This is dedicated to all the hackers and the crackers, to the hackers and the crackers.
I see in binary, I speak source code, step on my toes, I'll post a million jpegs of you
in a fag pose.
In your digital stance, getting firewalled ho, cause I'm riding the net in my six foe.
I was a dick with my 56, now with my cable I'm able to get that stable.
On the out, my name is Ace and I'm a Leo. On the digital highway, my name is Neo and I'm a hero.
In a flash, I'll screw you on burning dreamcast. You need some ISO? Let me through my hard drive rifle.
Our exchange, you could never stifle. In a digital hug, you just caught the love bug.
I bootlegged your CD, I caused a fight between Un and Jay-Z.
Your CG, it's all gonna be free, whether we take it by force or we take it nicely.
You feel that rattle in your bones? When I tell you we just hacked out Jones?
And NASDAQ leaves 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 criminals.
Serial code, source code, ISO, RAM, SIP.
Hello and welcome to Binary Evolution Radio episode number 126 for, what is today, the 13th of December 2005.
You even wrote it in the show notes, I mean, jeez.
Yeah, well I wasn't looking at it at the time.
Well, you normally say, oh, you don't write it in the show notes, I don't know what date it is.
It's right there.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
You can't complain about anything.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
I wrote the damn show notes, okay?
Why are you complaining?
Because you didn't remember what the damn date it is, and you wrote it.
Oh, Christ.
Hey guys, we have a radio show.
Oh, shit.
Welcome to you.
Okay, take two, ready to go.
Welcome to you.
Two.
Welcome to Binary Revolution Radio episode number 126 for 13th of December 2005.
I'm Strom Carlson.
I'm Black Ratchet.
And I am MC Squared.
Oh, yeah, we're going to do our, oh, gangster names, or, oh, shit, what the.
Oh, yeah, our uber elite blogger, podcaster, nerdcore.
Nerdcore handle, yeah.
Yeah, I was going to be MC Phonelot.
Yeah, I'm Rick Octol.
Excellent.
Actually, I'm really Droops.
Yes.
And I'm very happy to be here.
Yeah, I'm Droops' wife's husband.
And because my wife is so hot, I get to follow Lance James in arguably one of the best Bin
Rev shows ever.
Christ, everyone's talking, I haven't listened to the BinRev show lately, because my iPod's
like next to dead.
And I just, everyone says it's like kicked ass, and I wasn't there, and I'm very sad.
Well.
But I got a house out of the deal, so fuck you all.
Yeah, so, yeah, housekeeping ratchet is back from signing house paperwork.
Almost done with the signing.
I just sort of do signing a little, a little more, but.
Last hurdle.
Yeah.
So, everyone listening, we are streaming live, and tonight is a really awesome topic.
We're talking about new media versus old media.
So, we're kind of talking about blogs and podcasts versus traditional news and print media.
And it's going to probably be a very lively debate after we get through the email and stuff.
I thought we were talking about beer.
Were we?
Yeah.
I mean, that's where I brought my beer.
I mean, Droops had his Jim Bean, and I got my beer.
I think we were just going to drink a lot of beer and not talk about it.
Oh, well, let me grab some Corona.
Corona is out mainstream.
Hey, it's Southern California.
Yeah, true.
So, but yeah, take down this number if you want to call us toll-free within the U.S., 800-732-0442.
Again, 800-732-0442.
Or if you're calling from outside the U.S., it's country code 1-213-415-1047.
So, should we give anything else to talk about?
Oh, actually, well, first I'd just like to do a nice hearty congratulations to Droops, who's now a proud DDP member.
Woo!
Oh, yes.
Congratulations, Droops.
Well, thank you all, fellas.
Yeah, we'll also send shouts out to Locosex, who also was inducted.
We took him down to the basement.
We broke out the paddle.
See, what's funny is Stank told me, like, I had to do favors for him, you know?
And, like, at every con I've seen him at, I do that.
What kind of favors?
Well, you know.
Are we talking something obscenely biological, or?
Well, there was some plastic involved, but, uh.
Hmm.
On the next, Touched by an Angel.
Where did an angel touch you?
Right there.
Oh, man.
Ah, Family Guy.
Shouts to Family Guy.
We'll just send shouts out really early.
Yeah, and even though I co-host the radio show, I'm still kind of sitting here on the sidelines, not in the DDP yet.
So.
And you would be, like, the guy to give him sexual favors.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I've offered many times, but.
I really don't want to picture that.
Because Strom already admitted this evening that he masturbates three times a day.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we're just breaking all the taboos.
We're talking about alcohol.
I'm watching porn right now.
She's just watching porn.
Yeah, there we go.
Yeah.
Shout out to Jenna Davidson.
I tell our 12-year-old listeners out there.
We're some 12-year-old listeners, so special shouts out to you guys.
We're just, like, deflowering your poor virgin ears.
Yeah, just so everyone knows, cigarettes and porn are bad until you're 18, and alcohol is bad until you're 21.
But after that, they turn into magically cool things.
Hell yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, okay, before we go into further debauchery, let's go into the email.
How about that?
Sounds like a plan to me.
Hey, when someone calls the phone number, is Dr. Zygmunt screening?
Yeah, Dr. Zygmunt is screening tonight, and I tested him, and his audio levels sound good.
Sorry, it was like a surprise email thing, and I couldn't stop it while you continued talking, so...
He just couldn't stop it.
It was horrible.
Ah!
The humanity!
What's our first email tonight there, Strom?
Our first email is...
Hello, Ratchet and Strom.
And troops.
And troops, yes.
Your show kicks ass.
Thanks for the tip on SJPhone a couple weeks ago.
It works pretty well, and beats paying for the X10 version.
On to my hacking story.
I'm currently working with Ultima Linux Slackware to create a turnkey asterisk PBX mini-server install to be released under the GPL.
I would like to include the scripts written by Ratchet.
The idea is to release a full-blown Ultima-based PBX that can run from a USB pen drive, compact flash, or hard disk, remaining under 256 megabytes total size.
I know it's a big challenge, but I'm already close to accomplishing my goal.
Ratchet's scripts would be a fun add-on.
Please let me know if I can add them.
Thank you, DarkSource.
Didn't you GPL those, Ratchet?
I don't think it's actually stated in the code, so I guess that could be a mistake to make.
But, yeah, technically I'm not even sure if I want to release some GPL.
I might be much more into just sort of public domaining them, say, well, you know, whatever.
Whatever you want to do with them, okay.
Actually, something that just got brought to my attention is the scripts are not usable with Festival as a TTS.
You need to have the Cepstrol.
Is that how you pronounce it?
I forget how you pronounce it.
I think it's Cepstrol.
I think they call it Cepstrol.
Yeah, Cepstrol.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, jeez.
They're going to talk about that in my personal hacking story.
I found out some bad things today.
Yeah, but Cepstrol is what you need to do.
Anyway, I think it should be easy to change it over, but you need to code it up.
So, just buy Cepstrol.
Cepstrol is cool.
I like them, and their voices kick ass, but you have to pay for them.
I only want like $20 or $30 or something.
Yeah, I think it's like $30.
Cheap, cheap, cheap.
Yeah.
Our next email.
Dear Ratchet and Strong, I've just finished listening to episode number 125.
I'm left with questions regarding the how and who of phishing.
Can you give me any tips on just who to scam and how I should go about doing it?
I was thinking of scamming rich old people.
They were so gullible.
Do old people use computers?
If so, would it be best to put up a website or send emails?
I'm looking forward to a career as a professional con man.
I would appreciate tips from pros like yourselves.
Thanks, and the name has been omitted to protect the noobs.
My response is, I think you completely missed the point of the show, and you need to grow
the fuck up.
Yeah, that's pretty noobish, and really, phishers are the scum of the internet.
You just don't want to do that.
I can't tell if this was in jest or, I'm hoping it was in jest.
Lord knows what the hell happened in the show.
I wasn't there, but you could be doing all kinds of evil things, talking about how to
hacksaw people and how to drop docks and own stuff.
I think you need to buy Lance James' book and then see what he's trying to do to stop
people and then try to do other things.
Yeah.
If you really want to be a professional con man.
If you want to be a professional con man, you should buy 50 copies of Lance James' book.
At least 50.
Yeah, because, you know, you're going to be making so many notes on them that you're
going to want extra copies just in case.
I mean, it's just going to wear through that book.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, the paper is such low quality that, you know.
How to protect my cornhole in prison.
By Strom Carlson.
No.
I've never been to prison.
Actually, can I read the last email because this is something interesting.
Yeah, go ahead and read it.
Okay, this is from LXC.
Hey, what's up?
I listen to your show every week.
I had a few questions.
What happened with Freak Factor?
I heard the box die or something.
When will it be back?
I really enjoyed that show.
It was one of the few shows I could fall asleep to, and I mean in a good way.
It was soothing to listen to.
I tried to fall asleep to BinRev and wound up waking up to Snake Dog's room and got Best
by.
Also, what's the status for the coder?
Any way I can help?
I think Not Theory discussed what was up with Freak Factor in, what was it, 124?
Yeah, I think so.
The show and tell in 124, we put him right on the hot spot about Bell's Mind and Freak
Factor and all the other stuff he's been promising to do, and he did a good job defending himself.
I think Freak Factor right now is still shooting to start after the new year.
Of course, that probably means in Not Theory time, that isn't starting until after February.
Now, as for your second question, regarding a certain person named a coder, this was emailed
last week, and I had to talk to Snake Dog about this to find out certain things and what we
could release to public.
We're basically going to say he's out, he's served his time, and he's laying low.
And basically, we would all like to request everybody to leave him alone, and he'll make
himself known if and when he feels ready.
That's all we're really going to say, and don't bother to coder.
Enough said.
All right, so personal hacking stories.
Yeah, we got like no email this week.
Yeah.
Email us, people.
Radio at BinRev.com.
It's in the goddamn jingle.
Of course, it's all vocoder, so you can't really understand it.
Yeah.
But we even announced it at the end of the show.
And like, maybe they can't understand English.
Maybe all of our listeners are like Lassian immigrants who only speak Russian.
Yeah, don't speak English.
Oh, oh, this is, I guess you could, I don't know, I guess you could say, we'll just sort
of segue into personal hacking stories.
I'll start off.
Our Frapper map hit 100 people.
Not actually, this actually happened yesterday.
I'm curious what happened lately.
I'm sure if more people hit it, but we hit 100 people, mostly within the US-48, some within
Canada, a lot of people in Europe, a little bit surprised, and one lone person in Hawaii.
I forget his handle.
We have it right in front of us.
You can, you can.
I don't, I don't have the link in front of me.
Oh, well, let me pull it up.
Yeah, so, yeah, that was cool.
So, here it comes.
Oh.
One of the three people that's in Australia is a guy named Yalsab, I don't know how to
pronounce it, and he is rewriting the Hacker Media website as we speak.
Cool.
The guy in Hawaii is R4ND, so Rand?
I gotta guess.
Hey, there's somebody.
There's somebody in Bombay.
Bombay, India.
Cool.
The Electron and the Switch.
What's up with GDB Hack Radio?
I can't see how many people are actually listening to the show at this moment.
I owned it.
Oh, you owned it?
Yeah, I owned it.
Oh, ho, ho.
Well, anyway, so, are we still at 100?
Because I can't type the damn URL out.
Yeah, we're at 113.
113.
113?
Well, I don't know, but that's not like since, like, yesterday.
Or the day before, we were at 100, so we're still moving on up to the east side.
I'm still waiting for somebody from Mississippi to post other than me.
Because there's no hacking scene in Mississippi.
What are you talking about?
Well, I have to pay extra to have electricity 24-7.
That might have something to do with it.
You're shitting me, right?
Yeah, I'm shitting you, man.
Oh, okay.
All you guys have is, like, iced tea with, like, too much sugar in it, and collard greens.
Collard greens?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, it's like, I don't know, mint juleps, too.
I love a mint julep.
I've never had one.
For, like, two years, I had a mint plant.
Wherever I went, it went with me.
That's kind of weird.
Don't you have a flask?
What?
Don't you have a flask that you constantly carry around with you?
Well, I mean, I carry some liquor on me.
Well, there's nothing wrong with that.
Nightlord said Mississippi rules in the IRC channel, so.
Awesome.
I guess you have some kindred spirit somewhere.
Yeah, I think he's just wrong.
I thought he was in Ohio.
Yeah, probably.
This is the drinking episode of BinRev Radio, apparently.
We're talking about mint juleps and beer and Jim Bean and Corona.
You know?
And if anyone wonders what a mint julep is, it's, like, a whole glass full of ice and whiskey,
and then they put some sugar water in it with, like, a mint leaf.
Anyway, they're very strong.
Very good.
That's out for you.
I have to try one.
Getting good and drunk quick.
Yeah.
Anyway, my personal hacking is, I don't really have much for the hacking stories, actually.
I haven't been doing much.
I've been doing Christmas stuff.
Actually, my one story is, apparently, when I redid my server, I lost my Cepstral license
key, and I can't find it anywhere, and I think I'm going to have to rebuy another license
key.
And that makes me very, very sad.
Well, I mean, you could just pretend and just, you know, please register me.
I think I want to try to email them, but they have absolutely nothing on their website about
lost license keys.
And I'm probably going to just have them go hat in hand and say, I lost my license key.
Here's my email address.
Could you please, you know, send me another one?
And it sounds really, really pathetic.
Yeah, but that just, we love Cepstral, and we hate Cepstral.
No, Cepstral is a great company.
It was just my own stupidity.
Oh, okay.
And it installs in Slash Opt, out of all places.
So that's something that I did not back up.
We need the Ha Ha, You're a Noob song, or something.
If any of you aspiring composers out there want to compose a Ha Ha, You're a Noob jingle,
then I can have it on my soundboard.
Actually, I can do the soundboard now, because I have a full asterisk box.
It's amazing.
Ooh, oh, is that back up now?
Actually, well, it can be up, but I didn't have it hooked up right now.
Oh, okay.
Otherwise, we'd be hearing Stank Dog right now.
Strom, what have you been doing?
I've been doing final exams.
I haven't been doing much hacking, really.
Yes, I know that feeling.
But I'm drinking a beer now.
That's always a plus.
Yes.
Droops.
Well, man, I have been doing all kinds of mess.
And we just got another Infenomicon TV out the other day.
Is this you?
What's that?
Go ahead.
Oh, and I'm working on the Bubba Hacks Christmas special,
which should be released either the day before Christmas or Christmas Day
as a Christmas gift to everyone if you like Bubba Hacks.
And if you don't like them, then don't worry about it.
And we're also...
Oh, go ahead.
Oh, go ahead, man.
No, personally, I can say that I don't know who Bubba Hacks is
because I really don't pay attention.
Well, you should watch Infenomicon TV.
Yeah, I mean, I have all the stuff downloaded,
but I just...
I've been falling asleep on the bus for, like, the past, like, month,
and that's normally where I watch all of my stuff.
And I've never actually watched Infenomicon.
Hell, I haven't even watched Hack TV 3 yet.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm a noob.
Noob, noob, noob, noob.
And this is, like, the independent media show.
And, like, you're not even paying attention.
I listen to radio shows because, like...
Well, not lately because my iPod died, like, yesterday.
That's my other hack story.
Well, hell, I should talk.
I'm, like, I didn't even listen to this radio show
before I agreed to co-host it.
Well, I mean, I listen to...
I listen to...
I listen to twat.
Which actually reminds me, I need to go make an episode.
You need to go make a twat.
Yeah, I need to go make one.
Let's do a twat.
Twats are fun.
Yeah, no, they're fun.
I'm going to...
I actually shouldn't...
I shouldn't say it out loud.
I'm not going to flip my topic out early.
Just keep everyone guessing.
It's going to be phone-freaking-related.
How about that?
And, uh, we've been working on our Linux distribution a lot.
Me and Mr. Nightlord have been working on that.
And, uh, Nightlord set us up a gallery today at infinomicon.org
for us to post funny pictures and whatever else we have.
And people have been sending us all kinds of good stuff,
and we're going to put it up there.
Because even though the show has died, people seem to like it still.
Don't losers.
I know.
And we're coming out with a Christmas episode of the radio show, too,
which should be out pretty soon.
Is, uh...
Oh, shoot.
What is it?
Um, can't remember his name.
Obfuscated.
Going to be there?
No, no.
Ah, shucks.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Yeah, I'm looking for the return of Obfuscated.
I tried to get in touch with him to, uh...
You know, come on this show with us.
Or at least call in, but I couldn't get in touch with him.
Oh, see?
He lost his chance to make the triumphant return to the hacking scene.
Yeah.
And it's just sad.
Just sad, just sad.
It's a sad day.
Awesome.
Mm-hmm.
And I've been learning about PBXs and asterisks and all that mess.
Some people think it's cool.
I don't know.
Oh, God.
Who uses asterisks?
This place sucks.
Program.
Who wants to use that?
Yeah, that stupid PBX thing.
Who would want a PBX?
I don't know.
And you know...
You can use something that's Windows-based.
Exactly.
Next thing you know, people are going to be running asterisk on Gen 2 and using VoIP with it.
And thus, the trifecta is completed.
We have mentioned iPods, VoIP, and Gen 2 all in the episode.
Yeah, the running joke is that I think every episode is only about iPod, Gen 2, and asterisk.
For those of you who haven't been paying attention to every previous episode, except for last week, because I wasn't here.
Yeah.
Actually, I think...
I'm not entirely sure on this one, but I think last week we did not mention either iPod or Gen 2.
Shame on you.
I think we mentioned asterisk, but we didn't mention either iPod or Gen 2, so plus one us.
You know, I think that you mentioned it, and you said, we always mention this on the show, asterisk and Gen 2.
Did I?
I don't know.
I don't remember now.
Yeah.
Well, either or I'll have to go back and...
No, Ratchet, you haven't listened to it yet.
No, I haven't.
When you listen to it, when you listen to it, you take note of if I mention either of those things.
Okay, I'll be sure to do that.
And you reported to that this week.
I have a field assignment, and I can report about my personal hacking story about how I sat at work and listened to BINREV125.
This is Ratchet Reporting for BINREV News.
This is based on show notes.
That's what you do.
We should have a teletype.
We should have teletypes and hook that up to asterisk, and that's how we can send out the show notes.
Oh, hold on.
I'm getting an update.
One second.
Those things were so badass.
Oh, yeah.
I want a teletype now.
Who doesn't?
In really old Doctor Who episodes, they would have something like that.
And it would be like the latest, greatest space-age technology.
And then it would print out the communications.
Awesome.
We can pioneer TOIP, teletype over IP.
Hell, yeah.
Oh, well, what was it?
It was, um, I was, what did I see when I, it wasn't like one of those old giant, like, World War II teletypes.
But it was a, I was going for a job interview at an ISP.
This was back in 96, 97.
Yikes.
I feel old now.
And I didn't get the job, but he was taking me on a tour, and he was, I just walked right by something, and I didn't really notice what it was until I just snapped my head around and realized that it was a teletype.
And it was just a keyboard, and it had the acoustic coupler on it.
And I was like, wow.
I think it was made by digital, if I'm not mistaken.
So, yeah.
Get it.
Yeah.
Not even a response.
That kind of hurts my feelings.
Ooh, deck.
Oh, my G.
OMG, deck.
Yeah, deck.
Digital equipment corporation.
Okay, so we're just sort of ranting and rambling, although we just sort of, we did sort of squeeze the email in record time.
Yeah.
20 minutes.
Boy, we've got the lot of stuff to fill.
Maybe this will just be an hour episode.
Yeah, well, I mean, we've got a lot of stuff to argue about, so.
True, true.
And hopefully we'll get people calling in.
The number, again, for those of you who aren't calling in, is 800, excuse me, beer.
The number, if you're in the U.S., is 800-732-0442.
Again, that's toll-free, so you have no excuse not to call 800-732-0442.
I think I sounded really creepy when I just said toll-free.
Toll-free!
And if you're calling from...
I'll go get some ice.
I'll be right back.
All right.
And if you're calling from outside the U.S., the number is country code 1-213-415-1047.
I repeat, 1-213-415-1047.
I promise we'll have something easy to remember eventually.
666-BINROVE.
Yes.
Actually, I always think that I should get something in the 666 exchange.
Much like somebody else, but...
I love the 666 exchange.
It's a beautiful place to have a phone number.
Yeah, it's just...
It's like the one that's owned in, like...
It's all owned by a certain Sealec in my area.
Like, is it?
Yeah.
The same Sealec, too.
It's like the old one 666.
And I'm just like, what the fuck?
I can't tell if they just own a thousand block, though, or something.
I don't know.
I can lurk it up for you.
I'm sure it's probably like a SatanCon or something.
SatanCon!
Do-do-do-do!
Please enter your number.
Anyway.
So, calls that are cheap.
All you have to pay is your soul.
Unlimited long distance.
Just your soul.
So, our topic this evening is old media versus new media.
And this topic actually grew out of a conversation I had with somebody, like, a couple weeks ago.
We were talking about the merits of blogging and podcasting versus New York Times and, like, NBC news.
And I must admit that I'm – I don't watch TV at all.
I mean, I haven't owned a TV set in three years, and I don't watch TV news.
The only mainstream media news that I really pay any regular attention to is the CBS radio network.
I listen to KNX here in Los Angeles.
And I read stuff online, but it's through Google News.
And, like, pretty much I just read whatever happens to be relevant at the time.
I don't favor one source over another.
How about you, Ratchet?
Oh, well, I sort of have a mix here.
I do Google News, and I also – I watch my local – I think it's an ABC affiliate, I think.
It's Channel 5 in Boston.
I usually watch that in the morning – or, sorry, in the evening when I'm having my dinner.
But mostly I get a lot of my news through WBZ, which is our local news radio affiliate in Boston.
And I think they're ABC radio news, if I'm not mistaken.
Which is weird because, actually, WBZ-TV is the NBC affiliate, but they still use ABC news for the radio.
Weird.
Yeah, like, what the fuck?
I like the CBS radio news jingle.
Bom, bom, bom, bom, ba, bom.
No.
I forget whatever.
Not trailer, intro, whatever you want to call it.
But anyway, yes, but I go through Google News, and I do frequent a few weblogs and such.
And we have, you know, troops over here, Mr. Internet Media himself.
Is he back from getting ice?
Yes.
Yeah, thank God.
So, Mr. Internet Media yourself, tell us what kind of sources you get your news from.
Well, man, I don't have a television that's hooked up to anything other than my computer.
So that we can watch shows that we've legally downloaded.
Like Desperate Housewives.
You're going to keep a straight face when he says it, so that's just really bad.
You need to work on that before you go through the jury.
I, um, I downloaded it legally.
Well, I spend a lot of time cuddling up with my iPod, and I spend a lot of time listening to radio, like Mississippi Public Broadcasting or BBC Radio.
And I listen to news on that, so I get my local politics, this, that, and the other, from, you know, Mississippi.
And that's all that really matters to me, because I don't really have a voice in things.
And I have a lot of really cool things to talk about whenever you all really want to get into the goodness.
Well, let's get into the history of blogs and podcasting, I guess.
I looked up on Wikipedia and figured, oh, there's got to be some really quick and simple history of blogs and podcasting that I can just pull up and stick in here and read back.
But it was, like, all really self-congratulatory and blah, blah, blah, and very self-aggrandizing and irritatingly smarmy.
So I kind of cut it down a bit.
Much like every media source.
Yes.
Well, I'll get into my problem with the blog thing later.
But anyway, the basic history of blogs is that people, pretty much since the web showed up, have been posting things on web pages.
Like, JWZ's got rants dating back to, like, 1994.
But the term web blog was initially coined in December of 1997.
And the word blog happened in April or May of 1999.
The first, apparently the first, one of the first blogging sites is Zynga.com.
That was launched in 1996.
Really?
That was launched in 96?
Yeah.
That's what Wikipedia claims anyway.
Wow.
Holy cow.
I never knew that.
Yeah.
I thought they were trying to, I thought they were writing, like, live journals code kills.
That's the first time I heard of them.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, by 1997, they had swelled to the enormous number of 100 diaries online.
But now, as of December 2005, they have 50 million.
That can't be right.
Now it says 50 million.
So, anyway, the blog thing kind of apparently exploded in 1999 when Blogger and Grok Soup launched almost simultaneously.
And now there's, like, you know, 300,000 different varieties of blogging management software stuff.
Well, I must say, I'm pretty, I feel pretty good.
The fact that I actually caught on just before the wave hit, what about my web blog?
Because I started right around 1998.
In one way, shape, or form.
It died repeatedly.
Like, but I've had a web blog since 1998.
And I feel cool.
My first one was just...
That doesn't make you cool at all.
It doesn't make you a geek.
Wait, geeks are cool.
Yeah, that makes you a dork.
Dork.
Dorks are cool.
Now this dork can whoop your ass.
I don't know.
I'm a potty mouth tonight.
We're all potty mouth.
It's the beer and the live.
Beer.
Yeah.
Alcohol is bad.
This episode is brought to you by the letter beer.
Remember, kids, beer.
Never too late.
Yes.
Beer.
It's never too late once you're over 21.
And so, anyway, podcasting.
Apparently the idea has been kicked around for a while,
but actual RSS-based Automagic podcast didn't show up until late 2003.
The term podcast was coined in early 2004,
and now it's, like, the hottest thing since sliced bread to have a podcast.
Wouldn't that be toasted bread?
Toasted pre-sliced bread.
Yes, there we go.
Hottest thing since toasted pre-sliced bread.
And toast is hot, so that actually kind of makes sense.
That's what I was saying.
So, I guess, okay, I guess before we start ragging on blogs and podcasts,
I guess let's go over what we like about them.
I mean, for me personally at least, it's, well, why don't you guys give your viewpoints,
and I'll get into mine.
Groups, you can go first.
Sorry, I was shutting my door so I could smoke out my window.
So, but podcasting, I first found out about it after I started my radio show.
And Kizzle, who was running Hacker Media, or came up with Hackermedia.net at the time,
said, hey, y'all should really podcast your show.
And I looked into it, and I listened to some podcasts,
and I was like, these guys are all wimps.
I don't want to be involved with all this.
And so we didn't, and Kizzle started doing it for us.
And then we started getting a lot of hits,
because it's really, really easy to add something to a podcast feed
as compared to go to oldschoolfreak.com every week and download a show.
And that's also bad, because a lot of people add a show to it
and then listen to it once or twice,
and you're still paying for that bandwidth and getting that hit,
even though they're not listening to it anymore.
So it's hard to judge how many hits you're getting.
And I think it's a really handy idea, as in it's easy,
like an RSS feed, because that's what it is.
And I think it's going to get more and more popular than it is even now,
even though they've got, like, the worst people ever for spokesmen.
Who are the spokesmen for?
Well, there's that MTVJ guy.
What's his name?
Adam Curry.
I'm glad that I say I don't know, thank God.
Adam Curry is, like, the god of podcasting of some sort.
Yeah, someone mentioned him to me, like, just now, like earlier today,
and I had no clue who he was.
Even though he doesn't really do it.
He has a show, but he also has, like, a lot of money.
So he can do, like, a daily show, and it doesn't really affect him.
Like the rest of us.
Yeah.
Well, no, I mean, what was interesting was I remember I said,
who is this Adam Curry person?
The person just, like, I was asking went on and on and on and on,
and, like, never gave me any information, so I just kind of resorted to Wikipedia.
Yeah.
There's naked pictures of his wife up on the Internet, if anybody wants to check them out.
Are there?
Yes.
Sweet.
She's, like, some famous hippie singer.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
You mean there's...
That I've never heard of.
Hippies?
I'm shocked, though.
But, yeah, like, yeah, so I guess podcasts are, and blogs are pretty good, in my opinion,
just because...
If you want them, it's easy to get them.
Yeah, if you want them, it's easy to get them, and there are a lot of viewpoints,
which I guess the, quote, mainstream media, unquote, would traditionally ignore.
But I'm going to just launch right now into why I think they suck big time.
Oh, I got that, man.
My major problem with blogs and podcasts is that there's a complete lack of credibility.
I mean, the problem really is that, the way I see it, you know, you go to someone, some blog that you like,
there's, I mean, there's no guarantee that what you're reading is even remotely factual.
You know, they're not, the person isn't going to have to cite their sources all the time,
and it's not like there's hardcore investigative reporting going on.
This is just, like, somebody who blogs on the side.
I mean, there are a couple of good blogs, but for the most part, the ease of entry into the whole blogging and podcasting,
I mean, any schmuck with a computer these days can have a blog and a podcast.
And the ease of entry into blogging and podcasting just means that really among, you know,
if you're trying to find good information out there, no one, I mean, there are so many people who will rave about this blog
or rave about that blog, and every blog has its fanboy, and it's impossible to find out which blogs and podcasts
are the really reputable ones and which ones are just, like, total garbage.
So the problem is that there's so much noise now that drowns out all the signal that it's really impossible to figure out
what's credible and what's not.
You don't know who to believe anymore.
There should be an HTML tag for a blog so that when you search Google, you can, like, exclude blogs when you search.
Well, they're actually thinking about that, I believe.
I believe they were talking about...
I copyrighted that, just so you know.
They were talking about that a while ago, so you lose.
They were talking about just having a way of searching Google without returning blog stuff.
But, you know, I actually kind of like the fact that, well, okay, I sometimes like the fact that it returns blog stuff
because, you know, when I'm searching for something, like, oh, geez, I'm having this problem with my Linux system.
Like, sometimes someone will come up and post a blog saying, oh, hey, this is an issue.
I've had this problem.
Here's the way I fixed it.
And I'm like, oh, okay, let me try that way.
And sure enough, nine times out of ten, it actually fixes it.
But, like, when the SSH Brute Forcers first started coming out, I was going, oh, what the hell is this?
And I Googled and I Googled and I Googled and I couldn't really find anything.
But I finally, you know, I finally found a posting on a security list saying, oh, this looks like it's an SSH Brute Forcer.
You know, here's the code.
You basically explained it all out.
I'm like, oh, okay.
And so I just wrote a, back in the day, I wrote a web blog entry about it.
And I can't, personally, I used the term blog, but I just can't really stand it.
I just think it's a stupid, stupid term.
Oh, it's a horrible term.
I mean, blog.
What kind of, it's so dumb.
It lacks, it doesn't sound official.
It sounds like a blog to me.
It sounds like some slimy thing that you keep in your fridge.
Oh, you don't want to step in.
Yeah, like a, yeah, the slimy thing that's in that Tupperware that you haven't opened since 1997.
That's a blog.
So, but anyway, getting back to my story, I, you know, I posted on my web blog saying, oh, well, geez, I was getting these, you know, funky error messages.
And I included a couple lines of my syslog on there saying, you know, password failed for root, password failed for Joe, password failed for whoever.
And, um, and I said, oh, you know, I researched this and I found this web posting and, you know, full disclosure, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, for a while I actually was, if someone Googled for the, uh, the error message, someone, they get, like, I was number one or number two for a while.
And, you know, I figured that I helped a couple people out and I felt pretty good about myself.
All thanks to the power of web logs.
I mean, the web log thing is, is cool for stuff like that where it's, like, really bizarre, esoteric, and fairly technical information, like, you know, error messages and computer help and whatnot.
You can say, oh, I, I had this problem and I tried this, this fixed it.
But I think the real argument that, that I want to put forth is that blogs are really sucky as, as a way of distributing, you know, more typical news content, current events type stuff.
See, I, I, I don't just, I don't agree with that because, like, there's certain people out there and, I, I, I'm going to go give one of my sites out.
You, you know me, I'm the crazy Republican here.
And, uh, uh, one of my web logs that I view is, uh, michellemalkin.com and she, I, I don't know, I don't even know, I'm pretty sure she must have to do it full time.
But, uh, you know, she, she does pretty good stuff.
I mean, she, she does the news and she does her research and she asks, like, you know, she, she, she, she goes out.
She actually does her work.
And I, I think that's more part of the reason why I actually, you know, view her and actually look at her every day and read her up.
But, uh, with that, I mean, if you actually go out and do your work, you can actually do that as long as you actually provide it in a journalistic manner.
It's, you know, certain people that provide conspiracy theories and crazy shit like that.
And, you know, Bigfoot caused the quake in Indonesia earlier today.
And that, that's, that's a crazy shit.
Well, I think blogs are really handy for getting out information quickly, like breaking news, like the, uh, earthquake in Indonesia or the London bombings in the subway.
You know, there were pictures on blogs hella faster than the news had them.
Yeah, I mean, there were, there were pictures and stuff, but as far as accurate reporting, you know, someone, it's, it's all hearsay.
It's, I mean, well, what do you think real news is?
Well, real news is, yeah, but, but, but the difference is these people are, are employed to at least try and get things correct.
They're employed to try and get, you know, things factually accurate.
And I know that the, the mainstream media has its major flaws because obviously it, they, they focus too much on the sensational and whatnot.
But the problem is that, you know, especially for, for breaking news, a lot of stuff can happen.
And people will post things on blogs.
People, there's a, a huge possibility if people just make stuff up and post on blogs.
And if, if people start trusting blogs as, you know, as accurate and, and useful news sources, if, if, you know, people, where am I going with this?
If people start trusting blogs as accurate, you know, sources of information, it's totally foreseeable that if, you know, that during a major current event, when things are really happening, spur of the moment and happening really quickly.
And there's, you know, there's, you know, there's not a whole lot of time to double check things and it's all happening quicker than you can process it.
There is a huge possibility for complete misinformation to show up and be regarded as fact.
And that's dangerous.
Well, because I think the mainstream media has the same exact problem because, you know, going back to September 11th, I picked up most of my information because I was at work for like the first three hours before they actually sent us home.
But that was kind of disturbing anyway.
Working in a nice tall building, I did.
But I picked up most of my stuff through weblogs.
Weblogs, I think most of my news sources were Fark.com, who was under really heavy load.
Slash.com was intermittently responded all day.
But I think a good portion of my stuff came from the Hard Forums General Mayhem forum, which is just absolutely insane, in my opinion, now that I think about it.
But people over there were just posting saying, well, you know, I heard this.
This is what happened.
You know, I'm looking at it right now.
There seems to be some slight issues with it.
And, you know, there was some misinformation on there.
Someone posted that, oh, geez, I heard a car bomb went off at the State Department.
And, you know, it was hanging out there for a good, like, 15 minutes.
But then someone posted on, I work about two blocks away, and everything's fine.
The main problem is the Pentagon.
So, I mean, there's stuff out there.
And I believe it actually is.
It's more of what you have to consider what's trustworthy.
You have to make that decision.
I mean, I was going on September 11th.
I was just, you know, I was taking everything with a large grain of salt.
Unless, you know, there's someone, a person could post saying, oh, geez, I'm right at this, you know, I'm right at the face of the building.
And there are, you know, evil people coming out and shooting people.
And you can post that.
This guy actually might be in, you know, southern Indonesia for all I know.
But, you know, you could actually post that and say that.
But you just got to take it with a, you know, healthy grain of salt.
But, you know, a lot of these people were actually just coming out and just posting and trying to get information out.
On this topic, we have Javatar on the line.
Are you there, Javatar?
Hello.
Well, you have to do a great blog and everything and all that good stuff.
Well, blogs basically do blow.
I mean, you got to be educated enough to do a little bit of research.
But what I did want to say was that as a complete and utter noob, been in computers for about a year, the podcasts have been just a great thing for me.
I'm back in school at fucking 32 years old.
And being able to hook up with guys like, you know, on the IRC chat room in the free node, the InfoNomicon guys.
Hell yeah.
Just been able to point me in directions and, you know, waste a whole lot of time reading white papers and just learning way more on a computer than I ever could in college.
And being able to listen to InfoNomicon radio, you know, I understand about 60% of it now.
You know, most of it goes over my head.
But, you know what, it's opening my eyes to a lot of stuff.
And honestly, my dumb ass wouldn't have found it without the podcast on iPod.
So, you know, for what it's worth.
Well, hey, this brings up a point that I'd like to talk about.
Is the truthfulness of any of this information really important?
Because as Strom pointed out to me the other day, people are going to listen to whatever they agree with.
Yeah, I mean, do you think that we strike you as an extraordinarily credible news source?
Like, you listen to InfoNomicon radio and that show was horrid.
Horrid?
Define horrid.
I wouldn't call that horrid, but, you know, you basically just...
Come on, define horrid.
Like, Obfuscated and I, or Cotton and I, we're not, like, a credible news source.
Well, I'm not saying, you just re-read New York Times all day.
Well, I should go, motherfucker.
I'm trying to go to a drudge report for news.
I'm trying to be introduced to things that maybe I might not see in school in my stumbling upon with Firefox.
It's just another source.
It's another view.
I don't take it with, you know, it's not gospel.
Hell yeah.
Yeah, let me know.
Hell yeah.
I think the problem is that there are a lot of people out there who will listen to this sort of thing and, you know,
and take it as pure fact without bothering to think and think critically.
Well, that's going to happen to anything.
Yeah, that's going to happen to anything.
People as a whole are going to do that.
There's a bunch of right-wing Republicans that think that George Bush is the shit,
and there's a bunch of left-wingers that think, you know, John Kerry is the crap.
Well, yeah, of course.
I mean, people will...
The bottom line is you've got to figure out what you think and go from there.
Yeah, well, I mean, George Bush is the shit.
Well, I mean, the problem is really that people will, in general, listen to whatever propaganda they want to hear.
But, I mean...
So now in Phenomenon, it's propaganda?
Well, no, not necessarily, but, I mean...
I think it is.
There really are a lot of people out there who, you know, who go on their blogs
and they write up what really is propaganda and, you know, pass it off as fact.
Well, this show's kind of propaganda.
But if you listen to something like In Phenomenon Radio,
and then they have a whole bunch of posts at the end,
and you can go and read those posts,
Google the shit and then see if the facts match up.
If it's a bunch of crap, then the guy's full of shit.
Yes, that's a very good point.
I mean, that's part of being just a citizen of the world.
Right, but also, I mean...
The thing that somebody gives you is fact.
Right, but there are a lot of people who won't do that.
Look at Pat Robertson, for example.
He's, the only reason he's on is because, you know, he's got the money
and he's got enough people who blindly believe his propaganda to make him successful.
It's, you know, there's...
Pat Robertson's a good guy.
Leave him alone.
Or whoever the religious nutcase of the week is.
Like Jerry Falwell types, I'm thinking.
Hey, leave Jerry Falwell alone, too.
They're going to lead us to a salvation...
I mean, we could talk about Nazis and Adolf Hitler
and a bunch of people that thought he was right on, too.
There's always going to be extremists to one point or the other.
My whole point was, as a complete noob to computers,
the podcast, which to a bunch of leaked guys,
you know, they want to say, oh, RSS?
Okay, fine, whatever.
But it drew me in and it taught me a whole lot.
And, again, I don't take what DeRupe says as, you know, gospel.
You know, maybe Bubba Redneck or whatever the fuck his name was.
You know, he's right on with his whole hunting for hot spots.
But, I mean, in general, you know, you have to do your research.
I mean, we're a bunch of computer people.
You don't take anything for a fact.
If somebody says something's secure, is that truth?
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Well, I mean, yeah.
That's my opinion.
In my opinion, in $1.25, I'll buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
So take it for what it's worth.
Well, I'll take you up on that.
You go, too.
Yeah.
I'll take you up on that cup of coffee at Starbucks.
There you go.
All right, guys.
Later.
Later, man.
Thanks for calling in.
That's one of the regulars of my Emponomicon channel on Freenode.
Mm-hmm.
This one brought out Cloutridge in there.
Oh, cool, cool.
In the interest of full disclosure, right?
Freenode sucks.
But he brings up a good point.
I think part of the coolness about blogs is that, well, for some people, that is.
I mean, some people do comments for some reason.
But, like, when you post a story and you say, oh, hey, you know, I checked this out and I did that.
If you go down to the comments every once in a while, some people come up and say, no, well, see, no, I did this stuff and I showed this.
And, you know, they'll provide a completely different counterpoint to it.
And, I mean, when you're talking about the whole mainstream media, there's no real interaction with it.
I mean, the whole thing was, like, it's very much, there's another web blog, but it's an editorial cartoon web blog.
It's called Cox and Forkham.
I don't know how to spell it, but I just have it bookmarked.
But we'll, well, might as well approach this topic right now.
Back in, I forget when it was, it was, like, around October or September of 2004, when, you know,
with the whole political U.S. election season, and 60 Minutes 2 ran a very damaging piece against George Bush.
And it was saying, like, oh, he skipped out on all crazy stuff on his, you know.
Basically, they produced a story that was very damaging to him, and they had their main centerpiece
where these supposed memos that they got from the commander in the Texas Air National Guard.
And so what happened is, within about 60 minutes of the broadcast on the East Coast,
there was this guy on a website, and he said, it wasn't a web blog, it was more of like a forum,
but he said, I'll check this out, and this doesn't make any sense.
If you actually type this memo into Word, it looks exactly the same.
And everyone suddenly picked out on it.
Two web blogs, Powerline and Little Green Footballs, picked up on this,
and they did a lot of tests on it, and they ran it, they, like, called up a couple people,
and they did a lot of research on it, and I think that's what really made the difference.
But it actually turns out that these memos were forged, and if the web blogs weren't out there doing that,
that would have never happened.
And, you know, to have your opinion about George W. Bush, that's fine.
But at the same time, you really can't, you know, be forging memos about people and trying to pass it off as fact.
And I think that was, a lot of people point to that as a defining moment for the web blog community.
Oh, yeah.
Are you saying without web blogs, we wouldn't have had that information come out at all?
I wouldn't say, I think, I don't think it would have come out as fast,
and I think it would have been a lot more politically damaging if it happened, if it didn't do that.
And I think a lot of people, I think it would have happened, I don't think it would have happened as fast,
but I don't think, and I think it would have been, I don't think it would have been as dramatic as it was.
We have Natas on the line.
Hell yeah!
Is this your catchphrase groups, hell yeah?
I guess so.
So what's up, Natas?
What's your whole take on this?
I have no idea.
You just called in for that one?
No, I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know what my opinion is.
I'm sharing.
Ah, Natas, you never fail to amuse me.
Well, Natas, thanks for calling in.
Yeah.
So.
Don't hang up on us, Tron.
He's not going to contribute.
Sorry, Natas, you lose.
Well, I mean, yeah, we have low, let's get low-tech mystic on.
All right, I'm going to say goodbye to you, Natas.
Bye, Natas.
Okay, see you.
See ya.
Yeah, let me get low-tech on here.
Well, I mean, I don't think it would have came out, and I actually think that it had less of a chance of happening.
I think weblogs are very instrumental.
So you're saying they empower people to help with the news?
Exactly.
So in all, that's a good thing that came out of it.
That's a very good thing that came out of it.
And sure enough, there's a lot of things that, you know, probably have amplified on other blogs that, you know, don't have, that are bad.
I mean, sometimes you find crazy shit on there, like, you know, George Bush is single-handedly killing the entire Louisiana black population.
I'm just like, wow, this guy's on crack.
Like, so I was just, it's weird.
I mean, basically, I think, I think Jabotard said it the best.
It's, you need to question it, and I think certain people sometimes just don't feel that way.
Yeah.
Or don't have, don't have the ability, I wouldn't say don't have the ability.
They don't think of it that way.
Yeah, see, the problem is that people will blindly accept, you'll always have people who will blindly accept whatever they read as fact.
You know, they won't think critically.
They won't bother to do any research.
They'll just say, oh, okay, so-and-so says it, so it must be true.
And that's the danger, because at least with, you know, with mainstream media sources, there's only so many of them.
And, yes, they're not completely accurate all the time.
But with, you know, hundreds and hundreds and possibly thousands of blogs, you know, reporting on the same subject and each one taking his or her own totally, you know, self-aggrandizing politically charged standpoint and introducing his own version of misrepresentation and, you know, and poor fact-checking into it, you run into this problem where there's all these sources, none of which are actually credible, but which you have people arguing about and not knowing which one to believe.
And with that, we have Lotec on the line.
Hey, Chris and Fresh, guys.
Hey, Lotec.
How's it going, buddy?
Pretty good, buddy.
Yeah, deal.
I wanted to call in and just kind of drop my two cents into the line here.
I don't do a whole lot with the blogs, but I do do a lot with the podcasting.
And my whole, like, when I go and I listen to a podcast, I'm not downloading the podcast to necessarily hear the news or take these guys for being the truth or the word verbatim.
I'm listening to these podcasts because I live in a small redneck country town, and if I want to listen to somebody talk about technology, you know, share ideas, stuff like that, I'm not going to do it here in this town.
So I don't have a local 2600 meeting that I can go to.
There's nothing local like that for me.
So these podcasts bring it in to my computer where I can listen to it on my headphones in my car, and it's like getting to hang out with all these different people.
And so it's not necessarily, you know, I'm not looking for the truth.
I'm just looking to share ideas and concepts and educate myself, and there's an awesome, awesome scene and community for that.
Yeah, well, I got to agree with that because, I mean, it's – I think that one of the major reasons that, you know, hacking is such a big thing on podcasts and blogs for that matter is, you know, hell, we are the technological elite.
So we do all this cutting-edge crap.
Oh, yeah, I mean, I totally agree with that.
It's awesome to have a community of people out there, you know, a community of listeners that we can have this awesome relationship with.
I feel, you know, very much – everyone that emails in, all the people who are, like, on our frapper site and posting their pins on the map, you know, I feel a very intimate connection with them.
And I'm sure – I hope they feel the same intimate connection with us about, you know, Strom wants to be intimately connected with all of our listeners.
Oh, yes, yes, intimate, intimate listeners.
But, I mean, in general, I think for a large number of things, it is a good thing.
My only issue is with the credibility of the sources, really.
Well, really, I mean, it doesn't really matter where you're getting that.
I mean, you're going to get that in the mainstream media.
I mean, I think – well, who does this shoot?
No, Howard Stern.
Howard Stern's listeners, whenever there's some type of, you know, major crisis going on there, they basically call up the, you know, CNN, NBC, one of the live people, and they say,
oh, you know, hey, I'm a person who knows a lot about this situation, you know, would you like a comment or something?
And what they'll usually do is they'll toss them straight on the air, and they'll completely BS the commentator.
I mean, there's no real checking going on here.
Everyone thinks there is, but in reality, there isn't.
Yeah, I'd just like to say that you – it'd be a good rule of thumb for everybody.
Everything that you hear, you should always take with a grain of salt, because everybody's going to – everybody's going to give their opinion and their view of whatever situation.
So the truth is always somewhere in the middle from all the sources and all the different points that you hear.
You know, the more that you can gather different sources, the more likely you're probably able to maybe figure out what likely happened by finding whatever's in that common ground.
Something that I find interesting about, like, this show or RFA or my show or low-tech show is that we'll say something, we'll say, this is how it's going on,
but we'll always say, or every other show say, you know, you don't have to listen to us, make your own opinion, and the real news never says stuff like that.
That's true. I'm not saying that the mainstream media has it right either.
I mean, the mainstream media has lots of flaws. There's lots of problems, and people will blindly believe it too.
But I think better to have, you know, a smaller – see, the other problem I see is that you've got – with the mainstream media,
you've got a very small number of sources of at least somewhat decent credibility.
And you've got, you know, I guess, you know, you've got, like, AM talk radio with less credibility and so on, yeah.
But, like, the whole problem with the blogs and podcasting is, like, I've tried keeping up with them,
and I just can't because there's so many of them, and it's so difficult.
But you can't watch the 6 o'clock news on every channel either, though.
No, you can't, but, I mean, you can switch back and forth.
You can switch, you know, on a day-to-day basis.
You can read one, then you can read another.
But the problem, you know, is just – I feel it can be needlessly overwhelming at times,
and you don't know who to believe.
I think I'm just reiterating myself needlessly.
Well, I think that's with all media.
Well, I think everyone that's producing something has a goal in mind.
Like, this show is – like, we say there's no goal,
but the goal is to have, like, a community of hackers that are nice to each other
and informative and help each other out and strive to make the community better.
There's a lot of people in the hacker community that are just, you know,
read the fucking manual, you noob, all the time.
And, like, if I went around saying, let's say the Gibsons or anarchy or what all the time,
I wouldn't be on this show right now.
You know, like, there's, you know, definitely qualifications to be on the show
and qualifications to – or whatever I'm trying to say, I'm drunk.
Well, I don't think goal would be the right term,
but I would believe that – I think what you're more saying is that everyone has a viewpoint.
And we do.
We have a very, you know, pro-hacking, you know, pro-privacy, pro-technology.
And pro-nice to each other.
You know, we are – oh, for the most part.
I mean, we want people to be nice to each other, but at the same point, sometimes we're not.
We want lots of touching and feeling, right, Strong?
Oh, yeah.
All right, guys, I'm going to jump off here so somebody else can call in.
But a shout-out to everybody in the Pound and Phenomicon room on a free note.
And you should come up with it.
All right, so goodbye, guys, and thanks for doing the show.
Thanks, Low Tech Mystic.
All right, bye.
Bye, man.
Later, man.
Hey, Low Tech Mystic has a show.
It's called Ninja Night School.
It's at podcastincubator.com.
Good plug.
Low Tech School.
Yeah, I'm trying to plug as much as I can.
Yep.
So I think one of the advantages about the whole new media is that, well,
Strong was saying you have three viewpoints, and quite normally there are the usual three viewpoints.
And, I mean, let's try that again.
There's three viewpoints, but in reality there are three viewpoints.
It's generally just one viewpoint.
It's a giant echo chamber.
And for the most part, you know, I wouldn't say that they're all – blogs aren't just one echo chamber.
I mean, I'm sure there are in very – on a microcosm of the scale.
But it's different with that because you've got, like, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 1,000 viewpoints to look at.
I mean, just – you can tell that most of the blogs I hang out on, besides Slashdot, Slashdot, and other technical blogs,
because I hang out in a lot of political blogs.
And everyone on, like, CNN, you know, CBS and all of them, there's apparently some riots in Australia.
And they're all saying that, you know, oh, you know, a bunch of white people are beating up on Muslims.
And I'm like, oh, geez, well, that sucks.
But all of a sudden I go over on a certain couple of weblogs, and one of them is saying, well, you know,
one of my weblogs was saying, well, one of our – one of the blogs – one of the weblogs I listen to is saying,
listen, this guy is down in Australia, and I actually did some research on this.
And sure enough that this weblog, this weblog, and this guy are corroborating his story.
And it turns out that, well, yes, you know, people are beating down dark people.
But at the same point, you know, there was – the night before, there were, you know, massive riots,
and people were being smacked down on the other side of the scale.
So you didn't get that viewpoint on the mainstream media.
And if I wasn't looking at weblogs, I wouldn't have known that.
Hey, Black Ratchet, you look at a lot of Republican blogs.
What liberal blogs do you look at?
Daily Kos, if I want to last, Democratic Underground.
So you are getting both viewpoints then?
Yes, I try to get both viewpoints.
I don't try to go listen to – I've got to say the Republican ones are a bit more.
In line with my viewpoints, yes.
But I, you know, I also look at Daily Kos and say, God, these people are on crack.
Actually, Democratic Underground is a fun one if you really just want to get, like, the left-wing wackos.
And for the right-wing wackos, go to freerepublic.com.
Whoa, they're scary.
They both are.
But, like, it's just – you need to look at viewpoints, and you need to look at it, and you need to understand it.
And you need to know that one person is not going to be a definitive source.
And I just think a lot of people don't understand that, and they're too used to the old media, as it were.
It's just like saying – sitting down on their whole, you know, Mount Sinai and decreeing, how dare you question me?
Yeah, see, the real problem, the other problem I have with blogs is that so many people who write them are, like, self-aggrandizing, self-important, you know, overly smarmy types.
You don't have to insult me like that, man.
I wasn't referring to you specifically.
But, no, it's just like when I went to Wikipedia and I tried to get, you know, just a concise, impartial bit of information about the history of blogs.
It was impossible to find.
I had to edit out all this so-and-so, this major celebrity who I've never heard of, and this other major celebrity so-called who I've never heard of.
And I'm just like, you know, I had to edit it down so it sounded impartial.
Well, I mean, heck, you're going to run into that Wikipedia no matter where you look.
Yeah.
Yeah, but –
You're going to look at the manual – you're going to look at the hacker one.
It's going to be a ton of people saying, oh, major hacker celebrity so-and-so.
And, you know, you show that to, say, my mom.
She's not going to say, who the hell is Richard Stallman?
He's that guy from that cartoon.
Yeah, exactly.
Everybody loves Eric S. Raymond.
Oh, God.
He looks a lot like a cartoon.
Look at that way.
He looks a lot like Pigpen from the Peanuts.
Oh, God.
That's longer hair.
We have living –
Yeah, that's right.
I said it, so bring it on.
We have living down on the line.
Hello.
All right.
Hello.
Hey.
All right.
So, personally, I don't really watch a lot of the mainstream media because I don't really care what the latest bird flu or cancer scare.
But, I mean, like you said earlier about the SSH brute forcers, I mean, if you want to look at technical stuff, you've got a FlashDot, and that's a blog of some sort.
And those are the kind of places you go and you want to find out what's new, and technology or other things aren't in the mainstream media.
Well, yeah, it is.
And I think that also goes back to the whole multiple viewpoint thing.
I mean, you're going to get a technological viewpoint.
You're not going to get the watered-down, you know, 30-second blurb on CNN saying, you know, run the firewalls because firewalls are good.
And we're like, okay, yeah, we knew that.
Thank you.
And it appeals – there's a lot of niche audiences out there, and a lot of people just don't get that niche in, you know, the regular life.
Like, it's – I mean, just even talking about us with the whole podcast, I mean, we have, you know, 1,000 downloads a week or so, thereabouts.
Oh, do we?
Yeah, we do.
Y'all got more than that, huh?
Huh?
Y'all got more than that.
I don't know.
That's what Stank said.
He had about 1,000 a week within our first week or so.
Oh, God, you guys completely derailed my train of thought.
But it's a very niche audience, and we couldn't, like, go on CNN and appeal to Mom and Pop and all the other people.
We'd get basically 1,000 people.
But at the same point, I would hope those 1,000 people actually like the show and listen every week.
Yeah, my parents could care less about this right now.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they could, and I'm pretty sure my fiancé could care less about it.
But, um, so, yeah, it's just, it's very niche audiences.
That's what it is.
And I think, you know, with weblogs and whole things, I mean,
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
It's bad with the fact that, you know, you won't appeal to everybody, but it's good in the fact that I can actually tune into,
Hello?
Oh, sorry, I have my phone.
Oh, no.
Oh, my God, I was listening to you on BinRev Radio.
You guys are so cool.
Um, it's the whole, shoot, it's bad that we can't appeal to a widespread audience,
but it's good that, you know, people out there who want this kind of information can actually get to it.
I guess you could say.
So, yeah, we're, we're, we're, I think we're just really going on the whole infinite loop.
Oh, but I'd just like to toss this out there, actually.
I was, I was discussing this topic with, uh, Koresh earlier today, and he provided something interesting.
He heard, and I'm not even sure where he heard it, he may have heard it on the weblog,
that, um, NBC and GE are apparently owned by the same parent company.
He thinks it's NBC.
General Electric, General Electric has owned NBC for a long time now.
Okay.
Okay, so apparently that's what it is.
But, um, what it is, is apparently some people are hearing, or at least they're, they're looking into it,
and, like, certain coincidences are happening, that NBC News is doing very interesting things with some of their stories,
and they're kind of doing internal censoring, and they think it may be that GE is trying to, um, censor the stories as to,
because, because, um, GE is, like, one of the top three government contractors for military equipment.
And they're trying to, you know, not try to, you know, doom and gloom about the war more than they already have to.
So, I mean, I'm not saying this is fact, this is what he said, and I, I think it's a very interesting thing,
because, like, who, who watches the watchers?
I mean, when I go onto weblogs, and someone else comes and does research with the whole, um, oh, you know,
someone said that, if there's a story that says, oh, you know, someone said X,
and then someone complements back saying, oh, no, that's not right, because I heard that X did Y,
you know, that, that, that's going back to that feedback thing, and, you know,
someone will actually come out and say, you're point dead wrong for these following reasons,
and I did my research on it.
You'll never get that in the whole mainstream media.
Someone could be, you know, doing some fine-tuning in the back, and you'll never even know about it.
Meanwhile, you know, someone over and, say, like, something happened in Iraq,
and NBC, you know, tones it down a bit, you know, you go on the internet,
and there's, there's more than a few Iraqi blogs out there, um,
who are there and are in the thick of things.
So, I, it, it, it happens, and it, it, it provides you a better first-person source,
as opposed to just the talking heads on the mainstream media.
Yes, no, am I just talking out of my ass here?
You're just talking out of your ass, man.
Woo!
Excuse me, I'd like to ask you a few questions.
Well, I think that this has been happening for a long time.
Like, before there were blogs, people still communicated with each other.
Blogs have just helped facilitate it to be more worldwide.
Like, when there was the local dial-up BBSs, and, you know, the local newscaster said,
this happened, I'm sure they were saying, no, it happened this way,
or happened this way, and they were discussing it.
But, yeah, it's also much more...
Blogs have definitely helped you make it more mainstream and more, uh, like that.
Indeed.
Well, I have this book that's sitting here on my desk.
It's called Steal This Computer Book.
Or, yeah, Steal This Computer Book.
And Chapter 2, like, this is a really older book.
Yeah, that's like 95.
Yeah.
It tells you how to hack Netscape or something.
Yeah, it's how to hack Netscape, Chapter 1.
And Chapter 2 is alternative sources of news information.
And, like, it's bolded.
Think you can believe everything you read in the paper, hear on radio or see on TV, think again.
And it lists a whole bunch of internet resources for finding new sources of media.
And, like, it's everything, like African News and Bangkok Post and Irish Times.
It doesn't have blogs and such because it was an old book.
But, uh, like, I learned that a long time ago reading this book.
I was like, hey, that's pretty slick.
I can look at news other places and, you know, make my opinion off of that.
Well, I mean, it's coming back with, going, I mean, really, you know, the different viewpoints happened even before the weblog things.
I mean, back in, when was it, 90, 94, I think.
Whenever, you know, Clinton started to decide, hey, let's go bomb Bosnia, I was like, oh, well, that's going to be interesting.
So, you know, the night it started to happen and all the shit started to break loose, I ran up to my room and around 7 p.m.
I, uh, hooked it all up and I flipped on my shortwave radio and picked up Bosnian news.
And, actually, I picked up the Bosnian broadcast first that was in all, you know, I don't know, Serbian or whatever, whatever language I speak over there.
And it was pretty interesting hearing them say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, NATO, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And, when the English broadcast came on, because, you know, shortwave radio, you have all different languages on there, um, I listened to it and they provided a very alternate viewpoint.
And, basically, it was very, it was very, very propagandist, sort of Soviet almost, saying that, you know, we will repel the Yankee invaders almost.
It was, it was very strange.
But, it was, you know, it was a different viewpoint.
They were saying, oh, this is an illegal war, it's horrible, you know, you're killing civilians, please stop.
Ow, ow, that really hurts.
But, again.
Do you think a lot of the listeners have a shortwave radio or, like, a, uh, world band radio?
I don't think a lot of people do, no.
I think it's a radio.
I have one.
I listen to Radio Cuba a lot.
Really?
I never listen to Radio Cuba.
Like, 66 or something.
So, anyway, we've got, like, 15 minutes left, so I think we should start wrapping it up.
Uh-oh.
Well, I think Ponyboy has something to say, so let's go across him and we can go wrap it up here.
I'll bring him in.
He'll be our last call for the evening.
Hey, I just want y'all to know that other than Natus, everybody that's called in has been in the, uh, pounded Venomicon channel.
Well, good for them.
We'll give them a gold star.
You give them a little fuzzy wood.
Strom will reward them accordingly.
Getting them real close.
So, I guess Ponyboy's going to come in here any time now.
Come on, Ponyboy.
There he is.
Hey, Ponyboy.
What's going on, guys?
What's going on, everybody?
Hey, Ponyboy.
We're doing the show.
How are, what are you doing?
Um, I'm, uh, actually just got home.
Yeah, sorry I called you there a little while ago, Strom.
Oh, that was you.
Okay.
Yeah.
I was trying to find out when you guys were doing the show.
Yeah.
Now.
Right now.
So, what's your question, man, or comments?
Well, I actually had a question that, uh, about, because I know you guys are doing the, the hacker media type thing tonight.
I was wondering, what do you guys think is, like, the, the, the future, like, the next thing that's going to, kind of, the new, the next thing that's going to change how.
Oh, the future of media in general?
Or, like, independent podcasting and, well, I think, really, in general, what's going to happen is, you're going to find a balance.
I mean, obviously, the traditional news sources are, are rapidly losing readers and viewers to, to blogs and podcasts and whatnot.
But I don't think blogs and podcasts are going to completely take over.
I think there is going to be, at some point, a shakedown.
There's going to be, you know, a couple of really good ones.
Then there's going to be the sea of also-rans that nobody pays attention to at all.
And it'll be progressively harder to break into the whole blogging and podcasting thing.
I mean, media's been becoming more and more fragmented for, for years now.
But, in general, really, it's, what media have you been paying attention to, Strom?
What do you mean?
I mean, media's just sort of consolidating in reality.
Well, news media, news media, yes.
But, I mean, look at, look at the fact that now you've got, you know, you've got 200 cable television channels.
You've got all these different AM radio talk stations, you know, with all these different people spouting their ideas.
And, you know, you didn't have all of that 30 years ago.
Well, but, again, I mean, talking with radio, everything's owned by Clear Channel, at least it is.
I mean, running actual independent radios is just, is very hard.
Dealing back to Ponyboy's question, I really foresee it being more of news outlets becoming very much more weblog-like and being more Internet-orientated.
I mean, you're still going to have, you know, say the LA Times going to have a Dead Tree format paper.
But, at the same time, I think the more focus is going to be on Internet, Internet stories, you know, interaction.
And actually just change it, just have more than just what they have now, which is basically the story in electronic format.
Droops, what do you think?
Well, man, do y'all ever watch Rocket Boom?
Hmm?
Do y'all know what that is?
No.
It's like a daily news broadcast.
It's pretty left-wing.
But it's like a video blog.
And they've got some chick up there, Amanda something or another, that reads the news and gives her opinion and this, that, and the other on it.
And I think the next generation is going to be more video.
And it's going to be a lot of, well, like, podcasting started with just people like us or people that were bloggers and decided, hey, we want to move on to the next thing.
And traditional media is going to pick up on that.
And we're going to have the ABC video blog or whatever.
And they're going to have their people that they pay and their comments on things.
And people are going to get that source a lot better than traditional TV.
I think that's the next step.
No, here's, I mean, also, we haven't even talked about video blogging.
And that's something that's, I'm not sure how that's going to affect yet.
Well, fortunately, it's a pain in the ass to do video blogging.
Exactly.
So you'll get a lot less people on it.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting.
That's something that I'm not sure how that's going to take off.
I'm still waiting for, like, as we discussed before the show started, like, people transcribing the entire shows.
Because, like, if we searched for, in Google, for this topic or something that we've talked about today, it's not going to show up.
Mm-hmm.
Because it's an audio blog.
And I'm sure they're going to have that, you know, done pretty soon.
I think part of the reason we do that is also with the show notes.
Yeah, but the show notes don't cover everything.
Yeah, true.
But we try to cover most of the, the show notes, what we try to gear towards, trying to cover most of the major topics we cover.
So if someone does Google us, we can actually show up.
But, yeah, actually, there's, if someone hangs out on the Hack TV forums, or the, actually, it's called Hacker Media now, on BinRev,
I believe someone has set up some type of, some type of transcribing service for your radio shows.
And you can, like, submit it, and they'll actually try to transcribe it for you.
I'm not sure how they do it.
And it actually seems pretty cool.
It's a link in the forums.
But I think we have to start wrapping up, because I'm not even sure what the music we have for tonight is, but it could be pretty long.
Hey, can I say something real quick?
Yeah.
Of course.
Political media is all a bunch of crap.
Like, they don't publish things like who voted for what and how things like that until they're like, well, Droops is a fucker.
He voted for this, this, and this.
But they don't say everything that Droops, you know, Senator Droops, voted for.
And I think if they wanted to represent the truth in media, they would say things like that, like we'd be watching Dan Rather, whoever it is now.
And they would say, okay, here's the roll call for the Senate, and they voted for this today.
But they don't ever mention that, because they just want to get their agenda across.
Well, it's probably part of that, and also, who really wants to listen to all that?
I really don't want to know.
Well, it is pretty fucking boring.
Yeah, I don't want to know that Senator Feinstein voted that, what were they voting tonight?
I saw it on C-SPAN, they were voting that the 1-1604 is going to be the 104th anniversary of a Korean integration.
I mean, I don't care.
That's very nice.
But, you know, they all voted yay for that.
Whatever.
You can find that, and that's also going down back to your own research.
So, anyway.
Well, most people don't do that.
Yeah, exactly.
Anyway, yeah.
So, announcements.
So, we're going to start wrapping it up now.
If you're in the Los Angeles area, DC213 is meeting this Friday in Hawthorne.
Go to www.dc213.org.
I'm putting up a new site, and it should be actually up by, like, the end of this evening or tomorrow.
So, I'll have it up by the end of tonight, Tuesday.
So, DC213 Friday.
SWAT Radio is going in full swing this month.
Everybody needs to check that out.
It's at twatech.org.
Blackratchet.org has a blog up.
So, see my rantings on there?
I think my latest thing is this guy.
He was doing this really stupid thing on how the telephone network sucked during 9-11 and how the internet rocked.
And I was like, fuck you.
No way.
And I'm drinking Harpoon Winter Warmer.
It's a pretty good beer.
It's a very, uh, if you're over 21, it tastes like shit if you're under 21, so don't drink it.
I'm drinking a Corona Extra.
It tastes good with lime if you're over 21.
I'm drinking Jim Beam and Diet Coke with cherry, because that's all we had in the house.
Remember, kids, drink responsibly.
All right, it's time for shouts.
We got shouts, yeah.
Shouts to Dr. Zygman for taking our calls, for screening our calls tonight.
Hell yeah, Ziggy.
We love you, Ziggy.
Does he listen to the stream, or does he just sit there and just listen to that whole music the whole time?
He talks to the people.
He doesn't listen to the stream, because we were talking about the Lance James show, and he hadn't heard about it yet.
Oh, hot damn.
Good for him.
Definitely shouts for him.
I'm buying him, like, all the beer he wants, all the cake he wants, whatever he wants, when I see him in person.
Are you going to get close to him, Strong?
Huh?
Are you going to get close to him, Strong?
Sure, why not?
Everyone over 21, buy him a beer if you ever see him.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
Zygman's cool.
We need to get him back on the show.
Of course, we're going to have to find someone else to screen our calls if we ever do that.
My shouts to Koresh for pointing out that very interesting GNBC thing.
Shouts to Stalin for his red hair, and I don't know what else.
Shouts to everyone's shouts.
Do we even have a side of the week this week?
Um, no, I don't.
I don't know.
What's a weblog that you like?
JWZ.org.
I like www.fark.com.
Yay, Fark.
Yeah, Fark is fun.
As always, you can email us at radio at binrev.com.
Hey, what about my shout?
Yeah, I was going to say, Droops.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I thought you gave your shout, Droops.
No, I'm actually going to shout out to CFman, because he sent me a PM today.
He's like, I don't know who you are, but I appreciate what you do.
And that was really nice.
Of course, I replied with, when are you going to do a twat?
And he's working on one.
Awesome.
And shouts out to all the Infonomicon people and our newest member, Nightlord.
And everyone that's helping out with twat.
And, of course, everyone in pound Infonomicon that called in, because everyone else is a pussy.
And another blog that I want to talk about, real quick, it's a podcast.
It's Open Source by Christopher Lydon.
And I heard about it, because it's an open source, and I was like, I'm going to check this out.
But it's pretty much like an NPR kind of show.
And instead of just reporting the news, they actually find people that are involved in it
and heavily involve them in the show, which is really, really awesome.
And if you want to hear a really good one, listen to some of the stuff about New Orleans and Katrina,
because they had the people that were running, like, NOLA, which is NewOrleansLouisiana.com or something like that.
And that was a massive source of information for those people looking for their family and stuff like that.
All right.
And that's my shouts.
Cool, cool.
Thanks, though.
Did we shout the email out already?
Let's do it again.
You can email us, as always, at radio at binrev.com.
You're stealing my as always line.
I don't think Stank ever did that.
I just sort of tossed that on there.
Have you trademarked it?
I don't know.
I should.
Yeah, you should.
I did.
Yeah, I did already.
Okay, cool.
I want to sue you now.
Well, radio at binrev.com, as always.
So our closing music tonight.
Should I do the crazy one I was messaging you with earlier, Ratchet?
Yes.
Okay.
Oh, God.
We apologize in advance for this.
Ratchet and I were chatting earlier today,
and I started coming up with all your lyrics to Just What I Needed,
with Phone Freak lyrics to Just What I Needed.
I think there's a definite lack of Phone Freak-based karaoke out there.
Thank God.
So this is going to be one of binrev's defining bad moments,
but I'm going to do it anyway.
Hey, shout for Strom for letting it hang out there.
Yeah.
So, as always, we will see you next week.
Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
I don't mind you coming here and tying up my line.
Cause when you're boxing, oh, so near.
I hear the toes just fine.
It's not the hard hat that you wear.
The twisted copper in your hair.
I don't mind you coming here and tying up my line.
I don't mind you whispering off and boxing the class three.
It doesn't matter where you called, as long as it was free.
Yeah.
You always knew your coat so well.
And you grew so fancy, I can tell.
I don't mind you whistling off and boxing the class three.
I guess you're not just a freak kid.
You've got bad skills, I can see.
I guess you're not just a freak kid.
I don't mind you coming here
And tying up my line line
Cause when you're boxing oh so near
I hear the tone's just fine, yeah
It's not the hard hat that you wear
The twisted copper in your hair
I don't mind you coming here
And tying up my line
I guess you're not just a freak kid
You've got mad skills I can see
I guess you're not just a freak kid
You die with lightning speed
I guess you're not just a freak kid
You've got mad skills I can see
I guess you're not just a freak kid
You die with lightning speed
Yeah, so baby
You're not just a freak kid
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Hell yeah!
That was terrible, wasn't it?
That was awesome, Strom!
I was highly amusing
That's my new ringtone
Cool
See you next week, guys
Did I sound drunk?
I don't feel drunk