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 game pegs 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 screw you on burning Dreamcasts.
You need some ISO? Let me through my hard drive rifle.
Our exchange you could never stifle.
In a digital hug, you just caught the love bug.
I bootlegged your CD. I caused a fight between Un and Jay-Z.
Cause 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 leaves you flat on your back.
Cause I am he who loves to hack and crack.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the criminals.
Serial codes, source codes, ISOs, RANs, SIFs, SIFs.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the criminals.
Hello everyone and welcome to Binary Revolution Radio.
Episode number 59.
I don't know why I said that last so loud.
There's really no significance.
It's just another show.
Episode 59.
Coming to you on the 24th of August, 2004.
And we are, you know what?
We're on a run, in my opinion, of really, really good shows.
They're all good shows, I like to think.
But I think these last few shows have been really good because I've learned a lot from them.
I've been picking up and doing a lot of research and learning things and learning from the co-hosts.
And tonight is going to be no exception.
A co-host on the show tonight is going to be none other than Jason Scott himself.
Welcome to the show, my friend.
Hello.
Hello, listeners.
And, boy, we did a lot of catching up after Hope.
We had a lot of good topics we talked about.
And some of them that you and I both have in common as far as interest level is going to be what our main topic is later on tonight.
Specifically, well, a couple topics really.
Audio, audio format compression and things like that.
As well as archiving and storage and maintenance, et cetera, et cetera.
Anything related to that.
So, obviously, you have a lot of experience with that as well as I do.
As well as I.
Gosh, that was horrible grammar.
As well as myself.
I don't know what I'm saying there.
So, anyway, that's going to be our main topic later on.
But before we do, we are going to stick with our format and start off with the housekeeping.
I'm going to do one thing off the top of the show because I haven't done this in a long time.
And that's Pimp, the distributed.net team.
On the front page, I might bump it to the top of the front page by the time this airs.
We have a DDP team on distributed.net.
This is a client that you download to your computer and it uses your spare CPU time, your idle CPU time, to crunch away doing some, well, basically some password cracking, some encryption cracking I should say.
And testing the standards, see how powerful encryption is and how powerful computers and as they get more and more powerful.
Like right now, the Macs, those G5s, those G4s, G5s are just incredible at crunching these numbers for encryption cracking.
So, it's kind of testing them, see where they all fall into place and see if encryption standards are still outpacing raw distributed power.
So, it's a cool project and we do have an official DDP team set up.
So, you can check out the front page at binrev.com.
Kind of towards the bottom, like I said, I'll try to put it up to the top so people can link to that if they want to get involved.
If you've got a box laying around or a few boxes like most hackers do, throw this on there, use some of that idle CPU time and just kind of watch the stats.
Because I'm a statistics nut, as the regular listeners know.
Kind of an archivist myself, I think we have that kinship.
And, let's jump into some e-mail.
Now, let's see, let's do the theme music here.
And, one thing I want to mention in e-mail, we got quite a few e-mails on this subject.
And, I can't go through all of them individually, but we had several e-mails from some of our listeners in Canada who confirmed, last week we talked about the Canadian blank media levy.
I don't know what the exact term of it is, quite honestly, but there's a levy they charge on blank media trying to, in an attempt to disrupt piracy or slow it down by charging you extra money for blank CDs and blank CD burners, DVD burners, etc., etc.
I think the technical term is protection racket.
Well, yeah, I think that's...
It's not a protection racket, or maybe the ISO got together and just called it extortion.
Yeah, they call it a levy.
Down here, we call it busting someone's shins with a crowbar.
Is that...
Yeah, it's called, if you want to stay in business, give someone who doesn't know your business some money.
Exactly.
If they have their own business that you're no good at, and you don't want to learn what their business is.
Well, luckily, it sounds like several people confirmed that, really, the large chains are honoring it, but it looks like most of the mom-and-pop stores, and that was our question, or somebody had mentioned that they didn't get charged at several of the smaller places, the mom-and-pop, that's their way they compete is on price.
They can't compete with those big chains somehow, so they said that quite a few.
It's very common that you can go and get them without having to pay that levy.
So, that's kind of a cool thing to know.
I guess it's good.
So, thank you to several people, like I said, who emailed us about that.
Moth, Gluco, a lot of people.
Now, onto some specific emails, these also are going to kind of, I picked all these emails because they do somewhat tie into the direction we're going with the rest of the show.
So, the first email was from someone who gave their real name.
I don't know if they care or don't care, but play it safe, we're not going to give it.
Their real name was withheld by me, who says,
StankDog, I have put together a website that links to comp and tech shows that stream online.
I recently became aware of your show and would like to add it to my site.
I usually use a logo from the show's website to serve as the link on my archives page.
Would it be okay to lift a logo from your site?
Also, I was hoping that you could provide a brief description of your show so that I may also include that info.
And he gives me the link, which we'll throw up in the show notes.
So, we get this every once in a while, but there's no harm in reaffirming this because I want to point out, I'm going to kind of segue into some more emails with this.
But first of all, absolutely, we want everybody, if you want to listen to the show, that's what it's about.
I put it out there to listen.
You know, that's why I make the show.
We put the show out there so that people can learn, learn along with us so that I can learn and learn along with the co-host, etc.
So, absolutely, totally cool.
Take anything from the site you want.
Take the graphics.
Just, you know, keep in mind we have a Creative Commons license.
And all that Creative Commons license for us means is if you're going to use the stuff, just make sure you give us a link back.
Give us credit.
Don't chop it up.
That kind of stuff.
Leave it as it is.
Give us credit.
Distribute it.
Don't charge money for it because we are not charging money.
It's a community thing.
We want people to learn.
That's basically all our Creative Commons license says.
So, feel free.
We have link boxes out there already on the front page.
If you scroll down a little bit, you'll find some link boxes by Logan5.
Wonderful, wonderful work that you can use.
Or, hey, lift some of the other graphics from the site.
Take the BinRev logo at the top.
Take something from the forums.
Take something from the gallery.
Absolutely.
By all means, I'm completely open to that.
The description of the show, quite honestly, I didn't realize this.
But when he brought it to my attention, I don't have a description of the show up.
I never realized that before.
Well, what happens is your first show serves as your introduction to what the show is going to be like.
And next thing you know, you turn around and you've got 59 shows.
Yeah, I'm kind of a little disappointed in that.
So, I will put up a description just because it's missing.
You know, there's an obvious void there.
So, I'll write up something, just a little sentence or two.
I guess it feels kind of corny, but I'll do it so that, yeah, for new listeners who don't know exactly what it is.
I even went to RantRadio.com.
I thought I had given them a paragraph or something when we first started the show.
But, you know, the description is changing the world one hack at a time.
You know, this is a hacking show.
We just talk about what hacking is and different things like that.
So, I'm going to try to type up a couple sentences.
But, and please, tell me what you think of this.
On one hand, it's like, yeah, I want to put that up.
You know, I'll type something up and put it up there.
But at the same time, I feel like I'm, I mean, who, is it, I don't even know how to put it into words.
I don't want, I feel awkward writing the description of my own show.
You know, it feels like, I don't know, it feels kind of awkward.
It almost seems like someone else, you know, let this person who wants to put it on his site, maybe he should write the description based on what he's heard.
You know, maybe it's, maybe it's up to someone else to write a description of what the show is about.
You know, write a, write a couple sentences or a description because what I think of it and what it actually is may be two way completely different things.
Well, just, just write out your description of what you think it is and then go back and edit out all the stuff about being incredible in bed and you'll be all set.
Oh.
Not that, no, they got to find that out one at a time, all the groupies.
But, no, not that out and you won't feel too bad about it.
And get rid of the whole part about being able to bend steel with your hands and you'll be all fine.
Oh, crap, where's my eraser?
Doggone it, that's what I get for writing in pen.
Oh, let's see.
So, yeah, I'll whip something up and put it up there.
But, hey, feel free to, you know what, and the other thing is, feel free to write, if you know what, if you think the show sucks, and I know there are people out there who think that,
put out, you can put up a thing that says, this is the worst show on the entire interweb.
You know, go ahead and put that up if that's what you, you know what, I'm cool with that.
But, bottom line is, yes, I'll try to write something up for you, feel free to use any graphics, feel free to share this with anybody you want as long as you don't charge for it.
Use graphics, I'm totally cool with that, I'm glad that, you know, you're interested and maybe someone else will be.
So, all joking aside, yes, by all means, do whatever, whatever you want to do with it, you know, within that Creative Commons license.
So, very cool with that.
Second email tonight is from Thought Criminal.
Who says, Stank, please excuse the crude nature of the question, but what the hell?
Mag cards? Databases? Mimetics?
Is it just me, or did Binary Revolution Radio just take a huge evolutionary leap in content quality?
See, when I started reading this, I was like, who is, what the hell is this guy getting ready to yell at me about?
But, he kind of twisted it on me there, and you know what, I kind of agree with the content.
You know, I've learned a lot from these specific ones, these guests we've had on, Acidus and Decius and some of these guys.
Great, great stuff.
But, I'm sorry, I interrupted his email here.
I've been listening for a while and the show is great, yada, yada, yada, smoke up your ass, old news.
Never have I thought more during three episodes, and never have I gotten nine hours of listening out of them, because I listened over and over.
I love learning, and my mind has been expanded for three weeks straight, so thanks a ton, and keep it up.
Thank you, by the way, you don't have to thank me.
Ironically, I was dreaming about hacking around with a mag stripe equipment last year, but gave up due to no good documentation.
One of Acidus' laments on the show.
By the way, what are your plans for the show?
Do you know how long it will last?
Have you ever thought about a career in radio beyond BinRev?
I don't know what everyone else thinks, but you've definitely got the knack.
My only reservation would be not being able to hear you rant and curse where curses are due.
In conclusion, please stop being so good, or you'll have to go clear channel, make 700K a year, and move to Tahiti, where hacking surely isn't as enjoyable.
You should probably point out to the listeners that the part where you say the show is great, yada, yada, yada, smoke up your ass,
up your ass, old news, is actually what he wrote, and not your opinion.
Well, yeah, I was reading his, literally, that's what he typed in there.
And lest you think I read this to blow smoke up my own ass or something, no.
There's actually kind of a point here I wanted to make.
I probably should have edited out some of that stuff, but it just got down to the 700K a year part.
But I wanted to point out, I know he's saying this is a joke, and I appreciate it.
Uh-oh, I got a tone there.
Is the FBI on?
If they're on, they're having a great old time.
Right.
No, I know he's kind of joking, and I do appreciate the kind words, and I didn't read it because of that.
I read it because of this thing about the future of the show.
Okay, so first of all, thank you for the words.
I'm not reading it because I like hearing somebody say good things.
That's not it at all.
I do agree, first of all, like I said, the past few episodes have been great,
and hopefully we will continue in that direction.
This show is definitely no exception, with the great Jason Scott on.
See, that's blowing smoke right there.
That's how you do it.
But as far as the plans for the show, and this is why I read these emails,
the plans for the show is I'm going to do this as long as I can, as long as I enjoy it,
and most importantly, as long as other people are enjoying it and learning from it.
That's my goal with this show.
And Jason and I have talked about this at Hope and offline and other, you know,
my goal for this is not, I know, we're not going to go into a tangent on this
because we've already beat this horse dead, but I don't look at this as a historic thing.
I don't, you know, if it gets archived, that's great.
If somebody listens to it a few years from now, a few months from now, that's great.
I'm doing it week by week because I enjoy it, because I'm learning from it,
and I hope that other people are learning along with it.
But as far as, like, my plans for the future and my, you know, what's the future of the show
and a career in radio beyond BinRev, quite honestly, that's just not going to happen.
It's just not. That's not what I'm in this for.
I don't, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't turn down 700 grand if somebody wanted to throw it my way.
But let's be real. I'm not going to be on Clear Channel.
Because I, well, first of all, I think I've disrespected Clear Channel on quite a few occasions on the show,
and I will continue to do so.
And I won't even get into the monopoly that they are.
And also, I don't think you're going to get 700K out of Clear Channel unless you're running Clear Channel.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely right, absolutely.
But, you know, and I'm going to segue into the next email before I go too far into this,
but, yeah, I'm all about week by week.
I know that sounds kind of cliche, you know, like the football player.
Oh, we're just, we're just playing game by game trying to make the playoffs.
No, I'm just going week by week and learning as I go along and trying to come up with something interesting to me each week.
And if other people find it interesting, that's great.
If people listen to this months down the road or a year down the road, that's icing on the cake too.
That's all, that's all wonderful.
But, you know what, if people stop listening to it or I get to the point where I physically can't do it,
I don't have time, I have job, family, and things like that.
We've said on the show many times that real life always takes precedence over your online life or your virtual life or whatever you want to call it.
So as long as I can keep doing this and keep enjoying it, which I don't see, I don't see it stopping anytime soon.
I'm having a blast.
I'm having a great time doing this show.
So as far as the future of it, I'm just going to keep doing this.
Hey, we get through season two, season three, whatever, as far as we can get.
That's really all.
I'm not that ambitious, not that ambitious at all as far as long term.
And again, information to me, there's so much information.
And again, we have this kinship in common.
We're both archivists.
There's so much to learn.
There's so much information out there that it's wonderful.
Never a shortage of content for the show.
There's not a lack of guests.
There's always great people.
There's always intelligent people to get on the show.
And as long as there's always information out there, there's always something to talk about.
There's always something new to find out, new things being discovered.
Knowledge is limitless.
And if the show can be limitless, if the show can keep growing as long as I keep gaining knowledge, that's how the show – that's the future of the show.
Yeah, never pretend that you know it all.
Never pretend to reach the end of your learning curve.
Well, I knew it all yesterday.
Well, that's the thing.
But I forgot a couple things.
I just woke up and then somebody schools you.
Well, I just forgot some of it while I slept.
Right.
At the end of the next day, I'm usually caught back up again.
Right.
Now, all the new stuff.
Yeah, and plus some stuff people haven't figured out yet.
That's what people don't know.
The universe has an RSS feed, and that's why you've got to stick your head on and you're all set.
Yeah.
How many of this is it gets 400,000 updates a day?
But other than that, yeah, it's great.
Exactly, exactly.
No, so anyway, that's basically – that's the future of the show.
As long as it's fun and as long as there's content, which is – there's always content, we're going to keep doing it.
So the career in radio, no, that's not my goal.
I'm a programmer.
You know, I'm a computer programmer for a living, my paycheck that is to say.
I'm a hacker.
That's what my interest is.
Being on this show and doing it is just to share with people, and hopefully they're also learning along with me.
That's really what the show is about.
So as far as a profession, that's – yeah, that's not going to happen.
And if it did, it wouldn't be a Clear Channel thing, like Jason said.
So anyway, I'm going to transition this into the next email because there's another reason, another pretty obvious reason why I'm not going to be on Clear Channel.
And this next letter kind of explains that.
This letter is from, again, someone who sent in from their real name making an offer to me, a very generous offer and idea.
I'm not reading the name only because I'm not sure if he wants it, and I always err on the side of caution.
But he says,
I am having trouble listening to your hack radio stream.
It is buffering like there is no tomorrow.
A little creative editing.
I was also wondering if you might be interested in being on a real live radio station.
I am working with a community radio station here in – and I'm not going to mention the city or the call letters, just in case.
We are a low-power FM station, but we cover our county and then some, and the signal is pretty stable for about 10 to 20 miles.
We could run archives of your show, or, depending on what time you are on live, we could rerun it – excuse me, we could run it undelayed and totally live by picking up the stream and rebroadcasting it.
Let us know what you think about this idea.
BinRev is a cool show.
We like to put it out there for the college students and old hippie freakers – I love that term – that live around here.
The only thing we would need to do is edit any curse words out of the show before we air it, or we would have to ask you not to use expletives on the program.
You seem to do a lot better at keeping things clean in your show than, say, other shows.
We wanted to run other shows very badly, but by the time we found out about them, they had quit the show, and they cursed so much that it would be way too much work to clean them up.
Anyway, get back to me if you wish to collaborate with us.
Now, a little creative editing, by the way.
Let's be honest.
This is the real reason why I'm not going to be on – what do they say?
A real live radio station.
First of all, no.
I don't want this – I'm going to reply to this, but it's definitely not personal against this person.
I appreciate this offer, and I'm not a tag, but I'm going to explain why.
Because I've had a couple other people make similar offers that they work at radio stations, college stations, et cetera, I've had offers from.
And my answer to all of them is, same as to the person earlier who wanted to put it up on his website and link to us.
Absolutely.
I'm completely for that.
Share the knowledge.
Keep knowledge free, as Rex always said.
Get the knowledge out there, and if people find it interesting and you think the old hippie freaks and college students will like it, that's great.
I love old hippie freaks.
I love college students.
That's great if they're going to find it interesting.
And you know what?
Yes, other shows may have language, but you know what?
I have my language issues too.
I'm just as bad as anyone.
I'm definitely not any better than any others as far as that goes.
But you know what?
Sometimes...
All right, Jason, you can attest to this.
You've seen my show novels, my show notes.
Right.
I do have a note at the top that says, cut back on the foul language.
Uh-huh.
Every single week I put that in there, and that's only because, personally, I want to try to keep it under control.
It's not because I'm trying to be on real live radio or on some other station.
And that's the beauty of internet radio to me, is that I do have true freedom of speech.
All I'm trying to do with the comment on there, and what I try to do with the show each week, and I'm glad you noticed that.
I wish I was better, quite frankly.
I slipped more than I should.
But I don't want to use gratuitous profanity.
You know, and gratuitous meaning pretty much every adjective being the F word.
You know, oh, well, I went to the freaking store to buy a freaking Coke, and I had a freaking change,
and the guy gave me a freaking attitude.
That, to me, it doesn't really, you know, that, to me, is kind of a crutch.
I don't really want to use pointless use of bad language.
So, don't get me wrong.
I'm not using internet radio so I can get away with saying bad words.
It's not that at all.
But, I do, however, want to be able to use the F word, or any other word, if I really strongly feel like it's going to get my point across.
And, you know, Jason, I don't know if you, you feel free to disagree if you, you know, disagree with this, of course.
But, I do find that there are occasions when I absolutely want, need, and I think it's more effective to drop the F bomb, or any language.
I believe, truly, I believe in free speech.
And when I say free speech, I don't mean the FCC can tell me what seven words I can and can't say, et cetera, et cetera.
The internet, to me, is true free speech.
I can come on here, and again, I'm not trying to just get away with using a bad language, you know, because it's cool and because it's fun.
But, if I get pissed off at some company, or if I think there's a law or something, and again, try to stay away from politics, but if there's something that really, I think, needs to be emphasized, oh, I think the regular listeners know that I will raise my voice, I will drop some bad language, and absolutely go off.
If something is that wrong, or that important, I will absolutely not hesitate to use whatever language necessary to get that point across.
So, if I start using it, like, in every sentence, or something like that, then it's less important, and it becomes, you know, just throwing it around with no use whatsoever.
But, I do want the option to use it and be able to exercise my real freedom of speech, which is something that makes internet radio, underground radio, hacking radio, whatever you want to refer to it, the only true form of free radio, free speech.
Although, the government might, you know, they're always trying to get their hands in and limit that as well, but that's really the reason I'm not going to be on mainstream radio, you know, is because I'm not going to compromise my free speech.
I'm not going to cut back something I want to say.
I just will not do it.
I'm not trying to do this for a living.
I'm not.
I don't have bias.
I don't have advertising to sell.
I have no reason to pull my punches.
I don't have to worry about that kind of things, and that's the beauty of this.
That's why I love this show and being able to have freedom of speech and say what I want.
So, again, I don't know if you agree or disagree with that, or would you, in your honest opinion, and I guess I will put you on the spot,
I don't mean to, but do you think that this show specifically and other underground internet shows
would be better served if I did eliminate profanity, if we purposely edit, like I went back and edited out all the bad words?
It depends on what you're doing it for.
You know, language is a tool, like any other tool, and its purpose is to express ideas, and you can go wrong in both directions.
You know, it's one thing to tell someone that they possess an excessive amount of loquaciousness,
and it's another thing to tell them that they talk too much.
If you push yourself towards using huge words because you just decide to use huge words and it makes you feel good,
after a while you'll lose the communication.
People don't want to listen to you anymore because you don't make any sense and they have to run to a thesaurus every time they hear you.
Same way with profanity.
Profanity is a tool.
Profanity is an emotional reaction.
It's a way to kind of express, in one way, it's an expression of an emotional outburst.
It is a way to say, you know, this idea in mine is so big that it shocks me and it will shock you.
That happens, and that's something that people do naturally.
I mean, you know, take cockpit recordings when something goes wrong.
You don't hear them quietly chatting.
And when you have people who are faced with something that annoys them or has hurt them or bothers them, yeah, profanity comes in.
The problem occurs when you have somebody using profanity as both the adjective and the noun represent a bunch of other things.
Then you're just sitting there living in, you know, I mean, you can barely understand what's being said.
And at the end of the day, that's as dreary as somebody speaking with the most, you know, high academic tone of voice.
It's just as tiring.
Personally, I think that what you have there is you have an edge, a border of your language.
It goes in all directions.
You'll talk about this, talk about this.
You have a limitation against politics simply because personally it doesn't interest you,
not because somebody who's your producer or your company said, now, lay off the politics this election year.
We don't want to get in trouble.
You just say, I just don't feel like that.
That's not where my show should be.
So you've made that choice as opposed to it being made for you.
Same thing with profanity.
You know, in your manner of speaking, in your manner of running the show,
you hear a bunch of profanity, a stream of profanity to describe something that doesn't even require that,
and it just sounds poor to you.
So in the same way you're not going to record this show at, you know, 8 kilohertz,
you're not going to go ahead and record this show laden with a bunch of useless profanity.
So, you know, I understand why people do it.
I understand how they express it.
For some people that's how they express things, but I can also see, you know.
Well, I think that's just a fantastic parallel using, you know,
when you said people using these long words and just over, you know,
because I've met people like that.
They think if they use a bunch of long words and these extra strange vocabulary that they're somehow impressing you.
No, you're boring me.
Right.
Okay, I got it.
So you learned a couple extra vocabulary words.
Good for you.
I can read, too.
No problem.
You know, gratuitous use of those is no different.
That's a great comparison to, well, to vulgarity.
Overuse of anything like that becomes detracting instead of...
Yeah, I mean, you will hear radio show hosts who want to express these things.
They have to bend over backwards and provide, even though they want to use an expletive, they can't.
And in some ways it's entertaining, but it's entertaining only in how much they have to do these poor seal tricks to be able to keep their jobs.
And, you know, what they're allowed to say.
And you can even sense it.
You can sense them trying to work their way around it.
And you know that's not what they want to live like.
In fact, when you see them off the air talking at, like, events where they're not on the air,
they curse as much as I expect they would.
It's just they can't do it.
You know, they have this suit they have to put on, and you don't want to put the suit on when you go to work.
Yeah, and you know what?
Again, that's, to me, the beauty of Internet Radio and the beauty of doing this show is nobody's going to tell me what I can and can't say.
Right.
Well, you know, in a way, the listeners do.
You know, the listeners do.
I try to cut back on some of my language because I know that there are certain audience members that,
A, it's inappropriate for me to speak that way,
and, B, it's unprofessional and it does detract from some points if I overuse of it.
But at the same time, I am absolutely going to use it when I feel it's appropriate or when I feel just so overcome with something that it slips or it accidentally happens.
I'm not going to hold back, and that's great.
Limitless radio.
That's what Internet, and that's why there's this huge boom in Internet radio right now, not just hacking radio.
You know, and I guess I should give a little quick shout-out to Slip Mode again for giving his great speech at the Hope Conference in New York about hacking radio.
It's not just hacking radio.
There's lots of online radio shows in the past two to three years.
There's tons of it online, lots of talk shows that are popping up.
It's because we don't have limits.
This is an emerging new medium that lets people get their message out without all the bias that exists in public media.
You know, we've – anyway, that's a dead horse.
Let me wrap up the email here by saying, first of all, again, I apologize.
The person who wrote this in, I'm answering the question.
I'm not in any way attacking you.
I appreciate your offer.
So please don't misunderstand that I'm mad or attacking.
Don't tell me what I can and can't say.
That's not it at all.
I just want people to understand the reason why I'm not going to be on most FM stations or real live radio stations, you say.
Okay, first of all, you have my permission to put it on the air, and I'll even go a step further.
You absolutely have my permission to bleep out some of my more – my bigger outbursts.
You have permission to bleep out any bad language I made.
I absolutely give you full permission to do that because I'm not naive.
I do understand that to get it on the radio, they're not going to let me do that.
So bleeping it, I give you full permission to do that, not a problem whatsoever if you think the show is still going to be effective and good without those.
And I like to think, again, I try not to use them gratuitously.
I try not to just throw them around during the normal portions of the show.
But when I do get on one of those rants because we're talking about how much I hate AOL or how much I can't stand real media or some of these other companies or products, et cetera,
if you feel that it's still going to be worth listening to when you start bleeping out some of that stuff, you absolutely have my permission to do it.
Contact me again, and I'll give you all the information you need if you want to pick up the live stream.
I'll send you MP3 files that you can stream a day late or something like that.
Not a problem, absolutely.
I actually – I thank you for having that interest and being willing to do that.
So that's really the message for this – to wrap up the email on that kind of message.
I'm doing this show – I don't know if this is pompous for me to say this.
I'm doing this show the way I want to do the show.
And because it's on the Internet, I have the freedom to make that decision.
Just to add to that, one of the things that I encounter a lot with my different projects, especially my documentary project,
which I guess we'll touch on later, is people naturally say to me, well, you're working on this documentary,
so when is it going to be on PBS?
Or when is it going to be on the Discovery Channel?
And I often say to them, you know, that's not the logical end of a project like this.
One of the things that – you know, you take it as the compliment it is,
which is people experience media that's gotten into their homes and into their lives and their cars,
and they think of that as the stage, and they think that anybody who's gotten on that stage is now a success.
If you're not on that stage, you're not a success.
If you're not playing at Carnegie Hall and you're playing at a local, you know, pub, you're not a success.
You're just somebody.
And it's natural for people who hear these shows, and especially when they really like them,
to go, okay, so when do you get your reward, your logical end?
When do you end up on, you know, Clear Channel?
When can I tune in my local radio station?
And there you are because you're so great, I want that.
And it's tough to explain to people that it's not set up like a flagpole.
It's not we're down here at the bottom of the flagpole,
and the longer you go up towards the top of the flagpole where the networks are,
that that's the nicest view and the greatest time and when you'll be the happiest person.
It's more like this huge disk.
And maybe once it was like a flagpole, but now it's a disk.
The networks are on one side of the disk.
They're invariant parts to each other so that there's some variation.
But there's this whole other way of existing and expressing yourself and getting it out to everyone
that, you know, simply gets rid of that need to have to be on that one stage.
And you can be on any other part of the disk and happy with yourself.
You don't need there.
So you're running Binary Revolution.
You are happy.
You don't spend every day saying, man, when am I going to make it?
When does the fun begin?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, jeez.
I'm already – the fun's going on, man.
The fun is – see, the reward is the show.
That's all I need.
That's all I – that's it.
Yeah, at the end of the day, if someone who makes the show, that's where your happiness is.
And if the thing goes up on the Internet and next thing you know, it's playing in a cable
channel somewhere in another country and a million people are seeing it, great.
That's great.
But you don't sit there going, oh, where's that cable channel?
Yeah.
You don't check your time, your watch going, man, where's the check?
I was going to say, where's my royalties?
Yeah.
Time to sue somebody.
Yeah.
I mean, I find out all the time about stuff I've done being somewhere.
And it's like, oh, that's, you know, great.
That's cool, yeah.
You don't go like, oh, finally, now's the payoff.
Well, yeah, my reaction is like, wow, somebody else found that interesting?
No, that's the way you've got to take it.
And it's natural.
Like I said, it's natural when you're raised up with something to think that what that,
you know, that thing in your life is the end of it.
And I don't dislike the networks like a lot of people here in the shows do.
I don't dislike them, but I also don't treat them with the same pedestal.
I don't say, you know, oh, well, they said it was X, so it's got to be X.
Oh, well, yeah.
I don't apply.
I don't give them extra weight.
But I also say, okay, well, they do their little show.
You know, it's like the store down the street sells this kind of product.
It doesn't mean it's the only one.
It just means, oh, yeah, okay, they're selling it.
That's nice.
Right.
Well, and this is kind of a good tangent.
I'm glad you brought this up.
We'll kind of freestyle this a little bit.
But I don't, like, hate the networks either.
I just recognize their limitations.
I acknowledge them for what they are.
Yeah.
And that is limited in their scope and obviously biased.
So I don't hate them individually.
I'm the guy that Duel always makes fun of for watching American Idol.
Well, you know, I watch some TV on occasion.
But the thing is, you have to watch all of it together, listen to all of it in context,
and form your own opinion based on all of the aspects of all of the different channels
and all the different biases combined.
You know, so individually, I don't put any of them up as a pedestal,
and I also don't condemn any of them.
I just say you have to take it all in context and balance everything that you see.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
I mean, you know.
So, yeah, I don't want you to think or any of the listeners think I hate some specific channel or something.
I know a lot of people, I probably shouldn't even mention this, but I'm going to.
I'm going to regret this.
I know a lot of people hate Fox News.
You know, they just despise it.
To me, okay, it's another channel with their spin on things and their different viewpoints.
I agree with some.
I disagree with some, just like every other channel.
But it gives me an alternative to offset the others.
So, yeah, it's all mixing it together.
And occasionally you need to know what the weather is.
Well.
So, there you go.
Just a little flip over and there's what the weather and time is, and you're done.
Well, that's what the internet's for.
Yep.
Weather and porn.
Yep.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, an internet radio.
Did I forget?
Ah, crap.
Too late.
We'll edit that out.
Yep.
Yeah.
And actually, we'll segue into actually our show and tell, our projects.
I got one quick email just because this is going to segue into the show and tell and to our main topic tonight.
And this is an email from Tech Freak who says,
And again, I just told you basically this is going to be our main topic.
We're going to retouch on this tonight because both of us have some experience, again, in this.
But before we do that, quickly talk about our personal projects, the show and tell portion of the show, as you know we call it.
And I'll go quickly first, very shortly, because in preparation for the show while doing some research,
and I can't spell preparation right in my show notes.
Preparation as in H.
Okay.
In preparation for the show, I have to say, let's see, where's my notes here?
I got lost.
Okay.
In preparation for the show, I did a lot of research on AugVorbis because we've talked about it before on the show,
and I at one point wanted to, and I have always wanted to put everything up in Aug,
but I just haven't quite gotten around to it.
Now, I'm kind of rededicated the more I read about it and the more I found out about the way it works and did some comparisons.
On their page, they have some comparisons of their compression versus MP3 versus Windows Media versus –
were you telling me that there was like 12 or more different formats of – or was it lossless compression?
12 of lossless compression alone.
There's probably even more of lossy compression, which we probably should hold off until we go into that part, I guess.
Yeah.
But anyway, point being, that's what I've been – I've been researching this week, that kind of stuff,
because I'm kind of rededicated and trying to do that again and going to experiment a little bit with AugVorbis,
especially now that Audacity, the software that we use to record the show, has native support for that built in in the latest version.
I'm going to see how that works because I've heard that it's much, much better in this newer version.
I haven't tried it yet.
So that has been pretty much it, and I was doing – I was in Orlando.
Some of the regular listeners know that I go to Universal Studios, and I guess as an aside, look for – a little pimp,
look for an article on that exact topic in Blacklisted 411 Magazine coming soon, where I was up in Orlando for the whole weekend.
And doing – theme parks are such a great place to social engineer people.
These people are like standing at their post all day, bored to tears, and like –
you can go to these people and just kind of be nice with them, kind of joke with them, ask them questions.
They're just so raring to give you information to talk.
You can find out so much cool stuff.
So I did a lot of social engineering up in Orlando.
That's how I got a lot of information to write the article that I wrote.
I might have enough to do a follow-up, as a matter of fact, or maybe I'll just update that one.
But a lot of cool information I found out about Universal Studios and the way they work and some of the things there.
And you know what?
Silly stuff like getting the employee discount when you buy something in the store.
That's always nice and helpful.
And I was – this is kind of an in-joke.
I actually – the American Idol auditions are in Orlando this year, but they're next weekend, unfortunately.
Well, this upcoming weekend, I should say.
So I missed those.
Oh, damn.
I blew it.
I completely –
You can walk around and harass some of the contestants saying later when the guy wins,
you see him?
I annoyed the heck out of him in line.
Exactly.
I had – there were so many – I was just – I had so many ideas and so many funny things that I could do.
And it's like – we were actually planning on doing this the weekend of the tryout so that we could do the Universal
and still go have some fun here.
We were actually – a friend and I, we were going to go up.
And this is probably not funny as a story, but I'll tell it anyway.
It's probably something more visual.
But we were going to go up.
And we were going to dress – we were going to dress in wigs with dreadlocks.
And we were going to go in as Milli Vanilli.
We were going to intentionally be the ones that they joke and make fun of.
We were going to go in and do Milli Vanilli.
But what was going to make it extra funny besides the fact that it's these two white dudes dressed up in dreadlocks
and everything doing a Milli Vanilli song,
the other super funny part was we were going to go in with a tape recorder in our jacket
and lip sync like Milli Vanilli did
and just see the reaction from the judges.
But, ah, alas, it's not going to happen.
That's a shame.
We also – I was going to do a little culture jamming.
I had this idea.
And I don't know if this is – this is probably not a nice thing to do,
but I'm going to say – tell this story anyway.
I was going to actually go out.
Because for those of you who don't know the way American Idol works,
I can't believe somehow I'm talking about American Idol on a hacking radio show.
But I'm going to tie this in.
I promise you.
This is a culture jamming thing.
I was going to go there, and what happens is the people that win or that make it to the next round,
they give them this little yellow sheet of paper, like the golden ticket to the next round.
And they come running out of the studio, and they show it off to all the other people in line going,
ha, ha, I made it.
You guys just suck.
You're not going to make it.
That kind of – I was going to make up a fake one
and walk around through the line outside of the building because the line like wraps around the block
and all over the place.
I was going to walk out there with a card and act like I made it
and talk to people and get them to sing on camera and perform and stuff like that,
acting like, oh, I've already made it.
Let me give you some pointers.
That kind of angle.
And at the same time, take it a step further, possibly posing or insinuating that I had a hookup for them
and say, and this is where the culture jamming comes in.
I really think I could do this.
I really am good with talking to people and convincing people.
I really think I could have done this.
Go to several people in line, many different points, 100 people or more,
and had them audition for me with the camera and stuff there,
act like, you know, because I look like I belong with the yellow ticket
and the number and everything and the winner,
and then kind of whisper to them, wow, you're really good.
Listen, tell them when you go in there to the judges, say, Stank Dog sent me.
And tell them, and they'll give you an extra consideration because they know,
they liked me a lot and they know that I had an insight.
I could even say I'm a producer or something like that,
but I probably go with a contestant angle.
And if I do that to 100 or more people and they all go into the audition room
and say, hi, my name is such and such Stank Dog sent me,
there's no way they can't put that on TV.
The judges are going to be like,
who in the hell is this Stank Dog that everybody keeps talking about?
It's got to bother them if enough people go in there and say that.
I really think I could pull that off.
You think I could or couldn't do that?
You think that's reaching?
You know what the best part is with television is you never know.
You never know what these people are going to pull out.
And, you know, one guy, you know, when John Belushi was auditioning for Saturday Night Live,
he was stuck in the line with everyone else and didn't want to be,
and he just started storming back and forth.
He had his samurai outfit.
He auditioned by playing his samurai guy.
He just stormed back and forth and back and forth
and then just burst through the doors at a time he wasn't supposed to,
walked up and just gave them his performance and then stormed out.
And that's what got him the job.
And so you can't predict what's going to happen.
And somebody who's going out of his way to cause chaos in the line,
I mean, they just go, that's the little extra we need.
Put him on the air.
Yeah, well, I don't think they'd put me on,
but I think they would show the clips of, you know, like the narrator would say,
or what's his name, Ryan Seacrest, the narrator, whatever, would say something like,
we noticed a strange phenomenon in Orlando.
Apparently, Stank Dog had sent quite a few people to the audition.
They show a bunch of clips of people going,
Stank Dog sent me, Stank Dog sent me, Stank Dog sent me.
And then Simon or one of the judges going,
who in the bloody hell is Stank Dog?
I really think I could pull that off.
Well, I guess it's not going to happen.
I just went up last weekend.
I'm not going to make it up again.
If anybody wants to try that, I think if you're good enough, you can pull that off.
I think somebody, if you want to steal that idea, go for it.
I think you can pull that off.
It only works if you say Stank Dog sent me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
That's the ticket.
Yeah.
Your own handle, please.
Anyway, I'm sorry, that was a weird tangent to go off on.
But anyway, that was my weekend.
I mentioned in the forums I'd be unaccessible for the weekend.
And that's really what I was doing up in Orlando.
They got hit pretty rough by the hurricane, by the way.
A lot of people emailed me and instant messaged me asking if I was okay through the hurricane.
And luckily it missed us.
It went north.
It just shot right over top of me.
I'm down in South Florida.
But up in Orlando, there were signs down, trees across the highway in parts.
Most of it had been cleaned up.
But trees down all over the place, signs that were broken and shattered.
The roofs, part of the roofs were torn off.
I talked to some waitresses in the restaurants.
They said there were still places with no power.
So, yeah, I'm very lucky down here.
We didn't really get anything.
So thanks to everybody who sent an email or asking about how I was.
I appreciate that on a personal note.
Now, anyway, on to you.
Gosh, how much time do we have?
We still got a good half hour of time.
So no problem.
Okay.
So now, you mentioned it earlier.
Now, let's go into some more detail about it without sounding like a total pimping session of the documentary.
But for those of them who don't know, for those of the listeners who do not know, what documentary specifically are you referring to?
What is the documentary you're working on?
Okay, I'll give you the ultra-contest version.
The last three years, I've been working on a documentary about dial-up bulletin board systems.
It's at bbsdocumentary.com.
Basically, I run a site full of old BBS text files called textfiles.com.
And at some point, I started putting up lists of old BBSs.
And this got a lot of attention from people.
And I suddenly realized the story hadn't been told.
And that it wasn't going to be told in a way that I wanted to because as somebody who grew up through dial-up bulletin board systems as opposed to the web forums we have now, there was this whole history that occurred.
And I thought, well, I'll do it.
And three years later, 200 interviews, 250 hours of footage later, I'm putting this thing together.
And it's going to be a three-DVD set.
And it's going to be coming out this year.
And it's just been an incredible amount of work.
Oh, I can imagine.
And it's one of these things.
Because I certainly enjoyed doing it.
I learned a lot of things I wouldn't have.
I traveled to a lot of states I would have never set foot in before.
And I met a lot of people I would have never had the chance to.
So it was great.
And the problem, of course, is that when you spend that much time on something, you can talk about it for hours.
And I certainly don't want to do that to this audience, especially because very little of that specific part has anything to do with the main topic.
But I will say that one of the things that I picked up from this was how important it was to pick up the stories from people, from people who have been through something.
Because without those stories, you end up with a very dry history.
And as we've discussed, you and I have variant opinions on a lot of different things, which is the way it should be, because you don't want to have Stank Dog and Stank Dog Jr. on the show.
But, you know, I put a lot of weight in hacker radio, like I put it in a lot of other things.
I am one of those people who actually thinks live journal is a good thing, thinks that blogs are a good thing, because in all cases they are taking snapshots of history.
Now, that's a purpose and a need that a historian has and that people who study history have.
But it's not something that people themselves need.
In other words, it's very dumb for somebody to be doing a radio show because they want to save history.
That's kind of dumb.
They should be doing it because they enjoy speaking, they have subjects, they have thoughts they want to get out, and they can express it through their voice and through calling other people.
They shouldn't do it for the other reasons.
Now, for guys like me, it's a bonanza.
It's people going out of their way to say, hi, I'm an example of somebody in 2004 who's really into computers.
Here's what I sound like, and here's what's on my mind.
That's of interest to me historically, and with any luck, it's of interest to the listeners.
We can always hope.
Yeah, hope.
It's always a nice bonus.
I'm still waiting for that first download.
So in doing this documentary, I basically went out and spoke to 200 people, of which 30 are probably what we would think of as pioneers or heroes or whatever you want to call them, the creator of World War IV, of Phytonet BBSs, of Xmodem, of the first BBS, of the fourth BBS, of the creator of TCPIP, and so on.
People who made a difference technologically or in creating things.
But I also spoke to 150 people who just happened to use a BBS.
Some of them were huge multi-line affairs that they ran, and some people just used them and were excited that somebody like me would be talking about them and wanted to give their talk about it.
So because, to me, bulletin board systems and now forums are not composed of pioneers like, say, you know, the space program.
You can go, well, here are the engineers and here are the astronauts.
You know, you have the people charging forth.
With BBS, it's what really made it good were just the people, people whose lives had nothing to do with computers, who ran out and bought a Commodore 64,
and they called up a few bulletin board systems, and they became this whole other person and lived this whole other life online.
And it was this amazing time, and they remember it, and they had so many stories to give to me.
So in doing this, I got some of those stories.
And so I played some footage of it at DEF CON.
I'd been speaking about this on and off for a couple of years.
At DEF CON, I played 16 minutes of it.
The 16 minutes was pretty well received, I think.
The final documentary is actually a mini-series of six documentaries, perhaps seven, which will work out to be somewhere between six and seven hours.
Wow.
That's why it's on DVDs.
It's because the story is so vast, I wanted to make sure all the stories were covered properly.
Otherwise, you end up, you know, if you do a documentary on the car, how do you get, you know,
Henry Ford in with people who juice up rental cars in, you know, 2004 to rally, you know, the story couldn't fit them.
You'd have to do two minutes here, two minutes there.
Right, and I'm actually going to come back to that at kind of the end.
I want to come back and tie that in to the end of our main topic tonight as far as how much material there is
and how do you distribute such a large, well, not file, but group of files, a large amount of material, you know,
and ironically, in a comparison to the BBS days when files were tiny and everything was text and nasty and all that,
it's kind of a little irony there that now there's this huge documentary about this, you know, this tiny phenomenon.
Well, not tiny, you know, you know what I mean.
It's both tiny and huge.
Exactly.
Like everything else.
And just, I think, I don't know if I'm crossing a line here.
We'll edit this out later too, but you and I, you and I are, can I safely say we're around the same age?
Are you cool?
We're around the same age.
Okay, are you cool with that?
And therefore, I, my point being, I do have the same appreciation.
I just wanted to reiterate that I grew up with that too.
I had the Commodore 64.
I dialed the BBSs.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
You know, I remember Wildcat.
I remember the doors.
I remember the, the, oh, the trivia game.
When a 300 baud modem, a coupler that you had to put the phone down inside of and go on and play the trivia thing where you get points and compete with it.
I mean, little things like that.
You know, that was some of my first exposure is like a, you know, 10, 11 year old kid.
And that was one of the first things, you know, that opened my eyes to realize, you know what?
It's not about what's in this computer.
It's about what's in the other computers and how we can interact.
And, you know, now that I'm an adult, that's the beautiful thing about the internet.
But, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to back off because, you know what?
Okay, I'm sure the documentary is going to cover that and so much more.
Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's definitely completist.
I will say that.
I would say so.
Three DVDs you're looking at probably, most likely?
Yeah, it'll be three DVDs.
Or is that confirmed?
Yeah, that's confirmed.
It's going to be three DVDs.
It's now just a matter of how much bonus material goes on it.
You know, one of the things, like I said, that I point out is, okay, great, six hours.
That's incredible.
That's insane.
I don't want to see any of it.
I want to see all of it.
But the thing is, is that's edited down from 247 hours of interviews that have been conducted.
So there's a lot of footage that I generated over the last three years.
And a lot of those interviews don't have anything to do with BPSs who are just happy to have someone visiting them at their farm.
And I got to get, you know, a nice little talk about, you know, their gun ownership.
But, you know, that's the nature of just throwing out the line and seeing what comes back.
You get some really great, interesting characters, some interesting people.
Yeah, I bet.
And you know what I would like to see is some extra footage, or even in the documentary itself.
I may be too late for the suggestion, but I would like to hear the stories of how you found some of these people.
I think that would be cool bonus features, bonus footage.
Yep, the website itself will have a photo gallery of every interview I did, because I took pictures while I interviewed people.
I've seen some.
I give some talk about, like, what was going on, why I went there, what it was like, and so on.
So you get kind of a travelogue to go with it.
So you're like, well, what's the story with that guy?
And you go and you're like, oh, that's why.
He did this and this, and that's why Jason wanted to talk to him.
Right.
So, you know, I lost a rental car at one point.
I lost parts of my equipment at various points.
It was a very, it was like a travel.
It was like, you know, I traveled many thousands of miles.
It was a great adventure.
So, yeah.
Now, I guess I'll be the one to jump to where we're going.
Yeah, well, you know, it is a perfect segue.
First of all, we are going to come back to, you made one point with the documentary as far as media, medium again.
Yes.
And we'll end with that.
But before we go there, let's begin at the beginning.
And we've already kind of mentioned it somewhat with the documentary and the irony of these old text files, these old ASCII files, which are tiny.
They were pure text.
Text back then, sound files weren't even, you know, there was no MP3.
There was no, you know, audios, files being transmitted, or very, very rare, if at all.
Not in the way that we experience it now.
Right.
We definitely did transfer it, but they were novelties.
And by that I mean, you know, it was interesting.
I have Apple II discs in which you can hear Van Halen digitized.
But let me tell you, you need the words on the screen telling you that what you're listening to is Van Halen.
Exactly.
And it was 140K, and it took you an hour or longer to download it over a 300-baud modem to be able to listen to a 16 or basically a 10-second excerpt of perhaps Eruption by Van Halen.
You know, that was what you got.
And, you know, some of these programs would compose music, but that's obviously not the same thing we think of.
I'm going to have to take a timeout and award you two points for the first official use of Van Halen on Binary Revolution Radio.
Congratulations.
Now.
You know, you bring up something.
You know, whenever I look at things now, this is a result of running textfiles.com and my other archival projects, is to me the most fascinating aspect of anything technical or anything is history.
You know, to me, I'm not just listening to a hacker radio program, or I'm not just on a hacker radio program.
I think of how things were going back for the past 30 years with radio programs and how people got things on the air and what they went to.
And the rule I always make is the rule of firsts, which is never consider something being first to be the most important aspect of it,
because at the end of the day, you're going to find out it really wasn't the first.
You're always going to find something that was kind of like it that's pretty close.
And now if all you're saying is we're the first and only, you've gotten rid of the one thing that makes you good.
What you should be saying is we're doing our best right now.
We're something new.
We're doing something right now.
We have what's going on.
You are the best program that people are listening to right now.
You know, that's the way it should be.
You're working on this program and it's done.
And if you say, well, we're the first one with a co-host who's, you know, also this kind of programmer, you know, it's a losing game.
And you see it played all the time.
You know, we're the first BBS to be like this.
We're the first website where people had a counter.
It's foolish.
It's foolish and it's what people do.
So when it comes to things like, you know, sound, sound files, radio shows.
I think I was the first website to officially fuck not somebody.
Do I get points and like does that go down in the annals of history?
For the end of the program, I will send you a wave.
Okay.
This wave is being played on a computer in 1962.
And it is a computer singing.
And it was recorded by attaching a specialized device to one of the resistors inside of the machine such that you could hear the sound being sent in.
And that's 1962.
And you'll hear this and you'll say, wow, that's pretty good for 1962.
How long is it?
It's about, oh, about a minute.
I might have to play that as our outro tonight.
Yeah.
It's a very interesting little piece of work.
And it's back in 1962.
You know, what's important in looking at how something got to be the way it is or where it is now is you say not just like, wow, MP3s are neat.
But I don't want to switch to this odd thing.
It's not MP3s.
MP3s are the way.
You have to kind of say, why are MP3s the way?
Because MP3s are neat.
Why did we get to that?
And, you know, I can remember back in 1995, I was running a little ISP that went under, and somebody had this 5-meg file in their directory.
Now, keep in mind, my whole directory was, I think, 500 megs for my users.
So somebody had a 10-meg file.
They were eating up that much.
And I thought, what the heck is this?
What's it called?
And it was called Mariah Carey.
And then a song titled Dot MP3.
And I thought, no, it's 10 megs of Mariah Carey.
Yeah, did you kick him off immediately just for having a Mariah Carey MP3?
He was my boss.
And he always had, he was one of these cutting-edge guys, always was there right at the beginning.
And I was like, what the hell is with this 10-megabyte, is it pictures?
Is it, you know, I just didn't know what it was.
And when I went to him and he said, it's a song.
Like, what do you mean, it's a song?
And he said, no, it's a song.
And he played it for me.
And I was like, oh, that's 10 megs?
Wow.
And, you know, that was like one of those things.
Well, you know, what happened is that MP3 is like, it's almost a story like Prometheus,
the man who stole fire from the gods, which is supposedly how man got fire.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
We don't have time for the Prometheus story.
We've got maybe 20.
No, no, we're going away from Prometheus.
Okay, we've got a 20-minute story time, but we don't have Prometheus story time,
the Iliad and the Odyssey or anything.
I'll skip forward from Prometheus to about 1985, 86.
Okay.
The Motion Picture Engineering Group, which was one of the industry groups whose job was
to put together ways to transfer sound and data, sound video as data, actually, over
whatever telecommunications lines they would use, T1s or other digital media.
And the way to do this, of course, is to compress it, but you want to compress it so it looks
the most like the thing it used to be.
And in the mid-80s, there was an engineer, an engineer whose name is now mostly forgotten,
named Brandenburg, Karl-Heinz Brandenburg, who created, on the sound side, something called
the psychoacoustic model, which said basically, if it sounds like it should to a human being,
that's good enough.
Because the machine can look at it and say, no, there's something all wrong, everything's
missing, who cares?
At the end of the day, we're playing this for people.
And to do that, he created a compression scheme that was lossy in that it lost data.
This comes back to bite us later.
But at the time, it made sense.
Now you've got one-tenth of the size required than if you took, say, a 16-bit file and recorded
it, you'd end up with 100 megs for a certain length.
Now you'd end up with 10.
It made sense.
It was a 1 to 10 ratio.
What a great idea.
And just to interject here, since you've already dropped one definition, why don't you just,
to be thorough, lossy versus lossless.
Just touch on that for a second.
Certainly.
One of the things you want to do when you're compressing, you know, there's two ways of
looking at the data.
You can either take the, you want to make the data smaller, right?
So one of the things you end up doing is you can either make it lossy or lossless.
Now keep in mind that for a long time, there wasn't any such thing as lossy.
It's the dumbest idea ever.
You compress it, and when you uncompress it, there's less than when you originally had it.
Who would want that?
So really, it was always just lossless, what we think of as now lossless.
You would compress 100 bytes down to 20, and then later you could turn it back into the
original 100, having lost no data.
This was great.
You spent less time on the phone transferring data.
You spent less time and space on the computer dealing with it.
There was a little bit of a hit because it took the computer processor, but it was a great
idea.
And this psychoacoustic model was one of the first times where they said, well, why don't
we just compress it so that it looks like it should, but in fact, it's got a lot less
data in it.
They did this with the picture, and they did it with the sound, and it became known as
MPEG-1, or at the time, MPEG, the MPEG compression.
And that's what was MPEG-1.
Now, they wanted to accompany the video for MPEG with any one of three different approaches
to the sound.
And the third one, there were three layers, each of which was intended to be able to undo
the ones below it.
And the third layer was the one that this gentleman created, this lossy, but still sounded kind
of right, but definitely could save space, compression scheme, which was called MPEG-1,
layer number three.
Well, when people found this, you see, it was a number of people who were not in the industry
who kind of kept tabs on it, who said, wow, this thing can transport music and really do
it well.
You know, that same first time, if you can harken back to the first time you ran into an
MP3, where you were like, I downloaded this two-megabyte file, and it sounds like this?
That was what they felt.
You know, the only problem with it was that it took an enormous amount of processor to do
it.
In fact, back in 1988, when this group first created it, it used to take them three days
for a room full of computers to compress one second.
You know, that's how long ago this thing was being worked on.
So they wanted money for it.
So the decoder, they just let anyone have.
But the encoder, the thing that would turn it into an MP3 in the first place, well, that
was proprietary.
That was licensed.
That was meant to, that was to be used by companies who would pay a royalty.
And of course, it was developed, or to remind people again, by the MPEG, MPEG, the motion
pictures, does this sound familiar?
Yep.
This was the group of people who would then go on to work on the DVD standard, who would
work on VCRs, who had worked on everything where they were going to intend these things
to be used by the professional industry to provide the people.
It really wasn't meant for people to be using at any given time.
It wasn't going to be a consumer-level situation.
It was going to be something that came from the top down.
So when somebody discovers this program and starts using it and saying, look at it, it's
like, it's like crack.
You know, people encounter this thing that gives them the music they love, because music
is so emotional, and they're going to get it in this small amount of time.
All they've got to do is use the program on WAV files that they pull from some source,
and they can have a smaller version that they can transfer that sounds just like the WAV file.
We'll get into the techniques of WAV shortly, in a reduced size.
But, you know, basically, people, you couldn't get away from this.
Well, there was a slight problem of, well, it's kind of proprietary.
It's kind of owned by somebody.
So that didn't stop anybody.
No.
In the mid-'90s, people were pulling out libraries that were being used by other things.
Microsoft paid for a library.
There were other groups who paid for a library.
And they pulled it out, and they started using it.
And they were able to make it in code, quite in the face of the proprietary rules that were
applied by Frauhofer and by the groups who licensed it.
And they were able to turn it into, basically, a music compression machine.
And this was when we start to see things like MPG-123 and other programs that are basically
encoders.
Now, these are tracked down.
These are attacked.
These are brought down by groups.
Frauhofer went after people, basically going after developers.
You know, we start to see things that are happening now where they went after developers and said,
you can't do that.
You did that by reverse engineering our stuff.
And they said, no, no, no, we didn't do anything like that.
And then they quietly transferred it to, you know, Tasmania or some other place out of their reach.
Now, obviously, with the DMCA, reverse engineering is illegal.
So, yeah, even in, boy, that's, we're not going to go off on that tangent, but.
Understood.
But that's, people understand, this is the wild and woolly days of the mid-90s when you
could do this.
Reverse engineering is legal as long as it's not on a computer these days.
You can still reverse engineer stuff as long as it's not a computer software package.
Correct.
Reverse engineering is the bread and butter of innovation in this country.
But, yes, I will not go there.
You go, I'm sorry, you go right ahead.
So, you have this situation, right?
Now you have these, these, these, these MPEGs.
And people are calling them MPEGs, which is like, you know, that's why people, when you
hear people refer to CD-ROM images as ISOs.
I mean, ISO is the International Standards Organization.
It's a group that made the standard that that happens to be one of many thousands.
But lingo is lingo.
So, you can't really go near there.
So, how do you easily put down what people are using?
Well, you just say, well, it's MPEG-1, layer 3.
That's too hard.
MPEG-3.
M-P-3.
Exactly.
So, the name M-P-3 starts being used.
You know, the industry never called it that.
People just call them M-P-3s.
We're trading M-P-3s.
I've got some M-P-3s for you.
And it's important to note that, you know, again, CD audio, a CD.
The reason a CD holds 640 or 670, you know, megabytes is because that's how long it takes
to hold an hour and something of music.
You know, that's what, when you store on the CD standard, you end up with these, basically
you end up with these very large files.
And by compressing these down, even though they don't have all the same information, they
sound about the same to a lot of people.
Right.
And this is probably a good segue to start into some of the more technical stuff here
as we've got about maybe 10 minutes.
Wow!
Yeah.
Some of the history is good.
And I also just, one other thing I wanted to point about historically is, is just kind
of the irony of the fact that this was developed by the Motion Pictures Group, and they're the
ones that are so animated against suing people because their stuff is distributed, MPEGs, A-V-I's,
MP3s, et cetera, out there, the RAA and the MPAA.
You know, I find it quite ironic and amusing that their own creation came back to bite them
in the rear end, so to speak.
Right.
So I just want to bring that irony up.
Now, you mentioned again, let's kind of transition here into some of the hardware aspects of it
and some of the technical aspects of it as far as, okay, you were going off into WAV files,
for example, and let's, before we even talk about that, let's do a, let's back up and talk
about analog versus digital for a second if we can.
Okay.
Analog, well, I tell you what, maybe you, why don't you go ahead.
Analog versus digital, pretty, pretty generic topic, but let's clarify that before we go
into the technical details of files.
Sure.
When we think of things that are analog, certainly within the context of sound, it's usually
some sort of physical act, and by that I mean you do something, you cause a vibration,
and that vibration affects something, so for instance, when they used to make records, they
would take the vibration of the sound, and that would cause a groove to make etchings
in it, and then when you put a needle in those etchings, it would vibrate, so the physicality
of it was such that it would cause it to make these signals, and when they got up to a tube,
that tube would take the signal and then amplify it to the point that you could eventually hear
it on a speaker.
This is all analog.
In other words, there's a lot of variants, there's a lot of, you know, it's almost a
one-off thing, you go from here to there.
Maybe somebody's smart and they put in, like, a little piece of metal, and where that metal
is, it affects the sound that's coming through, but at the end of the day, it's basically using
physical stuff, electricity and physical waves.
When you have digital, you are transferring things to information, and until recently, and
by that I mean the last few years, you couldn't hope to make digital information come by fast
enough to make it sound as good.
You couldn't hope to do that, because you have to take it so many times.
In fact, that's where when people say, what about this kilohertz thing, that's how many
samples per second it's taking.
44,100 in a CD.
44.1 kilohertz.
That's how many times they're sampling the sound.
Right.
That is the CD standard for music.
Right.
Correct.
When you listen to, say, an MP3 and you see the kilohertz go up or down, that's how many
samples per second it's taking.
And the more sound that's going on, the less clarity you can sometimes have if you knock
it down, if you have a lot of information coming through, because it can't sample it
fast enough.
It's only able to take off.
It's like looking through a screen door.
It doesn't quite look the same.
You can see where it all was, but you don't have enough information.
Right, and if I may interject here, as far as sample rate, now let's actually apply this
a little bit so that people can follow.
The sample rate, as you explained, which is basically how many samples are captured per
second.
Sometimes called, well, that's why it's called the sample rate, but sometimes called SPS
or samples per second.
And common sense logic, because as you just explained, it's how many, you know, polls or
how many times you check it in a matter of a second, the higher it is, common sense tells
you the more samples you take in a period of a second, the better quality you're going
to get, because you're going to pull it more often.
Right.
The standard for CD audio at the very high quality is 44,100 hertz or 44 kilohertz, 44.1 kilohertz, written
different ways, but 44.1, which is what you'll most often see on, well, I guess for lack of
a better word, CD rips.
When you find an album that's been ripped out there, you'll most often find it at 44.1.
Right.
Okay, now, to apply this also to lossy compression, okay, where data is lost, what happens here
is that humans cannot hear above 20,000 hertz, if I understand correctly, and honestly, this
is, I've just read about this this week, so I'm kind of rough on this myself.
Humans can't hear it in general, but there are always people who are hypersensitive.
Women are more sensitive than men, and so on.
There is some variance.
Of course, yeah, of course.
Generally speaking, though, above 20,000.
So what that means is you want to have your sample rate to be twice as much of that, positive,
negative, I believe, but plus or minus, I guess.
So setting the rate at 44,100 covers that 40,000, 20,000 times two, 20,000 hertz times two,
so it covers everything.
So there's really not much of a need.
It's debatable and it's argued.
I've seen some people out there discussing it in some of the professional forums and stuff
like that about that.
But usually, 44,100 will cover just about anything, extreme high ranges, low ranges, etc.
But, in regards to this radio show and other talk radio shows, that's a lot of overkill.
That's accounting for very, very precise high range sounds, low range bass, etc., etc.
A normal speaking voice, or even an abnormal speaking voice like mine, even on one of my
tirades and rants and everything, does not really need all of that.
So, yes, technically 44.1 would be the highest, that would be the highest quality or one of
the highest quality I could put out, but it's really not necessary.
For what I'm doing here, and this is the email we went to earlier where I heard 1616, what
I used to put this at was 16,000 hertz or 16 kilohertz, which is what I mentioned on those
earlier shows.
We have switched lately, and I'm now doing 22,050 hertz, 22,050, or 22,050 is what I
usually refer to it, which the only reason I even do that is because the opening theme
music and the closing music, I like to give them a little bit more justice and sample more
often for those.
So, that's really the only reason that I made that change.
So, since episode seven, I think it was, when we recorded the first how-to, we've changed
a little bit and gone a little bit higher quality, but it's only for the music.
But, technically, you could go as low as eight or even less because talking is one of the
least precise things that you would put on MP3.
Right.
Okay, so that's the sample rate.
In fact, parts of MP3 are meant to be optimized for the human voice.
So, you actually have a case where human voices are meant to sound like normal humans as much
as possible under MP3.
You know, you can, you know, what we run into, the hidden monster that neither of us are talking
about here is the bandwidth.
That is to say, the amount of information that comes through, well, you know, you have
this balance.
The more information, the better it kind of sounds, but the bigger the file is.
Right.
And there is kind of a balance.
It's, gosh, I wish we had more than another four or five minutes to talk about this, but
we've got to at least touch on bit rate to go along with sample rate, you know.
And the bit rate is the other number that you see, besides the 44.1, you usually see, at
least I usually see 128 kilobits per second.
Right.
Which is very, very good for, well, that's not very, very good.
That's standard generic default for music.
But that is...
It was standard called for what we would call 384 kilobits per second.
But, you know, people discovered that 128 sounded pretty good and was much smaller.
So that's kind of where 128 comes from when it comes to music, is that's what, to most
people, sounds okay.
Now, anybody who's an audiophile, you know, who are one of the most unhappy people on the
face of the earth, they don't like it.
And, you know, the thing to keep in mind, again, is if your show, and I guess we're talking
about specifically within the context of radio shows, if your show is primarily voice, there
are, there's, 128 is excellent.
Oh, yeah.
Beyond excellent.
And you can get away with shorter.
Now, I, as an archivist, wish that people would keep, you know, their Audacity file on
a CD.
I would encourage people to do that, to keep that version of their show around.
But that's certainly not something you need to be transporting from your website.
In fact, it's, as much as it might seem like hard work or extra work from your side, having
multiple bit rates available for people, you know, having the really, really tiny one,
you know, and then having the one that's a little bit better, and then having maybe the
one that's beyond excellent for the crazy people, you know, the 128.
That's, that's, if you have the space, that's great.
If not, you know, somewhere in that, in that middle area, you know, getting around to 24,
or, you know, I think that's a pretty good balance for a lot of people.
Right.
And that's actually, we have a few minutes to talk about this, because this is important,
choosing this, because it is, bottom line, exactly what Jason just said.
It's a payoff, and it's a personal decision you have to make of file size and quality.
Yep.
Okay, so you definitely want to keep that sample rate, if, ideally, you want to sample
as high as you can, and you want to put the bit rate as high as you can, in an ideal world.
Right.
Okay, now, as an archivist, Jason's point is that you always want to keep the highest quality
you can, and your original DAT file, the original file from Audacity, or whatever program you're
using, you know, will keep usually a proprietary format, or it may just put out an extremely
high quality WAV file, and they're enormous.
One WAV file, high quality of any given episode of Binary Revolution Radio, will be around 350
to 450 megabytes.
Right.
For one audio radio show, not an ISO of a movie, not an ISO of a game, or anything like
that, 350 to 450 megabytes of audio at the absolute highest, lossless quality version
of the show.
Right.
And then I make the decision, based on what I explained earlier, with the sample rate to
make it a little bit, well, not a little bit, a whole lot smaller, because the reason I explained
earlier, we can go with 22050, and on the bit rate end of things, what I go with is 24.
And again, this is because I want a little bit more quality with the music, and I don't
have to tell the guys that are downloading it, that you see the file size ends up being
around 10 to 15 megabytes.
You go with 16 and 16, which is what we used to do, the files were around 8 or 9 megabytes.
I personally decided that it would be doing more justice to the artist whose music opened
and closed the show to give them that extra file size.
If I were to take it up to 128, it would be a 35 to 40 megabyte file.
And that's just not quite manageable to download.
If you have unlimited bandwidth, for whatever reason, say you have a T1 in your basement,
something along those lines, and you can afford to do that, by all means, that's your decision
to make.
But understand the reason behind it, and the reason the files come out the size that they
do.
And that's the two things I really wanted to emphasize on this show.
So we've got that out of the way.
Now, also, we kind of have been emphasizing and talking about the history, and we're referring
a lot to MP3s.
These technical facts hold true for any format, any lossy format at all, what we're talking
about.
Not only is it the high and low ends that we're talking about dropping the human ear, most
people generally can't hear that stuff.
There's also other things going on, like, especially in speaking, if there's a pause in
between your speaking, where there's no volume and nothing going in.
Like, if I stop, just for that second right there, there's really nothing there.
So the compression algorithms can be written smart enough to save all that space because
nothing existed.
Just kind of account for it.
Right.
And we will point out, so, you know, when we're talking about the history, the reason
we bring this up is because, basically, MP3 is a fluke.
It is a series of, you know, somebody found it, somebody stumbled upon it, got it out,
it caught fire, Napster started using it, everyone started using it.
It's not because it was the best.
It's not because it was the best choice to have.
It's because it was there where a certain group of people found it, you know, and for
that reason, once people found out that digital music was such an incredible, incredible,
for lack of a better word, where, you know, it was such an incredible thing that people
wanted, they, a group of people, Theora, started working on Ogg and said, we're going to do
this, but this time we're not going to have all that mess with encoding licensing and
people charging and reverse engine, you know, we're going to do it, we're going to start
from scratch, and that's a lot of work, and that's why they spent years on it, and people
heard there was something called Ogg, but they were like, but my MP3 works right now,
why would I want to waste my time with a new thing?
And over time, they created Ogg, and they created it in a fashion that it allows itself
to be basically improved over time, and people can still read it, you know, it's designed
so that over time, if they improve the algorithms, your stuff doesn't stop working, it just
starts playing the new better stuff easier.
Yeah, it's going to take a while for Ogg to catch on, and we're going to have to use
that as a segue, kind of, because my shouts tonight, we're going to be to the Ogg Vorbis
development team.
I mean, I am really, really going to try to set time, now that I've caught up on a lot
of other things, the magazine, the TV show, yada, yada, yada, I'm finally going to try
to get some time set aside to start converting and making Ogg versions, as well as the MP3
version, I do realize that people out there are not going to adopt Ogg, just like you
said, but I'm going to try to start putting two out there, and maybe eventually roll the
MP3 off, as hopefully Ogg will become a little bit more standard, more well-known.
Yeah, over time, it's the logical choice.
So yeah, that is my shouts, and you know what, I would also love to try to get maybe some of
the developers or somebody from the Ogg team on to give us some more detail also, and maybe
correct some things we may have misspoke or weren't very clear about in our evaluation.
But yeah, that's my shout-outs, is basically just to the Ogg Vorbis project team giving
us an alternative and being very animated about making it freely available, you know, that
there are no royalties and issues and stuff like that, giving us an alternative, open-source
movement, open-free software, all that.
I mean, they epitomize it.
Yeah, this is like somebody seeing a big skyscraper that's charging $100 for the view at the top,
and they're going, you know, they don't need to do that, and they slave for three years,
for four years, building a skyscraper right next to it, going, putting all the effort
in, and then when they get to the end, they could have charged $100, and they just open
the door and say, come on in.
Exactly.
And you can never dispute that kind of single-minded focus.
The world needs that.
Sometimes it can be a problem, you know, sometimes people don't like to talk to people who are
so focused, but I'll tell you, at the end of the day, you need people like that, and
this is a good example where it pays off beautifully.
You end up with a format that is free, that you could go right now and get your own version
of, look at exactly how they did it, download the library, shove it in a program you're
working on, and you're done.
And I think that these guys have made every step, you know, every step I've seen from
these guys has been a good one.
I think that all it's going to take now is if people are going to go, what's that?
Og?
Okay, it's Og.
All right.
And what other shout-outs?
Do you second that?
What other shout-outs?
You said there might be listeners in the future listening to this show on the archive.
What do you have to say to the people of the future?
What kind of shout-outs do you want to give them?
Um, I had to say, to those people, I apologize for everything I just said, ever, and I'm
really sorry about that thing I was found with in 2009.
Uh-oh.
Oops.
I hope that it didn't color people's later perceptions of me.
So that's about, you know, please don't think of me as that guy.
I was really nice back here in 2004.
No, seriously, your floor is yours.
You got any shout-outs you want to give?
Uh, shout-outs to me goes to anybody who is running a program.
Uh, anybody who's doing, uh, who's taking their laptop and making a show, and especially
to people who are trying to make a good show.
But anyway, you know, you are part of a group of people who are what I call content generators.
And in this world, people who make stuff will always be rarer than people who consume stuff.
And those people are to be applauded, you know.
So hurrah to you, and send me mail, jason at textfiles.com if you have a show.
Send it, tell me about it, I'll archive it, I'll give you space.
And we'll definitely be cooperating on some stuff in the future pertaining to DDP Hack Radio.
You know, it's going to be a streaming server of several shows streaming their new episodes on DDP Hack Radio.
Um, and definitely we'll, we'll work out some, some situations to share and to get things archived properly, et cetera, et cetera.
Um, and if you want to email us back, feedback on this show, you can send it to radio at binrev.com.
Um, article submissions.
Remind everybody, you can send article submissions for episode, excuse me, issue 2.2.
I'm, my media's running together.
2.2 of Binary Revolution Magazine.
Send your articles to articles at binrev.com.
Um, probably got maybe about a month, one to two months, somewhere in that range.
We're going to start laying it out soon because I already have some good submissions.
So the sooner you get it in, the more likely you will use it.
If it comes in and we've already got a full issue, it's going to be quite a while before the, you know, six months before the next one comes out.
So get it in sooner.
So, because once we go to print, you know, it's going to be too late.
And our closing music is going to be, well, what we'll do is we'll use what you had mentioned to me earlier, um, that old recording of the computerized, uh, Daisy song.
Uh, make sure you send that to me after the show and we'll close with that.
Thank you, my friend, for being on the show.
Go into our closing catchphrase, such as it is, and tell everybody that we will see them next week.
Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
Same hack time.
Same hack.
Same hack time.
Daisy, Daisy, get me your answer, too.
I've met a crazy old heart of love of you.
It would be a stylish wherein.
I've met a hard-to-carry, but you would see the last of the people that I've had to build for you.