This is dedicated to all the hackers and the crackers, to the hackers and the crackers.
I see in binary, I speak source code, step on my toes, I'll post a million jpegs of you
in a fag pose, in your digital stance, getting firewalled ho, cause I'm riding the net in
my six foe, I was a dick with my 56, now with my cable I'm able to get that stable, on the
out, my name is Ace and I'm a Leo, on the digital highway, my name is Neo and I'm a hero,
in a flash I'll school you on burning dreamcast, you need some ISO, let me through my hard drive
rifle, our exchange you could never stifle, and a digital hug, you just caught the love
bug, I bootlegged your CD, I caused a fight between Un and Jay-Z, your CG, it's all gonna
be free, whether we take it by force or we take it nicely, you feel that rattle in your
bones, when I tell you we just hacked out Jones, and NASDAQ, leave your fight on your
back, cause I am he who loves to hack and crack, cause I am he who loves to hack and crack,
this is dedicated to the hackers and the crissons, serial phones, source codes, ISOs, RANS, SIPs,
SIS, this is dedicated to the hackers and the crack, welcome everybody to Binary Revolution
Radio episode 49, if it smells like funk it must be us, and we are in the house again,
this is June 8th 2004, the original air date, I am here with ZeroDB, welcome back to the
show my friend, hello, and we're gonna start this episode off doing stats like we do once
per month, we're gonna talk about some May stats, do the email in the housekeeping section,
so I guess probably the best thing is to just jump right in, because boy, when it comes
to stats, this was a very, very interesting month, now first of all, some of the simple
stats, we averaged for the month of May around 850 visits per day, and that was, we were down
for a few hours one morning, because we ran out of bandwidth, so I don't think that few
hours, it was maybe, I don't know, six hours at the most, would have affected our numbers
too much, so 850 wouldn't have been affected too much, we used a total of around, when I
got the site back up, I put a little extra bandwidth in there, we used a total of around
340 gigabytes of bandwidth during the month of May, 340 gigs, and I had it configured a
little, well, not wrong, but didn't have enough dedicated to what I should have, so when I reallocated
some, talked to the host, got some bandwidth reallocated properly, and brought it back
up, so we also had to make some other adjustments, because it was mostly, it was hacked TV, and
we'll talk about that in a few minutes, but it was mostly hacked TV that was eating up all
the bandwidth, people were downloading the hell out of it, frankly, so, and that's just
us, some people in the forums, and some people IM'd me and emailed me talking about some of their
statistics, and how much, how many downloads they were getting, and some of them were getting
more than I was even, luckily they had that kind of bandwidth, which is great, and it's
so cool to have mirrors like that, but I'm estimating all together, between my site and
all the mirrors that I've gotten, been reported so far, that there were about 2 terabytes of
total bandwidth, total downloads of hacked TV, in the month of May.
A well-renowned thing, dog, huh?
Yeah, right.
I guess, I guess, you know, all those people coming in and bashing the card hacking segment
and stuff like that, I guess the word's getting around, so I don't know if it's good word or
bad word, but people are coming to download it, so that's very, very cool.
That's good.
Yeah, so, and it's great, I don't mind the bandwidth, I want it, that's why I'm paying
extra for the bandwidth and everything, well, I should say you, the listeners, are paying
for it with the magazine, because that's what funds our bandwidth, basically, and I want
people to come and download it, I don't, you know, I didn't want to take it down, but we
got to work out a good, efficient way to use it, so, and again, we'll talk about that later.
So, let's jump into the countries, I like to see what kind of countries and where the
visits are coming from, and this month, the number one country, now, obviously, I exclude
.com, .edu, .net, those, you know, any U.S., when I say other countries, I mean non-United
States companies and countries, et cetera, and the number one country was Poland, and
yes, that directly relates to Hack TV, because apparently, Poland loves Hack TV.
Number two was the U.K., number three was Canada, they're regularly around the top, number four
was Australia, and number five was the Netherlands, and I think Norway was real close there, too.
So, as usual, we're getting hits from all over the world, not just the U.S. thing, but all
over the place, and we get emails from these people all the time, too, which is very cool,
so, by all means, write in and let us know if you're in a, what I would call an exotic
country, which is not United States, what else do we have?
Okay, speaking of exotic countries, I also go through and see where the hits are coming
from, where they're originating from, and what search engines people are coming through
to find us, and I found some new search engines this time, something called, I'm not sure how
to pronounce this, Origovisla, which is Hungarian, it's from Hungary, a search engine, never heard
of that before, Baidu, B-A-I-D-U, that's another one, it's, I did some research on that one,
and apparently, there, a lot of people refer to that as the Chinese Google, that's apparently
a really, really, really big search engine in China, so, I got some hits from them, from
a place called IX Quick, which is from the United States, they claim, according to their
site, to be, quote, the world's most powerful meta search engine, for whatever that means,
that's a self-proclaimed title, I guess, like king of all media, I guess you can bestow your
own title, sip of iced tea there, and Mama, M-A-M-M-A, I think we've had that one before,
it's another meta search engine, and a final one from, again, the pronunciation, I'm not
sure, but Kvasir, Kvasir, does that sound, yeah, okay, and that's from Norway, so, some
exotic search engines from a lot of different countries, which is cool, so we're getting picked
up by more places, now, I thought this might be a good section here, to kind of step away
from the stats a little bit, and talk about search engines, which, again, is something
I really find interesting, we talk about a lot on the show, and explain exactly what
is a meta search engine, like, back to, it was called IX Quick, USA site that claims to
be, it's a normal American search engine, claims to be the world's most powerful meta search
engine, now, what exactly is a meta search engine, as opposed to a non-meta search engine,
or a regular search engine, and all the meta search engine means, basically, is that they
don't have their own spider, that goes out and spiders the web, and creates this giant
database, and their own search algorithm, and stuff like that, all they're doing, is sorting
and ordering results from other search engines, now, the one of these that I like best, I mentioned
on the show before, and it still is, is Vivissimo, I still like their site, and the way it's
a clustering engine, they call it, but it's along the same lines, a meta search engine
is not really doing the same thing as, say, a Google, or something like that, so there
are a lot of these meta search engines out there now, and they're like, when you find
them, they're like, they're the ones you see that will have, not only a search engine,
but they'll also have an MP3 search engine, and they'll have an images, and they'll have
a, they like, combine results from a bunch of different types of other search engines,
and try to, to rank them, themselves, to see what's most likely, and mix and match them
together, sometimes they'll even give credit to the original search engine, and Vivissimo,
again, is, is like that, they'll give credit to the original engine that, that it comes from,
and then they'll use their own ranking system, and I also found MSNBot, and I talked about
this briefly before, and I, I don't really have any new news this time, but, MSNBot is,
they're doing some really, really unusual things in the way that they're spidering our site,
the way they're, they're finding things in the engines, I'm actually getting, it's not
coming across like a normal spider, somehow, it's coming, it's almost like it's coming across
as hits from a, from a, gosh, I don't even know how to describe it, as though it was a
real person, and I know that can't be the case, I know it's not the case, but they're,
they're really making it come across, I think, I think, my guess is, anyway, that they're
probably just using Internet Explorer technology, they're using their same technology that they
used to build IE into the search engine, so that it looks like a, simply a hit from another
web browser, from another, another IE web browser hit, so that it gets mixed in with the
others, but it resolves back to an MSN search IP address, or something at their site, because
I do get a lot of hits that resolve to these seemingly random numbers, or, or temporarily
assigned names and numbers from Microsoft, but it's not showing up, actually, in the search
engines list at all, which is really strange, it's not, it's not your typical spider, so
I want to be, I'm going to be watching it really closely, and I'm going to do a little bit of
digging on it, but if anybody's already done some research on that, and they've looked
into it, if it, you know, you've noticed this on your sites as well, please email me and
let me know, you know, what you've found, and what you've come up with, because I think it's
really, I really want to know if there's more to it than that, I, I, again, I suspect that
they're simply using Internet Explorer technology, and turning their spider loose, using the browser
as the engine, instead of developing a new engine, and I don't know that there's anything
wrong with that, but it's definitely different, so, it'd be interesting to see how effective
it is, too, whenever they do finally announce and, and launch their MSN search, it's going
to be very interesting to see, because they're supposedly, I don't know if you remember this,
but they, do you remember he reading that they were trying to buy out Google at one time?
Yeah.
And Google shot them down, of course, because, well, they're Google, they've gotten kind
of big now, MSN, or Microsoft, I should say, none of them, Microsoft is actually developing
their own, and they, they really think they're going to knock Google down, they really think
they're going to put Google out, they got a little bit offended, I guess, that their
buyout offer was turned down.
Now, I doubt it will happen, I was reading an article today, um, about Google hiring so
many PhDs to do a lot of things, um, even the guys, the old Lucent guys, or a lot of,
a few of those are working for Google now.
Hmm.
Yeah.
But, uh, back to that, but, that, that, uh, bot, that MSN bot, in the, uh, headers, does
it display as an MSN bot?
It, well, it's, I, I haven't been able to look that far yet, that's what I'm saying, I'm
going to be doing that soon, but what happens is it revolves back to an, I, it revolves
back to a, gosh, how can I explain it?
Okay, when it resolves where the hits are coming from, it revolves back to something
like, um, MSN search 547382.msn.com.
Now, that should look just like a visitor, I could get, um, you know, ADSL-32.balsouth.net,
some randomly assigned DSL, it's what it resolves back, and that's where the browser, the person
that's physically browsing.
So, it looks indifferent than a user, except for the fact that my eye caught, when I was
looking through the logs, it caught my eye, MSN search, what the hell, you know?
So, that's what caught my eye.
It's not showing up in the spiders list, and it's not sending any, it's not sending a different
agent, a user agent.
It's sending the same user agent that a person using Internet Explorer would, which is why I
believe the way I do.
Um, but, obviously, I'm getting a lot of hits from them, because they're spidering, and they
are making, you know, it looks like a pretty in-depth picture of the site.
I'm getting almost as many, Google is still number one, I get more hits from Google indexing
the site than anything else, but probably within a thousand, one to two thousand of it, MSN
is keeping right up.
So, they are developing a pretty darn serious, uh, database.
So, when they launch that, that is going to be very interesting, and also, they're going
to have to do some catch-up with Hotmail, too, because Gmail and that one gigabyte of
storage has really got people excited.
We talked about it on a previous show about that.
I'm not going to go into it again, but I am going to laugh really loud if all these people
are paying money and buying these Gmail beta accounts, and they get taken away when they
go live.
I mean, they are beta accounts, after all.
I'm not going to feel sorry, but anyway, that's neither here nor there.
Now, um, links.
I get links from other sites, like to see where the traffic's coming from, besides the direct
hits and the search engines, and the number one, the top site that is giving us the most
hits is dc603.org.
Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right.
602.org, I thought.
Well, the Phoenix DEFCON group page.
Um, we had, you know, the stun gun fiasco a while back where...
Scandal.
Yeah, scandal, scandal, fiasco, scandal, eh, whatever.
Um, where Tech TV had demonstrated a stun glove using disposable camera.
Again, I'm not going to rehash all that, but basically, um, it was strikingly similar, not
only idea-wise, but even in the ingredients and everything, the way they did it, to something
that Logic had done on Radio Freak America a while back, and talked about in our forums,
and put up on his, on, uh, their website there at Phoenix, uh, 2600 group, DEFCON group, and,
um, kind of, we thought some credit should have been given, and, um, I guess a lot of our
listeners emailed, and, um, they broke down.
To their credit, Tech TV added a link on there, giving some credit, saying there was a similar
project from Logic, X-Logic, whatever he...
He, he didn't mean to be called X-Logic, but everybody calls him that, apparently, um,
linking back to his site, and he was nice enough there to provide a link back to binrev.com,
which is where it all kind of got stirred up, I guess, so, we got, uh, easily over 8,000
hits passed through there.
A lot of hits, so a lot of people, Tech TV must get a lot of hits, obviously, I guess,
and, um, a lot of them got rerouted over to us, so that's very cool.
And, uh, the number two site, and this is what I was mentioning earlier, it came from
a site in Poland, and it's called Hacking.pl, apparently a big Polish hacking site.
Now, it's a lot to talk about with this one.
First of all, Polish is not one of the languages that Babelfish knows, nor is it a language that
Google will translate.
So, even when I found where a lot of the bandwidth was going, and trying to figure out why I was
getting so many hits from this, you know, I still was under the impression it could have
been an attack or something like that, I didn't know what was going on, so I had to go out
there and do a little digging and find a, uh, a search engine that would, or a page that
would do Polish to English translations, and I found one, it wasn't very good, it was kind
of rough, but I finally found one and basically figured out what was going on, and that is
that this site apparently did a little report, did a little article on hacking TV shows or
hacking videos and stuff like that, and they listed, um, Hack TV along with the Broken and
some other clips, some other sites that had put up AVIs and stuff of, of different hacking
topics.
So, it seemed to be legitimate and everything, seemed to be a nice article, and I guess they
just have a lot of visitors at that site, and again, the statistics back that up and show
that, so, they seem to be okay, but the problem is, they committed just a terrible, terrible,
terrible breach of netiquette by doing deep linking straight to the files on my server.
Now, it says clearly on my page, we have a limited amount of bandwidth, we want to use
it efficiently and intelligently, so we put up a bit torrent, so that we could kind of
split bandwidth among other people who were seeding said torrent and said file, as well
as a list of mirrors that we had up, and they were rotating, some people would run out of
bandwidth, and I'd take theirs down, and some people would offer a new one, and I was rotating
them, and if you visit the site, you always had a lot of different options, so it balanced
out all the downloads over the different mirrors and different options that people had.
Well, this article deep linked directly to the file, the zip file, on binrev.com, as well
as two other of our mirrors, too, and they got a lot of hits, too, luckily they were able
to handle most of them, and they deep linked directly into it, a horrible, horrible breach
of netiquette. So, truthfully, we should have seen that coming. You know, I'll take
credit, I'll take fault for that. And Cy Pete, actually, from our group, as you know, he
and I have been talking, he's going to write a little load balancing script to help us account
for this in the future. For now, for now, I have put the file back up since we started
the new month. We've got a lot of bandwidth available so far. It's going fast again, don't
get me wrong.
It's going fast.
Yeah, it's going fast. Not as fast, but it is going fast, so I don't know if I'm going
to be able to keep it up like this the whole time, so I'll touch base with him and try
to get that load balancing going so that we can use all of our mirrors and balance everything
out a little bit better and hopefully, like I said, intelligently use the bandwidth that
we had. We have enough if we use it properly, I think.
They're still from Poland? Most of the hits, they're still coming from Poland?
Yes, still quite a few hits from Poland. A lot of hits are, I can't directly connect them,
but I suspect from what I mentioned earlier, the tech TV. People are coming and finding the
site through that, and when they get here, they're finding, oh, wow, I never heard of these
guys. They got this radio show. They got this TV. Let me download this. So, you know,
we're getting, it's, the word is really getting out there a lot. The word is getting
out there. They're coming from everywhere, but yes, still quite a few of them coming from
Poland.
Free advertisement.
Yeah, hey, that's the way it goes, man. And it's all underground. We didn't, it's not
like we're paying or we're out there, you know, pimping it out.
Right.
It's just word of mouth, which is fantastic. You know, that, frankly, that gives, to me,
that's better credibility to hear it from somebody directly.
Right.
So, um, so that's the one, those are the one, that was the one, two punch that really
killed our band with this much, uh, this month. Again, that's, that's great. We'll handle
it in the future. Um, but we did have a couple other in our top, um, uh, where a lot of our
hits are coming from, our top referrers. Um, the third one is actually with several. I bunched
them all together. Um, and that is, and this is kind of getting on my nerves. I put up the,
the hackers gallery for people to put up screenshots and pictures of cool stuff that they found
and hardware and errors and, and, you know, just whatever they found out there that could
be of interest to other hackers. I put up this gallery. I made it pretty wide open, but
it was all intentionally. I was kind of running on the honor system, so to speak. Um, I find,
I'm starting to find a lot of people who are using it to post their avatars that they're
going to use offsite in other places. Now, to a certain extent, it's a little avatar. It's not
such a big deal, but A, the more people do it, the more it adds up quickly. And when we're obviously
at a premium for bandwidth right now with the situation going on, it doesn't help. And B,
I end up getting all these hits in my stats that are very misleading and I want to know why the hell
I'm getting hits from, you know, this weird website that has nothing to do with hacking,
does not have a link to us. Why the hell am I getting all these hits from people over there?
You know, I see all this kind of stuff. I do look at the logs, people. I've said that many times. I
see what's going on. So I have found a couple of them. I've deleted some avatars. Um, and I'm in
the process, you know, it's, it's frankly, it's a timing thing. I haven't had time to really go
through, but when I sit, get time, I'm going to start banning people. It clearly says only for use in
the DDP forums, only for use on our sites. You, I don't mind you use it there. I put it there to
help out, but don't go using my site and then linking off site with it. You know, I can make
technical workarounds to prevent that. I just don't want to have to. It just really is kind of
offensive to me. It's another netiquette thing. So when I get time, maybe by the end of this week,
maybe next week, I am going to go out there and find it. If you clean that shit up now, darn it,
I didn't make it without cussing. I knew I would. If you clean, if you clean that stuff
up now, before I get around to it, you might survive, you might get by. But if I go out
here and I find out and I will, I will, it's just a matter of time, me taking the time to
go through and figure out who's doing what I go out there and find it, I'm going to start
banning accounts. Don't ban me. Don't ban me. Yeah. Right. It's just, it's just so rude.
We've banned people before, you know, and I've also, along that same note, I mentioned
it last week that I'd be upgrading the gallery and I did that. That was something I worked
on this past week. I upgraded the gallery and I'm in the process of making it, again,
it's a time thing. I really need, really need help on a lot of this stuff, man. I don't
have, there's not enough hours in the day. But I'm making it so that you're going to have
to log in with an account to be able to post pictures in the forum. And that's just,
that's terrible. I don't want to have to do that, but, you know, I'm forced to do
that by some people. So anyway, last few, uh, uh, refers that I have, uh, rant TV, rant
radio, et cetera. All the rant media sites are sending us some good hits. Um, again,
hack TV is in their rotation. So they're playing that and they've got some links up to us.
Uh, freaks and geeks, they're always sending us a lot of hits and old school freak. Don't
forget about oldschoolfreak.com. Great site updated frequently, you know, just cause the radio
show is not there every week again, still all kinds of other good stuff. Project Walmart
Freedom updated. He puts up some other audio files lately, spent some great articles submitted,
some photo, photography, all kinds of good stuff. That site is still updated very frequently.
So if you haven't been going, check it out and you can link to it straight from binrev.com.
It's one of our, uh, one of our buttons there. And finally, for the statistics to wrap it up,
um, I'm sorry. I love, I love statistics. I, you learn so much and you find out so many
things from statistics. Um, this one's kind of a funny one. The top search terms for the
month of May, the number one search term was anime. And like the number two through number
whatever, like all the top search terms were anime, anime wallpaper, anime, um, I don't know,
different anime topics. Uh, Counter-Strike was one of the top search terms. Starcraft.
I don't know. Is anybody searching for hacking that comes to our site?
The highest search term that we actually got that seemed valid was Hack TV. People searching
for Hack TV, which again, words getting out, that's a good thing. But yeah, we got, it was
just an odd month. I think it's the first time we see anime out there a lot. And it's because
we talk about it in the forums. That is where they're coming from. I trace them all the
way. Um, in Counter-Strike and Starcraft, we've got some wallpapers out there that people
are finding. So, um, I don't know. I guess, I guess it doesn't really matter a whole lot.
But, interesting nonetheless. Now, golly, we're halfway through the show already.
Man. Let's jump in.
Do some prank calls later.
Yeah. Let's do, let's do some, um, let's jump into the email here. And I'll try to
do these quickly because this is turning into me talking the whole time. And I know
I got some stuff I wanted to talk with you about later on, so I don't want to totally
bogart the microphone here. But let me do a couple quick emails. Um, the first one from
Fuzzy NG. He says, Stank, I'm a long-time listener, first-time emailer. First off, let me tell
you how cool your show is. The stuff I've learned from your show alone has kept me from going
nuts at work. Well, I wish I could say the same. I'm, I'm glad somebody had helped somebody,
but I still go nuts at work every day. Uh, so on to the other crap in this email. I
heard on one of your recent shows, thanks to Rant Radio, that you've been looking for
a way to turn a computer into a DVR. Well, I was looking through ThinkGeek.com and found
this, Beyond TV3. And, uh, I'll put the link up in the show notes. But, uh, using your existing
TV tuner card or buy our bundle package, which includes a Halpage WinTV PVR-250 BTV tuner
card. That's a mouthful. It'll let you record, watch, pause, and smart skip your favorite
programs using the Viewscape interface. Who needs a TiVo now? Anywho, keep up the good
battle. Woot, woot. Yeah, we did talk about the DVR, and we actually, maybe you haven't
heard all the episodes, we went into some more detail. Um, DVR is something on my personal
projects list that I want to work on. Unfortunately, I don't get to my personal projects too much.
I'm working on too many other projects, so it's at the bottom. I'll eventually get around
to it. But, um, I'm leaning towards something called MythTV. And you can go check it out at
MythTV.org, M-Y-T-H-T-V dot org, um, which is another, uh, piece of software. It runs under
Linux, um, that support, it's got a couple other features in it besides the TVR that I
like, besides the PVR that I like, excuse me. Not only am I going to record the, the
videos or digital, whatever, there's so many different terms out there. But this one also
has a couple other cool things on there that are like, it has a weather module, so I can
have the weather on screen, uh, supports XML feeds. I can have XML news of whatever topic
that interests me or whatever I want to subscribe to and have it scrolling across the bottom
of the screen, stuff like that, uh, can be skinned, so I can have a custom look. Maybe
I can put DDP wallpaper or something like that, silly stuff like that. But the biggest pull
to me is that it also supports MAME emulation. It, it, it will have, has a plug-in that you
can put the MAME emulator and all the ISOs or all the ROM images, I should say, of all
these old school games and put them on there and play them on the TV. That is pretty cool
to me, and that's one of the things that made that stand out.
That's kind of neat.
Yeah, I mean...
I've never, never seen this before.
Yeah, it's mythTV.org. You can definitely go check it out, and it, it's, it supports
a lot of different video cards. You don't have to buy that particular one. That Halpage
is a very popular one, even for MythTV. But, uh, it supports a lot of other cards. You
can go get a list and a lot of other different setups. People tell you, um, the different
sizes of hard drives and how much space it takes up and how fast it runs, what kind of
processor combination you need. You know, you can, you can actually get away with using
a very cheaper, a very cheap or a much cheaper, um, TV end card if you have enough powerful
processor to take a lot of that load off. So, it's got some charts out there that you
can look that kind of stuff up and see what's a good combination that you can afford and,
uh, what kind of quality settings you can expect and how you can tweak it a little bit to make
it work efficiently.
Not to cut you off, but, um, looking at this, you're telling me, excuse me, you're telling
me you can play games, it, it has its own modules, skins, I mean, this is, I'm kind of like trying
to grasp it here.
Okay, okay, it's, it's everything that a TiVo is and more, basically. Um, what it is, is
it's a computer, you know, you take a computer and you install this software.
Yeah.
Combined with a TV end card. Now, you do know, of course, a lot of people know that
with a TV end card you can watch TV on your computer. You're getting that signal coming
in.
Right.
Well, this, this, these PVR software, this digital video recording, DVR software, um,
will capture that. Screen capture, all of that, not screen capture, but it will capture
that incoming signal, save it to AVI. That's how you see out on these, like, uh, what is
it, Supernova and all these sites where you see all the TV shows and AVI's that people are
swapping. That's one of the ways where they come from. But basically, you set this all
up on the computer, send your cable directly into it, put a big fat Mac Daddy 300 gig hard
drive or more on there, and record all that stuff to it. Well, at the same time, on that
hard drive, there's a module here that you can put MAME on your hard drive, and there's
an interface, a module that will let your MAME, that will let you interface MythTV with
MAME, so that not only can you sit there and have it recording and watching TV, you can
also play your old school games, and these are ROMs and, um, arcade games and old Nintendo
64 or old Super Nintendo games and stuff like that, and play them on the screen, on the
TV screen instead of your computer screen. Yeah, it's a, it's a really, really great
thing, and it's something I've been wanting to do, but like everything else. That's for
Linux. Yes, they make, I don't know if there's a Windows or not. I don't know, what is it,
Huppapog or? Huppage or, yeah, I don't know how you pronounce it, Huppage. Oh, uh, Hippo
or whatever it is. Yeah. I've, I've, I've used that, you know, to watch TV on the PC and
do a couple other things, like with my video, with my camera, but this is like, kind of
like different here. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, I have, um, a pinnacle, this external
piece of hardware that I use to capture stuff from my camera, um, and basically this Myth
TV and others like it is a software version of that. You know, the hardware's input is
handled by, you know, your TVN card. I don't have one of those. I have this special thing
that I, I use to interface with my old video camera or VCR or whatever the case
may be. It has RCA jacks going in, so that's how I capture a lot of Hack TV
footage and other stuff like that. Yeah, no, it's very good stuff and I don't
remember which episode it was. You might want to go back and catch, I don't
remember which episode it was, but in the show notes I'm sure where I went into a
little bit more detail about it, I think, but MythTV.org and the links that it has
to support and stuff. There's a, a very friendly, appear, a seemingly friendly user
community and people posting a lot of stats and a lot of helpful information, so
definitely, definitely check that out. Now, I got another email, a couple of them
actually, from I am the stretch. You're stretching? I, I don't know. I just read
them. I am the stretch. It's interesting, I gotta say that. It's a unique name, I guess.
And actually, he explained that he, this was a new, something he had to pick a new
name for certain reasons, but first one I got from him, it says, on the last show,
Lucky225 mentioned that he visits BinRev.com and images don't load. This happens to me
when I use Internet Explorer because of my security options. Under Firefox, everything
is cool. I would therefore say Lucky is probably not seeing the image due to the IE security
options. That's kind of funny because IE blocks images and cookies that it shouldn't and doesn't
block those that it should. That's about right. Yeah, well, okay, first of all, Lucky's not
too bright. You know, I'm surprised he can even spell BinRev.com to get there. He, he's
lucky he can get on the interweb at all. So, the fact that he's the only one having a problem
with it, you kind of take that with a grain of salt. Of course, I'm kidding. He knows that,
but I'll get some hate mail from him about that. No, I won't. He doesn't listen to the
show and he lied. He doesn't go to BinRev.com anyway. But anyway, in his second email, I
am the stretch, he says, I spent about two hours looking through Google Answers and it's
great. Of course, he's referring back to, we had like a three or four part Google series
with a couple different hosts, racks especially, but Google Answers, which I thought was a really,
really interesting site and tons of potentially interesting information and, and he found some.
He says, companies are posting requests for the programming of entire applications. Also,
a not JoseLeon-GA is being trusted with full admin rights to several companies' websites so
that he may personally add code and services requested. Now, boy, that's dangerous. That's
really, really dangerous. Now, it's a very interesting way to get into a company. I mean,
that's an awful lot of trust to someone on a website Google Answers. I mean, that's a whole
lot of faith you're putting into somebody. Even if you do, even if it's a paid transaction
and stuff like that, that's a whole lot of faith. Isn't it, is it just unusual? First
of all, Google Answers, for the most part, is fairly cheap. It's not like this guy's making
thousands and thousands of dollars to write this software for them. I mean, everything
I saw was in the hundreds. Well, I guess they figure it's reputable. I don't know. I don't
know. I wouldn't... I wouldn't take the risk. Well, you know, sometimes management doesn't
make the best decisions. Yeah, exactly. So, I don't know, really know what they're...
Well, maybe it's cheap. Maybe that's another... Well, okay, if he's willing to work that
cheaply, though, what does that tell you? If he's willing to work that cheaply under these
odd circumstances of doing it through Google Answers, first of all, why not? Why didn't
he take it offline and get a real job and sign a contract work or something like that outside
of Google Answers? That's the right way to do it and do some research and make sure the
guy's legitimate. That's a real odd circumstance. So, if he's willing to do that and work that
cheaply on such a weird thing, how much do you think it would cost for me to bribe him
or to give him, you know, ask him to put a backdoor in there for me or give me an account
on that system? If he's working for that cheap, he's probably wanting some
money. Hell, here's 20 bucks if you can hook me a backdoor into whatever system you're
working on or something like that, you know? That's put... You know, you're trusting somebody
that you don't know. I mean, I guess that's the case all the time, you know? I guess let's
not be naive. But usually when you're hired...
Maybe you don't know the full story. Maybe there's some other kind of under-the-table
stuff or just some other logistics in general that might be contributing to what's going on
there. I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know. I'll be open-minded and say, yeah, maybe there's more to the story.
I'll be open-minded and say that. But you know what? It's just too dangerous. You know,
if that is really all there is to the story, whoever did that, whoever gave him access,
complete access to the system and development, stuff like that, needs to be fired because
that's such a huge security hole, potential security hole. I'm assuming the obvious. I
didn't... I probably shouldn't assume this. I assume they gave him this information in
Access Private. I hope they didn't post the access numbers and passwords and stuff in the
Google Answers. I assume they contacted him privately. They had to have. Surely they're
not that dumb. Well...
Maybe they... Well, I mean, where's their admin? You know, what's...
Probably is the admin for all we know.
Something doesn't add up.
Yeah.
Anyway.
All right. And one last email. And you know what? Okay. Again, we don't do real names,
so I withheld the real name. But this email says, hello, I was wondering if you would be
able to tell me who the music is by in the Hack TV episode one, artist and title. Thanks
in advance. Cool show.
Zerl. Can you answer this one for me? Because I'm just...
Uh, let's do it in unison.
Zerl!
Zerl.
Zerl.com.
Every week I think I pimp this guy. Great music. This guy does awesome stuff. Zerl.
Maybe he's a new listener. I don't know.
I... He says, cool show. He's... I don't know.
Well, he could have been... You know what? You're right. I'm going to be open-minded
again. He's referring to the video he probably got. Maybe this was...
Maybe this one was guys from Poland or from Tech TV or something. Got the video and he
has never listened to the radio show before. So... And frankly, if that's the case, he's
not hearing the answer now either, is he? I can't email every person back that asks me
about that music. All I can do is keep bringing it on the radio. That's the easiest way for
me to do it. I spend all day replying to this. It's in the FAQ. It's on the show notes site.
It's on there every time. It's downloadable from my site. We provide links to the
links to him. I've mentioned it on the show several times.
Maybe you should do a little intro to the intro.
Yeah, I can. Maybe I should just make the whole show zero. You know what? I'm going
to do that. I'm going to try to get in touch with him and get him on the show.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm going to try to do that. Get on the show and talk about some different things.
But see, I know he's... I've been speaking to him a little bit here and there and he's
busy, busy guy. So, anyway, that's enough, man. We spent almost the whole show doing
housekeeping type stuff. So let's move on to some other stuff. Actually, to give me a
break since I've been bogarting the entire show, I don't want to waste your time on here.
Why don't you start with the show and tell? Because there's actually... I wanted to kind
of transition that we did have some feedback last week when you weren't on. I forwarded you
to an email where there was a question about Plan 9 and whether or not it really is based
on Linux or not. Because I, from what I read and I went out and did some research, I thought
it was clearly not. But I thought I'd touch base and see what you had to say about it.
And then maybe since we can go from that into our 2600 meeting this past week.
Okay. Well, I'm not going to spend too much time on this because it's...
If anybody's looked at any links that was posted last week or did their own research and read
for themselves or even tried to install it, you can pretty much get an idea that it is truly
not units. It's not based on units. If it's a new design, and I'm just going to read something
here, this is from the Plan9BellLabs.com. It's the Plan 9 Wiki Index page. Clearly titled,
What is Plan 9? And I quote, Developed by people who devise UNIX, i.e., Bell Labs, Plan 9 takes
development back into the realm of research. While UNIX can be said to be a research tool,
the OS principles remain largely the same throughout all developments.
Plan 9, the name is taken from the title of the worst film ever made,
Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space.
I didn't... Yeah, I didn't know that. I was going to make a Plan 9 joke about that before.
I didn't realize that that's really where it came from.
It came from the movie.
Great. Go ahead.
...is an attempt to work on the concept of operating systems from the ground up,
reworking the whole idea using modern concepts and technology.
Now, that being said, now this is just one particular quote from many of Bell Labs' papers
and writings and different researchers that are working on Plan 9. It's a totally new design.
Now, I'm not going to... You know, I don't want to get on the soapbox or rant or anything.
I don't want to take it out of context. It's an OS, and that's all it is.
It's not like we're trying to come up with some cure for cancer or something.
You know, it's only an OS. No big deal.
It's just... From what I've read, my understanding from what I've read,
I understand there's another gentleman or... I believe it's a gentleman,
the one that sent the email stating that it is based on Unix,
based on what he's read and this and that.
I think it was from a textbook.
Yeah, I don't have... I've actually deleted the email.
You know, it's... I mean, if you're referring to a...
I think it was a B... Wasn't it a BSD textbook, I think?
I don't have... Right, right. He's referring from a BSD textbook.
I mean, come on. Look at something that's on Plan 9.
Go to the Bell Labs website.
There are plenty of researchers out there that have written papers on this.
And if you read through them, you can come to a general consensus
that it is not based on Unix. It is not Unix.
Well, it is very Unix-like. I mean, you would agree to that, right?
It does have some...
I would agree that some things were adopted.
Sure. Oh, yeah. They admit that it's based loosely on Unix,
that some ideas were taken from Unix. I do remember reading that.
Yeah. But you can't say it's based on Unix.
Right. It's not a form or a type of Unix.
Right. You know, I mean, I'm not ruling the whole Unix OS out as a total,
but a lot of... Yes, there were some things that were adopted from the Unix environment.
And that's just being an OS. I mean, every OS out there, in my opinion,
was adopted from Unix in some form or manner.
Yeah. You know, it's not that much of a big deal.
But I think I'm going to hold to my guns and say that it is not Unix based on my findings,
my readings, and my experience.
Yeah. And I agree with you, too, from what I've seen.
I did read up on it recently, and I just burned the most recent ISO.
Thank you for that, by the way.
You're welcome.
I'll be throwing that on the box very soon.
But I did do some research to find out more about it, and I came to the same conclusion.
But, again, it does have...
They do admit, in the same documentation and stuff that I was reading,
they borrowed some ideas from it.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, like you said, everybody's borrowed ideas from it.
But it is not a form or flavor of Unix.
Now then, I'm thinking...
Again, I don't have this email in front of me.
I think it was Profitas last week's show said...
It was from a textbook that he had a BSD textbook
and said that it was a derived or a form of Linux or something.
I don't want to...
I hate to put words in his mouth if it wasn't true,
but on the last episode...
But I think from what I've read from the email,
the little excerpt that he emailed,
I think the authors were basically giving a sequence that led up to Plan 9.
Not saying that Plan 9 took everything from those previous OSs.
Right.
It's probably just a poorly worded...
You know, and again, I think that's just the author's opinion.
Right.
Because it's a BSD book.
It's not a Plan 9 paper at all.
Right.
Well, textbooks make mistakes, you know.
Well, I don't even think it was intended to be a mistake.
I think that that was just the author's opinion.
You think?
I mean, opinion...
Well, I mean, which is a true opinion.
Well, then, okay, I'll play...
It's just a sequence of operating systems that led up to Plan 9.
All right, well, I'll play devil's advocate.
I would say the same thing about Bell Labs and what they're saying.
Of course, they're saying, oh, we didn't steal anything.
We're not a type of Unix.
We didn't take anything, you know, so...
No.
I still believe that it's not Unix, but...
Yeah, well, it's, you know...
All right, so we'll sum it up and say, I'm convinced.
I don't think it's Unix.
I don't think it's a form of Unix.
I don't think it was built or based completely on Unix.
But I guess people can make up their own minds.
Yeah, well, you know, yes.
And again, I'm not taking anything away from him.
He is a good initiative to do his own little research.
Well, no, it's a...
Yeah, it's good.
In my opinion, I think he's looking in the wrong place, however.
Nonetheless, he's doing his own research, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Absolutely.
I actually do commend him for questioning.
Absolutely.
That, you know, if he's drawing his own conclusions, then he's completely entitled to that.
Absolutely.
You know, I'm not taking that away from him.
But I would think that and hope that he would try to get it installed on a box and use it.
And maybe we can come to some sort of agreement that it's not Unix.
It's Plan 9 and Plan 9 only.
Well, I will be doing that myself.
Like I said, I got that ISO, and I'm going to throw it on an old box.
Hopefully, it'll run smoothly on...
It's a pretty old box I've got.
We'll see how that goes.
Let's talk about our 2600 meeting.
We just had this a couple days ago, actually.
Great meeting.
You think?
Great meeting.
I think we had...
I think I looked up at one point and counted about 17 people or so, which is pretty doggone good.
I mean, again, it's up from zero the first time I went.
From zero.
So, it's grown tremendously, and that's very, very cool.
Had a couple more new people this time.
It was Cyrus, is it?
That was the first time I...
Well, there was a couple...
Cyrus.
I don't want to name him by name.
Right.
Cypher.
That was a cool guy.
He had some really...
I really am looking forward.
He gave me some topics that he knew some stuff about, had some information about that I really
am looking forward to hearing back from him.
So, a shout out to all those guys and new guys, even in the old guys, of course.
Right.
And even the presentations were, in my opinion, outstanding.
Well...
Learned a lot.
No, seriously.
I learned a lot from both you and Pete.
Now, see...
Yeah.
Now, Cypher gave a...
He went to a conference.
I don't know if I've talked about this in the show.
He went to a conference called Tech Galaxy.
I guess three, four months ago.
And gave a presentation on behalf of our FL 2600 group.
And it was kind of a last minute.
Unfortunately, you know, we weren't able to go.
He ended up being there representing us and giving a presentation on security, just a general
security meeting and what it means to companies and some ideas that maybe, you know, hadn't
been thrown at them in their face like that or made them realize how important security
is.
So, we've been trying to get that presented at our meeting the last few times.
And just for logistical reasons, one reason or another, it didn't come up.
So, he finally gave that this time, which was really cool.
So, that's one presentation you're talking about.
Now, I also tried to give a presentation.
I'm putting something together for hope.
I'm trying to.
I'm thinking about it.
Now, I'm having second thoughts, frankly.
But I'm trying to put together a presentation for hope about the AS400.
And it's very, very, very dry material.
There's just no other way to put it.
It's very dry, technical, extremely technical, some would say boring material.
Well, I think, you know, you never know, man.
Well.
You never know who's going to be in the audience.
You just really never know.
Well, I understand the audience and being in the mall in public with people walking around.
You know, the girls walk by, you get distracted.
I know how all that works.
Yeah, we have to start over two or three times, yeah.
But, well, what it was was this was my first presentation of this.
And I didn't know how it would go.
While I presented, I actually picked up.
I'm like, man, I already said that.
It has some repetition in there, some stuff I need to clean up, stuff like that.
So, I'm going to hopefully kind of redesign, rework a few things in there I didn't like.
And try to spice it up is really, because it's so, so dry.
And that was the biggest problem, I think.
I like the video idea.
Yeah, I think I might try to do that if I have the capability.
That's really the bigger question than the time.
So, yeah, I'm going to try to do something like that as well, because basically I'm really, like I said,
going into some very technical detail about the S400, which basically means a whole lot of screenshots.
And slide after slide of screenshot gets really old and boring.
You look at it for a second, yet I talk for five minutes, and it's like, okay, we've been looking at the same slide, the same picture for five minutes while you talk.
People need something to keep their eyes from wandering and to keep them focused on the topic at hand,
because it gets boring to just sit there and listen to somebody while you're looking at the same thing.
So, I want to kind of spice it up a little bit, I think.
I think it's still, it's still going to be boring, don't get me wrong.
I mean, it's still going to be rough, but I'm going to still stick with it and give it a shot.
No, it'll be all right.
We'll be all right.
We'll see.
So, yeah, again, we had new people, so shouts out to them.
I almost missed out on my cookies.
No, she wouldn't let you miss out.
Yeah, I almost missed out on my cookies.
Actually, just before we started recording, I ate my last cookie already.
You still have them?
Well, actually, everybody ganked them at the meeting.
I only took home two cookies.
I ate one yesterday and one today.
There were like nine or ten in the back.
Huh?
I thought you had like nine or ten in the back.
Yeah, there were.
By the time the meeting got their hands in the back.
Oh, that's cool.
That's fine.
I brought two cookies home.
I had one yesterday, one today.
What is it?
The original cookie company.
Oh, that's good stuff, man.
The original cookie.
Huh?
Well, both.
Okay.
Okay, man.
Don't put me on the point here now.
All right.
I'm sorry.
And let's see.
Oh, I'm shopping for digital cameras.
I've talked about that.
I think I've come down and made a decision.
I'll probably be buying it tomorrow.
I'm going with the Kodak CX7430.
I think that's got the best combination of features that I want.
It uses SD flash memory.
I want to make sure I use secure digital because I already have some secure digital devices,
and it keeps me from adopting another standard card.
So that's kind of important to me.
I can mix and match and swap cards in and out with my digital video camera and other things, my PDA, stuff like that.
What kind is it?
I'm sorry, the camera or the...
Yeah, the camera.
I'm going with the Kodak CX7430.
What kind of media does it take?
It uses SD flash memory, secure digital.
Oh, okay.
Secure digital, and it comes with, I think, 16 megs internal.
So even if I were to lose it or something like that, it'll still function and work, which is kind of cool.
It won't hold a whole lot.
SD only?
SD only, right.
Okay.
Yes, SD only.
Purposely, first of all, I write off Sony completely because they use proprietary memory stick crap,
and I just can't stand Sony as a company because they always want to...
They're like Microsoft.
They always want to ignore standards and ignore things that are already established and come up with their own stuff.
And I just can't stand that about them, and I will never, ever, ever support Sony.
Can't stand them.
Besides, damn it, how did you pull me onto the soapbox?
Damn you.
I can't stand them because they're a company of hypocrites because the irony is so hypocritical when they're going to get up there and start complaining about how they're anti...
You don't want anybody to come back and say what it was based on something.
What's that?
You don't want anybody to come and say it was based on something.
Well, they complain about piracy and stuff like that, yet they sell CD and DVD burners.
I mean, the irony there.
Sony Music, Sony Entertainment, you know, yet they also have a Sony hardware, and they try to put digital rights management into their hardware at some point.
And then they try to start that mini-disc standard because they, oh yeah, we're going to adopt your mini-disc because CDs, we don't want to use the cheapest form of medium out there that we can get anywhere and use freely and easily.
We're going to adopt your mini-disc.
Dumb asses they are.
Anyway.
The language, the language.
I know.
Damn it, you...
I don't know how I got led onto that one.
You didn't know that was my sore spot, I guess.
I hate Sony.
No, I didn't know that, actually.
I can't stand Sony.
Even though, boy, they make good televisions.
They're good products, though.
They make good televisions, I've got to say that, but I'll still never buy one on principle alone.
So, yeah, I went with that one.
It's a four-megapixel camera.
The reason I bought it is for Hope, frankly.
I don't have a digital camera.
I have the digital video camera.
And it does take one-megapixel still pics, but I want something a little bit better quality and something a little smaller that I can carry around more easily.
In my pocket or something.
So, it's a four-megapixel camera.
Takes video clips, which is something else I wanted.
I want to be able to take short video clips, kind of covertly, go into the kiosk and Walmart or something like that, film some stuff like that covertly and quickly.
Quality, of course, is not going to be great, but it'll work.
You know, it'll get the job done.
And, let's see, SD-RAM I mentioned.
It had really good reviews.
Most people liked it.
And, you know what?
One of the other selling features, didn't even care, didn't even think about it when I was looking at the cameras.
But when I actually went to look at some in the store to try them out, Kodak makes a docking station that will...
One of the knocks against most digital cameras, and this one's no exception, was that the batteries run out quickly.
Well, Kodak and HP also was one of my finalists.
They both make docking stations, and I'm sure others do too, that comes with rechargeable batteries, and you can dock your camera on there and recharge the batteries easily.
Well, they also have an upgraded docking station that's a printer docking station, so I get the rechargeable batteries and everything, and photo quality printing.
Only $150, which, that's nothing to sneeze, don't get me wrong, but that's a good deal to me that I can dock the camera.
I get rechargeable batteries, so I never have to pay money and buy batteries all the time.
Dock the camera right there and print something on demand, no computer necessary, just print it directly from the camera.
High quality, glossy photo paper, print stuff on demand.
Yeah, the docking station and the printer?
And the printer for $150.
What kind of printer?
It's a little photo. It prints up to 4x6, I think. It prints directly only on photo paper.
And it's small. It's just about the size of the camera, so it's very small. I can put it in a little carrying bag.
And if we're at Hope, and I take an embarrassing picture of you in the hotel room, I can print it out and go put it in the lobby within minutes.
Hmm. That's kind of cool.
Yeah, so make sure you don't get in any compromising situations.
Also for Hope, and I guess we can, I mean, I think we kind of said this before, we might as well announce officially that you and I are both confirmed now.
We've got our flights confirmed and everything that we'll be at Hope.
All right.
And we're meeting up with a bunch of other people there.
Cy Pete's going with us, and we're meeting some other people.
So the room's all booked up and filled.
But also what I'm doing is trying to, I'm putting together a CD of the radio show.
I'm going to try to put all 50, the first 50 episodes, onto a CD and hand them out.
So be looking for that.
And issue 2.1 of Binary Revolution magazine, I'll say should be ready.
It's going to be ready.
I mean, it's almost done.
I got off the phone with Logan earlier today.
I've seen the cover.
He's given me the cover, which is finished.
Looks wonderful.
No changes.
It's absolutely exactly the way we talked about it, the way I described it and envisioned it.
So the cover looks great.
And I'm just proofing the articles for typos or any last-minute little things.
We've already proofed it once.
This is the final go-over.
So it's really almost completely finished.
So as soon as we get it finished and printed, I will put it up on the website.
Something tells me it's going to be really, really close to Hope.
So if that's the case, we might not have it on the website until after Hope.
So if you're going to be at Hope, you might be better off to buy it there.
Because once we get it finished and take it to the printers and everything, it's probably going to be Hope time.
So that's good news for anybody who's been waiting for Issue 3.
And don't wait.
Start sending in for Issue 4.
Maybe we can get it done quicker.
And I bought a terabyte of storage this past week.
I bought four 250-gig hard drives and some external USB 2.0 cases to put them in so I can finally have true backups.
So I'm actually going to have mobile backups that I can stick up on the shelf every few months, do a true, complete backup on my system so I don't lose anything.
Something I've been wanting to do for a long time and couldn't afford it.
So I finally saved up and bought that.
Oh man, now we are, let's see, I think we're well up on time.
Now we've got a few, let's touch, the main story I wanted to talk about is actually going to be a pretty quick one.
Um, but, um, another thing I did this weekend, did you want, is there anything else you wanted to bring up before we move on to the three blind freaks?
No, I'm pretty sure that, that'll handle it.
We could have some fun on that.
Yeah, the, anything else from the meeting?
Are we shouting at, we make sure we shout out everybody?
Um.
Yeah, I guess, I guess it's everybody.
We'll think about it before the end.
Um, I caught up on my reading.
I have, at any given time, no exaggeration, I mean, I've said before, I subscribe to 30, 40, 50 magazines a month.
So at any given time, I've got 100 or more laying around open to an article that I'm in the middle of, or I bookmarked so that I could talk about it on a show, and this is one of those cases.
This is an old article, it's from February Wired Magazine, February 2004 issue of Wired Magazine, and it's called Three Blind Freaks.
It's, like, three blind mice see how they run, I wonder if that's a pun, if that was intended to be.
Anyway, it's about the Badir brothers from Israel, um, it's written by Michael Kaplan, and it's basically, okay, well, here's the little subheader, it says,
Three Blind Freaks, How the Phone Freaking Badir Brothers Ran Rings Around Israel's Telcos for Six Scam-Filled Years.
Now, Wired is very hit and miss on their articles.
Generally, people bash Wired a lot for not having a whole lot of credibility.
I don't buy into that, I think that sometimes they have good stuff.
I'm not sure if this is one of them.
This may be one of the ones where people question it.
The way this was written, and some of the claims come across really, almost, not unbelievable, but non-believable.
I know there's no difference in those two words, but the way they're described, I mean, some of these, some of these things in here are just silly, what they described.
Almost like it was ripped out of a movie script or fake, you know, you know, claims about how they, uh, what was one in here I read earlier about, um, they kept sending this guy an email with his password in it over and over.
Every time he changed his password, he claims he got another email with his password in it.
I mean, that's just, that sounds like something out of Hackers, the movie, or something.
It doesn't sound real, you know?
I mean, yes, it's possible, but it just sounds, there's like, when you combine a whole bunch of these together, these little accusations and stories, I'm not sure how much credibility exists in this story, so.
Yeah, some of those kind of sound a little bit too far-fetched to me.
And here, I'll give you some of the highlights of this story, some of the main claims that were made here.
I'll, like, that one was a minor one, I didn't even list that one, but here's some of the major ones.
Like, first of all, they are blind.
These three brothers were all blind, okay?
Now, I, no, no, and don't get me, don't get me wrong, we know, blind people can do a lot of things, and there are tools to help make other things easier, and, you know, even, I even believe the thing that, you know, when you lose one of your senses, your others are more heightened and stuff like that.
I got that.
So, for example, the first, one of the first things in here, he starts off talking about how he dialed his phone, his cell phone, and before it started ringing, he was sitting at the table with these guys, and the kid read his number back to him, because he heard it from the touchstones.
Now, I believe that.
You can hear touchstones and tell.
Some people have a very finely tuned ear, and they can tell exactly what tone was pushed.
Yeah.
You know, so I can believe that.
That's believable, right?
Yeah.
That's not too far-fetched.
Well, it goes on a little bit more, and it talks about how these three brothers, when they were younger, were picked on by other kids, and whenever they wanted to talk to each other, they invented their own secret language to talk to each other in front of the other kids so they wouldn't get beaten up or they wouldn't get picked on and stuff like that.
So they made up their own secret mathematical language, is the way they called it.
Now, come on.
I mean, kids, when they're younger, making up a secret mathematical language, that sounds a little, that sounds like, you know, I don't know, Encyclopedia Brown.
That sounds kind of, I don't know.
Again, it's possible, but I mean, come on.
That sounds very far-fetched.
Like, how long did it take them to develop this language?
Yeah, and language is a strong word.
Maybe they had a couple code words that they had or something.
That I could see, but to call it, they had their own mathematical language, I think is the way they were.
They were blind, so how did they know, you know, I mean, if they were blind.
They're blind, not deaf.
They were talking to the, you know, because they see one, you know, they can't see one another, so how did they know if...
Well, they're blind, they're not deaf.
Yeah, but I'm talking about, as far as being close, they have to be, like, close to one another all the time or something.
Well, yeah, yeah, I guess.
But if you're getting beat up, come on.
Well.
I mean, I'm not beat up on two blind kids.
That doesn't...
Well, yeah, and you know what, that's a good point.
Even, that's even more, well, I guess you never know.
It's a different, this is in Israel, who knows what their culture and how, you know, what kind of stuff goes on there either.
Well, if they were legally blind, not blind, blind, but...
No, they're full-on blind, apparently.
Oh, okay.
All right, and this is what the big, this is the main gist of the article.
This is what they're accused of doing.
It says that they pulled in more than $2 million by running a long-distance company by using a radio station's phone lines.
Yeah, right.
Now, this was, not only was it a radio station, a government radio station.
They say they chose the government because the government didn't use the same restrictions or something, and it was more open or something.
This is the Israeli government.
Yeah, right.
So, they claimed that what they did, basically, was basically got in there and got control of those switching systems and changed it so that they could use their switches to send outgoing long-distance calls.
But the calls were originating from the phone, from the radio station's switching system and therefore billed to them.
So, they set up their own long-distance company using those radio stations' phone lines.
They were getting paid by the customers, but the bill back was going back to this radio station.
Now, hold on.
Before we go, again, that sounds like something out of a movie.
But technically, that's probably possible.
Very, very far-fetched, but possible on a technical level.
It's still bringing me back to how can two blind guys pull this off?
Three.
Three, I'm sorry.
Even three, right?
Three blind freaks, I'm sorry.
Yeah, that's rough, right?
That's...
How could three fully-sighted rocket scientists pull this off, you know?
Yeah.
That's definitely very tricky.
And secondly, logistically, how did this radio station not notice two million dollars of the phone calls?
Military radio station.
Come on, I don't...
This is really, really starting to stretch it.
You know, it's like one or two things, and I said this before, coincidences happen all the time.
But when you get a series of coincidences, or a series of unbelievable claims like these, you start to question.
Yeah.
You know?
And that's basically what I'm saying.
Like, here's another one.
The article makes them out in several examples that they are these just master social engineers that could fool people into anything.
They called secretaries and got passwords from their bosses.
They called government agents and got them to reset settings on these switches and give them access and stuff like that.
Sure.
Yeah.
There's plenty of social engineers out there.
There's plenty of really good social engineers out there.
It's pretty common.
So, yeah, that's believable and all, but once again, more to the pattern.
I mean, three blind freaks with a Superman logo on their chest or something.
These guys can do anything?
Really getting to be a stretch for here.
And another thing they did, accusedly, allegedly, I don't know if this stuff...
Well, they went to jail anyway, one of them for it, and I'll talk about that in a second.
It says they made money by rerouting phone sex calls to a company in the Dominican Republic and getting paid for referrals.
And they used other companies' lines to do this.
So they got paid for sending calls to this phone sex company for each call, but they used other companies' lines to do it.
Similar back to the radio station situation.
Again, possible, but how many of these are they getting away with and that we're going to believe all of them?
And then, finally, they're accused of stealing a whole database of credit card numbers from a phone sex company.
The same phone sex company that we're rewriting the phone from?
Yeah, I didn't catch if it was the same company or not.
I did not catch that.
Again, sure, you can steal a database from a company, but did that really happen?
I mean, what's the deal here?
Well, there must be some foundation of fact here.
I think the facts are in there somewhere and it's a true story somewhat, but I think this author, Michael Kaplan, I think he took some liberties to really decorate this up.
You know, what do they call it?
Sensationalistic journalism.
I mean, he really played a lot of this stuff up talking about all these, like, oh, come on, the investigator was getting emails with his password in it.
Here's a funny story.
It says, where was I?
I lost my spot here.
The brothers reportedly contacted Israel's DMV and registered Osmo's car, which is an investigator, under another name, causing embarrassing problems for the investigator when he tried to sell his vehicle.
That's straight out of Hackers the movie.
I don't believe this is, you know, these are a bunch of stories that, I just, I can't, he can't have, he can't have verified all that kind of stuff.
I think he threw a lot of that stuff in there to make the story more exciting.
Yeah.
So, anyway, there is, there must be some foundation because the guy spent four, the main guy, Rami, I think is his name, R-A-M-Y, Rami, Rami, not Ramsey from The Broken, whole different guy.
Rami Badir, he spent four years in jail for the whole radio station thing.
And even though they couldn't accuse him or they couldn't prove it or something, it was kind of a, I won't say a Mitnick deal, but they got him on enough other things that they kept him in for four years.
They finally let him out.
He comes out and he's, according to this article, has a huge mansion being built in one of the best parts of town.
So, supposedly, I guess he's got money to be able to do that.
He's buying all this expensive computer equipment, Braille, touchscreen monitors, and computer, you know, all these special blind computer equipment.
And he claims while he was in jail that he has written this PBX firewall software program while in prison, mind you.
Don't make me laugh.
It is fine.
While in prison.
Yeah, a blind guy.
While in prison.
Who's never seen a PBX phone system before.
Yeah.
Well, he claims he's the master of the phone system, so he could do this.
And he even quoted, there was a quote in here, and I don't, I can't find it on the spot like this, but he's basically saying that, um, who knows the phone system better than him?
He's, he's, uh, here it is right here.
I'm inventing a PBX firewall.
I know all the weakest spots of a telephone system.
I can protect any system from infiltration.
Come on.
Infiltration will be impossible with his PBX fireball.
And if that's, if that's true, the guy's going to be a multimillionaire if he's not already from his alleged scams and stuff like that.
Yeah, but whatever happened to the other two brothers?
I don't know.
It looks like he carried them, actually.
According to the story, it makes it look like he did most of the work.
He's the one that got busted.
The others, I guess, were accomplices and probably got lesser sentences or whatever.
And maybe there is context on the outside.
I don't, there's some holes in this article and some unbelievable things in this article that just don't quite add up for me.
So, yeah, I'm going to, I'm not going to call, well, I can't say the word because I'm trying to cut back on my language.
I'm going to call shenanigans on this one.
That's busted.
Yeah, I'm going to say this is, this myth may be busted.
Well, no, I'll tell you what, I will, if anybody listening has more information or has some credible reason to make me believe some of these things,
it's, I think the truth is somewhere in there.
Like I said, I think they probably broke into the system, tried routing calls out of it.
They claim they lost or made two million or whatever.
There was enough to bust them.
I think that's the only truth to the story.
Everything else was sensationalized and popped up.
And then he said, you know what, I need another paragraph to make everybody believe how scary they are.
Oh, I'll put in a thing that they emailed his password to him over and over again.
Oh, I'll put in a thing in here that says that they changed his DMV paperwork so that he couldn't sell his car.
Yeah, that'll make him sound cool.
I think there was some sensationalism going on there.
That's all I'm saying.
And that's, I think, the fault of the author.
But, again, if somebody knows otherwise, and if you go out and search for these Badir brothers, if you do a Google search, the incident did happen.
I found news articles that were dated.
But, people, when I do these stories on here, I'm not only going by the Wired story.
I go out and do the research.
This is a research show.
I go out and learn and find out information on this stuff and verify it.
Same thing with the magazine.
When I get article submissions for Binary Revolution magazine, I verify them.
I'm not going to blindly print something that I can't prove works for a fact.
I want to print something out there that doesn't work and makes us look like fools or makes us look like we don't know what we're talking about.
Same with this article and every article we do.
I go out there and I do my research and I try to verify or disprove, like the Mythbusters, I go out there and I try to find the truth.
This incident happened.
There's no doubt of that.
I found headlines from 1999 with the proper names.
All the names matched up.
The accusations were there.
Something happened with this phone company with them breaking in and something along those lines, but no details on exactly what happened.
And I definitely could not find any verifying on him emailing the password and changing his DMV information.
So that's the stuff.
I think a lot of the extra was thrown in there.
So that's what I'm saying on this story.
I'm just not sure really what to make out of it.
But anyway, this was from February.
It's months old now, so I'm going to move on.
Move on and wrap up the show, I think, is a good topic.
Well, you know what?
Tell you what.
Not only – okay, we know that some of these things are possible.
Let's go back to the radio station.
We have a few minutes here.
Let's fill up a couple more minutes.
I don't want to end the show quite – I'm going to use my whole hour and a half, damn it, even though it's an hour show.
Now, the radio station phone line thing, you tell me – yes, you know, it's possible.
Anything is possible.
But you tell me how likely it is.
You would know better than I would.
How likely is it to go in and do something, to take over the switching or – and it's not like there's one switch, like there's a magic button.
Oh, flip it from paying them to paying me.
It's not that simple.
Yeah, I mean –
How likely is it that they could have done this?
I'm definitely saying that that's not likely.
I mean, there are passwords, there are passwords on passwords, you need secure IDs.
Oh, but they were –
There are so many different keys implemented as far as gaining access to these systems that – I mean, I'm pretty sure Israel is an exception.
They also must have some sort of – you know, you can't just waltz into some marine or military base and – or even remotely try to reroute calls or make a – make a long-distance company through their line.
Come on, that's –
Yeah, making a whole company.
No, I don't do that for half a second.
To make a whole company, they would have to have some kind of billing system and stuff in effect too, right?
Right, yeah.
You have to say, okay, these numbers are – belong to you and –
Accounting.
Come on, it's – come on, if even a person with a half a brain does ten minutes of thinking, it's just not – it just won't work.
But they were master social engineers.
That explains everything.
No, seriously, the logistics of this is – okay, let's say – let's say they – let's say they did social engineer the passwords to the switching system, a switching system, which, again, I doubt that there's only one involved in this whole – doing this whole process.
Let's say they got a password into one system.
Okay, well, if they got one –
Well, first of all, they're blind.
Well, still, I mean – okay, if you get one password – okay, let's just say they magically was able to grab control of a switch, some equivalent to an AT&T long-distance routing center or whatever.
Okay.
There – I mean, within, I would say, minutes, somebody would know that something is wrong.
Things aren't being routed properly.
Somebody on the inside.
Right.
Things aren't going where they're supposed to be going because, number one, the customer would call and say, well, you know, I can't get through – you know, I'm talking about legitimate customers.
I can't get through what's going on.
I'm trying to get out.
You know, if they're rerouting the whole system just for their long-distance company – come on.
Well, what if they weren't affecting the radio station?
The radio station still had incoming and outgoing lines.
They just piggybacked on them.
Possible?
Piggyback – well, okay, well, it – oh, man.
It's just – it's just not likely, man, because if you don't – a military station would have, like, a pipe, like a circuit or something, like a T3 or something that they use to break down into different channels for these particular phone lines.
They wouldn't have just one line, like at your house, you know.
And to really reroute those, it's – it's just not practical.
It's just not practical.
I'm not saying it's not possible, but, I mean, you would have to go through so many hoops.
Okay.
How about this?
Let's put it in perspective.
Let's say I wanted to set up my own long-distance reselling company, and I called up Bell South or – what is – damn it, what does Duel use out there?
What's that company he – out there?
Crap, I can't think of their name.
But anyway –
What's it?
I'm sorry?
Quest.
Quest, that's what they're called.
Okay, Quest.
Okay, I called up Quest, I called up Bell South, I called up Bell Atlantic or whatever and say, listen, this is what I want to do.
Aren't they going to basically assign, like, several engineers and some accounting people and some processing and – I mean, this is not like a three-blind guy job, is it?
Right.
I mean, that's what I'm saying.
It goes through – to even set something like this up – I mean, even – man, you can attack this at so many different angles, it's not even funny.
I know.
I think we got the point across.
I mean, I can chop them down in two seconds with that.
I mean, it's just not practical.
Even if they did have control of the PBX or the phone switch, it would be – it would send alarms off right away.
You would – you know, they would – they can shut it down and say, well, why is this going this way?
You know, if they're getting the dollars for the phone business company, then the legitimate military radio station – I mean, according to this, they're saying they're getting the phone – they're getting billed?
Apparently, that's how they found out was they eventually finally got billed or they eventually discovered the leak.
Okay, so if they were getting billed, then how was the dang three blind freaks getting the money?
I mean, you don't just –
Well, that's what I'm saying.
There's also accounting things going on and billing and –
You know, it's –
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
There's so many hands.
I mean, the paperwork – I mean, it's going to get lost throughout the trail.
I doubt they made any money if all – maybe they were able to route something.
But as far as getting $2 million running a long-distance company, I don't think so.
Yeah, I think that's a little far-fetched.
Well, anyway, I think that's going to –
I don't know how Israel's phone system is set up.
Maybe it's the third – you know, Israel really isn't all that third world.
I mean, they do have some decent technology there as far as self-communication.
So I don't know.
But then again, they made reference to a lot of phone things here.
So maybe they worked – or knew somebody that worked for a phone company or something.
I don't know.
Yeah, and I didn't mention it, not that this has much bearing, but just to put it in perspective,
this was in 1995.
95.
95, and then I think 99.
It happened in the late 90s, most of these events.
So it was somewhere in that time frame, but I think it was 95 was when that occurred.
Anyway, let's wrap it up.
I mean, again, if somebody knows more about this or has some direct association, you know,
again, I did my research.
I looked up.
I Googled.
I found some old links.
I found enough to prove some of this stuff,
but I don't believe any of the level of depth in this particular article.
So don't send me, you know, links to a Google story unless you can say this directly disproves something from that article.
And again, I'll put a link to the Wired article up.
Or, of course, if you search for Badir Brothers, B-A-D-I-R, you will find the first hit, I think, will be the Wired article.
So check it out and read it up for yourself and see what you think.
But I'm calling shenanigans, and I'm going to wrap up the show with that.
So let's do shouts now.
Now, I also found one other, this is kind of a, I have weird shoutouts.
They're not always tech hacking shoutouts.
Also, in some of my reading, I read about this.
This artist, his name is Charlie White.
Do a Google search, Charlie White, fairly common name, art or something like that,
and check out this guy's work.
It's just incredible.
It's the most unique and original art that I've seen in just years and years.
It's interesting, new.
It's like, it's almost like special effects of science fiction, except it's in photography and still shots.
And it's really hard to describe.
You have to see it to believe it.
But it's very surreal and yet very, very sublime, very down to earth.
I'm not sure.
Google for Charlie White, and maybe I'll throw some of these up in the gallery
if I can get my hands on some of his artwork and stuff.
And, of course, shouts out again to Cypher.
Who else from the meeting?
You got any shots you want to mix in there?
Yeah, just everybody from the NFL 2600 meeting.
Shouts to you and Pete.
My opinion, a great job done.
To all the new guys that showed up, to all the old-timers that were there.
And we should probably remind, next week, we will be at Hope, or excuse me, not next week.
Next month, the first Friday of the month, you know, will be Hope Conference.
So, those of our meeting, I guess we should put this on the website.
I mean, feel free, go ahead and meet as usual.
Right.
You know, just because a couple of us are going or some of us are going to be going to Hope,
by all means, still have the meeting.
And, um, maybe we can even get some, work out some phone calls back from live from Hope.
That might be interesting.
Um.
Yeah, we can work that out.
Yeah, that might be fun.
So, we'll be there the Monday, the Tuesday, coming back Thursday?
Yeah, we'll come back Wednesday.
Let's see, we're, we will, yeah, we, oh, no, wait a minute, Tuesday night.
No, Wednesday.
Wednesday afternoon.
I don't remember.
No, Wednesday afternoon.
Is that what it is?
Okay.
Yeah.
And back to work Thursday morning.
For me, for me anyway.
Right.
Well, actually, that's still a little up in the air.
But, regardless, that's neither here nor there.
So, um, feedback for anything in the show, the story, whatever, you want to feedback,
uh, radio at binrev.com, you can email us.
Um, articles for Binrev Magazine 2.2.
Like I said, 2.1's put to rest and should be out by Hope.
Um, start sending them in for 2.2.
The sooner we get them, the better your chances of getting in, A, and B, the sooner the next
issue will come out.
So, I guess it looks like we're falling into a two-issues-a-year pattern right now until
people start sending more stuff in.
Oh, and, uh, I forgot, uh, I do want to say shout-outs to Logan.
Logan Files.
I mean, he does great work.
I mean, you can't...
You know, he's like a, he's in my permanent shout-out list.
The guy's...
I mean, I don't even know him, but, I mean, I've seen the magazines that, you know, that
I bought, that I got.
Yeah.
And, I mean, that's really, really quality.
Yeah, I, you know...
It was a good quality.
I started doing the magazine by myself.
And, I opened it up and, what, what, I don't even remember what program I was designing
it in.
I had it laid out.
I was so proud of it, man.
I had it.
I had a table of contents.
I had the fonts.
You know, I mixed the fonts up nice and neat.
I threw, like, a, a photo in here and there to mix it up and a little graphic or something.
I was so proud.
And then he's like, oh, man, you know, I have experience in this.
Let me take a shot at it.
Well, sure, absolutely.
Knock yourself out.
I felt so stupid to see his work compared to...
It was so fantastic.
Yeah.
That guy's incredible.
Yeah.
Definitely shouts to him.
And, um, uh, closing music this week is Emerald Rain Productions.
It's a track called Zombie King, which, allegedly, is supposedly produced by MC Frontalot.
Uh, pretty cool track, actually.
Nice kind of swing to it.
I like this track.
Um, and, again, articles at binrev.com.
Send your submissions.
And I think that is it.
Zero DB.
Thank you once again for being on the show.
Oh, you're welcome.
And you and I have some other stuff to do this week for next week's show, actually.
Which won't really feature us on it, but it will be the Telephonic Craptacular.
So we might have some good stuff for that.
Oh, yeah.
So, um, I guess that's going to wrap it up for this year.
Wow, we're actually...
This was a full episode again, man.
We're almost over.
So, we're going to close it out.
Tell everybody that we will see them next week.
Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
Peace.
Don't come back.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
He was a sensitive boy.
He cried often.
His mother's own pride and joy.
And did it soften him too much?
Too much, too much, too much, too much, too much.
Who's to say?
He was so fragile and shy.
He cried always.
He was such a sensitive guy.
He used to run out of harm's way.
But now he's passed away.
He can't remember why.
Now he's the king of the jet set.
The lord of the cold and the grill.
Go on and praise his name to the heavens.
It'll never huddle to him.
Who's a big old man?
He got you in the shade.
He ends up in here.
Who don't know a thing about the being afraid.
He ends up in here.
Who will never write to his mother and his father.
He ends up in here.
Who would give a damn, but he doesn't ever bother.
He used to cry at the sight of a sunset.
He used to wince at a needle's prick.
He used to care so much.
So much, so much, so much, so much, so much.
This makes me sick.
He used to write verses of poetry.
On the nature of death, gloom, and pain.
But when you got the real thing, who cares?
Who cares?
It's all the same.
Now go on and tell him a dog-eyed.
Tell him his girl says goodbye.
Tell him his mother was eaten by spiders.
He'll never blink an eye.
Who's so big on that?
And he's got balls of steel.
It's all the same.
Who has a friend that we can't do real well.
It's all the same.
Who's got a lumbar coat instead of a hat.
It's all the same.
Who's post-break just dropped off the charts.
It's all the same.
Hey, King Dick, your ass are off.
He used to be just another pasty-faced guy.
Now you're the toast of the underworld.
All the zombie hikes want to be your girl.
Check out his new dick.
See him to believe him.
He got a king-sized mageleon.
Got a tombstone headboard.
Carving for a bed.
Everyone who sees themselves, you're better off dance.
So shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it.
Shake it till the zombie king can he act.
Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it.
Shake it till the zombie king can he act.
Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it.
Shake it till the zombie king can he act.
Hey!
Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it.
Shake it till the zombie king can he act.
We'll be right back.