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 school you on burning dreamcast, you need some ISO, let me
do 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 rattling
your bones, when I tell you we just hacked out Jones, and NASDAQ, leave you flat 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 crickles, serial phones, source codes, ISOs, RANs, SIPs,
SIS, this is dedicated to the hackers and the crackles.
Hey there everybody, this is Stank Dog, and you are listening to Binary Revolution Radio
episode 96, almost to episode 100, 96, four more to go, and today is May 17th, 2005, another
Tuesday, another episode of Binary Revolution Radio.
However, this week we have a treat, we have a new first time co-host on the show, joining
us, the Roman poet himself, Virgil, is co-hosting the show with me.
Virgil, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks a lot.
So, let's, we do have quite a bit of stuff to talk about tonight.
We are going to talk about Google Mining, something that both Virgil and I find very interesting
and has a lot of potential for discovering and finding data, and I know a lot of people
we've been getting turned on to this project lately in the forums, but we're going to talk
into a little bit more, go into a little bit more detail, I should say, on the show tonight
of exactly what it means, because it is kind of a vague sounding topic, Google Mining.
So, we're going to make that our main topic later, but first, let's take care of a little
housekeeping.
I only have one thing to mention at the top of the show here, and that is to just thank
everybody really for participating in Freak Factor.
We had our third episode of Freak Factor, which is our new reality, freaking, and hacking
radio show, the first and only of its kind that I'm aware of.
Very, very challenging project that we have taken on, and Not Theory has done wonderful,
wonderful things with.
Very successful so far, and there will be some changes coming up to that.
But, this is really a cool show, because not only is it the reality of just people dialing
in and participating in the conference call, but also, what I like about it is that we're
making everyone part of the process.
We could have waited and gotten every single bug ironed out and got it working perfectly
and made up a format.
We decided not to do that.
We decided, as part of the reality of the show, to deal with the bugs as it went along,
and deal with the adaptation and the growth and change of the program and of the show
as it goes along, and dealing with the problems, and involving everybody in on that process.
So, that's one of the things that I've liked about it.
However, we are evolving every single episode, and there will be some more changes as the future
draws near.
So, I just wanted to let people know that.
I guess we'll give out some more details when we get closer on our website,
FreakFactor.net.
That's P-H-R-E-A-K-P-H-A-C-T-O-R dot net.
But, basically, we're going to try to cut down on 20 people all trying to talk over each other
and try to cut it down to just a few people speaking.
And, we have several ways that we're talking about doing it.
So, once again, you, the listener and the participants, will be in on that process as well.
So, look forward to that next week for FreakFactor.
And, Virgil, unless you had some housekeeping, website maintenance, project announcements,
anything like that.
Let me see.
No, actually, I'm pretty good.
Most of the stuff we'll probably get to.
Okay.
Well, then, let's take care of some e-mail.
All right.
We had quite a bit of e-mail from last week's show.
So, mostly from, Black Ratchet and I are two crotchety old farts.
And, we sat there reminiscing, going off on these weird tangents,
of some old television references and movie references and things that we weren't sure
if a lot of the listeners would get.
And, I told Black Ratchet that a lot of people would get these references.
They're not as obscure.
A lot of people knew that Snidely Whiplash was, in fact, from Dudley Do-Right,
the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show and things like that.
So, I knew that.
Did you really?
Yeah.
See, I mean, they're not as obscure as, I guess, we, I thought that one was,
might be obscure, but Black Ratchet thought that Ghostbusters,
he said a line from Ghostbusters.
And, I'm like, everybody knows Ghostbusters.
It's not that old.
So, we did get a lot of e-mail from that.
So, I'm not going to go into reading a bunch of those.
But, we do appreciate people confirming that for us.
As far as our actual, real e-mails this week, I guess,
all right, I'm going to start off with an e-mail from Amy.
Amy writes in,
Greetings, Stank Dog.
I have a question for you.
Since you changed to VoIP,
I was wondering if you might suggest some of the better companies.
I am so sick of Quest, which is out there in the Midwest,
or out there in the West, I should say,
and the asinine fees, they add on to the bill.
I listened to the show where you changed,
and I think I'm going to change also.
They screwed up my bill,
and after two calls to the so-called customer service,
it is still not fixed.
I am tired of the imbeciles.
Oh, that's a good word.
Imbeciles.
Oh, that's a good word.
I've got to start working that into my vocabulary more often.
Definitely.
Yeah, I'm tired of the imbeciles they employ to, quote,
ensure my satisfaction.
Sorry, I am ranting.
If you could share your opinions, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, and keep up the great work.
All right, well, thank you, Amy, for imbecile.
I'm going to work that in.
I'm going to start putting that in.
Yeah, actually, it's been quite a while now that I switched over to VoIP,
and before that, people were probably really tired of my rants,
and Virgil, maybe you can back me up on this one,
of how much I hate Bell South.
You're in Bell South territory as well.
Yes.
So I'm sure you feel my pain.
I can definitely sympathize.
Yeah.
So as soon as I had the opportunity to get off of Bell South,
I jumped, and I switched to cable modem,
which was finally made available in my area,
and went to VoIP and haven't looked back.
So I've been, all in all, I'm happy.
However, however, I'm never completely happy.
The better companies, I've only tried a couple myself,
and I've heard a lot of things from other people.
Bottom line is, anybody leaving one of the Big Bells,
again, Bell South, Quest, any of the larger companies,
the traditional phone companies,
the baby Bells that became Big Bells again,
and we won't go into that whole thing,
all of this monopolistic tactics that they have of,
like, for example, Virgil, we don't have a choice.
If you want phone service, it's Bell South.
Yeah.
And you're going to pay what they charge you.
Basically.
Period.
That's it.
And Bell South down here,
they do offer a VoIP solution,
but it costs about the same price as their regular phone service.
They're not competing with these other VoIP providers.
So, anyway, any chance to get off of the phone companies,
I'm completely, I'm all for it.
So, as far as where I switched to,
and my recommendation,
I went with Voice Pulse.
And I think I've mentioned that on the show before,
and we're using it right now.
So, please, Virgil, by all means,
tell me if it breaks up or anything bad.
And some days it's better than others.
I don't really think that I could honestly recommend them.
I'm not too happy with them,
because they're not reliable.
Some days it will be perfectly fine,
no problems whatsoever.
The sound quality is good.
I don't miss calls.
Other days, I pick up the phone and I won't get a dial tone.
So, it's just too intermittent.
I can't count on them regularly giving me the same service.
So, I mean, it is okay.
However, the only reason I went with Voice Pulse
is because Voice Pulse will cooperate a little bit better with Asterisk,
the PBX software.
And at one time, that was one of my projects I wanted to work on.
And quite frankly, long story short,
I have too many things going on.
I had to accept the fact
that I'm not going to have time to put together my own Asterisk box.
And for all the great things that Not Theory and Natus and Nick and Black Ratchet
and those guys have done with theirs,
I don't need another one.
We've got plenty going on.
So, I accepted and resigned to the fact
that I'm not going to have this box.
So, now what I'm going to do is probably be switching soon.
So, it is kind of timely that you ask this question.
If you are looking to tie something in with Asterisk,
then yes, I would still say Voice Pulse is not bad.
It's pretty decent for the money that you pay.
I won't compare features to all of them
because quite frankly, they're all similar.
You're always going to get free long distance,
unlimited long distance for like $25 a month,
somewhere thereabouts.
You're going to get the same services,
call forwarding, voicemail, call hunting,
you know, all that kind of stuff.
And that's not really the point.
The biggest thing is, A, the price.
They're all close together.
B, the reliability.
And I think when it comes to reliability,
if you're not going to do it with an asterisk box,
I think the short answer, the way to go,
is to go with Vonage.
Vonage is the largest of the companies,
which doesn't necessarily mean anything,
but they are large and they do have people
for customer service.
They've done a good job.
I got my father using Vonage
and I did have to call and use their tech support.
They were very helpful, I have to admit.
Maybe I just got one good representative,
but I had good luck with their support.
We had a hardware problem
that was basically a bad port on the router
that they sent us.
I would have sent it back,
but since it's my father
and he doesn't need the rest of the other port,
I just switched it, so it was easy enough.
But I would recommend Vonage.
Now, I also, just to get another point of view,
I asked Lucky225 and Doug both,
who are very, very well versed on this,
and they both agreed that Vonage
is definitely the way to go for reliability.
For anybody who's not going to do anything hardcore with it,
you just want to replace your phone
and save some money on your bill
and not be a slave to the big quests
and bell sauce of the world,
then you want to go with Vonage.
There are other options
if you want to tie it into AskRisk
or do some other things,
but Vonage and VoicePulse
are still seen to be...
And whatever you do, avoid Packet8.
I was told to pass that message on.
Doug says,
everybody hates Packet8,
so I guess we definitely say stay away from them.
Something I will say,
it's not really that related,
but I was recently looking at domains lately,
and I recently noticed
that Quest actually owns Q.com,
which actually is kind of interesting
because technically,
like the single-letter domain names,
you're not allowed to have them.
Like if you do a whois on a.com,
you'll see that all the single-letter domain names
have been reserved,
and like in one of the RFC specifications,
it explicitly says
that the single-letter domains
have all been reserved
and you can't get them.
However, there are some very small exceptions,
Q.com being one of them.
Another one is Z.com,
which is owned by Nissan,
and I've wondered for quite some time
how much money Quest and Nissan paid
to have them get this anyway.
I actually recently found out,
apparently,
like way back in the old days,
you could get single-letter domain names,
and just no one thought of doing it.
So, I don't know,
kind of neat.
Single-letter domain names,
there aren't many of them,
Quest happens to have one of them.
Right, and isn't it true,
I thought I read somewhere that
all the single, double,
and three-letter domain names
are all gone?
Oh, of course, yeah.
I mean, if you have like a two-letter domain name,
you can retire on that.
Really?
Now, but see,
I mean, I do understand the,
I guess the rarity,
for lack of a better word,
but let's say my two-letter domain name is
QL.
I mean,
I would have to find a company
with those initials.
Quantum Leap.
Ah, I guess.
Quantum Leap?
Who's going to pay?
I don't know.
I mean,
I do understand it,
but I don't quite see
why people are willing
to pay that much for it.
People do it.
Yeah.
Domain names are an interesting,
that's a whole study in and of itself,
because another interesting phenomenon,
since we're going off on a tangent,
I've found sites
that I have registered before in the past,
or that we have,
other BDP members have registered
and things,
where there are companies out there
that will simply buy up
your used domain name,
no matter what it was,
no matter what it was about.
No, that is very true.
No, no.
It's even,
it is dangerous
to even run
whois queries
for certain domains,
because someone will say,
oh, look,
this person is running
lots and lots of whois queries
for this domain.
Maybe we should buy it,
and so it's different
than them from having it,
then we sell it back to them.
But no, definitely,
if you have a domain
and it just expired,
especially if it is a short one
or if it's in .com,
they will register it immediately,
and then they will try
and sell it back to you.
Yeah, and that usually only happens
with some of the shadier companies
will watch your whois queries
through them.
Generally, I don't think
that happens with the Go Daddies
and the larger companies
in the world, I'll say.
But yeah, I've heard stories
like that as well.
But no, actually,
I'm not finding it
with sites like that.
I'll give you a specific example.
Bland Inquisitor,
a DDP member,
a staff writer for 2600,
a great guy.
He had BlandInquisitor.com.
That's a very unique name
that is his handle,
never been seen
that I've ever seen anybody
use it or have it before.
Well, he let the registration expire
as he pulled out of the scene,
and someone bought the registration.
And I think,
I'm only guessing here,
but I think their logic is simply
somebody else owned it,
there must be some sort of traffic to it,
I will buy it and throw ads on it
for the simple fact
that I know I'm going to get hits
because it already existed.
That's actually a very good idea.
I don't know,
what else's motivation was
that if someone wanted it at some point,
probably someone else will want it
in the future.
Right, and that's another good example
of that is an old site
from one of our members,
BIOS,
who used to run a site
called digitalrights.org.
And this was back in the early days
before the RAAA and MPAA
started suing 12-year-olds
and all that,
which is a whole other tangent
we won't go into,
but back when that stuff
was first starting
and before it was really starting,
he started that site up.
Well, now that site,
when it went public
and when it was not renewed,
that, I understand,
there can be a domain
of people fighting
and willing to pay for it
because that is a good domain name,
a good site,
could be used
for a lot of different purposes.
I can see that one.
Blandinquisitor.com,
the only person
who would really want that
would be, well,
Blandinquisitor
or somebody that,
you know what I mean?
I guess there's a lot
of different examples
and a lot of different motivations,
but it's definitely
an interesting phenomenon,
I guess.
Oh, actually,
I just put up something.
If you look at
deleteddomains.com,
they actually have
a big, big list of domains
sorted by how long they are
that have just recently expired.
Yeah, and there are companies
that specialize in
going out there
and fighting to try to get domains
that have recently expired.
So, it is,
I actually read,
gosh, I wish I knew
the link offhand,
but I read some very interesting
explanations of how
that stuff works
and there's multiple companies
that swoop in
to buy them up
and they actually,
it almost comes down
to like a technological fight.
They go in
and they keep querying
the name servers
over and over
and the different
registrar servers,
I should say,
not the name servers,
the registrars,
like every few minutes
to see if something
has been released
within those few minutes.
I mean,
they're fighting
and tripping over each other
trying to grab
these domain names.
So, it's not just one person
or one company.
Companies make a living
doing this.
So, anyway,
we're going way off topic there.
Let's come back here
to some email.
So, again,
I would recommend Vonage
back to answer the first email.
I recommend Vonage
if you want to just
save some money.
Otherwise,
I would say go with Voice Pulse
if you're planning on tying
an end to an asterisk box.
That's my advice.
So, our next email here.
Oh, my goodness.
Help me out
with this one, Virgil.
I'm going to go with
Reliyama.
Reliyama?
Yeah, that sounds right.
R-E-L-Y-I-M-A-H.
Reliyama.
Who says,
Hey, you stank and company.
First of all,
great show.
I listen weekly from Australia.
Hi, mate.
And would just like to clear up
a few things about
the Web Accelerator
provided by Google.
Now, that, of course,
was our main topic last week.
You mentioned on episode 95
that the Accelerator
would only be good
for dial-up.
They say themselves
at
webaccelerator.google.com
slash supporthtml
that, quote,
dial-up users
may not see
much improvement
as Web Accelerator
is currently optimized
to speed up
web page loading
for broadband connections.
I do agree
with you entirely
having a
1.5 DSL
connection myself
that I cannot see
a use for this
on my connection
besides becoming
a spider for Google,
thus rendering it
entirely useless
to anyone
with half a brain.
Also,
the privacy issues
mentioned about
caching authenticated pages
makes it even more
useless to anybody
who has a mind
for security.
Anyway,
keep up the excellent shows
and I'll keep listening.
P.S.
the Australian accent
you used
when reading
your email
from Skullface,
a good friend
a few episodes ago,
was absolutely hopeless
but hilarious
nonetheless.
I was laughing
for the whole
of the email section.
Well,
I'm glad
I can amuse you
like I'm a clown.
I'm here just
to be a joke
for you people
in Australia.
I'm glad
that I serve
that purpose for you.
No,
I'm just kidding,
of course.
I don't mind
taking a few jokes
myself
and putting myself
out there.
I know my
impressions are
hit and miss,
usually missing greatly,
so that's all good.
Actually,
Virgin and I
were talking about
this before the show.
I thought
the Google Web Accelerator
has been pulled
from the site.
Now,
the reason,
I guess,
is in question.
I still say
that they brought this
down out of public
pressure
because of the thing,
not that we pointed
them out,
a lot of people
pointed this out
besides us,
so I don't think
it's anything
that we did,
of course.
I'm not that naive.
But who didn't
see this coming?
A lot of people
were having problems.
They saw the privacy
issues.
I think they pulled
it down because
they realized
they might have
screwed up.
But they haven't
pulled it.
But it says
something,
what does it say?
It says that
they have lots
of users now
and they are
working on
increasing their
infrastructure
so they can
support more users.
That is not
pulling.
It says,
whoa,
big demand
must recoup
a little bit.
But again,
this is,
I guess maybe
this is my whole
Google conspiracy
coming back again,
but I don't
necessarily trust
that's the real
reason.
That's their
publicly stated
reason.
Maybe they
pulled it
or they've said
they've reached
their limit.
What they're
actually doing
is fixing
the problems
with it.
And then they
will re-release
it when they've
got the problems
fixed and claim
that their
infrastructure was
upgraded or
whatever.
Well,
people are
using it
right now.
I know people
who are using
Google Accelerator
right now
and there's
no downtime
or anything.
I guess it's
possible that
they could be
revamping the
service for
privacy reasons.
Right,
and they'll re-release
a new one and
they'll probably
make those people
who are still
using it upgrade.
I'm not saying
they've disabled
it completely,
but you can't
download it anymore.
That's true.
Right?
Of interest,
though,
when the Google
toolbar was
released and
there were privacy
considerations,
they actually had
on the Google
toolbar page,
they said,
oh,
whoops,
sorry about that
privacy thing.
We have a new
privacy-enabled
version that you
can download now.
So in the Google
toolbar where there
really was a big
concern about
there being a lot
of privacy issues,
they said it
very much up front.
Now,
that doesn't mean
that they haven't
changed now,
but that's at least
some track record.
Right,
and that I think
was related back
to the page rank
system they had
in there at the
time.
Oh,
no,
the problem
with the Google
toolbar is that
it knows who
you are when
you're visiting
a page.
So let's say,
for example,
they say,
oh,
people who visit
this site also
visit this other
site and stuff
like that.
Oh,
see,
that's exactly
what I don't
want.
Oh,
man.
That's exactly
what I don't
like about
Google is
them doing
that.
And they're
doing that
toolbar or
not now.
They're
marking,
they're following
everything.
If you're logged
in,
I already went
over this,
you know what,
I'm not going
to,
I probably
shouldn't rehash
the same topic
on here,
but they're
tracking everything
at Google
and anybody
with any
concern for
their privacy
should just
be careful.
I'm not going
to rehash.
That was a
whole long
conversation and
I'm not going
to redo it on
the show right
now,
but Google
has a lot
of scary
information.
I think
that's the
long and
short of
it.
So,
let's move
on to another
email here.
Excuse me.
Next email
comes from
Ghostless,
who says,
Ghostless,
excuse me,
who says,
Dear Stank Dog,
after hearing
all of your
anti-Google
rants,
well,
that's timely.
Great.
Way to segue
into the great.
I thought I
might draw your
attention to a
nice little site.
Hopefully this
site is
something new
to you.
If it's
not new
to you,
maybe you
could draw
the listeners'
attention to
it as well.
It's
www.scroogle.org.
That's
S-C-R-O-O-G-L-E
dot org.
They call it
a Google
scraper.
It is basically
Google for the
anti-Googlers.
Wow,
that sounds
dirty,
but I don't
know why.
What it does
is it gives
you the
results of
all powerful
Google search
engine,
minus the
cookies,
search term
records,
access logs,
and best
of all,
ads.
Okay,
thank you
Ghostless for
the email.
I trimmed a
little bit off
there,
but there are
a couple other
sites that do
that as well.
What was the
one we were
talking about
before?
Google-watch.org.
Right,
yeah,
I think I've
mentioned that
on the show
before,
Google-watch,
and I
had never
heard of
Scroogle,
so thank
you for
this.
I did go
check that
out.
It didn't
have anything
on there
new for me,
quite frankly,
but it
does work
as advertised,
and it
looked to
me strikingly
familiar,
similar to
Google-watch,
to be quite
honest.
It may be
the same
people.
I didn't
have time
to go
into it
and look,
but I
don't know,
maybe it's
just more
of my paranoia
of tying all
this stuff
together.
I don't
know.
I can
definitely
sense a
very
anti-Google
sentiment
here,
but I
don't know.
I'm actually
not too
worried about
Google.
I think the
real problems
with Google
are,
number one,
that you can
basically assume
anything they
know,
the federal
government can
know.
And not only
that,
anything Google
knows,
someone else
can find out
by a
subpoena.
But that's
just the way
it is living
in the U.S.
However,
as far as
Google being
evil by
themselves,
I mean,
admittedly,
they do have
lots of power
and you just
kind of get this
thought in the
back of your
mind.
You're like,
wow,
you're just
getting bigger
and bigger,
aren't you?
And you're
just knowing
everything.
But still,
so far,
they have been
completely saintly.
There are
some things on
Google Watch
and stuff like
that.
But no,
they're funding
Wikipedia.
They're going
to Stanford
and they're
digitizing libraries.
And these are
all,
I mean,
they've been a
saintly company.
Other things I
think that's
also very
interesting,
which makes
them different
from the other
search engine
companies,
is that they
have not been
doing content.
For example,
if you look at
MSN or AOL,
like MSN has
their MSN
and Carta
encyclopedia.
And if you
search for
some famous
person,
it'll say,
oh,
get this MSN
and Carta
article and
we'll give you
half of it
and then you
pay for the
other half.
Right.
Now,
Google does
not do that.
They make
no content.
So thus,
there's no
reason for
them to be
biased,
which I
think is
very important.
And I
even think
Google knows
this.
Like if you
note the
google
dictionary.com
link where
they define
words,
which is now
answers.com,
all the
information there
is basically
the 1911
Webster's
Dictionary.
Full public
domain.
A guy at
Google could do
that in a
month and just
completely replace
that.
However,
they have not
done that,
which I find
very interesting.
I think it
very clearly
shows that
Google is
trying to stay
away from
doing content
so that
way they're
never thought
to be
impartial.
Right.
Well,
I've never
said that
they've done
anything yet,
yet,
but the
potential is
there.
And that's
all I've
ever said
is that we
should be
careful of
the potential.
I said the
same thing
about Microsoft
Passport many,
many episodes
ago, and the
same does
hold true for
Google.
So far,
they're
straddling the
border.
You've got to
admit they're
getting closer.
I mean,
they're going
through your
Gmail and
parsing through
it to send
custom ads
to you.
But we're
taking their
word for it
that they're
stopping there.
I mean,
let's be
frank,
we are
trusting
Google.
In Google
we trust.
And no,
it has not
bitten us
exactly in
the past
yet,
although I've
had a few
minor issues
with Google
with their
advertising and
stuff,
but that's
a whole other
topic that may
come out at
DEFCON.
But it's
just the
potential.
Tell me what
you think about
this.
This, I
think, is,
I don't know
if I'll say
evil, but it's
conniving,
certainly.
You and I
both know and
agree that
Google is
tracking everything,
all of your
search words,
the times,
which sites
you click
through,
etc.,
etc.
We know
they're keeping
that and it
could be
subpoenaed.
And frankly,
that's no
different than
any other
site out
there.
But here's
something that
I noticed.
I agree with
that, but
that's not
Google being
evil.
That's just
fear of them
being subpoenaed.
And I do
admit, if
Google has to
say everything
they know about
you, that's
probably a lot.
Well, watch.
Let me finish.
With Gmail now,
I don't know if
you've noticed
this.
I just
mentioned it
last week.
I just
noticed now
that if you
sign into your
Gmail account,
it used to be
that Gmail was
completely independent
of Google.
if you look
now, if you
sign into
Gmail and
do not
sign out,
you actually
stay logged
in, not only
to Gmail.com,
but to
Google.com.
And that
history thing,
that feature
they added
recently that
tracks your
history and
lets you go
back and
redo your
searches and
if you want
to go back
and look
something up
you searched
for before,
all by itself
that sounds
good and all,
but they are
tying these
things together.
I did not
at any point
in time authorize
my Gmail account
to be tied
into my
Google.
I probably
did in a
fine print,
let's be
honest.
Probably in
their fine
print it
said they
could do
that and
being the
non-user
license
agreement
reader that
I am,
I probably
clicked right
through it.
But I
think that
is certainly
underhanded
for them
to now
automatically
log me
into Google
and let's
say I do
a search
for, I
don't know,
grandma porn
or something
embarrassing.
I never
logged out of
Google and
now Google
has logged
that search
and has
that in
a profile
associated
with my
name and
my Gmail
account.
I do
think that
is certainly
underhanded
that they
did it
without me
logging into
Google.
They assume
that I
want to
stay logged
into all
the Google
services
because I
checked my
Gmail once
in the
morning.
That is
underhanded
to me.
I do not
like that
tactic.
That's
actually very
interesting.
I was not
aware Google
was doing
that.
I'll look
at it.
But no,
it is true.
I agree.
That certainly
is a very
discreet
connecting of
Gmail accounts
to user
searches.
Anyway,
we went
into this
on the
last show
a lot and
we probably
shouldn't
rehash it
again.
I'm just
worried that
A, the
potential is
there because
they have so
much data.
Like you
said, they're
just so
big.
You have a
natural bit
of paranoia
that comes
with that.
And I'm
generally, I'm
not a real
paranoid person
and I haven't
changed a
whole lot the
way I use
Google.
I do still
use Google,
so I'm not
that big of
a conspiracy.
I'm just
saying be
careful.
But my
other big
worry is I'm
also, I
guess I can
say this
safely, I'm
anti-big
business in
general.
I don't like
monopolies,
monopolistic
companies.
And when
Google went
public, that
was a scary
step for me
because now
you're answering
to shareholders
and people
whose bottom
line is money
and they're
going to start
making decisions
and when
Bryn and
whatever, when
they say, no
we're not doing
that because it's
evil, the
shareholders are
going to say,
um, yeah, you're
going to do it
because it's
going to make
us money and
we call the
shots now.
That potential
scenario exists.
It hasn't
happened yet and
you know, hopefully,
I pray it never
does happen, but
the potential is
there now and
it wasn't there
what, nine, ten
months ago before
they went public.
That's true.
So these are
just all my
things, I'm just
pointing them
out.
Again, I guess
maybe I am coming
across as a big
conspiracy nut
against Google,
but I still use
Google.
I'm just telling
people to be
careful what you
use Google for
and start mixing
your stuff up.
I'm searching
with Google and
Yahoo and MSN
Search.
I still like
Clusty, the
clustering search
engine.
So just mix your
stuff up.
That's pretty much
all I'm ever
trying to say
about the whole
thing.
So, man, another
tangent we got off
on there.
Let's jump back
into another
email here from
Axquan.
Axquan?
Axquan, I think.
I think it's
to rhyme with
Axon.
Ah, okay.
All right.
Axquan says,
Hi, Stankdog.
First of all, I'd
like to thank you
for the great
show.
I've been
listening to
Binary Revolution
Radio for almost
a year now, but
not until I had
got to episode
58 with
Decius, a
mutual friend of
ours, talking
about memes.
I had gotten
the courage to
send a letter
to you.
You've got all
this great stuff
on your show,
and I just
didn't have
anything interesting
to say to you.
Well, I'm sure
that's not true,
but back to the
main topic.
I found Decius'
meme talk
extremely interesting.
It's just
fascinating to
observe how a
hacker can relate
to the grounds
of life and
make something
useful of it.
Well, yeah, as a
side note, gee,
hackers are normal
people, and we're
smart, and we know
other things besides
computers.
Big surprise.
Anyway, whilst I
was listening to
the beginning of
the show, oh,
did you see that?
He used whilst.
W-H-I-L-S-T.
Whilst I was
listening.
Oh, that's nice.
That is nice.
Man, we have
some very eloquent
listeners.
on this show.
Man, I'm
impressed.
Whilst I was
listening to the
beginning of the
show, I didn't
know a first
thing about
memes, but at
the end, I've
had a whole
bunch of
questions and
ideas spinning
through my
head.
I really would
like you to
ask this question
on the air so
everyone could
learn more
about it.
Okay, here we
go with this.
And you know
what?
I'm going to
turn this over
to you because
I think you
know a lot
more about
this than I
do because
frankly, I
learned most
of it from
Decius, and
I think you
probably have
more experience.
So let's
see.
First question,
okay, my
first question
is, how does
a mime spread?
I've understood
the knock-knock
jokes comparison,
but I wonder
how does it
spread on a
large scale?
Imagine this.
There's a drop
of water falling
onto a still
lake.
This drop is
an information
or a meme,
and while it
hits the water,
the wave
progression starts.
And does the
meme spreading
through the
society act like
this wave?
does it go
through the
whole lake
and then
disappear,
or does it
bounce on the
border and
then get back
to the
sender?
Or maybe it
doesn't really
reach to that
point because
humanity is so
big.
Do you want to
stop?
Okay, yeah,
I'll take this.
Okay, I would
say first off
that I think
the water
analogy is not
very good.
I mean, I
guess it works
okay, but I
wouldn't recommend
thinking that
way.
I think the
really important
thing to focus
on is the
connection between
genes and
memes, like the
name very
obviously implies
this.
Of interest,
if you're
interested in
more about
memes, this
concept was
first introduced
in Richard Dawkins,
the selfish gene,
and then it got
really big, and
Susan Blackmore's
the meme
machine.
But the
main thing that
makes memes
interesting is
that it was
the first place
where the idea
of evolution was
popularized outside
the context of
genes.
And basically
evolution is more
of a general
purpose algorithm
and can be
applied basically
anywhere.
The evolution
algorithm basically
has three basic
parts.
It doesn't really
matter in what
context you have
these.
You're always
going to get
some kind of
evolutionary force.
You can write
these down.
Your three basic
parts of
evolution are
number one,
variation in
the initial
population, which
in this case
would just be
the myriad of
ideas out there
in the world.
Two, selection.
So I guess in
this case would
be what you
find believable.
And then three,
heredity and
reproduction, in
which case you
just tell it to
someone else.
That's basically
just means in a
nutshell right
there.
Like there's
lots of ideas,
you have some
of them that
you like, and
you say, okay,
I'm selecting for
these ideas and
I'm going to go
tell them to my
friends and post
them on my
blog.
And then your
friends may repeat
the process and
thus some ideas
get spread more
than others.
And they can go
to war and they
can dominate with
each other.
Stank, did that
make any sense?
Oh, absolutely.
I think a very
good example of
that.
And let me go
ahead and let's
take his, he has
a second question
here that I think
is a good follow
up to that.
And he says,
my second thought
was what impact
it has on the
personality of
someone's infected.
Like with this
McDonald's song,
do we go to the
McDonald's restaurant
because the meme
altered our
consciousness in
some way?
Or do we do
that because we
were already
familiar with
the brand?
I would not
use the word
infected.
Like it implies
it's like a bad
thing.
Like you can
consider, like
you can think
of a meme as
like many
beneficial things.
But you can
think of people's
scientific
understanding of
the world as
a meme.
So like we
can think of
actually Newtonian
mechanics is a
great example.
Newtonian
mechanics was,
there were many
ideas out there
for explaining
like the movements
of plants,
and stuff.
Newton selected
one that he
liked.
In this particular
case, he had
some good math
to back it up.
And then he
published it to
other scientists.
Other scientists
said, oh, look,
this is great.
And now it's in
the schools.
And now this
idea is reproducing
itself.
I mean, there
are very many
helpful ideas that
spread through this
exact same
mechanism.
To say
infected implies
it's bad, which
is in a way a
good idea.
Well, then, is
that, all right,
so would I be,
would this be
accurate to say
that maybe
sometimes things
like this get
overanalyzed?
Can it be
simplified?
I mean, what
you're saying
sounds very
clear, quite
honestly.
It sounds very
clear and very
straightforward.
Is it, do you
think maybe
sometimes people
are trying to
overanalyze
memetics and
memes in
general, talking
about whether
it gets
polluted and
why doesn't it
reach here and
how do the, you
mentioned earlier
about how they
can actually have
like a survival
fight when one
meme collides with
another, et cetera,
et cetera.
Yeah, like
religious wars
are a great
example of this.
I mean, I
can go into
more detail about
that, but I
mean, basically
you have one
self-reproducing
meme versus
another.
Like, religion
A says, accept
religion A or
die, religion B
says, accept
religion B or
die, and these
two go at each
other.
And so there's
some person
saying, oh,
should I choose
religion A or
religion B?
Right.
Well, what
about, so,
if we were to
take this to an
extreme, is
there come a
point, does
there come some
point in the,
I don't know,
meme war, for
lack of a better
word, where at
the end of time
there will be one
meme that
dominated all
others and we're
all like mindless.
One meme to
rule them all?
Exactly, we're
all mindless
drones being
brainwashed to
the point where
we...
Probably not
because...
By going
science fiction
right there.
Because very
often in the
heredity, actually
I probably should
have said this,
in the heredity
there is an
assumed mutation
and variation.
So, like, for
example, if you
tell the idea to
someone else, they
might get, like, a
few parts wrong or
they might expand on
it a little bit or
they might, like,
understand it in a
different context.
So, thus, the
ideas, they're
changing ever so
slightly when they
reproduce.
So, the idea that
it will ever reach a
completely homogeneous
steady state is
basically impossible.
Very, very
interesting stuff.
I wish we
actually had more
time.
Maybe we should do
another show dedicated
to memes in the
future.
We can have me and
Death is on here and
we can chat about it.
Oh, that would be
phenomenal.
That would be a
great show.
Actually, yeah, we'll
talk about that later,
actually.
Anyway, let me finish
out his email here.
Let's see, where was I?
Like I said before, I
found this topic very
interesting and
opposite to my first
impression, very
related to hacking.
I'll definitely
research on that in
the future.
But now I would like
to talk on some, I
would like to touch on
something different.
I think that what you
don't realize is that
your show has more
value than it seems.
Everyone says that
it's funny and
informative, and it
is, but it also
helps polishing my
English.
I'm from Poland, and I
don't really have an
opportunity to hear
English in day-to-day
use.
Sure, I can listen to
CNN or the BBC, but
it's not the same.
Think of that while
you are cursing on the
air.
Just think about it.
Where else are you
going to hear such a
wonderful English word
like whilst?
Well, whilst is good
stuff, but see, I mix
that in with all my
foul language and
vulgarity that slips
out sometimes when I
get on a rant about
something.
You are propagating
whilst to all of
Poland.
I am spreading the
vulgarity meme to
other countries.
That's my job here.
Thank you very much.
God bless.
Good night.
My work is done.
Yeah, like I don't
have enough pressure
of trying to make a
funny show and a
technical-based show
and teaching hacking
and stuff like that.
I am teaching the
world how to cuss
together in harmony
and it's kind of sad
really when you sit
back and think of it.
I'm contributing to
the downfall of society.
That's all I'm doing
here on the show.
Oh, and he has one
last line here that I
think you might
appreciate too.
It says, I've always
wanted to say
something about
Acidus in episode
57, but I think I'll
save that for another
time.
That's too bad because
I know that's your
buddy there, Acidus.
You and him have a
little history together.
We have some history
together.
Yep, some history
together that we
probably shouldn't or
won't talk about
tonight.
So, yeah, that was
very good stuff.
Let's move on.
We're falling behind
an email like we
always do on the show.
We have so many good
listeners and good
emails.
Let's see, we have
two more here.
Let's do Old School
writes in and says,
Stank, after listening
to episode 88 and
thinking back to when
you first started
talking about offering
AUG files, I decided
to do my part.
I have converted all
Binary Revolution
radio files to AUG as
well as added the
episode number to the
IDV tag.
I have uploaded the
first year to my
server, www.remote
exploitation.com.
That's remote
exploitation, all one
word, .com.
Take a listen and tell
me if you would like
me to upload the
rest.
And I did contact
Old School and told
him, by all means,
go ahead and upload
the rest of them.
And thank you for
doing this, Old
School.
But also, I had some
other people volunteer
to do this as well.
So, I finally, and I
kept putting it off,
telling everyone, you
know, the whole
lossy format to lossy
format argument of,
you know, you've got
an mp3 file that's
compressed and has
lost a few bits, and
when you convert it to
another lossy format
like AUG, then it's
going to get even
worse.
But, so all this time,
my excuse and what I've
been saying was that I
would rather just
remaster it from my
high quality master
files, my original
DAT files and
everything.
But, I have to accept,
just like the other
thing I accepted, that I
won't have the time to
make an asterisk box, I
have not had the time
to do this conversion
either.
So, since old school
already did it, I'm
saying, go ahead, the
bottom line is this is
talk radio, which is
generally very low
quality anyway, and
insert your own low
quality joke there about
the show, but generally
we recorded a very low
bit rate, is probably a
better term to use, and
whatever could possibly
be lost in that lossy to
lossy conversion is
probably not that
noticeable, quite
honestly.
Yes, it's going to
happen, it's inevitable,
they're two different
algorithms, so there's
going to be some loss,
but you know what, I
bet you people might not
be able to notice the
difference.
Maybe in the opening and
closing music you might
notice it, but frankly,
I've been putting it off
so long that I think
that this is probably the
way to go, and if you
don't know what I mean
by lossy to lossy
conversion, you can go
back to episode 59, I
actually looked that up
with Jason Scott, was my
co-host on the show, and
we talked about audio
compression, audio
formats, and lossy
versus lossless, and a
lot of other interesting
audio things as well, so
go back and check that
episode out if you're
interested in that topic.
So yeah, I'm saying, you
know what, it's time to
get these AUGs out
there, it's my fault for
putting them off, trying to
do too much myself, I
should really back off
sometimes and let people
help out, and old
school, thank you for
doing that.
Again, if you are
interested in the
AugVorbis files of
Binary Revolution
Radio, he has season
one up, and maybe
season two by the time
this airs, at
remoteexploitation.com,
so thank you old
school for that.
And, our last email
this week comes from
Elzer.
Elzer says, dear
stank dog and
Virgil, look at that,
it says it right there.
Oh, how kind?
I know, I made that
up.
Dear stank dog and
Virgil, what's up in
the, nobody knew you
were going to be,
actually, we've been
trying to get, we've
just had really weird
scheduling conflicts
trying to get you on
the show.
So, I'm glad to have
you on, hopefully we'll
get you on again soon.
But, anyway, dear
stank dog and Virgil,
what's up in the DDP
hood?
First, I would like to
wish Decoder all the
best, and I hope that
he can be let off
easily.
The Mind War was a
really neat show, and
I would really like to
hear his voice again.
It sucks when a member
of the community gets
busted by the feds.
Well, yeah, it does.
Second, are you still
looking for people to
help with the
hacktivism site you
were planning?
I wanted to mention
this on the air because
I had actually not
heard of it before, and
I think this project is
definitely worth
mentioning.
Anyway, I would love
to help out with it.
Good luck, and happy
hacking.
Alright, people who
listen to the show
regularly know that
Decoder is in a
troublesome situation
right now.
Virgil, I know you've
been through a little
bit of a process like
this with your
situation, but that was
more from a private
company.
Decoder is getting
hassled from the feds
and for reasons that
are totally, what's the
word, benign.
So, it's really a bad
situation, and we have
avoided talking about it
on the show, and we're
going to continue to avoid
talking about it for the
one reason that it's still
ongoing, and when you're
dealing with the feds,
stirring up more trouble
and making a big stink is
making it worse on
Decoder.
So, I appreciate that
everybody has been very
respectful of that
situation, and I do
appreciate people have
not pushed it and stirred
up a lot of trouble.
Let's let it play itself
out.
You've got to play their
game for a little while,
and we might have some
news soon.
Not good news, not bad
news, but some news, and
we will let people in when
it is time.
So, please hold off just
a little bit longer, and I
do sincerely appreciate
that people have kind of
stayed away from this, but
we will definitely have
something to talk about
in the next month or so.
So, as soon as I know
something and feel that
it's time to talk about
it, we will definitely do
that.
Now, as far as the
Hacktivism site, which is
very, very related to
this, because this is
where we would share
information and try to
help people from getting
in this situation again,
quite frankly, the
Hacktivism site is yet
another project that I
take on, and it's just
too much for me to
carry.
I don't have enough
hours in the day to do
everything, and it fell to
the wayside.
Just a lot of other
projects kind of jumped
ahead on the list, and
Freak Factor came along,
and presentations and
conferences and whatnot, so
this is kind of falling
aside.
I do still want this to
go forward, but I'll
basically, I'll just be
very blunt with this.
I cannot do this project
by myself.
I have no time to maintain
this, to contribute every
single day, to babysit it,
to watch it, to nurture
it.
To get a site up and
running and successful, you
have to spend time on it
every day almost.
Every single day.
You've got to watch it,
you've got to help it
grow, you've got to make
sure it stays in the
direction that you want it,
that it doesn't become
chaotic, that everything's
nice and clean, and it's a
lot of maintenance that
goes on.
You've got to check in on
it every day or two to
make sure that it's still
moving and still active.
Kind of like that old
thing about 2,600 meetings.
If somebody goes to the
site and it hasn't been
updated in three months,
they're not going to go to
the meeting.
It looks like it's been
abandoned.
It looks dead.
You have to keep updating
it, show people that
there's still interest and
still activity.
And you want to make
sure that you aren't
getting Google referrers for
kitty porn and stuff like
that.
Exactly.
I used to get that.
A lot of spammers will go
in and just post replies to
unrelated topics.
You know what the big one
is right now?
Seven card stud poker or
whatever it's called.
Seven card Texas Hold'em
poker sites.
That's what all the spam I
see is about now.
Actually, I'll tell you
something.
This is kind of an
underhanded technique, but
it's kind of interesting.
Lots of bloggers watch
their Google referrers very
religiously.
If you spoof many, many
Google referrers to their
websites, say about some
certain topic, you can very
often get them talking
about this topic.
And that's probably all I can
say about that.
But there are times when
this has been done.
Hmm.
Sounds interesting.
Sounds intriguing.
Certainly.
Um, well, as far as this
hacktivism site, I am
absolutely, I still wanted
to go forward with this
project.
I set the site up.
It's registered.
It's running.
I've installed, um, a
content management system
on there that does
everything that we want to
do.
I have customized it.
The only thing left to do
is, A, to work out the
graphics for it, a little bit
of layout design work.
And secondly, start putting
up content.
And I think Virgil and I
also agree on this, that
this whole myth about, I
won't say myth, but this
whole preconception of what
hacktivism is just gets on
my last nerve.
I just absolutely can't
stand that when you say
hacktivism, the first thing
that people picture is
anarchists and chaos theory
and defacing web page in the
name of some cause or
something.
I mean, granted...
Yeah, but actually, there is
something I want to comment
on here.
I'm looking at the notes
here.
The hacktivism is spelled
H-A-C-K-T-I-V-I-S-M.
Death Veggie from Colt
a Cow would be totally
squirming, you know,
whenever he sees that.
I think, I don't know, I
know Death Veggie was, if
not the first, I think one
of the first people to
initially use the term, and
it was initially spelled
without the K.
So it was just activism
with an H at the
beginning.
I've noticed that more
and more, even people in
the media, they're putting
emphasis on the hack
rather than the activism.
Well, I don't know, I'm not
going to tell people how
they should spell their
words, but I think the
emphasis there is very
important.
Right, and actually that's
very much consistent with
what we do on the show.
Emphasis is on the hack.
The emphasis is on the
tech.
So it's not really, I
mean, I understand what
you're saying, but also,
also, wasn't there, isn't
there project the
hacktivismo with an O at
the end of it as well?
I don't know if that's
still going.
Supposedly, Peek-a-Booty
was supposed to be released
at some point.
I know there were some
betas floating around, but
as far as I know, that
project is no longer
active.
Yeah, I saw betas, and
that's all I ever saw of
that as well.
But, again, I, you know
what, it's, and that's,
that's kind of one of the
problems, is there are a
bunch of different
definitions.
People took it a step
further, and, and yeah,
emphasis on the hack, and
they were using it to
deface websites, and
that's exactly why I want
to use this, and by, and
I want to take the word
back, just like I want to
take the definition of
the word hacking back that
the media has ruined.
Now, I'm not foolish
enough to think that it's
going to happen in a
short period of time,
because it's been abused
for so long, but the same
with this word.
I don't want hacktivism to
be tied to these punks,
that these people out
there that are defacing
websites, because of
some, quite frankly, I
don't believe that there's
a cause to it.
I think it's just an
excuse to be
troublemakers.
That's just my opinion,
of course, and I've
mentioned this on the air
before, and I see a rise
in attempted attacks on
my server the next day.
So, you know, do what
you got to do, people,
and you disagree with
me, but you know what?
I'm going, what I want
to do with this site,
what I, my definition,
what I, my goal for
hacktivism, is to prove
that, you know what, we
are hackers, and we are
affected by a lot of
these laws that you guys
implement.
General technology laws,
these anti-terrorism
things that catch us up
in the loop, oh yeah,
throw the baby out with
the bathwater, let's call
all hackers out there a
bunch of terrorists and
label them with terrorists.
Guess what?
I'm not a terrorist.
You know?
I don't want to be
associated with that.
So, you know, basically
what I want to do is,
when information like
this, when the
government's making
decisions, when
companies like their
RAA, et cetera, are
going forward, making
these, taking these
foolish actions and
stuff, I want a site
that can show the
other side of the
point, to show another
point of view.
I realize the EFF is
out there.
I realize there's a
lot of other sites,
uphill battle, there's
tons of them, but I
want one, and it's
exactly what you said
earlier, I do want one
that emphasizes the
hack.
I want one that is a
site for hackers, by
hackers, about how
hackers are affected by
these political decisions
that are made.
Now, this is not a
political show, and I'm
not going to go in any
deeper than we already
have, but that is my
vision for the site.
I want news items, I
want laws that are
being passed, acts
that are being looked
into, decisions that
are being made.
I want them to be,
instead of going out
and defacing a site,
instead of crying,
instead of standing up
on a soapbox and
pounding on the Bible,
and trying to
convert it, I would
rather stand back and
say, you know what,
we are some of the
most intelligent people
on the planet, myself
excluded, of course.
We are people with
educations, we are
hackers, we do things
that other people
cannot do, we think
differently than
everyone else, why
not put that to good
use, and let's
educate people, and
it may be naive, but
you have to start
somewhere, if we can
break down some of
these bills and do
some analysis and
point out problems
with them, and
possibly offer
solutions, or
different viewpoints,
maybe somebody will
actually be educated
and listen, and maybe
we can have some
effect.
Maybe we won't, but
I bet you we will at
least educate some
people that visit the
site, and maybe if we
just touch one
politician out there,
make a small
difference.
That's all I want to
do with the site.
So yes, if anyone is
interested, email me
directly about that,
stankdog, at
stankdog.com, that's
S-T-A-N-K-D-A-W-G, at
stankdog.com, and we
will talk about that.
Now, let's see, how
are we?
We are, whoo, let's
see here, we're going
to have to, let's jump
through the show and
tell super fast and go
straight to the main
topic.
How's that?
All right.
All right, because all
I wanted to mention in
the show and tell for
myself is that I am
working on putting
together some
information about
BINREV meetings.
A lot of people out
there don't have a
local 2600 meeting.
A lot of people are,
for whatever reason,
one reason or another,
they don't like their
2600 meeting or the
attitudes or the
egos or whatever the
situation may be, and
we've had people
request and show
interest in binary
revolution meetings.
I go to my 2600
meeting and my DEFCON
meeting, so I'm
basically, as far as
I'm concerned, the
more times you can
meet with fellow
hackers and work on
things, the better.
So I am working
together, working on
putting together some
information on starting
binary revolution
meetings, so as soon
as I get that ready,
I will announce it on
the site.
And looking ahead
towards DEFCON,
DEFCON is coming up
the end of July,
beginning of August,
so we're just now
going to start forming
some plans and
figuring out how
long we're going to
stay, where we're
going to stay, things
like that.
And catching up on my
reading a little bit
in general, gosh,
there's two, I'll
just say it like
this, there's two
very good issues of
popular science out
right now.
I just got done
reading the May
2005, which was a
very good issue, had
some stuff of interest
to hackers, there was
an article actually on
DEFCON in there, and
basically it was
emphasizing the war
games, the capture
the flag stuff, which
was an interesting
article, but also in
addition to that, it
had a very long
section on, I guess the
term is smart
phones, those PDA
phones, and the
different operating
systems, and the
features, and the
benefits, and the
pros and cons, and
things, so if you're
into that kind of
stuff, there was a
very good article in
that one, and in the
current issue, as soon
as I got done with
that one, which is
obviously the new one
just is coming out, I
just got it in the
mail, I think, day
before yesterday, has a
very good article on
one of my, one of the
few heroes that I
actually have, I think
I can say that he is a
hero of mine, there was
a very good article on
Albert Einstein in
there, and a lot of
good information, and
a lot of interesting
viewpoints, and
thoughts, and what if
Albert Einstein never
existed, what if some
of his theories, and
his findings never
happened, so there's a
very good article about
that in there, so if
you're, if either one
of those interest you,
first of all, I
recommend subscribing to
Popular Science
anyway, it's a great
magazine, great magazine,
it's less than a buck
an issue, I'm not a
commercial or anything
for them, but even if
you don't want to
subscribe, you might
want to go to the
bookstore, and pick
these two particular
issues up off the
shelf, if, if any of
those sounded
interesting to you.
So, Virgil, what do
you got?
Let's see, most
things I've been
doing, I guess there
are two things really,
and they're kind of
related, and conveniently
they're kind of related
to the main topic.
All right, well then we
will segue.
The main thing I've been
getting into is data
mining, and this is a
pretty, pretty general
purpose thing, but I
don't know, I guess it
really has two, well,
just to describe it a
little bit, it has
basically two parts, and
they're pretty
straightforward.
The first one is massive
data collection from
huge numbers of
sources, and then after
you have this huge
mass of data, you then
either A, pan for gold
for the really exciting
bits, or B, you do do
some kind of, some
sort of analysis,
statistical or otherwise.
And I don't know, and
there's lots of great
trivia here that I
suspect most of your
listeners will enjoy.
Some people who've done
this in the past, when
the Nazis took over
France, they, well, they
wanted to kill Jews
very quickly, because
that was kind of in
fashion at the time.
So what they did was
they raided all the
big Jewish temples, and
then they got all the
little phone books of
all the rabbis, and
then they correlated all
of them into a list.
And they would say,
oh, look, these are the
people who are cited
extremely frequently in
all these rabbis' phone
books, we should go get
them first.
And they did, and this
was apparently a very
successful technique.
So, I don't know, this
shows you kind of the
unexpected ways in
which these techniques
can be employed.
Right, and that's like
probably one of the
earliest forms of data
mining.
It's one of the most
interesting ones,
definitely, because there's
no computers involved at
all.
Right, absolutely.
Pre-computer, I was
getting ready to say,
that was before,
obviously before Google,
and well before computers
ever came into the
picture.
So, yeah, that's a very
interesting, very
interesting one.
And I guess, yeah, let's
segue right into our main
topic.
Actually, no, there actually
are a few more examples I
want to give people that
people may or may not
know about.
Sure, go ahead.
That I think they'll
enjoy.
Some history, absolutely.
Okay.
So, some other interesting
data mining things that
you, that, I don't know if
they're too well known
right now, is the Alexa
toolbar.
Most of us who know about
Alexa, of interest, the
Alexa spider is the same
spider that powers
archive.org.
So, you know, that's kind
of interesting.
But what I'm focusing on
here is that the Alexa
toolbar, which you get at
Alexa.com, is actually
spyware.
And it shows you, it
tells you which websites
you've been visiting.
It reports back to Alexa,
which ones, you know,
which sites you've been
looking at.
And it correlates them.
You can actually go to
Alexa.com and you can
see, oh, look, you know,
this site is more popular
than this site.
And people who visit this
other site also visit these
other sites and stuff like
that.
And this is an ability that
you basically cannot, it's
almost impossible to get
any other way unless you're
Google.
Right, right.
Well.
So, that's kind of neat.
Let's see.
I don't know.
And, I don't know.
I guess this is sort of
obvious, but I guess
that everyone should
always mention the NSA's
Echelon system where they
scan emails and stuff like
that looking for flag words
for analysis.
So, supposedly, a few people
have actually been caught
by this.
I recall seeing a few
articles on, I think it was
in Wired, like maybe a year
or so back, where Echelon
actually caught someone,
which, I don't know, which
pretty surprised me.
And, I don't know, and this
is kind of, this is sort of a
subcategory of the data
mining idea.
I remember in Jello Biafra at
Hope 2000, there was this
very big, this very, you know,
I guess the very important
meme of the day was
Become the Media, which has
gotten very popular, like
even on Death Use's meme
streams, you can see that
around the front page.
I like to think the modern
version of this is Become the
CIA, and there are many
different websites that try
and do this sort of open
source intelligence thing,
where you're basically mining
all non-classified information,
and you and your friends, you
basically become an
intelligence agency.
And it's often surprising
that the things that you can
know that the regular media
does not.
Right, and that's why things
like the Freedom of
Information Act were just a
godsend.
Oh, yes, definitely.
A great example of this is
Russ Kicks, the
memoryhole.org.
I mean, I don't know if I
call him a walking intelligence
agency, but he certainly does
have a lot of interesting
stuff that otherwise would
not see the light of day.
Right, and I guess, you
know, that goes along with
another saying, or another
meme, if we're going to use
those words today, and that
is the whole watch the
watchers.
Yes.
You know, watch the
watchers, I think, is very
appropriate.
Watch them as they watch
unto you.
So, that very much actually
is a good, I guess, jumping
off if we want to actually talk
about Google mining, which
ironically, being that I'm
somewhat concerned about
what Google's watching
about me, and what Google's
looking into and tracking me
doing.
Ironically, Google mining
allows me to do the same
thing back to them.
Well, I'm not really doing,
I guess it's not really true,
because I'm not...
But you can see a lot of
the same things they see.
Right, right.
And actually, I haven't told
you this yet, really, either,
but I've been watching them.
You can Google for sites on
Google, and information on
Google, so just as easily as
any other site.
Right.
So, I have found some
interesting information about
Google on Google's own sites.
So, they slip up and make
mistakes as well.
Now, I'm not going to drop
some of that on the show
tonight, but I have found
some interesting PDFs and
internal information.
Now, they're usually, doesn't
stay up for very long, but I
have found it.
But, again, this comes back
to what you said earlier, and
you said there were...
Correct me if I'm wrong here,
there's really two steps to
this, if you can say that
again.
One is the collection of data,
and step two is the
subsequent analysis of said
data.
Yeah, which is either like
this big macroscopic thing
that you say, oh, person B
hangs out with person A, or
you look for something like
very special, which would
probably be the case for
NSA's echelon, where they're
looking, where there are
like billions of emails and
they don't care about, you
know, 99.99999% of them.
Right, and that's an example
of a way that can, of a,
that's an example that can
be automated, looking for
keywords, et cetera.
Sometimes, you do have to
eyeball and manually go
through some of the data and
some of your results at the
same time as well.
So, I think, actually, I
think maybe we did a little
bit of history, and we gave
a couple examples.
I think maybe we should
back up and do a couple
quick definitions.
We've got like maybe 10,
15 minutes left here, time
flying like it always does on
the show.
So, a couple definitions
actually, and, okay, we're
going to, what we talked
about really has been data
mining in general.
And what Google mining is,
is data mining applied to
Google.
Google has this huge, huge
amount of information.
They've cached, you know,
however many million, whatever
it says on the front page, it
tells you how many pages
they've indexed.
They have this huge amount
of information.
So, that's half the battle.
Half the work is done for
you.
They've gone out and they've
built this giant data
warehouse, for lack of a
better word.
And actually, that's one of
the terms.
Data mining usually goes
hand in hand with the term
data warehousing.
Not really in the case of
Google mining.
Data warehousing usually
refers to transaction-based
systems.
And I had written an
article for 2600 quite a
while back about
transaction-based systems.
But transaction systems,
and the best example of this
is credit card companies
and Amazon.com is the
biggest, biggest example of
anybody.
And it's very similar, you
described it earlier, as
where they're tracking like
trends to see people from
this area also bought this.
People that ordered this
item also ordered these
items.
And by looking at the
transactions, you're not
necessarily looking at the
history of all the items in
an items database, and then a
user database, and all these
separate ones.
You're watching the individual
transaction.
What other items did they view?
What else did they add to their
cart, but then not buy?
All of these things on a
transaction, user-by-user basis,
are warehoused.
And then data mining,
generally, in a business sense,
refers to then analyzing that
for trends and patterns.
And again, Amazon's a great
example because that's how they
always tell you, people in your
area also bought this.
People who bought this DVD movie
also bought this DVD movie.
If you like that book, you'll
also like this book.
That's how Amazon does it.
Amazon is like the biggest
company that really, really does
that.
And credit card companies do it
as well for a little bit more
nefarious purposes for
advertising.
They try to find trends in what
you buy and what stores you
shop at, and they data mine that
and sell that list of data mined
custom targeted marketing to
different companies.
If they find that you do a lot
of shopping at Circuit City, for
example, they'll send you in a
database over to Best Buy to try
to steal you away as a customer
and make you go over there.
They'll send you, sell your
information to Best Buy.
Best Buy will then send you
advertising trying to steal you
away as a customer, for example.
So that's generally in a business
environment what data warehousing
and data mining is used for.
But again, it's not exactly what
we're doing with Google mining.
Am I correct?
Is that correct?
Usually with Google mining, we're
doing the other analysis where
you're basically panning for gold.
Like most of the data, the majority
of the stuff Google has isn't
terribly interesting, but by using
some clever parameters, you can go
down to the really nice bits
quickly.
Right.
And when you say clever
parameters, there is absolutely a
relationship between the
traditional term, quote, Google
hacking, end quote.
So Google hacking is not necessarily
equal to Google mining.
Google mining is that Google has done
the data collection.
You are going to do the analysis
of that data.
And if you need to use Google
hacking techniques to do it, so be
it.
But that's kind of the process.
And I know that you even take this
a step further.
And this is something I would like
you to talk about a little bit.
And that is like for well, let me
say like one of the examples I made
up in the forums to try to get
people interested in this is the
Bell South project.
And I basically, I was, it's a very
simple and a very basic project for
data, for Google mining.
Go out there and find as much stuff
as you can about Bell South.
Let's gather it.
Let's get it together.
Because it's doing a little bit, it's
not quite doing the analysis yet.
It's just mostly siphoning out all,
like you said, Google's got all this
garbage.
A lot of it's uninteresting.
Let's get the interesting part for at
least this particular project.
Let's get a bunch of stuff from
Bell South.
Download all the PDFs you can find,
graphics you can find, document files,
spreadsheets, whatever.
Let's gather them all in a central
location.
Stage two is the analysis part,
which is what you do a lot of.
And you showed some examples of this
in your interzone presentation.
And that is, for example, writing
scripts or, or find, there are scripts
out there already you might find.
For example, to look through metadata
of office things, that kind of stuff.
And what is some of the stuff that
you have found or some good stories?
I know you mentioned some at interzone.
And maybe, let's mention, why don't you
mention your site, first of all,
where people can download your...
Oh, okay.
Well, let's see.
The, as there was mentioned, the Google,
I mean, the data mining presentation at
interzone.
You can download that off my site at
romanpoet.org.
It's linked right off the front page.
It's pretty straightforward.
Let's see.
Oh, as far as interesting things
that were found, most of the sort of work
that I've been doing, I can't talk about
things I personally have found.
However, I can tell you some other
related projects and some of the stuff
that they found that were interesting.
For example, actually, one of my favorite
ones was analyzing Microsoft Word documents
released from the Blair government in the UK.
And it was found that by analyzing the revision
log of the Microsoft Word document,
you were able to show that it was plagiarized.
And the only reason it was plagiarized,
through it, you were able to show that who edited
what bits here and who changed what words
here and there.
And this was very interesting.
Like, for example, you could find out
which government official changed the word
freedom fighter to terrorist and stuff like that.
And let's see.
This entire thing is covered on computerbitesman.com.
I think his name was Richard Smith, I think,
the person who did all this analysis.
Right, and that's a great example.
And how embarrassing.
How incredibly embarrassing.
And that's just, any of the office documents,
I'm sure, are ripe with that kind of information.
As a matter of fact,
as a matter of fact,
if I remember correctly, Virgil,
I think I remember sending you
some very interesting metadata from
your little incident.
I don't know if we're allowed to talk about that.
Do you remember that?
Yes, I do.
I think I found something very similar
that I sent to you all
back when your case was going on
that I don't know if it helped or did anything,
but that's exactly what I did,
exactly what happened.
I didn't call it or have any idea
of the concept of data mining at the time,
but it is kind of a neat application,
kind of a funny story, I guess.
But it's not only office documents
that you can find this kind of stuff in.
Office just is well known
for keeping a lot of metadata,
tracking the last,
I think it's 10 by default,
10 changes that were made,
revisions, I think is the term they use.
But it also keeps a lot of other stuff,
author names.
If you turn on the,
the, oh man, what's the term?
Track changes function.
Yeah, what's the term?
Collaborative functions,
that's what I was looking for,
the collaboration tools and whatnot.
Then yeah, it has a lot of functions in there
that could also have that information.
So that's the kind of stuff that,
that's the kind of things you'll find out
when you start doing the analysis phase of things.
So phase one, again,
and let's just go back to the Bell South project
because it's a very simple example.
It is collecting a bunch of data,
whatever that data happens to be,
and I don't know if you've had time
to look at our Bell South,
but there were some other surprising things
that I wasn't expecting to see.
Like I think Natus and some other people
also found some scripts,
some shell scripts with plain text passwords
and usernames on them.
I didn't expect some stuff to be that...
For Bell South.
For Bell South, yeah.
And I didn't expect something to be
that much out in the open,
but it certainly was.
So that was kind of funny
that you find something interesting
in the actual collection part of the process
just by kind of checking and nosing around
doing some Google hacking.
So the second phase is
once we get a lot of this interesting stuff
from Bell South,
then it's doing the analysis and collecting it.
And I know,
and I don't want to put you on the spot,
I don't know if you know them offhand,
but I think you mentioned some tools.
Aren't there tools that will parse through,
for example,
metadata from Microsoft Word documents
and pull it out
and put it into a database?
There are some basic tools.
There is no definitive God tool.
But there are a few basic things.
But I don't know.
I don't want to emphasize
the metadata element.
I must admit,
the metadata is one of the more fun things
that you can mine for
in a big collection of documents
because usually it's something
people don't know is online.
But usually you don't even have to do that.
I mean, let's see.
Oh, a classic example.
Like if you downloaded
like every file ending in .sh
from Belfelf.net
and then just grab the password.
I mean, you might find something.
Exactly.
I mean, it's a primary one you can find.
Great.
Yeah, absolutely.
A great example.
And didn't you also tell us about one
where the PDF file,
my terminology is probably way off here,
so correct me,
but something about things
were blocked out,
like censored out.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I don't know.
That's probably data mining,
but it is interesting.
I don't know.
Occasionally,
like this is most common
in the Freedom of Information at Request,
very often the PDF documents
will be blotted out.
And there will be like little black rectangles
over the good bits.
And contrary to popular belief,
the PDF is actually a multi-layered document.
So underneath that black rectangle,
the text is still there.
So if you understand a little bit
about the PDF format,
you can automatically remove those black squares
or replace all black squares
with yellow highlighting
and stuff like that.
Which is great.
The highlighting is funny.
And one more example
is the EXIF information.
I understand you don't want to focus
on the metadata,
but they're always similar,
like the EXIF information
and image files and whatnot.
And who was it?
The girl from Tech TV?
Oh, okay.
Kat Schwartz.
Yes.
If you just do a Google for Kat Schwartz,
everything becomes pretty clear.
Basically, she's one of the
Tech TV eye candy babes.
And due to some metadata in the JPEG
and the way JPEG is done in Photoshop,
you're able to get some very nice
nudie pictures
that were not intended to be online.
Yeah.
And there was much rejoicing on the internet.
Yeah, very much so.
Of course, I don't get Tech TV,
so to me it was just another naked chick.
But whatever, you know.
All right.
Well, and, you know, again,
like Virgil was saying,
it's not all about the metadata at all.
It's about collecting it
and looking for patterns of any kind.
They could be as simple as,
maybe you'll notice that
from 2000 to 2003,
they were using a lot of
Microsoft Word documents,
and then all of a sudden in 2004,
they switched to OpenOffice.
PDF.
Something as simple as that
is very interesting
and can tell you a lot about the company
and what they're choosing.
Actually, I have interest,
the Blair government
no longer publishes .docs,
if you look.
Hmm.
Well, I guess.
Like, right after this incident,
they no longer publish things
in .doc format.
I see.
There you go.
It's interesting.
They learned their lesson, I guess.
Apparently.
All right.
Well, we're going to wrap it up here.
Did you have,
we've got a couple minutes here,
a few minutes,
if there's anything
you wanted to talk about.
Because I know,
the other thing is,
I'm trying to make,
like, very simple projects.
And I know you go a little bit more in depth
than I do, quite honestly.
And I know that your targets
that you find interesting
are a little bit different
than the stuff I am.
I'm kind of looking for
more things like passwords and stuff
as far as the way I'm applying
Google mining.
And you've got a lot more interesting,
you're finding a lot more surprising data.
I guess I'm finding a lot more funny data.
But you're doing, like,
some really,
some detailed statistical analysis.
I don't know if you want to mention this on the air.
I have it in the show notes there.
But your other published project
that you did recently.
Oh, yeah.
I can talk about that.
I didn't know.
Let's see.
There was something I did pretty recently.
Well, we don't know about public records,
and public records are slowly being put online.
I did an analysis
basically using only shell scripts
and a little awk and a little said here and there
to derive mother's maiden names
by using a combination of birth records
and marriage records.
And I did this across the entire state of Texas
by combining state-level marriage records
and birth records from the counties
and birth records from various other places,
mostly genealogy sites.
And I ended up being able to derive,
like, with almost 100% certainty,
mother's maiden names
for about 4 million Texans.
It was very pleasant.
Yeah, that's really amazing stuff, man.
That's really kudos
because that is definitely something
that took time and research
and some analysis.
And that information is also on Roman Poet?
Yes, yes.
You can read the full paper.
I actually should be publishing
the data sets I used
probably within the next few weeks as well.
So if you want to see the data sets
that I used to compute all this,
you can get that pretty shortly as well.
Well, I have to hesitate at the front page
for a second anyway
and look at the chick with the Mac.
Yes.
She's always nice.
I love that picture.
Oh, man, that's great.
So that's our segue to end the show there.
We'll close out on the hot chick picture, I guess.
And head into our site of the week.
And actually, I think you had a site for this week, right?
Yes, there is a site of the week.
This is along the same theme
of the Become the CIA theme.
There's one particular site
that I think is probably doing the most,
probably the most interesting work of this nature.
And this is NNDB.com, just NNDB.com.
And it says on the front page,
NNDB is an intelligence aggregator
that tracks the activities of people
that we have determined to be noteworthy.
Superficially, it seems like a who-who's database
where a person's curriculum vitae is available.
But mostly it exists to document
the connections between people,
many which are not always obvious.
A person's otherwise inexplicable behavior
is often understood by examining the crowd
a person has been hanging out with.
And that's basically the whole thesis.
The idea is that it spies on famous people
and it determines who their friends are
and who they contribute to.
And you can see all that right for the taking.
I think this is probably one of the classic examples
of open source intelligence
and taking the CIA into your own hands, I guess.
Or taking the job of the CIA into your own hands.
All right, and that's NNDB.com.
And I have been there myself
and I've seen a couple interesting things.
Some surprising...
I didn't know they were friends
or I didn't know they had anything in common
or any relationship.
So that is a good site.
Shouts for this week.
I'll go ahead and give you a second
to think if there's any shouts.
My shouts go to DC404,
something probably close to you there.
Shouts to Tabiz and to Natus
and to CypherX,
who's been helping me out with a lot of stuff lately.
There's some graphics.
And also Natus as well.
Like I said, Natus is doing a lot of cool stuff
and working on some projects.
And he's doing a great job, of course,
with Old School Freak.
The site's been up and running very well for a while.
So shouts to them.
And how about you?
Do you agree to Greg and Strick at Yak, please?
Greg and Strick at Yak.net, right?
Or Yak.org.
Yak.net.
Go check that out.
If you want to email us about anything on the show
to yell at us, disagree with us,
add to us, give us more information,
the email address is radio at binrev.com.
Our closing music this week is from Pete Miser.
And it's called Scent of a Robot.
And I actually came across this
because I found a video of it
and liked the song,
went out and found the song.
It is Scent of a Robot.
I think this is one of the cooler songs
I've heard in a long time.
Very unique lyrically.
So check this out.
And Virgil, thank you for being on the show.
And I do sincerely want to try to get you
on another show as soon as we can work something out.
I know our schedules are kind of tough sometimes,
but definitely want to try to get you on the show.
Maybe we will go into another show about memes.
That sounds good to me.
Great.
Well, thank you again for being on it.
And I think we're going to close it up this week
and tell everybody that we will see them again next week.
Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
More human than human, I can do it all.
French kiss, smoke a spliff, give a shit about baseball.
I'll come home at night to my robot wife,
drink a light beer and watch me a DVD.
I look good.
You can't even tell.
They have me fooled.
Implanting memories of puberty and preschool.
Girls that broke my heart at dark nights in the summer.
Just a string of primary numbers.
Didn't bother me none before I knew.
I'm a slave.
It's okay.
I got things to do.
But then I'm sitting there at work
when my email blinks.
And it's from the big boss.
But it wasn't for me.
It's just another memo about our robot line.
See, it's that schematics detail on the robot's mind.
And I find that when I look close,
all I see is a blueprint to manufacture me.
I'm a robot.
Program not to know that I'm a robot.
But some dumb fuck emailed me the computer code that makes up my soul.
Now I'm running around trying to forget what I know.
I'm a robot.
Program not to know that I'm a robot.
But some dumb fuck emailed me the computer code that makes up my soul.
Now I'm running around trying to forget what I know.
Mad, stunned, a little bit hurt.
How many people at work know what I just found out?
Round bout noon my boss calls.
Wants to see me in his office but I stall for as long as I can.
But the man comes down on my floor before I throw a tantrum.
I can't run.
So I sit there with his hand on my shoulder saying,
Listen Pete, you've been a real soldier.
Said he was sorry that I saw that email.
And he was hoping that I wouldn't quit the firm.
He told me that I was a joy to work with.
And brown nose me so hard I started to squirm.
Concerned looks on the faces of the people I work with.
And lots of small talk with a robot issue skirt.
Made me nervous so I rolled up and I asked my boss
if I could have the afternoon off.
I'm a robot.
Program not to know that I'm a robot.
But some dumb fuck emailed me the computer code that makes up my soul.
Now I'm running around trying to forget what I know.
I'm a robot.
Program not to know that I'm a robot.
But some dumb fuck emailed me the computer code that makes up my soul.
Now I'm running around trying to forget what I know.
Eat later.
Cats guessing and wondering what's next.
Lucky for me it was a Friday.
So I stayed away from the office for the whole stinking weekend.
My dark mood deepened into adult depression leaving.
Me with even more damn questions.
Like what the hell do I tell my robot kids?
And how long does a healthy robot live?
And how did I make it through the airport x-ray?
Or was that one of those fake memories?
It ain't easy knowing the truth.
I'm blowing a fuse.
My soul feels funny like there's a hole in my shoe.
I need a moment or two.
Let me go over the clues.
I drank a case of Bud Light.
It's still sober and noon.
I got a few things to do and even more to put in order.
Walking through the kitchen trip and there's my wife and baby daughter.
And they can see by the look of my face.
So I sit them down and tell them I've got something to say.
Honey?
Yeah?
Snookums?
What?
You're not gonna like this.
What did you do this time?
I'm a robot program not to know that I'm a robot.
But some dumb fuck emailed me the computer code that makes up my soul.
Now we're running around trying to forget what I know.
I'm a robot program not to know that I'm a robot.
But some dumb fuck emailed me the computer code that makes up my soul.
Now we're running around trying to forget what I know.
I'm a robot program not to know that I'm a robot.
But some dumb fuck emailed me the computer code that makes up my soul
Now I'm running around trying to forget what I know
I'm a robot program not to know that I'm a robot
But some dumb fuck emailed me the computer code that makes up my soul
Now I'm running around trying to forget what I know
That's the biggest thing I want to impress upon you
We want you here, we need you here
So just take some time off, take the day off, take the week off
And just sleep on it and think about it and come back fresh on Monday
And I know, I know your answer will be
I want to stay, I'm happy here
And that's what we want
We want you to be happy and we're going to work towards that
Towards that goal together, mutually
It's a mutual understanding
We want you here
We want younga
We want you here
We're in the end
We want you here
Here yesterday
We want you here
We know you here