want to be part of this new digital world, Peter,
that could cloak you from it, protect you from all of this?
Don't buy a mobile phone, and just make sure that when RFID tags arrive in everything,
Anything that you buy, get the tags disabled.
Apart from that, you could wrap yourself in Baco foil, I guess.
Right you are.
All right, back to the lines.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Peter Cochran.
Good morning.
Good morning, gentlemen.
I was hearing all of the RFID talk, and I am involved in the RFID industry.
Little background, I have well over ten years of experience implementing both Department
defense and commercial sites.
I have worked with one of your previous guests, Professor Hodges, before and I do work with him occasionally.
And I just wanted to take the opportunity to try to dispel some of the rumors that are rampant these days about RFID in the commercial world.
For example?
For example, the tracking of you and linking it up with the products that you buy.
Just can't be done, huh?
No, it's actually being done today without RFID.
Anytime you go into a supermarket and you use your club card to get that discount, it's being done with the barcode in combination with your card.
As far as using RFID in the retail commercial world, The advantage to the retailer is, when example using a smart shelf, they will not be able to tell which person is pulling things off of the shelf.
They want to know information such as, how many times is a product being taken off the shelf, looked at, and put on before it is purchased?
How long is a product sitting on the shelf before it is purchased?
That will allow them to decide Should I continue to carry that product line?
Should I improve it?
Should I improve the advertising?
Alright, so you're pro RFID.
I mean, you see its advantages and no downside, basically, right?
Depending on whose hands RFID gets into, there could be disadvantages.
However, in my experience, I have only seen the retailers, the distributors, etc.
Looking for a financial advantage in the use of RFID, rather than the invasion of privacy.
Alright, well, Peter, how about that?
Absolutely spot on.
I mean, the terse responses, you've never had any privacy or secrecy get over it, you know what I mean?
The caller is absolutely right, all information is known.
However, there are some subtleties The commercial world never does anything unless there's some cost advantage.
One of the biggest trials in the UK has been run by Tesco, which is, if you like, the Walmart of the UK.
And it's been used for shelf-fill monitoring, which lines up exactly with your caller.
Instead of having high-value items like DVDs disappearing off the shelf so nobody can see it and buy it, It's used to monitor shelf fill, and therefore the shelves are always full of the DVDs that are selling well, and you maximize sales.
That's one example.
Sure.
The other one is for the control of shoplifters and the stealing of goods.
So high-value things, funnily enough, like razor blades, have got RFID tags in to try and prevent the theft.
It's the kind of thing that easily slips into the pocket.
People could walk out with.
Those have been a couple of the uses.
Peter, let me ask you a question.
Currently, in a lot of stores here in the U.S., I don't think it's RFID.
It might be RFID, but when you go to buy an item many times, for example, a DVD, there's going to be a barcode on the front, and when you get up to the checker, They'll take it and go to a bulk electromagnetic eraser or something and wave it in front of that a few times and a lot of times it doesn't get erased and you get out to the person who checks as you're going out the door and the alarms go off.
And, you know, they look at you like you're Bonnie and Clyde.
Yeah.
That happens in the UK, too.
Is that RFID that we're talking about?
Not really.
It's just a very crude security tag.
Uh-huh.
Crude, I guess, is right.
Yeah.
I mean, the ultimate will be that they'll know it's you that's bought it, and they'll know, you know, you've bought half the items, and you've also stolen a few.
It's going to make it impossible to get through without getting spotted, that's for sure.
All right.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Peter Cochran.
Good morning.
Good morning, gentlemen.
Hi.
It's Jim in Los Angeles on KFI.
Yes, sir.
And I'd like to share a concern with the guest and see if they've already been there in the UK.
And that has to do with a situation we have sometimes in America where private information gathered through various means ends up in places that the citizen wouldn't Prefer.
Either because, for instance, a phone company sells for a price that a person's bill or records, or recently there was a hack where there were many, many thousands of records released to the wrong place.
Right.
And that combines with the potential for these records to remain for decades.
Is that something that has already been Either has already happened or have they set in consumer safeguards to prevent that sort of thing.
All right.
Let's start with the selling of information, Peter.
The caller is dead right about that.
That's very Annoying.
In other words, your information is so free-flowing, and that's all fine and well, except that there are companies that are selling information to other companies that, because you bought item A, probably would be interested in item B. So you get bombarded with spam or spam mail or just otherwise bothered.
Yep.
Well in Europe there's a Data Protection Act where you're not supposed to be able to do that but of course people circumvent it and it does happen.
You get spam email but you also get spam paper mail and I sit here privately sort of worrying about getting spam voice over IP messages because now Using voice over IP, the phone call doesn't cost anything.
And we're all subject to that.
What I think is really worrying is when large institutions like banks or indeed phone companies get a security flaw where people get whole rafts of customer data stolen.
And then it is used for various unlawful, one way or another, purposes.
And that really is worrying.
But according to regulation and the law, certainly in Europe, all that sort of stuff ought not to be able to happen, but actually it does.
Yes, it does.
Let's talk about voice over IP for a second.
There's a commercial running in this country right now, and I need not name the company, but basically it shows some real pretty gal talking to her sister in Spain.
And the husband's on the way out, and he says, Hey, who are you talking to, honey?
Oh, I'm talking to my sister in Spain, and I've been on the phone since 6 this morning!
And he just smiles.
No, he doesn't, Mom.
He kind of looks at her like, What?
Are you crazy?
And she says, No problem!
I'm using so-and-so company.
Voice over IP.
I can talk for hours and hours!
Well, it's true.
She can.
And that's all neat and well, but...
How's the phone company going to stand up under that?
I mean, voice over IP means that you're sending your voice over the Internet, folks, and it's just like any kind of phone connection.
You're talking to somebody on, you know, on another continent, and it doesn't matter.
You can talk for free for hours.
Well, that isn't going to work out too well for the phone company, is it, Peter?
Absolutely not.
I used to work for the phone company.
I used voice over IP all the time when I'm in the United States.
I regularly talk with my 17-year-old son.
We do homework assignments and have discussions.
The kind of thing that happens is the quality is so good that it's like you're inside the person's head.
It's hi-fi.
And the second thing is that because it costs nothing, you tend not to make a phone call.
You open up a circuit and you use it a little bit like an intercom.
And so that commercial is kind of right.
Well, it's kind of right, but again, how is it going to affect the phone companies?
Well, it's going to be devastating.
The sad thing is that for the last nine or ten years, the phone companies knew and have known about this technology.
Uh, they've experimented with this technology, they've been in a state of denial, almost like the music industry with MP3 downloads, and now that technology is upon them.
Now here's an interesting and important fact.
If you take the bandwidth, or the number of circuits that we have available on the internet, and you compare it to the number of circuits that we have by the phone companies for making telephone calls... Right.
It just does not add up.
The whole of the planet cannot go on the Internet.
The Internet is not big enough and therefore you finish up with voice over IP calls over the Internet proper that either work really well or they're terrible.
As you say, dog poop, they just do not work at all.
So we now have got a lot of the phone companies Looking at ripping out all of those great big switches that they've got, replacing them by internet routers and switches.
No kidding!
And changing their entire networks.
Now here is the good news.
The good news is that if you were to build a phone company from zero today and start with a clean sheet of paper, the cost would be much less than 10% of the cost expended by the incumbents.
That is, if you were to take The AT&T network or the Verizon network or the Bell South network and say, right, let's start with a clean sheet of paper and we'll replace the entire network with internet protocol based, optical fiber based, wireless based technologies.
The cost would be less than 10% of what those companies have already expended in creating that network.
So the forecast is that The Telcos are going to head down towards the commodity business where the profit margins are no longer 22, 15 or 10 percent.
They're going to be 1 or 2 percent.
The good news for the consumer is we're going to get virtually free communication.
It's just going to fall off the end.
It's going to be in the noise of our accounting system.
So they're just going to have to learn to live with it.
Alright, so that's fine, but now let's move into the next logical area, which is MPEG-3s, and worse yet...
Downloading of movies.
Peter, I really do have, I should let you know, sympathy with the artists, the music artists, and the artists, the people that make motion pictures.
It seems as though this music is being downloaded for free, and now motion pictures are being downloaded for free many times.
Before they've even come out of the box, or to get to the box office.
I mean, it's pretty sad.
And, you know, what can be done, or will be done, or is being done about this?
Well, I think it's more than sad.
It can be really a bit of a disaster for the industries if they don't change the business model.
You know, the reality is that the recording industries, and I mean music and movie, Uh, resisted tape.
Audio and video tape.
VHS.
Audio tape.
They tried to stop that technology.
Yes.
They tried to stop the CD.
They tried to stop the DVD.
You bet.
They now make all of their money.
All of their money comes out of DVD sales and CD sales.
Now a new technology arrives.
What we need is a new distribution model.
Now, if you take a CD on the shelf of a store in a box with a cover on it and what have you with the music on, they were selling them at like $22, but actually they cost less than a dollar to make.
And if you say, how much money did the artists get versus the industry, how much did that get?
It was a pretty low percentage.
So here comes a new model.
And really, it's a great shame that, in the case of the American recording industry, they didn't embrace Napster and buy it, and get into the download business really quick, because people like Steve Jobs have actually stolen a march on them, and other companies have too, and I think that the movie industry is now facing a similar crisis.
But now there's a new model, and this new model is kind of interesting.
You know when Hollywood creates a good movie, they know it's a good movie, they phase that release of that movie across the planet to heighten the attention of the audience, to sell it more, to market it more, to make more money, and that is what they do.
If they make a dog of a movie, it's released on the same day All over the world, so that at least in the first week or so, they can recoup their expenditure and not have a total loss on their hands.
That's right.
So now what happens?
The young kids go to watch the movie.
They sit in the movie house.
Inside the first hour, they're texting all the friends, don't come and see this movie, it's a real dog.
So all of a sudden, they're starting to lose money on these movies because of this mechanism.
Now comes another mechanism which is really interesting.
What the kids do, one of them downloads the movie.
It's an illegal copy.
It shouldn't be on the internet.
It shouldn't be anywhere.
They get a download copy.
They watch the movie before they go to the movie house.
And they email or text their friends and say, hey, this movie's great, let's go tonight.
And they go to the movie house to watch it because they get the big screen, the surround sound, and that social engagement with all of their friends, and it's that evening out.
So you're really saying that once they've seen it, their illegal copy of it, it then motivates them to go to the big screen to see it.
Is that really true?
Do you have numbers to back that up?
No, it's very difficult to get actual numbers, but I've been involved in a number of studies and observational sessions looking at what people do, and I'm intrigued by the number of people that download music and then buy the CD, the number of people who download movies and then buy the DVD, because what they want is the real quality recording.
All right, I guess, but you know... No, I'm not sure it's all right, because it's a very disruptive force.
Yes, I'm not so sure it's all right either, because eventually these not-so-good copies are going to be perfect digital copies.
And then what, Peter?
Then I think that the industry has got a real, real problem and is on the verge of collapse.
But now let's extend this a little further.
The most watched movie of all time was not made by Hollywood, or Bollywood, or the Europeans.
It was made by a couple of kids in L.A.
using a PC and a camcorder.
And that was?
Uh, 405 The Movie.
Really?
Yep.
Go on www.405themovie and just download that and you'll see a very amusing, a very cleverly done And a really high quality piece of movie making.
Okay.
Now, the other day... Peter, hold on.
We're at a break point, and we'll pick up on this as soon as we get back.
The most watched movie?
No kidding.
405, the movie, really?
I had no idea.
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That's our fell at aol.com or art bell at mine spring calm Well like it or not this is the world we live in and
And Peter Cochran, my guest, has described it, and I guess come up with ways to help you live in it, in a book called Uncommon Sense.
Out-of-the-box thinking for an in-the-box world.
And that would be available at most of your local bookstores and so forth.
We were talking, and I want to finish that up.
It's so important.
You know, the movie makers, for example, When it gets to the point where these movies can be duplicated and then passed on for free in high quality, it seems to me that industry is in desperate trouble.
And America is the world's biggest movie maker.
And so what new business model do you imagine, Peter, that would be successful for them in under conditions like that?
Well, I think there's more than one thing changing here.
Uh, imagine if we could take a step forward and we got away from all this celluloid distribution.
Instead of having these films distributed in cans, they could be downloaded to the movie house.
Okay.
And you could link the viewing of the movie To the selling of a DVD immediately afterwards, also the selling of other goods and experiences with the movie, so you've got an integrated sale.
These things are going to happen to the industry and they can't stop it.
One, the technology of making movies is going to drop in cost very dramatically.
The number of people capable of making movies is going to accelerate dramatically.
The audience is going to become ever broader and, if you like, ever more pernicious in its activity to get those movies, and it's got to see some value add.
What they're not going to be able to do is to maintain the profit margin, just like the telcos and other sectors.
They're not going to be able to maintain the old profit margins with the existing model, so they have to change the model.
The questions are, Will people, for example, download a portion of the movie or all of the movie to go on their PDA and on their laptop, and will they be prepared to pay for it in the same way that people now buy ringtones?
So you have an industry now created.
In the last five years, where people will pay money for ringtones, and they will change them every month.
Will they do that with the movies?
Will they save them, and will they do a similar thing?
And that no one knows.
But you know already, if you go to Southeast Asia, if you go to places like Bangkok, all CDs and DVDs are a dollar.
It doesn't matter what's on them.
It can be Microsoft Office, or it can be A movie or anything and all the CDs and DVDs cost a dollar.
So whilst people are worrying about the internet pirating of this stuff, there's a mega industry out there of hard selling and hard pirating that's even bigger.
So I think that there's going to be a shakeout in the industry and it's going to change.
And just recently, just roaming around the net, I found a Star Wars movie that was nothing to do with the original series in as much that it wasn't made professionally, it was made by amateurs, and it wasn't half bad.
They produced their own backdrops, their own technology scenes, they'd done their own blue screening.
So you think the marketplace is going to let all this shake out?
Oh, I don't know where it's all going to finish, but I do know there's going to be an awful lot of grief on the way.
Yeah, there's already grief.
And I understand that grief.
I mean, if you look at Hollywood, you would think, I mean, Hollywood has got a very big voice, but actually it's a fairly small industry.
You're only talking about 10 billion.
Uh, compared to the automobile industry or steel or electronics or anything else, it's actually got a big voice, but it's actually a minor player.
I think that if you go to India and you look at Bollywood, you find they actually produce more movies than anyone else on the planet.
But, you know, this is the second world, so I'm not quite sure what the financial stake is.
And, of course, the biggest player in the motion industry is the pornography, where they make even more movies and make even more money than Hollywood.
All right, going back to RFID for a moment.
We're short on time here.
I just got sent this article, Privacy Advocate Decries ID Tags and Passports.
Privacy activist Bill Skinnell has launched a website designed to discourage the State Department from deploying remote tagging technology in passports.
In February, the Department proposed significant changes to U.S.
passports that, among other things, would mandate the usage of radio frequency identification tags.
Would contain all the information about people on their passports as well as facial biometric information.
Privacy advocates and security experts have criticized the initiative saying it could make Americans more insecure because the chips would broadcast the passport holders information to potential terrorists who have scanning technology.
From identity theft to identity death, an RFID chipped U.S.
passport means good news for the bad guys, Chanel wrote on a site called RFID Kills.
Yep.
Well, there's a one-line answer to that.
It's called encryption.
All of that data can be encrypted and made accessible to the right authorities only.
But at the end of the day, I have not seen a technology that has not been circumvented eventually by people who have sufficient evilness or resource to go after it.
A lot of the time they will use a photograph to identify you anyway.
Peter, is there any such thing as an unbreakable code?
In principle there is.
We can use quantum cryptography to make code that in principle cannot be cracked, but you then look at quantum computers and Well, perhaps.
I think it would be a brave man who would say that there are codes that cannot be cracked.
I've never held that view.
What you can do is make them so complex that you need so much resource that it's virtually impossible, or for the moment it's impossible.
All right.
Well, as for the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Cochran.
Hi.
Yes, Art?
Yes.
Hi, another great show.
Thank you.
I wanted to bring up this This issue of, every time we talk about RFIDs or something like this, the issue of privacy and freedom always comes up.
Of course.
And, uh, you know, a previous caller already invoked 1984.
Yes.
And, uh, who was it that said, uh, you know, that those who give up freedom for security deserve neither?
Right.
Like Patrick Henry or someone.
I don't remember.
Anyway, your point?
But my point is, uh, 1984, as compelling as it was, I just don't see that happening.
I mean, it would take several generations for us to get to that point.
All right, well, that point alone is worth discussion.
1984, a scary movie, to be sure, Peter, but the caller said, look, I don't really see that happening.
Do you?
The only mechanism I can see that could bring that about would be the apathy towards politics leading to a situation where people did not actually exercise their right to vote and therefore some power got into control that gradually edged our society in that direction.
I think The biggest danger to any of our societies is not from without, but from within.
Well, thank God we have no apathy in this country, so we're okay.
Well, throughout the Western world, you see a growing disenchantment with politics and the system.
And certainly in the UK, you have to worry about the prospect of people getting in control by default.
There are people who are in politics, who are inside the system, who have declared the kind of things that they want to do that frankly worry me, and I feel that democracy is the best system we've come up with yet.
But if people abdicate their responsibility to actually take part in democracy, then we may get just desserts in that sense.
I agree with the caller.
The 1984 scenario is very, very difficult to bring about in truth if we have got and continue to remain responsible government.
International Line, you're on the air with Peter Cochran.
Hi.
Yeah, good evening, Mr. Bill.
Good evening, Mr. Cochran.
This is Ivern calling from CJOB 680 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Yes, sir.
And I just wanted to touch base again with you, Mr. Cochran, about the MP3 thing and how you said that Hollywood and the music industry will have to change.
A little bit of quick background.
I'm a musician.
I've been so for the last 25 years, and it seems to me that in the 50s, records were only handed out to promote the artist coming to your town so that your butt would get on the grass and come and see us in the venues.
Seems to me that the record industry, over the last 50 years, has tried to justify the massive profits that they take from the artists by saying, for every one artist that makes it, a hundred of them don't.
Being a guy that's been creative for the last 20 years, I'm really getting tired of paying for the people that aren't making it, and if I can get my music directly to the kids for download and get their butts in the grass where I get my muckers on their ten bucks, and the industry does, then I say, hats off, gents.
Let's go.
Comment, Mr. Cochran?
Yeah, I'm with you.
I can see that there are an awful lot of artists that are actually going straight to a website.
They're not going through the recording industry at all.
And this is allowing people to hear more music.
I think one of the things that is really disturbing is the fact that more and more people are now listening to music artificially, if you like, and live than ever before.
When I was a child, Very, very few people got to hear either a pop group or an orchestra or any other form of music live because it was too expensive.
Now, we can sample the goods extensively, decide that we really like you as an artist, and then make the ultimate effort to travel to come and see you at one of your concerts, and that seems to work.
In the UK, there are at least one pop group that make all their money out of concerts, and they just use the recording industry and the Internet as a means of advertising, which is really where it started.
And there are many authors who are putting the first chapters of their book up on the Internet.
I think wisely so, as well.
So publishing, also.
Absolutely.
First Time Caller line, you're on the air with Peter Cochran.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
It's a pleasure to speak with you, Mr. Bell.
Thank you.
I've been holding and listening to you.
What I wanted to share with you is, I'm a retired consultant, technology consultant, and I wanted to just tell you that the easiest form of communication to compromise and take is information that goes through the air.
Well, sure.
You know, I'm saying, like, it doesn't matter if it's microwave or whatever.
I caught you all talking about privacy and there was a discussion over, you know, security and stuff.
And someone's ability, you know, to access that information.
You know, I'm just saying that that's one of the easiest to do.
Well, yes, I know.
Sir, 128-bit encryption can be applied to something that goes through the air as well.
I mean, there is security.
Yes, you might intercept it.
That doesn't mean you'll understand it.
I was about to get to the encryption portion of it.
As I'm sure that you well know, there's always some bad apples out there.
And that's where these black boxes come from that are created to steal this kind of information.
You know, I kind of, well, we kind of refer to them as rogue engineers or rogue scientists or what have you.
The motion picture expert skill, the joint picture expert skill, MPEG, JPEG.
They used to have pictures on the Internet.
But because people were downloading them and selling them, they changed it and you could only get a thumbnail.
And you couldn't resize it.
Now, this is kind of a... I'm trying to decide what you're asking here.
What are you asking?
I wasn't going to ask anything.
I just wanted to share something with you.
Okay.
You were talking about the MP3.
Yes.
Well, what I was saying, what my point is, is before the MP3 thing, it was the motion picture expert skill thing.
I'm saying they have them on a network.
And people would, excuse me, download them.
But they were like an advertisement.
And then somebody came along with a program so they could download them.
And MPEG and JPEG got together and said, you know, hey, we don't do this for free.
And the same thing is happening, like, with the MP3.
Now, as far as the voice internet protocol, We designed that equipment years ago.
It's always been available.
It's just that people haven't seen it unless they subscribe to it.
Because there are machines and different telco systems as far as that goes.
Okay.
Alright, do you have a question for my guest?
A specific question?
Nope.
Alright, well then we'll sort of settle it right there.
Thank you very much.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Peter Cochran.
Hello.
Yeah, good morning Art.
Good morning.
Good evening, wherever you're at.
Yes.
Walt from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, listening to you on 850 WNPJ.
Yes, sir.
And a fellow ham operator.
All right.
Loud at ESSB.
Good for you.
Quick question for your guest there.
You talked about RFID and putting, you know, putting like a little tag in kids and that for possible safety reasons or detractor movements and that.
Why not put them in, like, registered sex offenders or It's already done in the UK, but the tags are external.
why not put it in them and track their movement instead of our kids alright
uh... what a very very very very good question uh... peter it's
perhaps a more sensitive area but people are very concerned about sex offenders
child molesters that sort of thing uh... what about it already done in the u k with the tax breaks to know where
you have put the tags on the like of
uh... the persistent offenders uh... it restricts the movement there
on the effectively on the house arrest They have to report to the police station every day, and there has been some success with that.
Of course, they're not internal tags yet.
That would, I guess, be seen as a violation, but they are externally tagged.
The really bad guys then cut the tags off Commit another crime and then they get put away in jail.
But it's already done over here.
Do you envision a day, Peter, when the tags will not be external, not removable, they'll be internal?
Yep, I sure do.
I think it's an inevitability for people like that.
And it'll be on the basis of no choice for them.
But people like you and I will be by choice.
So I think the honest Honest citizens will have a choice of whether they want to do something or not, and I think the dishonest ones, or the gross offenders, will have no choice.
So, Peter, all in all, with this emerging technology, do you think that it is more advantage to mankind than it is disadvantage in robbing him of his, uh... Yeah, I think the upside to me is so enormous, just to add another strapline for your caller there, Quite a number of convictions in the UK have been made on the basis that some criminals said, it wasn't me, I wasn't there, but their mobile phone was, and they've been actually convicted on the basis that they've been able to say that their mobile phone was actually in the area where the crime was committed, and that's just blown their alibi out of the water.
That gives me a deal of joy, if you like, that the bad guys get it.
I just look at the upside.
There's all of the worries about the technology.
My favorite one is cooking your brain with a mobile phone.
There's no evidence to support that.
The number of people who survive tremendous medical problems, accidents, and what have you, and have been saved by mobile phones.
All right, there you are.
We're way out of time.
We're out of time, Peter.
Your book on common sense, available generally on Amazon.com, I'm sure.
Indeed it is.
And if the callers want any more data on me and all of this, I've written up on Cochrane.org.uk.
Cochrane.org.uk, is that right?
Correct.
All right, my friend, I want to thank you for being here.
It's been a joy, and you're square in the middle of what's going on in the world.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
Good night.
Good night.
Actually, good day, I suppose.
It's probably morning there, and he's probably having tea.
That's it for this weekend.
See you next.
Don't forget, Saturday next, the real story of Amityville.
Good night.
Midnight in the desert, shooting stars across the sky.
This magical journey will take us on a ride.
Filled with the longing, searching for the truth.
Will we make it till tomorrow?
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