This is dedicated to all the hackers and the crackers
I see in binary, I speak source code
Step on my toes, I'll post a million jpegs with you in a fag tone
In your digital stance, sitting firewalls ho
Cause I'm riding the net in my dick phone
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 fool you on burning Dreamcast
You need some ISO? Let me do my hard drive rifle
Our exchange you could never stifle
In a digital hood, 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 night free
You feel that rattling in your bones?
When I tell you we just hacked out Jones
And NASDAQ, leave your pride on your back
Cause I am he who loves to hack and crack
This is dedicated to the hackers and the crew
They're real close, so it's a total of high school
Randy, 50, 50
Hello! Welcome to Binary Revolution Radio, episode 122
With the days of your date being November 15th, 2005
I'm Black Ratchet and Strom is...
Where is Strom? I don't know
He's sleeping
But filling in tonight for Strom
Introduce yourself
Will be Dr. Zygman
Woo!
Despite not like having a phone
This is another all-voice episode
And you know, it's actually a complicated story
You see the hurricane came
And I forgot to pay my phone bill
So I don't have a phone
Oh, so that's how you were saying
It was sort of Wilmer related
That's what I'm using as my excuse
But it's cool
Cause we got to use an all-voice
Without actually having to pay a VoIP provider
This is just two asterisk boxes connected together
Yeah
So, yeah, so
Now we're, you know, with VoIP
With all VoIP and no phones
And the fact that we're actually not live
This is...
I'm calling it a bit of a slapdash episode
Cause I just like the term slapdash
But Zygman disagrees
I think slapdash is a cool word
Don't get me wrong
I don't think any episode of FinRev has ever slapdashed
Oh, God, you just haven't been around long enough
I don't know
You guys pull it off real well
Yeah, we just pay no attention
To the man behind the curtain
See, we were going to be live this week
But the problem was
I suddenly got a phone call today
In a house that my fiancé and I
Were looking at them buying
And the guy said
Well, geez, can you be here Tuesday at 6?
And it would work out that
I would be unable to be in the episode
And so I said
Strong, Strong, you can do this, right?
And he said, sure
And then he said
Five minutes later
Oh, no, wait
I have to study for a final
And it was like
Or a midterm or something
I don't know
Some giant college thing that he does
It's final time now
Is it finals or midterms?
Well, my finals are in two weeks
So it's getting to the wire here
I'm interrupting my studying of genetics
I think I'm the only biological science major
Slash hacker
Wow
Here I was thinking
You're doing like video production
Or something
No way, dude
I'm a biological sciences major
That doctor's not there
Just for kicks
That's a good one
I've got to say
That's pretty good
See, I've graduated
And I'm actually choosing to go back
For some reason
I'm looking into grad school classes
God help me
Better than real work
No, no
I'm actually going for the
Ultra Mega Pain version
And working 40 hours a week
And going for my graduate student
All at once
The Ultra Mega Pain
That's the
They put a UMP on your diploma, right?
Yes
Black Ratchet
UMP
And BS Master
Actually, you know
If you ever
Yeah, my mother always told me
That the Ph.D. and a diploma
Stands for
Piled High and Deep
She always told you
That you were very special as well
Didn't she?
Yes, yes
She always apologized
For doing those microwave repairs
While she was pregnant
And all that horrible thing
And hitting me
So now we know why you have Wi-Fi so much
You're still getting microwaves
Exactly
Now it's all concentrated
So
Actually, it always disturbs me
When I'm starting to use Wi-Fi
For a while
And like
The area right underneath my
Where the
Where like my wireless card is
My leg gets like
Really, really warm
And nothing's touching it
And I'm like
That can't be good
It's those invisible radio waves
They're out to get you
Exactly
Well, that's how microwave was invented
They had the whole
Basically one of the
Radar operators
I don't even know where the heck he was
But it was during World War II
That
He was using the radar thing
And he kept his coffee
Like right there
And he always noticed
How it always stayed warm
And that actually kind of scared him
That's a good story
Yes, I
You know
Take it with a grain of salt
Because like my
My 10th grade chemistry teacher
Told me it
And he was
He was an odd bird
To say the least
How about that?
Mr. Loomis
Shouts
No, no
He was very strange
But God
He just
I failed everything
In that class
And he always passed me
So, you know
Shouts to Mr. Loomis
I couldn't tell you
A damn chemistry thing
Hmm?
Yeah, Mr. Loomis
You're talking to the wrong guy though
Because chemistry
Is my strong
No, no
I was a physics man
I was definitely a physics man
Because I never tried in chemistry
Because I always knew I would pass
It was
It was creepy
It was very creepy
Reminiscing about school days
Anyway
And you gotta love this whole
Voip lag thing
It's just like old school
Bin Rev radio
With stank in the speakerphone
And I always thought
I was sounding great
When I was recording the show with him
And then I listened to the show
And I'm on this
Two second delay
Constantly
It's amazing
Echo
And the echo and everything
So, I think we should just sort of like
You know
Stroll right into email
And what did I say?
Slapdash
Our first email tonight.
Black Ratchet, this one is for you.
Are you lead enough to compile packages from scratch?
Gent 02, Gent 02, Gent 02, Gent 02, Gent 02, Gent 02, Gent 02, Gent 02.
iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods.
iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods.
iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods, iPods.
asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk.
Gentoo!
Ha ha, sorry, Hattu.
The artist formerly known as De La Natas.
The artist formerly known as Natas, now known to be known as De La Natas.
And I say, hey, Natas, fuck you.
But this actually takes care of all of our...
I'm starting to think that Natas has Tourette's.
I mean, look at how many times he said that bad word, Gentoo.
Exactly.
Don't you use Gentoo?
I forget.
No, I don't use Gentoo.
I'm a hardware fan.
Okay, good, good, good.
The Gentoo users are among us.
And I'd just like to say thank you, Natas, too, for getting all of our three iPods.
You know, we mentioned iPods, asterisk, and Gentoo, all in a matter of, like, you know, 30 seconds.
It was amazing.
And I'd also like to state for the record, I did edit this email down.
Because I literally, if you actually look at this email, it's simply amazing.
He just, like, kept on copying and pasting.
So it was like, you know, an entire paragraph worth of iPods.
Although I do believe I dictated everything that I had in the show notes verbatim, which
I feel kind of proud of.
I don't think Natas is that thorough.
But if he did, you know, shouts it to him.
Go right ahead.
He is the man.
What can we say?
The elite war-dialing wave master.
Our next email tonight is from Anonymous.
I didn't sign a name, so I'm not going to say it.
I've sort of shied away from my whole, going to drop your ducks, unless you say otherwise.
But I got behind with BinRev Radio over the summer.
While catching up, I heard you discussing Apple products.
Perhaps you've moved past this, but the 28th October issue of the satirical British magazine,
Private Eye, contains the following.
And this is the story.
Revolutionary new iPod been launched by our science correspondent, Emma P3.
The computer giant Apple last night unveiled a plan for an incredible new version of its
best-selling iPod range, which promises to turn the role of personal music on its head.
This one actually works, said a spokesman.
It doesn't freeze, crash, explode, or shortly after you buy it.
And it has an extra.
The screen doesn't crack either.
Crapple.
However, the reaction from iPod's fans will listen enthusiastic.
We like our classic version, one said.
With this new one, all you're going to do is spend time listening to music rather than
enjoying the full iPod experience, i.e. swearing, banging against the table, or ringing the
helpline to be told of what technical sports cost 30 pounds a call.
The new iPod, cratchily named the iWork properly, is thought to unlikely catch on.
And I've got to say, yeah, I actually didn't notice about the correspondence name MLP3 until
I read it out loud.
I feel kind of embarrassed about that.
Do the bridge have some kind of other iPod than us, you know, United States people do?
I've never had problems with mine.
I think they're kind of spoofing the whole iPod nano getting scratched or something.
I forget what exactly happened.
Like, the screen was scratching.
And I think Apple was, you know, pretty cool when they finally decided that it was an eternal
defect and it was their fault.
They said, well, bring them on back.
We'll give you new ones.
And, of course, people over here, at least, in the United States are going, lawsuit, lawsuit,
lawsuit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But I've got to say, the iPod is one of the more reliable pieces of electronics that I own.
Of course, you know, now that I say this, I'm totally fucked.
I'm going to wake up tomorrow and I'm going to, like, see, like, this molten pile of lava where
my iPod was docked last night, or not even docked.
I didn't even have one of those models plugged into the FireWire cable.
Do you have an iPod, Ziggy?
No, I never got behind the whole iPod craze or the whole MP3 player craze.
I always stuck behind my trusty CD player that can play MP3 CDs.
I call it my ghetto pod.
And you know what?
It doesn't have any scratches or anything on it.
So, you know, it's cool.
I like it.
It works.
I used to have one of those.
I only have 135 songs, but, you know, 135 songs isn't bad on one CD.
Well, I actually, before I got my iPod, I actually still think I have it.
I think I have, like, a Rio SP90 or something.
Something's really bad.
It's an MP3 CD player.
And I've got to say, it worked fantastic.
The only problem I had was, you know, it went through batteries like a motherfucker.
And, yeah, I dropped the MF bomb on BinRev Radio.
I think that's the first time I ever did that.
Really?
We're going to have to go back and check.
Yeah.
Natus will have to do it for us.
And they'll send an email the next time and say, motherfucker.
Except they always say it twice.
It's double time now.
Yeah.
We're pushing the edge.
We are elite.
Yeah, I mean, I loved it.
It was pretty good, except, like, I think we go, like, through two batteries every week.
And it was almost like clockwork, because I would listen to it on the way to work and
on the way back on the bus.
And I think it was, like, you know, about a 40-minute ride each way.
I'm not even sure.
Did I say, like, eight hours of battery?
Hmm?
Are you saying, like, eight hours of battery from your CD player compared to how many hours
of battery with your iPod?
Well, but I never used to listen to it at work, I think.
I was, when I was actually at tech support, so I could, had to answer the phone and actually
turn around when people talked to me.
Now that I'm just, you know, staring at a computer for 24 hours a day, or 24 hours a day, ha-ha.
Well, close to it once I get home.
But now I'm just staring at a computer at work.
I just sit there and, yeah, I got my headset on.
I don't have to listen to any of your inane comments.
I'm a horrible, mean person.
But I'm proud of it.
All right, why don't I read off this next email for us?
Go for the gold.
All right, it says, hey, host, which is very nice of them to say.
I found this slightly long but interesting article about international calls for free.
I believe you'll enjoy it.
It gives the address, hccp colon slash slash miniaddress.com slash free calls.
Keep it up with the show.
It's only getting better all the time.
Thanks, CXD.
Well, obviously, CXD hasn't heard our slapdash episode yet.
Slapdash.
I don't even know where I got that.
I think I got that term from Eddie Izzard, I believe.
I don't even remember what, you know, what it was from.
But maybe it's a British thing.
Perhaps our British people can, you know, not call in, but email us as we can say if it's a British term or not.
And God is the queen.
Yeah.
Yeah, God, queen's under fire, man.
God, Al-Qaeda wants her?
Jesus.
First, you know, she has like two or three years off from the IRA and all of a sudden some more people want her dead.
It's very sad.
Fuck off, I'm the queen.
He's married again.
He's hanging out with that girl.
Who's the new girl that the prince is hanging out with?
Prince Charles or one of his sons?
No, it's Prince Charles.
M, M, M, no, Camilla, Camilla.
Camille?
Is that right?
I think so.
I don't know.
Honestly, seriously, all I have to do is I talk to my aunt and she knows everything about the royals.
It's kind of creepy.
It really is.
Interesting soap opera.
Yeah.
I'd get maybe a little origin in the background.
Anyway, back to the email at hand.
I don't know how the hell we got on this subject.
It's all your fault.
You said, like, God save the queen or something.
It's the right thing's fault.
They're coming.
Well, let's get back to this guy.
This actually leads to a weblog entry.
And the guy's weblog is www.mundy.org.
And I've got to say, for the record, you know, this guy is amazing.
We sort of mentioned him indirectly last week.
I don't know if we actually shouted his URL off on the air, but this is the guy who was doing the Bluetooth proximity and asterisk detection.
Ah, yes.
Yeah.
That guy's awesome.
And he basically, what he just did is he set up a DISA.
For those of you who don't know what DISA is, an asterisk.
What you can do is you can, or a lot of PBX support this.
You dial in, and you, like, dial an extension, and then you dial a passcode.
And what it does is it gives you a dial tone, at which point you can just dial out like you were inside the PBX,
or like you were sitting at a desk and you had an extension.
And what...
You have dialed.
Exactly.
That's exactly what it is.
Okay.
Except that I believe the term is direct in word system access, or I don't know who thought of it.
Maybe I could be wrong.
I'm not into that sort of thing.
But what this actually did is he set it up so that he has free incoming mobile, I believe,
and free incoming minutes on his mobile.
So what he does is he dials the asterisk box, enters a code, hangs up,
at which point the asterisk box calls him back, and he gets a dial tone.
So he can just dial up from there to whatever he wants.
Very cool.
Yeah.
Actually, this is...
Doesn't that also have something to do with caller ID spoofing as well?
Well, sort of.
Apparently, you were reading the notes, weren't you?
Back in the day, T-Mobile...
Well, I'm not sure if this still works.
Lucky would know this.
If you were using T-Mobile, you had free mobile to mobile minutes.
What you could do is you could rig up your asterisk box to spoof out to you another T-Mobile number,
and at which point you wouldn't get billed for that.
You'd only get billed on the VoIP side, because T-Mobile would use your calling party number
as determining whether or not this was actually a call from a mobile number
or a call from a non-mobile number.
So that would...
So you mean billing just based on caller ID information?
Well, it's not caller ID.
It's calling party number.
And for those of you who are curious,
you can go refer to our wonderful asterisk episode, parts one and two.
Like 111 and 112, I think, or 111 and 113.
So, but yes, yes, it's very stupid.
They shouldn't be doing that.
And I'm not sure if it still works.
It's not dangerous, but at the same point, you know,
you're making it very easy to rip them off.
And of course, as we said last week, toll fraud is stupid.
This is toll fraud.
Don't do it.
Stay at home, kids.
Don't masturbate.
Stay at school.
Don't do drugs.
Yes.
Take a bite out of crime with McGruff the crime dog.
There we go.
Do you hear that McGruff's, like, protecting us from terrorism now?
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
As long as he's no longer saying duck and cover, I guess we're in good shape.
No, that wasn't McGruff.
That was the turtle, the civil defense turtle.
Duck and cover.
Yeah, because he used to cover in his shell.
For those of you who don't know what we're talking about.
It was a little before my time.
Oh, it was very before my time.
It was the whole, basically what it was during the 1950s when the U.S. government was still
telling us to, oh, yeah, you know, there could be a nuclear bomb attack, but all you guys
will survive.
Just, what you used to do is, you know, just duck and cover.
And what they did is they did all these little PSA announcements that would tell you to duck
and cover, and they had a nice little cartoon turtle.
It was kind of like, you know, ducky or something.
I don't even know what the hell his name, damn name was.
But he used to hide in the shell whenever he saw the nuclear flash.
Which is a very effective method.
Yeah.
Well, my personal favorite PSA, I don't think I still have this, but I downloaded it someplace.
And they're showing the typical 1950s American family, and they're all having a nice cookout.
And the, you know, dad's at the grill, and, you know, mom and sister and brother are sitting
at the table.
And all of a sudden, the atomic bomb goes off, and you see the big, you know, animated flash.
And mom, brother and sister, they duck underneath the table.
They duck underneath the picnic table.
Like, that's not going to afford its protection.
Okay.
But all of a sudden, you see dad covering himself with the picnic tablecloth.
Really?
Oh, my God.
It was.
Oh, Jesus.
I was just like, oh, my.
It was a red line.
Apparently.
Jesus Christ.
That better be some amazing tablecloth.
It's made out of Gore-Tex.
I don't even think they had Gore-Tex back then.
That's the point.
Oh, man.
And what I always chuckled, if you ever see the South Park episode with the volcano in
it.
Yeah.
And they sell, say, ducking cover.
God, I was on the floor for that one, because I knew exactly what they were spoozing.
Boy, we're just having a very, very meandering episode here.
Right on topic.
Yeah.
We're talking about Atomica.
So, oh, did I mention this on air, that, like, Cypher-X actually did send me something
from the Marine Corps that says, if you were caught in a nuclear blast and you do not have
cover, basically lie on the ground and point your feet toward the blast.
Which, I...
Better than nothing.
No, really, it is.
I think that's the most logically thought out thing at all.
So, you know, just present the lowest profile and, you know, hopefully it won't die.
Oh, and that South Park episode is called Volcano.
It's season one, episode three, just for the trivia fans.
God, season one, episode three.
God, do you have a release date?
What about a release date?
Do you have one of those?
I don't have a release date.
No, I'm not that good.
Yeah, it's going to be, like, 97, 96.
Back when I was in high school, taking chemistry with Mr. Lemus.
I remember one of my friends telling me, I remember one of my friends telling me, you
have to watch this show.
And I was just like, no, it's popular.
I don't want to watch this.
Being the angst-ridden teenager I was, and I was like, oh, my God, this is the best thing
ever.
So, let's go to the next email.
Dear Black Ratchet and Strom Carlson, I love what you've done with the show.
It's nice to see a live BinRev call-in show.
Anyway, I wanted to clarify my idea concerning VoIP.
It seems that the current VoIP landscape is split into many different networks with little
interoperability.
This cause multiple network model is a problem for two, possibly more reasons.
They can cause interoperability issues.
And the dependence on several major networks makes it easier for the government to begin
imposing regulations because they see VoIP providers as no different from the traditional
utility companies.
To reduce these problems, I think there should be a standard method of calling someone via
the internet regardless of what the network they're on.
My advice is to just use DNS.
Just as there's a special record for the mail servers, MX, there should be a special record
for the VoIP servers.
There's VX records.
He has that in parentheses, just so you know.
If you want to call someone, you could just type in their URL, show at example.com, for
example.
And your VoIP server, asterisk, would then query the DNS server in charge of that domain
for the VX record and send your data to the IP address specified.
The VoIP server's in charge of delivering it to the users.
Maybe the user maintains a steady connection to the server, and if a call came in, it would
automatically be forwarded to him.
If he was unavailable, the server would notify the caller and go into voicemail, saving all
the voice packets to form a message.
With the system, you could talk to anyone regardless of whether they use Vontage, FreeWorld
Dial-Up, or their own homebroom system.
I am still somewhat a noob when it comes to VoIP, so I do not know if something like this
is already available.
Later!
I believe he had a name, but I don't think he actually signed it.
So, you have a wonderful system.
It's called Enum.
I'm sorry.
I don't want to burst your bubble.
Strava and I did refer to this in our afters presentation, so we'll shamelessly refer to
that again.
Yeah.
Well, Enum's a cool system, and basically, you design a system exactly how it works, so
pat yourself on the back for that.
Basically, what the system that works where everybody has a list of peers, and you ask
one peer how to connect to Mary, they don't know how, but they ask their friend Bob, Bob
tells them where Mary is, who tells the peer you ask, who tells you.
That whole thing where you can kind of keep a cache for a certain period, something like
ten days, and it gets refreshed, and that way you always know a route to get to a peer,
be it over the public switch telephone network or through a series of voice servers.
Sort of.
What you're describing is Dundee, and Dundee is Enum-based.
Oh, Dundee.
Dundee.
Oh, so close.
Yeah.
Well, Dundee is Enum-based, and there's a lot of stuff with Enum in Dundee, but what Enum
is is basically, it uses DNS exactly as he says, but I believe it's called, I forgot
the record name.
It's like N-A-P-T-R or something.
I don't know what it stands for.
Lord only knows.
I like VX, though, VoIP Exchange.
That's pretty cool.
Maybe we should, like, we should rewrite the RRC and resubmit it.
Yeah.
Just anything that says N-A-P-T-R, we're calling it VX this time.
The X.
We have to do a find, replace, and then just resubmit the entire thing.
Yeah.
I just kind of run it through SED.
He pressed the X because it's extra, baby.
So, you know, pat yourself on the back for designing the system, but it already exists.
Sorry.
But, like, the problem with it is is that, for example, different people use different
protocols, and what you have to do is you have to all agree on a standard protocol, and
people have tried to do this, and they have it called SIP.
However, SIP suffers from other issues, and so EECS is coming out, and then there's probably
going to be another couple years, there's going to be another major VoIP protocol that
people are going to use.
So, Lord only knows what the future stores.
Definitely true.
Exactly.
Wait, how long has, but SIP has been the dominant language for, I'm sorry, the dominant protocol
for a while now.
I mean, IAX, I guess IAX version 2 is really starting to take a hold, but I think SIP is
really going to come forward, at least in the short term, as the protocol of choice.
Well, SIP is the protocol of choice, because everyone supports it, but it's just, it has
lots, it has problems.
What it is, is that, you know, it doesn't play well with NAT, and...
Definitely not.
It hates NAT.
So, it's just, it's annoying.
And EECS addresses a lot of these issues, but at the same point, it has its own little
compatibility problems, because no one supports it.
So, it's just a matter of everyone sitting down and agreeing on a standard protocol.
And I don't think SIP's been dominant for too long.
SIP's been dominant for a while, yes, but, I mean, go back two or three years, and we're
talking H323, I believe.
I mean, Microsoft NetMeeting.
H323, exactly, the Microsoft NetMeeting protocol.
That's what we've been used for such a long time.
Yeah, well, and it's still a major use by major network carriers in their backbone systems,
apparently, which explains a lot, as I said.
So, well, that wraps up the email.
Zygman, what have you been doing?
Going to show and tell here.
All right.
It's only for getting into it.
I've been putting together a pretty cool presentation that I first kind of showed a rough draft to one of
a pony group's, I'm sorry, Pony Boy's group meetings up in Georgia.
A pony group, yay!
You ride all the ponies?
Hurricane Wilma.
No, I didn't ride any ponies.
I think his fiancée would have been mad if I would have done that.
But anyway, the presentation deals mostly with what happens actually in memory during a buffer overflow.
And I'm putting together a great example of everything by using a two-dimensional array of strings in C,
which is just a fancy way of saying I'm going to have a lot of control over how my arrays are set up.
I'm going to overflow from one buffer into the next one and create strings going on, things like that.
So it's something to look forward to at the next BINREF 5.6.1 meeting that's coming up.
And at the soon approaching BINREF 305, it's also starting up, which is being hosted by LogoSets.
But it should be a really cool presentation.
I'm going to show how I can actually overflow one of the arrays.
And since it's a two-dimensional array, there's another one right below it in contiguous memory.
And I'm going to overflow into the next one and show how the null terminator is what's important as far as the string is concerned
and then other types of arrays.
And just kind of show, like, this is actually what's happening.
You're moving into another named, you know, another place of memory that was allocated for something else.
And, you know, I think it'll give people a good understanding of exactly what's going on
and just something to make them want to learn more because I'm by no means an expert in memory.
Wow.
So, yeah, I'm not a major expert in buffer overflows at all, period.
I shouldn't actually sit down and reread the Shell Coaches Handbook and figure out a lot more like that.
So, sounds exciting.
So, people should show up at the BINREF 561.
Is that happening this week?
Yeah, that is happening this week.
We'll get to it in an announcement.
Yeah, we'll get to an announcement.
I'm sure you'll plug it out just like I plug mine.
What have I been doing?
The Whistle Interjet, what I was talking about, I finally actually got to work.
It turns out it was always working.
I just didn't actually have a – what I assumed was a null modem cable actually turned out to be not a null modem cable,
which made me very, very angry.
But I have one now, and it boots, but it doesn't actually let me log in because it just sits there.
I think the distribution I use, which is an IP cup, just flails miserably on it because it's –
I think it's only running under 8 megs of RAM, I believe.
I could be wrong.
Yeah, I need to find – if anyone has them, like, you know, 72 nanosecond SIMs, BlackRatchet, BlackRatchet.org.
I think I have two slots.
I think I need 16 megs SIMs, I believe.
I could be wrong.
I could find them at the junkyard, dude.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm going to go into the landfill.
Give me a rubber glove.
I'm going to go find some SIMs.
Whenever there's some alcohol, I'll be fine.
And, yes, I actually sell one.
My other big thing, as I've been kind of obsessed with lately,
someone was selling something called an iTech switch.
And what an iTech switch is, it's a telephone switch.
It's designed for, you know, a small rural office.
And what it was is it's not electrical mechanical, but it's solid state step.
So it works exactly like a step-by-step switch, which I won't go into.
But it's all computer-driven, which is really cool.
Does it use an in-band or out-of-band signaling?
Oh, I think you could probably use it and set up both.
It's designed to be sort of a bridge between electrical mechanical and fully electronic systems.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Well, I'm sure if I got, like, a toll selector or something, a toll switch,
I could set up to use in-band signaling.
But the problem with in-band signaling is that with a step, it's all dial-pulcing.
So you wouldn't hear, like, you know,
Oh, that's not cool.
Well, actually, no, no, it's cool in its own way.
Now I'm telling you, you can use the blue box all day long,
and it'd be totally legal because you'd be talking to your own switch.
And just hit your ass to the PSPN.
Dude, I'm going to blue box.
Yeah.
No, we can just go up to Alaska.
I guess I can say it's in Alaska.
Go up to Alaska, and you can blue box up there.
It's just the principle of the thing.
You know, it's always fun to do all things from the past.
Well, if you go to the, I believe it's called Seattle Computer Museum.
No, Seattle Community.
Seattle.
Let's try that again.
Seattle Communications Museum.
They have a, like, they have, like, all the switches hooked up,
and they have, like, a panel, and they have a crossbar five,
and a step, I believe.
I could be wrong.
They have, like, two or three switches,
but they're all actually inter-hooked up with 2,600 controlled links.
And Strom does have a recording of it.
He doesn't actually have it for public consumption yet,
but I've listened to it, and it's all on his mini-disc recorder,
and you hear him, like, you know, put the, like, you know, tap the hook,
and you hear, ka-cheep, ka-cheep, ka-cheep,
and it's just like, oh, I want to go there.
Oh, yeah.
That'd be awesome.
Do you think they'd let you bring in a blue box?
They probably wouldn't care.
They'd be like, oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, they don't care.
It's not, I don't have to.
Well, it probably depends on who you,
because it's actually run by old telephone guys,
so if you get, like, Dom Tuffy up there,
be like, ah, coffee skating that blue box.
That's the toll fraud equipment there.
Oh, no, let's not go down that road.
But, yeah.
So, I mean, they were relatively cool with Strom
when he showed up there, and he just said,
yeah, can I bring my own phone so I can just record all of this?
They were like, sure, yeah, no problem, whatever.
So, they seem relatively cool up there.
So, if you see, yeah, I'd love to go there.
The problem is it's on the complete opposite side of the country,
and there's nothing else I would ever want to do in Seattle.
Go to Redmond.
Go pee on the Microsoft sign.
You know you said that on the radio, right?
Hmm?
You know you said that on the radio, right?
Of course I did.
Okay.
I'm proud that I want to pee on the Microsoft sign.
So, the main topic tonight.
What is the main topic tonight, Sigmund?
I think the main topic tonight is going to be just a listing of a couple of programs that we really like.
You know, if we need more, there will be a sequel.
If there isn't a program, I'm sorry, if we don't mention a program that you think is kick-ass, you know,
send us an email.
But it's really just supposed to give you an idea of maybe there's a program out there that it does something that you never thought that you would need,
but you can't live without it now that you know about it.
And that's kind of what we're going to try to get into today.
Yeah.
So, we're just trying to, like, you know, broaden your horizons and maybe, you know, toss a program out there that you've never heard of.
So, my first program, I think, have you ever actually added anything to this list?
I don't even think you saw anything.
I did.
I added one thing at the end, if we're going by the show notes.
Oh, okay.
Well, I guess I'm free of you.
See, you've got, like, eight things there.
I was expecting you to have, like, all kinds of...
I can talk about some of yours.
Well, I was expecting you to, like, have all kinds of, like, you know, super elite video editing utilities, and there's, like, nothing here.
We had a whole show on those.
Yeah, but you can, like, you know, still hash them because we're running, you know, just through the hell with it.
I'll mention a few.
Whatever.
So, my first one, I actually just started replaying with this program.
It's called Confabulator, and it's K-O-N-F-A-B-U-L-A-T-O-R.com.
Confabulator is cool.
It's basically...
It was originally designed for Mac OS X, and what it is is just a bunch of little widgets.
You can do, and it's, like, you know, there's some cute stuff, but there's actually, like,
like, graphical utilities to, like, monitor things, and, like, right now, I have on my desktop,
and actually, it's originally for Mac OS X, but they ported it over to Windows, and I don't know when they did.
I think it's owned by Yahoo.
For example, I have...
Up on my desktop right now, I have the current weather, and it's all very nicely done,
and it blends in beautifully.
They're very well artistically rendered.
I have a nice little animated analog clock and, like, my processor speed,
and then I have this little utility that does the current Internet Storm Center threat level,
whether it be green, yellow, or red.
And I have a little utility that pings, like, four or five of my boxes,
and then, you know, I have little, like...
It shows little lights of whether or not they're green, yellow, or red, depending on the ping times.
And it's...
That's a good feature.
Yeah, and there's, like, and there's tons of stuff for it.
On my laptop, there's, like, this wonderful, this, like...
And all these are, like, you know, you can put them, like, semi-transparent,
so it doesn't eat up all your desktop space.
But on my laptop, I have something for my Wi-Fi signal and for my battery level,
and they have a couple other things.
And there's, like, literally hundreds upon hundreds of widgets you can download.
And they're all modular, and they're all free.
It's a completely free program.
I believe it's sponsored by Yahoo.
But it's very...
They don't, like, you know, shove it down your throat about it.
Now, there's no spyware or bundled adware or anything like that, right?
No, as far as I can tell, there's nothing like that.
Which really amazes me.
I believe, you know, Confabulator, when they first did it,
it was just basically this guy's hobby.
And what happened is...
Actually, there's a comparison we can make to it.
If you ever use Mac OS 10.4 and use Dashboard,
this was Dashboard before Dashboard existed.
And actually, when Apple came out with Dashboard,
this guy basically said,
Fuck you guys, we're going over to Windows.
And of course, actually, I believe that Vista has something similar to this now,
so maybe he'll port it over to Linux.
Who knows?
But I forget where I was going with this.
It's, like, you know, completely free.
The guy said it's a hobby,
and then he started to do it for shareware for a while,
and then Yahoo bought it, and now it's free.
And I believe, like, there's, like, there's more than a few,
like, when you start it up with the default widget set,
there's, like, a Yahoo search bar,
and I believe the weather cuts it from yahoo.com.
But as far as I could tell,
when you turn everything off,
you can't see anything that's, you know, done by Yahoo.
That's cool.
Yeah, it's a really fun thing,
and my one complaint about it was,
when I was running it on my Mac,
it was just, it gobbled CPU time,
but it's, you know, nothing on my new XP over here.
It's very yummy.
Because usually programs are much better designed,
I don't want to say it like that,
but have less CPU footprints in Mac than they do in Windows,
so that's an interesting little changeover.
I'm also running hideously on a hideously underpowered Mac,
so that probably goes against me.
To leave that detail out, huh?
Yeah.
Anyway.
My next favorite program,
we'll go toss this right out here,
since we just get down here.
Asterisk!
I mean, what have you been doing with Asterisk?
What have you been doing with Asterisk,
or can you mention that on air?
You know what, yeah.
I guess I might as well.
Well, I'm really starting to do a lot of Asterisk programming,
especially with the dial plans.
For anybody who's a little intimidated by the whole Asterisk aspect,
the dial plans are very intuitive.
They're very easy to program.
I mean, when you get fancy, of course, you're going to have trouble.
But, you know, it's all, if you're going to press 1, it's extension 1.
If you're going to press 2, it's extension 2.
Everything makes nice, linear sense.
And what I've been making with it is going to take advantage of the school that it does.
You can actually write call files in Asterisk.
And it'll initiate its own calls.
And this is pulling numbers from a database, initiating the call,
going ahead and making some stuff happen with the dial plan,
without getting into too much specifics.
Then it puts all that information back out through AGI,
which is their programming interface that touches any other programming language,
mostly Perl for this purpose, and updates what happens back into the database.
But, I mean, just the absolute power of Asterisk.
Forget about it as, you know, the open source PBX.
Hey, it works as a great open source PBX.
But that's just the beginning of it.
You can really, the only limit to it is how much you want to code it.
And that's what's such a beautiful thing about it.
It's nice and intuitive.
It's an easy programming language.
It's got a little bit of regex, its own kind of version of it.
But it's not too tough.
And I really think that you should just get out there and do it.
And as long as we're mentioning that, I'll plug this book that I got for it.
It's called Asterisk, The Future of Telephony.
Telephony.
There you go.
And it's an O'Reilly book.
And anybody who just wants to get started in Asterisk and doesn't want to listen to three hours' worth of shows about it,
that's an excellent book to check out.
But listen to those three hours of shows anyway, because those three hours are very well done, damn it.
Trying to sneak a little, like, a little zing in there, there, zing in?
Well, I'm not saying that.
I mean, of course the shows are excellent, but, you know, this will give you also a good foundation to,
you know what, why don't you listen to the shows at the same time you're reading the book?
I can't do that.
It would drive me nuts.
I can't do two things at once, basically.
Just out of curiosity, what's the animal in the O'Reilly book?
I'm sorry, the...
The animal.
Oh, it's a starfish.
Oh, it is a starfish?
Okay, I knew that they wanted the starfish, those asterisks, star, starfish, ha-ha.
Hey, I never noticed that before, that all the O'Reilly books have an animal on them.
Wow.
That's the first time I've ever noticed that.
Holy moly, you have never noticed that?
No, I never noticed it.
I just read what was in them.
But why do you think they call it a safari?
The library is a safari, because they all have animals on it.
Actually, the...
That makes sense.
The third edition of Practical Unix and Internet Security has a safe on it, rather than an animal.
But I believe they used to have a lemur on it.
But, um...
That's an interesting animal.
Yeah, um, um...
Pearl has all camels on it, and dromedaries.
Um, Practical Sea has a cow.
Uh...
Moo.
Yeah.
I just, like, all...
They all have animals on it.
You silly, silly man, you.
No way.
So now there's at least one other person in the world who also knows that those are all animals.
Wow.
I don't...
Shoot.
Yeah, so, asterisk is cool, and we just had to sort of toss that in there again.
Um, the...
The...
Speak...
Yeah, speaking of one person who hasn't heard anything in the world, you know, have you heard...
I assume you've heard of Firefox, right, Zygman?
Yes, I do use Firefox, ye of little space.
Yeah.
Well, you never know.
I mean, you're the one who didn't notice about, you know, the whole...
Animals.
...animal thing.
You might have noticed, oh, wow, there's another web browser on there besides Internet Explorer?
Well, I'm not really into the whole piece of reality, so, you know.
Uh.
Oh.
But anyway, Firefox.
Yeah, I'm just not even touching that one.
So, well, you know, for those of you, like, you know, the one person who's been living in the cave for the past five years,
Firefox, Firefox.org...
Oh, yeah, by the way, Asterisk is available at Asterisk.org.
A-S-T-E-R-I-S-K.
GetFirefox.com, actually.
That's where you get Firefox.
Yes.
Yeah, Firefox, open source, good web browser, standards compliant, actually under active development.
What, you know, IE7 will be in a couple of years.
Only more secure.
Actually, well, no, I'm kind of cool about IE7.
I think they run, I think Firefox is going to borrow a couple of concepts from Microsoft.
Like, they have some...
Hmm?
Do you know what it is that really makes Firefox so incredibly powerful and such a great browser?
Why?
It has to be the millions and millions of extensions that exist for it.
Well, that's a double-edged sword because if one of those extensions are coded badly.
That is true.
Yeah.
I didn't think of it that way, but you are correct.
But, I mean, really, anything you want to do with it, there's an extension for it.
Exactly.
I mean, you were buying large adult pleasuring objects with Grease Monkey.
Or Grease Monkey?
Or header?
Headers.
Yeah.
HTTP headers.
Yeah, that's it.
Five headers.
And I wasn't buying them.
I was just testing the cart system.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, you're not into PCDality, but you're into other things, are you?
Hold on.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
There's a thing at the door.
Hold on.
Let me get a sign for this package.
This is this large vibrating package.
Hey, how did I get turned on?
So, yes, Firefox, and we're going to just sort of segue into the next one.
Thunderbird.
I don't even know what the URL for this one is.
Hold on.
Do you use Thunderbird?
You know what?
I'm not really familiar with Thunderbird.
Oh, Thunderbird's great.
Well, Thunderbird is basically the, basically, think of Firefox or email.
And I love it.
I use it everywhere.
That would be mozilla.org, M-O-Z-I-L-L-A, slash products, slash Thunderbird.
And if you can't spell Thunderbird, you know, too bad.
It's just, it's a very nice, basically, if you ever use Netscape,
what do they call it, Netscape Communicator?
No, no.
Netscape, the Netscape Mail Client, whatever the hell that was called.
Maybe it's just called Netscape Mail.
I think it is Communicator.
No, Communicator was the whole suite after they scrapped the navigator.
Oh, yes, you're right.
You're right.
But literally, the first time I ever fired up Thunderbird, I swear I was staring at,
if you could have convinced me, it was like the old school Netscape Mail Client from 1996.
And that's cross-platform, right?
Mm-hmm.
Well, yeah, there's all kinds of crazy stuff with it.
You can get it on Linux.
You can get it on Windows.
Plus, one of the cool things that they're doing is there's a project out there where all of Thunderbird
just fits on a USB memory key, and all your mail can just travel with you.
That's a cool thing.
Which is just, yeah, it's a really good idea.
And Thunderbird will do that, and try doing that without Look Express, and you're screwed.
You know, as long as we're talking about e-mail clients, probably my favorite e-mail client,
it really has to be Pine.
Pine is, you know, it can be a little difficult to configure, and I'll admit that.
But, you know, when you get down to it, and you just want that nitty-gritty text-based screen,
you know, it uses a lot of the Pico commands and things like that.
Well, Pico is a derivative of Pine.
Absolutely.
And, I mean, I've always been a big fan of that as my mail client.
A lot of people will choose other ones, and they'll think that's a little not,
I don't want to say it's not pretty enough, but that's what they're getting at.
But if you're looking to run just mail on a machine that just maybe can't handle all the fancy X
and all the graphics, the send-mail-Pine combo is always a good way to go.
Well, I use Pine.
I'm a devout Pine believer, but here's my problems with it.
It doesn't support mail tours, which is a way of storing mail on a unique system,
for those of you who don't know.
And their IMAP support is actually hoarded.
Because, well, what happened is I used to have a Slackware box,
and Slackware and Pine play together like there is no tomorrow.
It's just a beautiful integration.
All these are names are the same.
Yeah.
Well, not even that.
I mean, if you run it locally within the system, it works great.
I mean, basically, Slackware is designed for Pine.
So I ran Slackware for a long time as my mail server,
and all of a sudden my mail server had, like, a sudden massive reality failure.
Like, Apache just, like, you know, ate itself,
and then apparently some of the libraries got corrupted.
Like, horrible things were happening to this box.
And I said, okay, I need to move to a new box.
So I said, okay, I want this whole Debian kit.
Debian's pretty good.
I like Debian.
I'll go install Debian as my server.
So I installed Debian as my server, and I configured it all.
And one of the major interesting things I had to do was, you know,
convert all of my virtual domains from PostFix to Exum,
which are two different mail-transferred agents.
And so I, you know, configured it all.
It's, you know, second-down mail, and I move all my stuff over.
While in Thunderbird, I copy all my messages over, and everything's all set.
And I'm going, all right, I'm all set.
And I went to bed that night, and I got up the next morning, and I went to work.
And what I usually do at work is I just, you know,
SSH into my box, and I fire up my Pine session.
And I type in Pine, you know, command not found.
I'm like, oh, damn it.
And getting Pine to work on Debian is a bit interesting because, as far as,
a lot of people don't know, Pine is an open source.
Pine is actually, it's open in the fact that you can look at the source code,
but you really can't do much with it.
And so, like, I kicked and screamed, you know,
beat my Debian box in submission so I could get Pine installed on it.
And I eventually had to work out, and I had to kludge out the solution to get Pine working with IMAP and mail orders.
And it was, it's, it's, I really miss it working with just Mbox format.
Mbox is the other way you can store mail on Unix.
But you're recommending Thunderbird for all your mail purposes.
I like Thunderbird.
It just works great.
And I love Pine.
They just really, really need to improve their IMAP support.
Basically, I've kludged out a couple of things.
It can save stuff to my sent directory.
It can read my inbox.
But as for every other, because I have, like, you know, four or five different folders of where I classify and archive stuff,
none of them work in Pine.
It just makes me angry.
And I just want to go, Ratchet smash!
You know, toss my Pine client across the room.
But Pine is a very solid client.
I've been using it since 1995.
And that's very, very scary that I just figured that out.
Not even 1995, 1994.
Wow.
Yeah, like, well, it was, like, really, really late 1994.
I'm actually approaching my 11th anniversary on the interweb.
Ta interweb.
Yes.
No, no, ta interweb.
T-A-R.
Wow.
Actually, it was before the web, so it couldn't be just the internet.
Damn straight.
I always just say, I always distinctly remember playing around on the world's wide web when I heard about it the first time and saying,
this stuff sucks.
Absolutely.
There were no real search engines and all that jazz.
Yeah, it was pretty weak.
Well, also, it was just, like, you know, text-based browser.
And it wasn't even links, L-Y-N-X, which is another cool program.
We'll actually, we'll talk about those two next.
It was W3M, which was, like, I think it was, like, the world's first text web browser.
And, oh, boy, did it suck.
Like, what it used to do is you used to, like, it used to render the web page.
And I believe, if I remember correctly, after every link, you would get a little number.
And it would prompt you for what number you want to enter, and you would follow that link.
Really?
I want to go to link number three, enter, and it would take you to link number three, and you would follow it.
That's actually kind of cool.
Oh, God, it was painful.
It was just, I wanted to gouge my eyes out afterwards.
So you got back on the IRC.
Yeah, I got back on the IRC.
I remember IRC.
I remember IRC when it was cool.
People used it, and there was no porn bots.
Well, there were porn bots, but they didn't attack you as much.
Hey, since we're talking about text web browsers, if you're ever stuck in a text client,
there's two major ones out there.
For the old school ones, there's L-Y-N-X, which is links.
That's how you pronounce it, like in a cat.
And then there's links, which is spelled L-I-N-K-S.
And one of the major problems with the L-Y version of links is it doesn't render tables,
and there's some odd support.
It doesn't format stuff correctly, and it's not as pretty.
Links L-I solves all of that.
It's literally a much better text browser than the other links, L-Y.
Boy, they're just making it hard to compare people when you're talking about it.
Yeah, links is better than links, but I wouldn't use links for this because links can't do that,
but the other links can.
That's absolutely right.
I mean, I've always used the L-Y version when I was in a real bind,
but usually it was just to get the address so that I knew what the W you get.
So other than that, it's, I mean, when you get down to it, if you're using a text browser,
it's because you're more or less in a situation where something's not entirely done
or you're really hurting for resources or something like that.
So, you know, of course it's not going to do the fancy JavaScript and all that jazz,
but that's not what you're looking for at that specific moment in time.
Well, actually, one of Strom and I's friends uses it all the time because he's blind
and he has a screen reader, and links works perfectly for him.
I didn't mean that's an excellent use for it.
Yes, no.
We have two or three people who are blind, and they all use links because it's just a whole lot easier to use.
And they can't see either.
Mm-hmm.
They can't see it.
And actually, they can't use, the links that they use is L, Y, and X, by the way.
And I don't think they can use the L, I, and K, S version.
Oh, God, I can't believe they're making, I sound like a damn fool when I'm saying this,
is just for odd reasons.
I forget why.
But, like, you know, L, I, and K, S, just, they, if you look at it and you compare it between versions,
you bring up two consoles and you run links on one and the other links on the other,
and you just compare them, you can see the L, I, and K, S version is just so much better.
L, I, and K, S version.
God, it sounds so stupid when I say that.
They should name it.
And there's also another program out there which is based on L, I, and K, S.
It's called eLinks.
And it's slightly improved.
I guess the E stands for extra.
They should call it X-Links.
Of course, that would actually probably mean it.
We're talking about X.
Yeah.
GIMP.
GIMP is another thing.
GIMP is an excellent program.
You know, I use it mostly.
GIMP is really the program that's supposed to be the more or less equivalent of Photoshop,
but for the Linux environment.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, I've used Photoshop for a while.
And for me to move over to GIMP, I mean, it was a little tough.
Some of the things are different.
But one thing that GIMP does that I really like, that Photoshop just doesn't really handle
that well, is you can make really cool text with gradients.
There's a lot more choices in gradients.
There are a couple of features that Photoshop just simply doesn't have.
And, of course, it's the other way around.
There are a couple of filters and stuff that GIMP doesn't have.
But since GIMP is open source, most people are just developing whatever it is they need.
You know, a quick Google search away, and you can find whatever it is you wanted to do
in Photoshop and how to do it in GIMP.
I mean, have you had any experience with GIMP?
Oh, I use GIMP all the time.
And I just use it for basic photo editing stuff, nothing too hardcore.
Because, I mean, I'm trying to think.
I know they have a lot of similar tools.
It's just, I mean, the layout is different.
And it takes some getting used to if you're used to Photoshop.
But, I mean, it runs nice and quick, you know.
It definitely renders a lot of things much faster than Photoshop does.
And I don't know if that's an operating system issue, like that's actual GIMP versus Photoshop.
But I know certain filters can take forever in Photoshop that you can get done pretty quick in GIMP.
Well, for those of you, you're saying that it takes a lot of stuff to get used to Photoshop versus GIMP.
There's actually, I don't know if it's like a fork or a program or just a bunch of different configurations you can use.
It's called GIMP Shop.
And what someone did is basically they took all the GIMP menus and everything and how everything works.
And they converted it all over to exactly the way Photoshop works.
That's cool.
Yeah, it is really cool.
And people who are trying to get used to, like, you know, GIMP over Photoshop are saying it's the best thing since PlaySprat.
Of course, there's a lot of GIMP diehards out there, the software jockeys that are going,
GIMP, you're ruining the GIMP user experience and stuff.
But literally, they are saying that.
I mean, I always thought it was a great thing.
And then I hear people that are actually complaining about it.
And I'm going, come on.
Don't use it if you don't like it.
Well, not even that.
I mean, you're getting your program out to more people.
Yes, it looks kind of different, but you're just expanding your usability.
I mean, if more people are using it, you know, so be it.
Bring it on over.
If you want to go pervert, I don't care if you're perverting my code.
If more people use it and I can help more people, go right ahead.
Some programmers' egos are larger than the others'.
I'm sort of like the Gandhi of programmers, I guess.
The Gandhi of programmers.
Yeah, I'm kind of going bald and everything, too, so that'll kind of work out.
That's just because you're old.
No, I am old.
Well, I'm not as old as Stank or Not Theory.
I'm like, I think I'm like number three in the line or so of the DDP members.
But I am up there.
Next program.
It's a program that I use.
Have you ever heard of this, UltraEdit32, Zygman?
No, I've never used UltraEdit32.
It's called UltraEdit32, but it's still, everyone refers to it as UltraEdit,
and it's available at UltraEdit.com or just Google UltraEdit.
It's a tech setter for Windows, and it is just very well designed.
And it's, I've been using it since about, I'll say like 99 or so,
and it's just, every version he comes out with, it's worth the upgrade.
It's worth just sending like, it's shareware, this is actually, it's not open source, it's not free.
But his prices are very reasonable, and every time he comes out with an upgrade, it is just worth it.
I mean, I, when I find out there's an upgrade, I, you know, find out to when I can afford it.
I mean, it's not, oh my God, I need to fork over my credit card right now.
But at the same point, it's worth the money that he charges for it.
And it's just, and it has, it's a text editor, and it's just very well done,
and it has syntax highlighting, and it understands all kinds of programming,
all kinds of programming languages, and highlights all the text,
and it can understand, you know, if statements, and it has tab spacing,
and, you know, you can like fire it up in HTML mode or C mode, and it has all kinds of buttons.
It's, it's, it's, it's, basically, it's just a very well-written text editor for, for Windows.
Are you saying that it's a lot like KWrite in the sense that it has syntax highlighting
and a lot of features like that?
I guess you could say that.
I, I've never actually used KWrite.
KWrite, as long as we talk about text editors, I mean, KWrite is another really good one for Linux
that has syntax highlighting, and it can understand your, your spacing, and all that cool stuff.
But, um, it's not quite as powerful as, uh, as KWord, which is from, uh, the OpenOffice suite,
which is basically Office for free.
OpenOffice or KOffice?
Uh, I think I'm talking about it.
There's a difference, remember.
I, I believe, if it's, if it's the one written for KDE, it's, it's, it's, it's KOffice.
Then I'm talking about KOffice.
Yes.
And the whole KOffice suite, which is a, a cool way of going about it.
But, uh, yeah, KWrite, I guess, would be almost on par with, uh, UltraEdit,
but, because I'm getting the feeling that UltraEdit has a lot more functionality to it,
you know, a lot prettier, like centering and tables and things like that.
I wouldn't go that far.
No, not quite?
No, no, it's just very much a, it's a, it's a straight up text editor.
Which is always very useful.
It's always very useful, and, uh, one of the cool things is that it, it throws itself into a context menu,
so when you right click something, it'll pop up and say, UltraEdit 32, and you bring it up,
and it's just, no matter what it is, and it's also a built-in hex editor, too.
Awesome.
Oh, yeah, it's great, and it's all, like, you know, it's sensitive to realize when it's editing text
and when it's editing a binary file.
So, it's, it's handy, it really is.
If nothing else, just for the hex editing, uh, capabilities that it has.
Yeah, I don't know if there's any, like, you know, decent free text editor, um, sorry,
decent free hex editors out there for Windows.
Well, besides debug, because everyone has debug, but debug is a bit, debug is a bit hairy, how can we say?
Um, that's to put it lightly.
Yeah.
Well, actually, we, we should, like, you know, toss this right after GIMP,
but let's go, um, talk about, uh, Adobe Illustrator.
Now, Adobe Illustrator is, it's, it's not as much as a photo editor as it is a, you know, design program.
Like, you can lay out, like, graphic editing, and, you know, you can't do, like, you know, drawings on it and everything,
but it's, it's just very handy for, like, designing your own graphics for a website or anything,
and I, I bought a copy of it used at the MIT flea, and I'm not sure if I should admit to that,
because it's probably violates Adobe's EULA somewhere, but, um, it's an, it's an old version,
but it works great, and it's solid, and it's just, it's very nice for designing graphics
and making, like, professional-looking stuff.
Like, if, if, if anyone's ever seen a lot of my, um, uh, like, my bell system logos or something,
like, and I, I, I made, like, a bunch of, like, you know, graphics, like, really high-resolution bell system logos,
and, like, Ohio bell and New England telephone logos.
That was all done in Illustrator, and, um, actually, if you go into Venra forums,
I don't even know where the heck it is.
I think it's in Photoshop Contest now.
The Strom Carlson, uh, Illustrator.
Yeah, Strom Carlson did that, Strom Carlson, uh,
did a whole, uh, graphic of him, and he kind of drew it,
because he just got a graphics tablet, and, um, he did this, he did that all in Illustrator,
and he did all the editing, and then what, he was,
it was basically the drawing of him holding a phone and pointing at it and says,
Strom Carlson doesn't want you to be a kitty, and, uh, what I did is I, I took the drawing,
and I, I kind of, you know, I, I used GIMP, and I, I, sort of,
whited out the, uh, doesn't want you to be a kitty, and I, I, you know, fired it up in, uh,
Illustrator, and I wrote in there, you know, wants you to pull his finger.
I, I think I actually started the whole, uh, the whole, uh, Photoshopping it or GIMPing it,
because, uh, I saw it first, and, of course, I had to take it down, and I added that, uh,
he wants you to join a boy band, and put that, yeah, that was, yeah,
I couldn't remember that with you or not, I couldn't.
Yeah, and then I did another one where I actually colored it in, in Photoshop,
which is how much we love Photoshop.
Hmm.
Photoshop stuff.
Yeah.
Um, no, I, I, actually, I will say that I do like Photoshop learning GIMP,
just for the various things you can do with it.
Um, but, hey, do we just own, of course, I don't want to spend,
I don't want to spend $500 on Photoshop, so I use GIMP.
Hmm, well, taking a step off from, uh, all the, uh, the graphic editing tools,
there's also, uh, a really good utility that's used for, uh,
for making, uh, your own CDRs and DVRs and all that jazz,
and that's got to be, I mean, Nero Burning ROM is probably one of the,
Hell yeah, amen.
It's probably one of the easiest graphical interfaces to use.
It has drag and drop, you can play things by double-clicking on them,
you can check everything out, it shows you exactly how much space is left on the disc,
you can save discs, you can do multiple discs.
I mean, everything you could possibly imagine, you could really do with Nero Burning ROM.
Yeah.
It, it's a bit pricey, I think it's like 50 or 70 dollars, 50, 60, 70?
Somewhere around there, I forget what it is.
They do have a free trial, though.
They do have a free trial out there.
Um, and it's really, um, I, I bought it for work, work, work, work buys it,
and I, I use it down there when I have to, because I have to burn some CDs in my job,
so, you know, and they said, oh, well, you know, I, I, I put in my request,
oh, I want this program.
Oh, what can you do with it?
You can burn CDs.
Um, can't you do that with Windows XP?
Yeah, but this is just much better, and I did, I made up this bullshit,
I made up this bullshit excuse of, oh, Windows corrupts CDs a lot,
and Nero does a much better job of that.
Oh, oh, okay, we'll buy this for you.
And it's, it's very much, I, I got to say, it's the Rolls Royce of, of CD-ROM burning programs.
You know what, I think it's free trial is, is one of them,
and I think it's Nero Burning ROM, but I'm not exactly sure,
but it has a really strange trial program.
It works until the end of the month.
So if you install it on, like, the 27th day of the month,
you're only going to get, like, two or three days out of it.
But if you install it in the very beginning of the month,
you get a full usage out of it.
And I think it's Nero that has that strange free trial.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, I got to say, that's pretty funny.
I, I don't know I've never used a free trial.
I've always had a, oh, yes.
If I'm wrong, I'm sorry.
You know, don't listen to me, but, uh, you know.
Yeah.
Blame Dr. Z, but he's finally wrong about something.
Thank God.
Oh, don't go there.
She's not having those home runs episodes anymore.
Um, I don't have to do Nero Burning ROM.
Ethereal.
Ethereal's another fun program.
What Ethereal is, is it's a Ethernet packet sniffer,
and you can actually, it's a little more than just Ethernet packets,
but you can sniff anything.
And it's a graphical user interface cross-platform.
We're back into free programs again, just so you know.
Completely open source.
Yeah, it's just a very well-run program.
Um, you can, like, you know, sniff traffic, save it to a file,
open it up later, look at it as more, tack on some, tack on to it, I believe.
I could be wrong.
Um, and, like, they have, like, all kinds of built-in decoders for traffic.
Like, uh, you can, like, you know, it'll say, oh, this must be, uh, A1's messenger packet.
Here's who it's from.
Here's who it's to.
Here's what the text is.
It's, it's amazing.
And even, like, string.
Mm-hmm.
And, well, and Ethereal also has a really cool little additional program that, uh,
I use it in Linux, but a lot of people don't know about it,
but it's, uh, T-Ethero, or however it's pronounced.
Yeah.
It's the word with T.
Ethereal.
So it's T-Ethero.
Thank you.
All right?
And that, and that just runs in the console, and it'll show you just more or less the kinds
of packets that are going by, and I use that a lot whenever I'm having trouble getting a
network to work.
I'll put something in monitor mode in between, uh, with, uh, T-Ethero, and it'll show me
exactly what's going by in real time in a, in a console environment.
But when you can get to that GUI, I mean, you really can't beat the way Ethereal shows
you everything.
It groups, just like you're saying, and it decodes everything nice and pretty.
You can, you, you can really do a lot with it.
It is the shizzle.
And I've actually, I, I, I, I don't actually know, would it be T-Ethero or T-Ethero?
How about that?
There's a question.
Ooh.
It's got a T in front of it.
I think that's as far as we need to go.
Yeah.
Um, probably because it stands for text.
Ooh.
Yes, uh, Ethereal's at Ethereal.com, and it's spelled Ethereal, Ethereal.com?
I don't know.
But Google Ethereal, E-T-H-E-R-E-A-L.
And, uh, Nero Burning ROM is, uh, available at, uh, Nero.com, I believe.
I, Nero.com or is it Ahead.com?
Oh, Ahead.com.
I'm sorry.
I'm completely wrong on that one.
Ahead.com.
Oh, so I was right.
Yes, you were right.
Well, you, you, you could be right too, but I'd just like to point out the fact you were
wrong once.
Okay.
And if you can't find an illustrator, you know, sorry, you, you, you, you, you lose at the interweb.
Yeah, at the interweb.
Yeah.
Well, as long as we're talking about, uh, more or less network related programs, uh,
probably one of my favorite programs for Windows, and I have my laptop dual boot, so whenever
I need to get into it, I can use this, but it's a program by the name of LookAtLAN, and
it's, uh, L-O-O-K, the at sign, LAN, and you can get it at www.uh, L-O-O-K-A-T, not the
at sign, uh, the A-T-L-A-N.com.
It's made by, uh, Carlos, uh, and I'm going to butcher his last name, but it's M-E-D-A-S,
so I believe that's M-E-D-A-S?
Am I right on that?
M-E-D-A-S.
There you go.
Carlos M-E-D-A-S.
Yeah.
Stuff all over.
Spanish for your story.
Uh, it's graphical, um, it has really fast enumeration of all the different nodes on
a network.
It has OS detection, um, you can use it, you can set up mail traps, or, um, and what a mail
trap will do is if, uh, uh, you can set it up so that if a user goes offline, you'll get
an email to the effect that they got knocked offline, if, uh, anything changes, or any of
the, uh, the ARPs get, uh, uh, you know, if the ARP caches get mixed up, it'll, you
can get it to email you that, uh, there's 300,000 users who use it right now, so it's
a pretty well-tested product, and of course, it's free, so, I mean, you can't really beat
that.
It'll also do port scans if you tell it to, I mean, I really like it.
It's all graphical, you know, you get nice, pretty things to show you, and that's how Windows
works, and you can also export everything over to a report, so.
Is it free?
Because I, um, I, I'm reading it over here, it's got a free trial version.
You know, um, I've never had the free trial of Spire.
Oh.
So, I'm not sure.
Oh, wait a minute, I'm sorry, I'm looking at the wrong thing, hold on for one second.
Oh, no, yeah, Lookout LAN is a freeware product, pardon me, he has, like, Midas, the VNS, I
don't even know what the hell VNS does.
Sounds like some type of strange disease you may get.
I don't know if we want to go to LAN.
Yeah.
Yeah, I got the VNS, shouldn't have gone down to New Orleans.
Actually, it's, shouldn't have gone to Thailand, how about that, that sounds a whole lot better.
That's, no, I don't want to insult New Orleans right now, but Thailand, they're, they're still
fine right now.
They, they got over that tsunami thing.
Bye now.
Yeah.
Actually, since, I don't know the website for this one, but it's, there's a program out
there, since we're talking about, like, you know, sniffing and traps and all kinds of
cool stuff.
One of the programs, I believe we've mentioned on the show before, Cain and Abel, C-A-I-N
and A-B-E-L.
It's, it's a, it's a sniffer, it's a VoIPs capturing, it's, it's, it's, it's literally
a Swiss Army chainsaw of tools.
You, you can get everything in there.
They have, like, you know, SAM password cracking.
It's Windows only, by the way, and I believe Lookatland's also Windows only, I think?
Yes.
Okay.
You can't enable, it's just, I, I don't remember all the stuff it can do.
I haven't actually installed it since I reinstalled my computer, but it's, it's freeware, not
open source, but, it's, it's made by Oxide, right?
Um, yeah, that sounds right.
I think it is made by Oxide.
Yeah, that, that, that, that sounds right.
Lord only knows.
Um, it's, it's, it's, it's a fun program to fool around with, but just don't do it for
evil purposes.
Dun, dun, dun, dun.
They actually just fixed a problem with it.
They came out with a new version, I think it was about a month ago, whenever it was
trying to dump the, uh, I think it's the LSA secrets.
Mm-hmm.
It was crashing in the computer.
Oops.
They fixed that issue, and now it works properly, so now it's, once again, in my, uh, tool kit.
Um, it's really good for citizen administrators just to make sure that all their passwords
are secure.
Yeah, um, oh, since, since we're talking about secure passwords here, we can just sort of
like closely go on tangents here.
Um, another fun program out there is, uh.
Are we going to talk about John now?
Oh, we're going to talk about, uh, John's another good one.
I was actually going to talk about Loftcrack, uh, L-0-P-H-T-C-R-A-K-C-K, C-R-A-C-K, yeah.
Uh, Loftcrack is actually made by the people that formerly were called Aloft, and before
that were called, well, formerly were called Aloft, then they were called At-State.
I believe they were owned by Symantec now.
Um, it's, it's a Windows password cracker, and it's, it's expensive.
Uh, I believe we actually have a license for it at work, but it's, it's amazing, some of
the stuff it can do.
Like, before we started enforcing, this was back in 2000 or so, and I started running it
against our, um, password database.
It literally cracked about half of our users' passwords within us.
Like, you know, you click, crack, and it's like, bam, there's half your passwords right
there, because it just did a, like, really quick dictionary attack on them.
It was just amazing.
And then, within 24 hours, it had 99% of the passwords cracked.
Although, I would like to state for the record, not mine.
For a password.
I, I was very proud.
Um, and I, I don't, I don't believe my, my supervisor either, but my assistant,
supervisor, she, she got cracked.
She got owned.
Owned by the law.
Was it God, was it God, sex, secret, or love?
I think it was one of her children's names.
Oh.
Yeah, it was one of those.
No, no, you're supposed to be smarter than that.
I'm sorry.
Shame on you.
But, um, John the Ripper.
Yeah, you want to talk about that?
Well, John the Ripper is, you know what, I usually use it, even though it is, it is a,
um, a, a password cracker.
Um, I usually use it just to benchmark CPUs.
It has that as a great feature.
But it can, I mean, and I don't remember all the types of encryption, or the types
of hashes that it can, it can run through.
But it runs really well.
It's nice and fast.
It'll really take over a computer, so you gotta be careful about that aspect.
But, you feed it basically, you know, the same way you feed it, you can either give it
dictionary files, you can have it brute force.
And it'll try to crack, uh, you can shadow passwords, passwords with salt, and, uh, mostly
for the Unix environment, things like that.
I don't know if it does Windows passwords.
Do you know about that?
Um, well, John the Ripper just brute forces them, so it's capable of doing it.
I'm not sure if it runs on the Windows platform, though.
Though, I don't, I don't see why not.
Um, actually, what, what, what makes Lostcrack so good is it actually uses a vulnerability
in the, I wouldn't, well, I guess you'd call it a vulnerability.
There's sort of a flaw in one of the, uh, Windows, this is all NT4.
Uh, one of Windows's, NT4 Windows, um, passwords storage thing, and it was just, it was bad.
It could easily crack all of them within brute force, and that's how you could crack most
of them with these 24 hours, so, that, that was one of the problems it had.
But you don't have that vulnerability in current versions of Windows, do you?
I'm trying to think, and I'm not sure.
Someone will tell us.
Someone will email us.
Email us.
Radio at BINROP.com.
All right, do you want to start wrapping up?
I, I think we've covered a lot of, if, if, if we haven't mentioned something, and you
think there's a cool program, or hell, if you just think there's a cool program, and,
you know, we're not talking about it this week, just drop us a line, drop me an IM, I'm
on AIM, uh, Black Ratchet.
Um, do you want to go about your AIM name?
I'm not sure if that's public information.
You know what, I might as well.
Um, my AIM name is, uh, Dr. Big Man, just without the carrot, because, uh, AIM doesn't
like carrots.
Yes.
Oh, oh my God, I can't believe we didn't mention this in housekeeping.
Yeah, actually, for those of you who don't know, um, actually, is this public knowledge yet?
Uh, I believe it is.
You believe it is?
Oh, yeah, you, you're, you're on IRC, so.
Yeah, Sigman is now a proud member of the Digital Dog Pound.
Wow.
Yeah.
Hey, look at that, like, you know, if run hack TV and you get inducted into our evil ceremony,
and my UPS is making a loud beeping noise right now.
It's, it's, it's just that excited for Dr. Sigman.
It's, it's clamoring.
I feel the love.
Yes, a, a, a, a, what is it?
Um, smart UPS 1400 by APC.
That doesn't have a battery.
That's why it's complaining.
Um, yeah, so.
No, but actually, it's really cool.
Um, I'm very, very happy to be afforded the opportunity to, uh, be a member of the Digital
Dog Pound.
Uh, I, I think it's one of the coolest things that's really ever happened to me.
So, uh, I look forward to doing a lot of great projects with the group.
Um, I, it's unfortunate that I don't get to meet all the original members.
But, uh, you know, I, I look forward to doing a lot of great things.
And, uh, I thank you guys, everybody in the DDP for, uh, for the invitation.
And, uh, I'm going to try to work up, work up to the, uh, to the, uh, high expectations
of the Digital Dog Pound.
The high expectations.
There's a laugh.
Oh, I mean, um, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
That's, that's really good.
Might as well ask it.
When, when's Hack TV coming out?
Hack TV should be coming out soon.
And the reason I'm going to say soon is because when I gave a date last time, I stabbed myself
in the foot by doing that.
Um, all the time.
Oh, you, you, you, you did, you did have a, uh, extenuating circumstance with the fact
that you got evacuated over to, uh, I don't even know where the hell you were.
Georgia?
I went to, I went to Georgia, yeah.
But I don't want to use the hurricane as another excuse, even if it is true.
But, uh, we're just going to record the intros, and then it should be all done.
All the segments are put together.
Um, I'm waiting on a couple of people just to approve the, uh, segments that they submitted,
because that was always a deal of mine, that you'll approve it before I use it.
And, uh, it's going to be real soon.
I, I, I promise it's going to be really soon.
Unless there's another hurricane, Lord only knows.
Even if there's another hurricane, I'll tell you what, I will grab my computer with me
to wherever I have to go and make sure it gets done.
They'll go to, they'll go to the Superdome and go, do a Hack TV.
Hack TV, Superdome edition.
On the road.
On the road with Zygmunt.
Oh, yeah.
I, I can see, like, Zygmunt on the, on the chopper cruising down the highway with, like,
a bandana.
And he's got, like, a CPU, like, strapped to the back of the motorcycle.
That's right.
That's, that's exactly what it is.
And it says, uh, free clog on it or something like that.
Yeah.
O, O, S, S, for Eva.
Anyway, announcements.
Um, been around 508 at the Framingham Borders this Friday.
Uh, I'm going to try to be there.
I'm not sure if, uh, Namaskat's going to be there.
I'm not even sure how to pronounce his name, to be honest with you.
Um, the meeting, I think, starts at 6, but I don't think I'll be able to make it out there
at 7.
And I'm not even sure if I can make it at all.
So, you know, who, who knows?
Who knows?
Um, you, does, is 5-6-1 this week?
5-6-1 is meeting this week at, uh, Panera Bread, which is, uh, on Yamato.
That's the BinRev 5-6-1, which is our Florida little chapter.
Um, it's going to be that Panera Bread, as I said, it's going to be right near Yamato.
Uh, it's Yamato and Federal.
So, so for anybody who knows it, uh, we're moving it there.
Because that way we have more space and we have free Wi-Fi.
So, uh, come and check us out there.
Uh, I'm trying to drag, uh, one of my professors from my programming course to come down and,
and really help me out with the presentation.
Because, um, she's going to really, she's really knowledgeable about it.
And I'll also ask the TA if you'd be willing to come.
And, uh, both of them said they'd like to, but neither are committed.
So, hopefully they'll make it.
Um, you're going to have my presentation on buffer overflows.
Hopefully we'll have, uh, some sample code for, uh, SQL injection.
We'll show off more than just the 1 equals 1.
And, uh, we'll show maybe dumping the database, things like that, and with really vulnerable scripts,
and how you can try to enumerate what the database looks like, and how to structure your queries.
And, uh, yeah, that should be a lot of fun.
So, come and join us for Binware 5.6.1.
Yay, 5.6.1.
Um, hey, since you're talking, how about your shouts?
Uh, sure.
I'd like to give a shout-out to the DDP, of course, for giving me the chance to join them.
Uh, I really look forward to it.
Thanks again, guys.
I feel the love.
Um, it's Booter's birthday, or his birthday was yesterday, so happy birthday to Booter.
Hey, Booter!
Yeah.
Hack and Slash got it at 34 on his DCT.
So, uh, the baby member, the DDP, he is doing well in school.
We're all proud of him.
Is, is, is that, is that good?
I don't know.
Um, yeah, it actually is.
It's really good.
It's an excellent score.
What, what's, what's, what's the, what's the scale on?
Uh, you know, I don't remember the exact scale.
So, I, I don't remember the exact scale, but I know, I know when I took them in seventh
grade for the Duke Talent Identification Program, I scored a 28.
So, and that was supposed to be really good for the time.
So, I'm guessing the 34 is, like, really awesome.
So, I'm guessing that it's good, and we're going to let it go as if it was really good.
So, good job, Hack and Slash.
Yay, Hack and Slash.
Um, I want to thank RM Pants.
Uh, he helped me out with some great curl scripts for the asterisk that I was working on.
And, uh, same thing with Logosex, he helped me out with some database assistance, which
was always cool.
And, uh, that's going to be my shout.
Thanks, guys.
How about you?
Um, shout, shout, shout, shout for you for doing this on, on kind of short notice, because
like I said, the whole curveball and the slapdash thing, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Um, so, uh, shout, shout, shout, for whatever he's studying for.
I'm not even completely sure.
Um, yeah, that's about it.
Um, it's a whole lot easier to have shouts when you're, like, only on, like, once every
month or so.
When you do it every week, it just kind of, oh, shout, shout, uh, there.
Shout, shout, shout, to Stank.
And, um, I'm going to send shout, shout, to a special somebody.
Um, I'm pretty sure I'm never going to listen to the show, but, you know, he knows who he
is.
Um, he had a big day today.
Um, well, big day today on Monday.
So, you know, shout, shout, shout, to him.
Um, shout, shout, to him, definitely.
Exactly.
Um, side of the week.
Uh, DefaultRadio.com.
They actually released episode 40 this week on November 11th, or last week in this case.
Um.
At 1111.
And then they crashed.
And then they had to restart, like, 1141 or something.
You know, I don't think everybody gets that joke about why they did it at 1111.
Do you know about that?
Well, that's, that's, that's Default Radio's thing, 1111.
That's email.
A lot of people I don't think need that, so they're going to throw that out there.
Hmm.
Um.
Email.
Radio at BinRev.com, as always, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Uh, email us if you think you've made, you know, like I said, you know, if there's a program
that we missed, or if there's a program that you like, uh, toss it back up here.
We may have another, we may just not put it on immediately, but if we have another one
of these shows, we'll go toss it out there, and we'll go figure it out, and I'll go play
it.
And I always like finding a new program, don't you?
Uh, absolutely.
Always nice.
Um, closing music, I'm, speaking of butchering last names, Joe Redifer, I guess that's kind
of how you pronounce it.
I think that's right.
Yeah, it's at the Metroid Hemroid Remix from, uh, ocremix.org.
Yeah, I, I just, I, the song's okay, but I just, I just wanted to say that was the, uh,
that was the, uh, song tonight, so that's why, that's why it won, it had a snazzy title.
Um, so, as always, see you next week, Same Hack Time.
Same Hack Channel.
See you next week, Same Hack Time.
Same Hack Time.
Thank you.