Welcome to the next generation of Hacking Information Exchange with StankDawg and Wintermute.
I see in binary, I speak source code. Step on my toes, I'll post a million game pegs of you in a fag pose.
In your digital stance, getting firewalled ho, cause I'm riding the net in my six foe.
I was a dick with my 56. Now with my cable, I'm able to get that stable.
On the out, my name is Ace and I'm a Leo. On the digital highway, my name is Neo and I'm a hero.
In a flash, I'll school you on burning dreamcasts. You need some ISOs? Let me do 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, leave you flat on your back? Cause I am he who loves to hack and crack.
Cause I am he who loves to hack and crack.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the criminals.
Cereal codes, source codes, ISOs, RANs, SIFs, SIFs.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the criminals.
Alright, we are here back with Binary Revolution Episode 2.
I have with me, as always, Winter Mute in the house.
And we are back on the air.
We weren't canceled, we weren't kidnapped, we weren't captured by the feds or anything like that.
So I guess life is good.
We weren't napalmed.
Well, I was napalmed. I just said I wasn't captured.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I was drugged and, you know, they had their way with me.
And it was pretty much a rough weekend, but...
I almost had my tongue cut out.
I hate it when that happens.
But we are back.
We are back.
So, we are going to actually, I guess, open up the show with some feedback from Episode 1, which is a good thing.
I mean, people actually listen to Episode 1.
That's a good sign for things to come, I hope.
In Episode 1, if you remember correctly, I asked for any kind of feedback, whether it was good, bad, or ugly,
or if you just wanted to call me a fucknut, whatever you wanted to do.
I wanted to hear what you guys thought, and I got all of the above, actually.
I think it was Hack and Slash or Bland.
I'm not sure one of them called me a fucknut in the IRC channel right away.
So, we got that over with and taken care of.
Which, by the way, I didn't mention in the first episode,
because I actually didn't know if the channel was going to be up and working.
But, Gluco, Zaprolink, Nick84, some of the guys got together and did set up a BinRev channel, IRC channel.
And it is up 24-7, 365.
You can come on during the show, while the show is streaming, and talk about us, talk about the show while you're listening.
And, apparently, call me a fucknut seems to be a popular thing to do.
I don't...
Did you get any fucknut comments, Mute?
No.
Yeah, see, I guess I'm the fucknut.
That's the funny thing.
I never get fan mail.
Never.
I don't get good, bad, or ugly.
I don't get fan mail.
I get hate mail.
Well, no, I don't get anything.
I don't get mail in general.
Mostly spam.
But, well, yeah, trust me, sometimes you don't want it.
But, actually, speaking of mail, we did get a couple emails here, like I said, some good things.
Total Blackout sent me an email.
It says that some things he really liked about the show was that we talk about what is a hacker and words that the public uses to describe him.
So, he liked the show.
He had some good comments to say.
And, you know, really, the first episode was kind of a, I don't know, a feeling out episode, a very special episode of Binary Revolution.
It was...
We wanted to start off with something so that people would, you know, understand where we're coming from.
I guess I'm coming from, you know, if you disagree with me or have no problems jumping on us, calling me a fucknut.
How many times have I said that already in the show?
We're not even a couple minutes in.
Oh, two, like five or six, man.
Yeah, all right.
From now, can I, let's see, I already gave the award out last month, last week.
So, I'm going to try to go the rest of this show and the rest of this month without saying that word.
I'll never make it.
You want me to get to the, like, ten minutes from now?
Yeah, you're probably right.
So, all right.
Well, in IRC, they can have a countdown and see.
We'll take gambling and take bets on how long I can go without saying.
But anyway, yeah, so he, you know, I had a couple people say in IRC that it was, you know, good.
It was the first episode, of course, so we're going to have to adapt and grow.
I mean, we're not going to come out and be masters at this in the first shot.
But, again, the first episode, we just wanted to talk about something that all listeners, new listeners, old listeners, could relate to and understand and hopefully have some feelings on the matter.
And, you know, talking about what a hacker is and what a hacker isn't, I thought was just a good topic to talk about whole that first episode, something we could all have input for.
And we did get input.
But, like I said, a couple people in the channel said that they liked the topic and that they, you know, they had some things about whether they agreed or disagreed with what we said is a hacker and a cracker and some things like that.
So, you know, that was just a kind of a feeling out episode.
So I think everybody knows where I'm coming from and my attitude and how I approach things anyway.
So from now on, hopefully we won't spend quite so much time on one topic, unless it's that serious, of course.
But if something comes up that I think needs to be addressed or something that I'm going to, you know, that I feel we need to spend time on, then, yeah, if you use hacker in a derogatory or negative manner, I'm going to jump all over it and I'm going to make a deal out of it.
I'm not going to spend a whole episode on it, you know, anymore, but I will call it out when I see it.
But I thought that giving it the first episode feeling, being the first episode and all, we should address that immediately.
Yeah, I mean, it lets everybody know where we stand.
Now, whether they agree with it or disagree with it or, you know, have other things to add to it, you know, that's a whole other issue altogether.
But at least I think they know where we stand so they can pretty much establish we're not coming back to listen to these schmucks or, you know, hey, let's see where they're going to go from here.
So hopefully it's the latter. Hopefully people stick around and see what happens with it.
So we did have, I did get an email from someone who wishes to remain anonymous, which I can respect.
He kind of didn't exactly feel the same way.
He felt that, well, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but let me read a couple little parts to this.
It says, he says that you seem to spend a great deal of time on what seems to be a moot point, the term hacker.
He goes on, the term hacker is now synonymous with a computer criminal, which compromises computer security with intent.
This is an English issue.
The masses decide on the meaning of words, plain and simple.
And since the majority of respectable publications have acquiesced,
He goes on, he says, this brings us to the next question, though,
and that is what a computer enthusiast may specialize in.
If it is security related, why not simply call yourself a computer security professional or enthusiast?
It certainly sounds better to prospective employers and to those in power.
More importantly, if you do, in fact, use networks or systems without permission,
you are a hacker, a criminal, plain and simple.
Laws and all that good stuff determine this.
I may or may not agree with said laws.
As a final note, a reasonable expectation of privacy is more important than curiosity.
I hope that this is an issue you raise in your show.
Would-be computer security enthusiasts should practice and learn on their own systems,
not the systems of others.
He does end saying that he likes the show.
He just wants us to keep it focused on hacking info and not too much on politics,
like the definition of a hacker.
So, first of all, thank you for that.
That's the reason that I, you know, told people I want to hear feedback.
Where do you think we should go and what should and shouldn't we talk about?
But, like I said before on the email before, you know, it was a starting off to let people know where I stand.
I don't plan on being on a soapbox for an hour every night talking about that same topic.
But, again, it was a good starting topic.
Another thing is I want to make sure you're clear on something with your terminology.
Don't mix up your terms here.
You used, you know, you made a comment about using the term security professional or something similar to that.
Well, yeah, if I was writing a resume or if I were to speaking, if I were talking to the normals or talking to a potential employer,
then, yeah, I would use the word security professional or something like that or security officer or some other general terminology.
And you have to.
The normals just wouldn't understand the word hacker because of what it has become or the connotation it has on it.
But this is Binary Revolution Radio.
This is not a show for security professionals.
It's not a show for the normals, nor is it my resume.
This is a show by hackers for hackers.
Mute, can I get an amen on that?
Hmm?
Who is this show for?
This is for anyone in the security business that wants to learn.
Anyone that wants to learn, period.
But, as for when I see it, it's a hacking show.
Well, see, that's the way I look at it, too.
However, I'm not going to pull my punches and choose verbiage just because I'm basing it on the audience.
You know?
I'm going to say it the way it is to me, anyway, and if people disagree with it, you know, send in the emails.
I appreciate it.
I'll discuss them on the air.
I'll be happy to debate them.
That's not a problem.
And I'm not going to take offense at it, either.
You know, this is, I can accept criticism if you have legitimate comments, and this person did.
There is one thing in here that was kind of sad to me, and the way that you worded this email, and again, this is someone who wishes to remain anonymous, and we'll stay that way.
But the way he gives up on the word hacker is, it's kind of sad.
You know, I don't really take a defeatist attitude so easily.
I don't give up on things, anything.
I don't give up on things ever.
I'm not a give up, quit kind of person.
And to give up on the word hacker, or what a hacker is, or what a hacker stands for, maybe you think it's further gone than I do.
But, you know, I think it still can be recovered.
And whether or not it can be, you know, that's not the issue.
It's what's right and wrong.
You know, I'm going to fight with everything I have when I think something is wrong.
And when it's a right or wrong issue, that's what's important, not how easy it is.
So when people attack hackers, I get personally offended because I look at that as an attack on me.
So, you know, I'm here on the show.
I want to reach out and educate people on hacking.
Do a weekly show.
We do RFA as often as we can.
We try to do that weekly if we can.
We reproduce a magazine, website.
We create a healthy environment with forums and stuff like that for hackers to organize and fight for what is right and wrong.
And I don't like standing by and giving up and letting people pass laws against, you know, innocent acts and overbearing laws and controlling things and taking words away from me.
So it's just not my style to just, you know, shut up and take it.
It's just not that kind of person.
So, you know, giving up the word and saying that the English language dictates it, then, you know, that's not the way I operate it.
You know, we may not be able to change something overnight.
It may take a long time.
It may not happen in my lifetime.
But if a couple people listening get it and understand why I'm doing this, then that's really the most important thing.
When you give up the word and you're not even willing to fight for it, you know, the battle is over before it has even begun.
So, you know, we're trying to start a revolution here, a binary revolution, where we take back those things that people are trying to take away from us as an Internet community and as a hacking community.
So that's what this show is about.
I do appreciate your email.
You know, I do.
And if there's others out there listening, frankly, it was 50-50 on the emails I got.
I got some people saying that it was good.
I got some people saying that it was bad.
So if people agreed with me, they were very apathetic and didn't take the time to email.
And I don't think letters at binrev.com is that difficult of an email to remember.
You know, right now it's 50-50.
Maybe I do need to stop getting on the soapbox and I should just bend over and take it and just deliver some headlines and news to people.
But I really don't think that that's what people want.
But, you know, I'll let you guys dictate that.
Give me an email.
Tell me, yes, I agree with this.
No, I don't agree with that.
And, you know, we'll take it from there.
But saying something like giving up – I actually used the phrase – let's see.
What phrase did he use?
If the masses decided on a meaning of words.
That was his exact phrase.
If the masses decide on the meaning of words, what kind of recourse or does that make it right and wrong for like –
I guess if that's his definition and other people's definition, then it's okay for me to walk around and call women bitches.
I mean, that's apparently a big thing.
That's the whole rap videos.
They call women bitches and I guess that's okay to do because that's what's becoming popular and the normal thing to do.
So I should just let go of trying to defend a word like that.
Or gay people, can we call everybody faggots and queers because that's what's become commonplace?
You know, I'm not afraid to say that.
I'm not afraid to say that on the radio as an analytic discussion.
But that doesn't make it right for me or anyone to go up to someone and demean them like that.
You know, that may be a little bit more of an extreme example than the word hacker.
But it's still the same thing.
If you're letting the masses decide on the meaning of words for you, what decisions are you making on your own?
You know, so you walk up to, you go downtown New York, you go to Harlem and call someone the N-word and tell me that the masses dictate the language and then get back to me.
Let me know how that goes.
But I am going to get off the soapbox for this one.
I spent a few minutes on that and on the emails.
I'm going to move on to some actual hacking topics, excuse me.
Oh, I did have one other email from Bob Nino offering web space, which I appreciate.
We just switched over to a new host and we just actually redesigned some pages this past weekend.
So by the time you're listening to this, hopefully everyone will notice that we have reorganized and rewrote all the pages from the ground up.
So there will be a few little problems here and there, but for the most part, they're going to be ready to go.
Be able to order the magazine online, download past episodes of the radio show, things like that.
But we do appreciate the offer.
We switched to the new host because we knew we would need space.
So we got a hosting contract with pretty good web space and bandwidth to account for that.
But definitely I appreciate the offer and we might take you up on that in the future if we run out of room or maybe for mirroring or something like that.
Or maybe as a backup site in case something happens to us.
So I do appreciate that.
Actually, I'm very happy.
We did get some feedback and that means people are listening and that's a good thing.
So, you know, I'm happy to hear it.
So let's move on to some lighter topics.
What do you think?
I think we should move right into those stories.
To the stories?
The stories?
I have a story.
Okay, sure.
I believe the story is very vague for reasons that I don't have to say right now.
But, yeah, sometime in the past week I've alerted a few companies to their problems with their security.
And oddly enough, these companies have been very well, have received me in good arms and have not turned me to the police.
Because I just wanted to give this an example to anyone that maybe has seen some insecure things, some blatantly insecure things.
And instead of, oh, let's go hack it, let's go take it down, turn around and say, maybe we should help these guys out for once.
Help the name, the hacker.
Well, then that's what we always say, you know.
So that's what I did.
I walked in there, I told them it was wrong.
Didn't call the police on me.
Well, we can give a little bit of detail.
I mean, let's at least let the people know this was a retail establishment, correct?
Establishment.
Okay.
That wanted some help.
They didn't need one.
I wanted some help, but they didn't understand what was going on.
I knew what was going on.
It was very bad.
I don't want to release anything else about the details of it.
It was pretty wide open.
Anyone listening to here would have figured it out.
I went in there.
I addressed the problem.
They didn't know.
At first, the guy didn't realize what was going on.
Realized what the vulnerability.
He didn't know it existed.
When I was showing him what was wrong, he understood.
Took care of it.
He actually understood it?
I walked it through.
I told him he had some comprehension of what was going on.
He set up the network there.
I told him what was going on.
Halfway through, he realized what the problem was, fixed it, and came back and thanked me immensely, actually.
I left out feeling that I helped out him.
I helped out the people, the hackers today.
It's kind of reaffirming.
It's a good feeling to know that he actually knew what you were talking about, first of all.
He wasn't completely incompetent.
I'm surprised that you actually got someone who knew anything about what you were talking about and didn't just give you blank stares.
Secondly, that he was approachable.
He actually did appreciate what you did for him.
I mean, we've heard lots of horror stories of people saying that they reported this to their school lab manager, to the principal or whatever, and ended up getting in trouble for it.
So, you know, I like to think those are few and far between, those kind of stories.
So, you know, yeah, I'm the same way.
If I find stuff like that, I'm usually pretty quick to share it.
If I find a website with a problem like that, I usually email it, give them time to fix it before I go broadcast it other places, and usually anyway.
So, yeah, that's very cool.
Now, did they slip you a little cash on the side?
Did they give you like a gift card?
I want to paraphrase here that if there wasn't any contracts involved, he would have hired me on the spot.
Oh, man.
Tell him he can give you a contract.
No, I should have.
Yeah, they have an exclusive contract probably with some outside security vendor or with some, yeah.
Through set up to their company.
Yeah, store policy of some, or, yeah.
Huh.
Yeah, well, you know, that goes back to what we were, you know, kind of mentioned earlier is, yeah, we try this stuff on our own machines.
We hack on our own sites.
We don't go out and, you know, frequently attack a bunch of other sites just for the sake of destruction, you know.
It's, it's, there's a lot of constructive things you can do with hacking knowledge.
So, that's, that's a good story.
I'm glad to hear that one.
I don't like hacking hamster sites with the name hamster and the domain name, but that's another story altogether.
What, a hamster site?
Yeah, some, I think, I think it was some April Fool's joke, but, but in July it was on, it was on security news portal, but that's not here nor there.
Oh, all right, we'll have to go into that one another show, I guess.
That's the first I've heard of that.
Boy, I don't, I actually, I don't have anything that cool to talk about this week.
My, my highlight of my week was a trip up to Daytona, Florida, where I, the most, the highlight of my whole week was buying some new stickers for my laptop.
Went to some store in a mall up there, it was some kind of, uh, uh, punk rock clothing store, I don't know how to describe it, actually, I don't know the name of the place, but, um, they sold a lot of, uh, stickers and, um, iron-ons and patches and stuff like that for clothes, so I figured, what the hell, I'll buy a few stickers.
They had a couple stickers there I liked that I'd put on my, my laptop.
You, you put, you put stickers on your laptop, or do you like it nice and, yeah.
I'm only going, I have only gone with one sticker, the Hacker Sticker, from, what is it, uh, is it HackerStickers.com?
I'm not sure of the domain name, you'll, you can find it pretty quickly.
It's Japanese.
Oh, the Japanese, yeah.
It's interesting, at camp, as everyone knows, I just came back from camp a couple weeks ago, uh, there's a kid there that has taken, that was taking Japanese in high school, Hank, she read it for me.
It's pronounced Haka.
Yeah, it's Haka.
It's Haka, yeah.
Yeah, so, that was kind of nice of him.
So, uh, the only other sticker I would buy, or type of sticker would be, from them, it would be a, uh, the white, it would be completely white to match the iBook.
Hmm.
I don't want anything standing, I wouldn't be like, you know, kind of recessed, you know, look and be like, oh, okay, I see what's going on here.
Right.
The next one would be the Pagastorm sticker that they have.
Right.
That'd be very nice of him.
Yeah, some people, you know, even when I got my first laptop, I didn't, you know, I kind of didn't want to put any stickers on them.
I liked it, you know, looking new, pristine, nice, clean laptop and everything.
And, um, especially if you're going to take it, like, to work or anything like that, you know, all of a sudden you got these stickers on and people are going to start raising eyebrows at you.
But I finally broke down and said, what the hell, I don't really care.
Uh, I had that, uh, Japanese hacker sticker on the back of my car, by the way.
I saw that.
I just, I just put it on there.
I, um.
The free, the free promotion?
Yeah, yeah.
I got from when they were, if you put a link to their site on your, uh, page, then they were sending out a free sticker and I got the, uh, Japanese hacker.
It's the white, it's white and I waited until I, I just recently had the tinting on my car done.
And so when they were finished with the tinting, I went on and put the sticker on the outside so it's a white on the black tinting.
Looks really nice.
I'm actually very happy with it.
Um, and of course I have the RFA sticker.
I have that on my car.
I have that on my laptop.
Um, but yeah, on my laptop I just bought a couple.
They're kind of silly, I guess, but I thought they were funny.
Like, uh, there's one that says, I may look weird, but I can kick your ass at Jeopardy.
Um, got one.
See, this is, this is like my theme song for everything for the world.
It's, I got a sticker that says, I'm tired of stupid people.
See, that's, I just can never say that enough.
I just, it's like the story of my life.
I just never run into, it's, we need a sticker that says, I hate the normals or something like that.
Or, I don't know, I can't deal with normal people.
So I thought that was pretty appropriate for me.
Um, I picked up one in Spencer Gifts and I think everybody, that must be one of those stores in every mall in America.
I think it was supposed to be a bumper sticker, but I put it on my laptop.
It says, if at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
So I thought that was pretty appropriate for the laptop.
I won't say in Y or allude to any connotation there.
My favorite one, though, was, I don't know if this is deep or if this is kind of cliche,
but it says, you all laugh because I am different.
I laugh because you are all the same.
I thought that was the most profound one and that's my favorite one.
And I kind of wish maybe I had only put that one on there and left the rest for something else.
Do you think, you know, I have the RFA sticker on there also, like I said, and I have that on my car.
Do you think we ought to make a BinRev radio sticker?
I think it would be pretty nice.
I think maybe it's a BinRev sticker.
Or just BinRev or actually Binary Revolution all the way out or BinRev.com.
We might have to, we might have to design a sticker.
Or if anybody wants to design a sticker, by all means, you know, maybe we should make a contest out of it
or, you know, have some interaction or at least mail us, again, letters at BinRev.com.
Let us know if we'd be interested in something like that.
But, you know, I don't know if, you know, I don't know if the people really would care enough for something.
I know I would.
And maybe we could just print up a few of them for us and put them around in some interesting places.
The RFA stickers do pretty well.
So maybe we could put them in the magazine as well.
Definitely.
Anyway, let's move to some hacking topics, some actual news items instead of just our personal stories.
Like, let's lighten up.
This story just makes me laugh so much, maybe because I'm a redneck, maybe because I like the, what does Duel call it?
Rednecks turning left?
I actually, that's the reason I was in Daytona, I mentioned earlier.
The reason I was in Daytona was up there for the NASCAR race.
So you guys can go ahead and write me in and kind of make fun of that if you want to.
That's fine.
But this is a somewhat related story.
I call it Rednecks Got Computers.
It's really short.
It's Michael Milo, I guess that's pronounced, acknowledged that he fired off more than half a million email messages to WFXT TV25 in Boston
after the Red Sox game was broadcast instead of a NASCAR race in 2001.
See, you don't give us our NASCAR and you're going to get messed up.
So the network thought it was a hacker attack, shut down internet communication with the affiliate and was forced to spend about $36,000 to clean up the barrage.
It's discrimination, plain and simple.
See, that's what I'm saying.
That's all I'm saying.
Can't a brother get a break?
How are you going to show a Red Sox game instead of a NASCAR race?
I just thought that, where did they come up with $36,000 though?
To clean up?
I mean, yeah, I mean it sucks and the guy screwed up and I'm, you know.
Actually, it's not quite as bad, it doesn't end as bad as a lot of the other hacking stories or, yeah, hacking stories turn out, I guess, for lack of a better word.
It says, he actually pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge of damage to protected computer system.
Under a plea agreement, the government recommended a sentence of six months confinement in a halfway house.
And his sentencing is August 12th.
There's people that send out to spam every day.
Well, yeah, that's true.
They're not getting destroyed.
Yeah, you know, I guess, well, he pleaded guilty.
I mean, I guess he did the right thing and stepped up and, you know, he didn't, it could have been a lot worse, you know.
He could have been a whole Mitnick situation all over again or Agent Steele or some of these people that get put in jail for long periods of time and aren't allowed to touch computers.
It could have been worse, but, yeah, it could have been, could have been less, too.
I still want to, what is that $36,000?
I mean, he mail-bombed them, basically, for lack, you know.
He sent a bunch of emails to them.
Yes, they panicked and took it offline, I guess.
But as soon as they realized what was going on, they realized they probably shouldn't have panicked.
All it was, isn't it, this is oversimplifying it, don't get me wrong, but it's pretty much a simple case of delete star where email address is equal to whatever, you know.
It seems like it's a fairly simple cleanup.
I don't know where $36,000 comes in.
That seems a little expensive, but, I don't know, is that fair?
Six months confinement in a halfway house.
I have no idea.
That could be maybe a bandwidth thing.
Yeah, but, I don't know, that seems kind of...
There might be some money spent in a bandwidth, but not nearly $36,000.
Well, they shut it down, so they weren't getting charged for a bandwidth while it was down, so he thinks that would balance it back out or something.
Yeah.
I wonder if there was an advertising, a loss of advertising somehow accounted for...
Could have been any number of things in that, but...
Here's a, you know, one of my favorite, favorite companies in the whole world is America Online.
That was sarcasm, by the way, just for anybody who doesn't know any better.
Making sure.
AOL is suck.
I absolutely hate AOL.
And here's just one more reason why.
This is the shortest story.
This is a one-liner.
But, basically, they had their annual shareholders meeting lately.
All 13 of AOL Time Warner directors were running unopposed.
Nobody, nobody was running against them.
The jobs were just handed right back to them.
What the hell?
I don't understand.
The company's not doing that well, you know?
There's been talk of them splitting again.
There's been talk about how much money they've lost and how they're...
That the AOL part of it, anyway, has become kind of a drain on the overall company.
So, somehow...
Again, it's more apathy.
People just don't care.
It's like, oh, yeah, sure, just put them back in there.
We don't care.
Well, I hope if you keep watching your money and the value of your stock's going down, you'll start to care soon.
But, um...
If I'm going to invest in a company, I want to know what the hell's going on with it.
Yeah, well, you'd think so.
There's also another, you know, the meeting itself, they go over a lot of things.
That's when people bring up rules they want to make or changes they want to make to the company and stuff like that.
And one of them that I was...
And I was reading the report on this because I hate them so much.
I try to keep tabs and see what they're doing and what they're trying.
One of the things that was brought up kind of confused me on why this did not pass.
It was turned down.
And I'm going to read to you.
It was a proposal by a Christian organization, which that's irrelevant, but it was a proposal by a Christian organization,
to require the company to detail how much more its executives make than low-rung workers.
It only got 7% approval.
Basically, it was a request for disclosure of salaries.
How much do the executives make compared to the low-rung workers?
It got 7% approval.
Now, who would not vote for that kind of thing?
Why would you not want to know that?
That's information that, especially, again, with the company performing poorly, I want to know,
are these guys making $700 billion a year compared to everybody at the bottom rung?
You know, what's the separation there?
What's the distinction?
And I think it's because, you know, the executives don't want people to know how much they make.
They always kind of try to hide that as much as they can, even though it should be disclosed.
Only 7% of the stockholders voted for it, though.
If you own stock in America, God forbid you own stock in America.
Oh, no, I don't touch on that stuff.
God forbid you did.
Wouldn't you want to know?
I mean, doesn't that just seem like any request for information I think I would vote for,
almost unequivocally.
I would blindly say, yes, I want all the information I can get about this company that I partially own,
because that's what owning stocks is.
I think the problem is that a lot of people, when I've seen this before,
that have bought stock before, and I've seen what happens with days that they send you a big packet,
and the packet's got a bunch of paper in it,
and the only meaning people piece of paper is in the front, where it says,
check, a bunch of check boxes.
And everyone that gets stock throws it away because they have no idea what it is.
Right.
I'm throwing, people throwing away the chance to change something.
So, and they do have a possibility, it's not like an election where you vote,
but, oh, wait, sorry, your vote really doesn't count for much,
because the electoral college knows this is going to count for something.
Well, I think your electoral vote counts for something, too, but that's a whole other topic.
When you vote for the popular vote, that's what I mean.
All right.
Yeah, you know, and it's, another thing is, again, I own a few stocks, too.
Well, I did until I had to, I had to sell those off to liquidate and get some cash fundage out of them,
but the other thing is when those voting, when those votes, the papers come for you to put your vote on,
I can't think of the term, for you to bubble in, it has written across there,
the shareholders suggest, or the executive committee suggest you vote yes or no.
You know, they tell you what to vote, and a lot of sheep, a lot of the normals, they just say,
okay, well, if that's what they recommend, then, geez, that's what I'm going to vote,
and they just send it on back in if they send it in at all.
So, you know, when you have the opportunity to vote, and owning a company, you do own a percentage of that,
you have the right to vote and have some say on where that company is going.
So, you know, if you don't exercise it, you know, I hope, you know, you're happy with the value of your stock going down,
if that's what it was, don't complain about it, because you didn't take that opportunity to make a change.
Let me just tell everyone right now, you ever get access to a time machine, go back to 2000,
buy all your tech stocks, buy your big companies, and ride them out.
The only way you're going to make money.
I bought Nvidia at 18, went up to like 60, sold it, went higher, dead, killed me for it.
Mm-mm.
Sucks.
Yeah, I jumped off of Amazon.com finally.
I bought it when it was down at six bucks.
I know a lot of people bought it much cheaper than that, but I bought it at six bucks and jumped off at like 30 something.
Unfortunately, I only had ten shares in there because I'm not exactly Rockefeller, but at least I made a little money on that one.
There was another measure on AOLs to require AOL Time Warner to adopt more worker-friendly practices in China.
This one also failed with 7% of the vote, and that one was on the ballot for the second time.
Failed with 7% last year, failed with 7% this year.
You know, that, I guess, you know, maybe there's some reason out there somebody would not want to vote for that, but, you know, sending all your work off to these sweatshops, you know, it's just...
It's time that, you know, they stopped making all those CDs.
Yeah.
I think the world has enough AOL CDs to kill them.
Yeah, you know, actually, that's a good segue.
Thank you very much for that.
The...
Oh, God, this...
I'm going to try to stay calm on this.
Hey, I've actually made it a long way without using that word, haven't I?
Hey, you made it.
I just realized that.
I was about to use it, and I just caught myself.
Right.
Um, yeah, AOL is also in the news recently because they filed $10 million worth of lawsuits against dozens of companies and individuals accused of spamming AOL customers.
Isn't that wonderful of them?
Isn't that nice of them?
Because, you know, AOL doesn't spam...
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute, I'm confused.
AOL was suing other people for spamming their customers, but...
Oh, they must want exclusive rights to spam their own customers.
That must be what that's about.
Well, you know, who wants exclusive rights to spam?
A...
AOL is the king of spam.
Nobody spams like AOL.
No, they own the...
The material spam market.
Well, they own the digital spam market.
I mean, the AOL software itself, that's one of the big complaints.
I haven't used any recent versions of AOL for good reason, but I have seen people who have, and it's...
It bombards them.
When you go on a website or something, everybody hates when you get pop-ups on the webpages that are, you know, you have to fight and you have to use pop-up blocking software.
However, AOL, in addition to whatever you get from outside, AOL pops up inside their internal software, inside their client.
They pop up little sales ads and stuff like that.
It's...
They have pop-ups that won't go away.
They have pop-ups every time you log on.
And, again, I don't use that, but I use AOL Instant Messenger quite a bit.
But, and, is it considered spam that they're at the bottom, or is it that...
No, at the top of it, they have that little ad that's built into AOL Messenger.
I consider that spam.
You know, I can't get rid of it.
It won't go away.
I didn't ask for it.
I don't like it.
There was a trick in 2600 Magazine, I guess, a year or two ago on how to take that out that I had...
I went in and did that, and it worked.
I haven't tried it since I reinstalled the computer 20 times since then.
But, you know, generally, most people can't get rid of that.
Is that spam?
Partially.
Yeah, and there's a splash screen.
Every time you start the AOL, by default, the splash screen is on.
You have to go into the options and turn the damn thing off.
But, yeah, what you're talking about is the physical spam.
I mean, I can't, you know, walk to my car without stepping on an AOL disk somewhere.
My magazine subscription...
That's a funny thing that I can't figure out.
Like, if you subscribe to some of the very technical magazines out there,
why do they still feel the need to put the AOL software in there?
You can only have so many disks.
Yeah, I mean, I collect them.
I have fun with...
Anytime I see one, I keep it.
I've got a whole file cabinet full of AOL disks.
No joke.
I have, like, from version AOL 1.0, like, early, early versions.
I probably have...
Who are floppy disks?
I have floppies.
I have CDs when they first started coming out on CDs.
I have mini CDs.
I have...
Yeah, I have probably every version of AOL known to mankind.
I think there's actually already a site out there somewhere that has all of those to download
if you wanted, for some reason, to reverse engineer, disassemble them, or something like that.
But the first versions are, like...
Yeah, they're, you know, they're fit on a diskette.
Like you said, they're 1.44 or less.
I think they had 720K on the low-density diskettes when they first came out, too.
I want to see someone log on with that.
It still works.
I...
Yeah, anybody out there...
I know we have some people that use AOL.
God help you.
But let us know.
I'm pretty sure that if you install an old version of AOL, I think it forcibly upgrades you.
That'd be hilarious.
I think you don't...
I don't think you have a choice to use it.
I don't even think back then they had a TCP IP function.
Because now in AOL, you can see go over TCP IP.
I think back then it was only dial-up.
I wonder if it would be a fun game or a fun experiment
if you were to set up, say, a Windows 3.1 box.
You know they don't update the software for that.
They've given up on that.
If you were to put an old version on an old Windows 3.1 box or something like that
and try to connect with it, what it would do?
If it can't update to get to newer software, I wonder if it would still work.
And if it did, I wonder if there were any holes in that that are still, you know,
that you could play with and do.
It'd be interesting.
That'd be fun to do, but I don't want it enough to actually sign up for an AOL account.
If anybody else wants to try that and let us know, mail us in at the address we gave you before.
Yeah, what about...
I don't know.
I kind of like collecting the AOL discs now.
It really has turned into a collection for me.
I've got to come up with some creative ways and some games or some tricks to do with the AOL discs.
I know we had a thread in the forums for a while about that,
but I've got a lot of AOL discs.
I think you can see what the one guy did.
He attached CDs to his Dremel and kicked the Dremel really fast and dropped the CDs on the ground.
Yep.
And it would bounce.
It would run up walls and stuff.
Yeah, I posted that link in the forums, too.
I thought that was very cool.
There were some other similar things.
I saw the...
Try that.
That's going to be so cool.
Yeah, the one with the...
You could put them in the microwave.
Some people filmed that before.
That's kind of played out, though.
But, yeah, the one where he put it on that drill and sent it, it climbed up the wall two or three times.
It had so much momentum that it hit the ground spinning again and just looped around.
He shot it in the fishbowl and it just spun inside the fishbowl.
That was pretty funny.
Anyway, that's probably not good radio because they can't see that visually.
But you can go to the forums at stankdawg.com, S-T-A-N-K-D-A-W-G.com and click on forums and you can find it from there.
If you can't, then, you know, you don't want it bad enough.
Spam.
Back to spam.
Virginia, my home state.
I was born in Virginia.
Very proud of that.
Born and raised.
No, and I wasn't raised.
You were home.
No, I was only there for, oh, I actually went back and forth.
I've moved a lot.
We'll leave that at that.
I, yeah, it's home, but I, yeah, I was raised in a lot of, a lot of different places.
They, however, just passed a new anti-spam law.
It allows the state to seize assets of convicted spammers and a prison sentence of up to five years.
So our buddy, the redneck up there, you know, he's, I hope that wasn't in Virginia, or if it was, it was before this was passed.
But finally, you've got some teeth.
You've got a law that you can actually, you know, threaten people with, you know, that you can actually put them in jail and make them pay, you know.
You know, it's still not powerful enough, you ask me.
I'd say, you know, for each offense, cut off a testicle.
That's what I say.
They'll only do it twice.
You know, they, I mean, I'm sorry.
They're just the scum of the earth to me.
I hate spam more than anything.
But how are you, the question with these is, at least this is, yeah, it's effective, the penalty is better, but how do you enforce this?
How do you, how do you prove this in court?
You know, our judicial system is something else I'm, you know, not impressed with lately.
People, it's so hard to prove things beyond a shadow of a doubt, and, you know, what's going to stop them from going in there and claiming that, oh, no, I didn't send out spam.
I was, my system was hacked and someone else spammed it.
They'll blame it on hackers like everybody else does.
It's going to be difficult to nail it down and make it stick to somebody.
That's my worry.
And what about the rest of the states?
Are other states going to follow?
Actually, some states I have been reading recently, some other states have followed.
So, hopefully the federal government might consolidate all this into one law, like their do not call list, which we need to go into a detailed analysis on.
That's more of an RFA topic there.
We might have to bring that up on Radio Freak America this week.
What do you think?
I would bet.
Yeah.
Here's another good one.
One of my favorite sites, The Smoking Gun.
TheSmokingGun.com.
Finally, well, not finally.
I guess, actually, this surprised me.
I didn't see this coming.
But The Smoking Gun is coming to television.
Oh, yeah.
Making the TV show, The Smoking Gun, which is, for people who are not unaware, of course, you can go check it out.
TheSmokingGun.com.
Pretty easy URL.
They're real good about digging up the dirt.
The dirt.
Yeah, the dirt.
They dig up all the, it's like disclosure information is what I call it.
It's like public records when people get arrested or when people file lawsuits.
That's all technically public information.
It's part of the public record.
And it's sometimes difficult to get it, but The Smoking Gun always finds a way.
They're the ones breaking the stories when somebody gets arrested or when somebody is caught driving drunk or commits a crime and they try to cover it up.
But, you know, the mass media might not tell you about such and such person getting this because they're, you know, it's a media of pretty boy and they don't want to drag his name in the mud.
Well, The Smoking Gun is there.
The Smoking Gun will have it in a day.
It's a line from our theme song.
They are going to be on, ironically, they're on court TV, which really, really, really sucks for me because my cable company sucks ass and I don't even get court TV.
So, I'm not even going to be able to enjoy the thing.
You get court TV?
I believe, I get a lot of stuff.
I get some pretty obscure stuff over here.
I might get, like, Spanish court TV down here, but I don't get regular court TV.
That would be great.
No, that would be good because of all the different trials they'll have.
What, like, what's that?
They'll have all the different, they'll have the really good trials then.
Yeah, remember that, that actually was created, sorry, I just took a drink there.
That was actually created about the time of all the OJ and there was a lot of celebrity lawsuits and legal things going on that kind of spawned that.
Everybody wanted to watch that damn OJ trial and stuff like that.
It went on for a couple, a year.
You know, that was the first sign, the first shot fired in the fall of our legal system.
I'm not going to go off on a rant.
I'm going to listen to our friend, our anonymous friend earlier.
I'm going to try to stay off the soapbox for the rest of the show.
It's like the first taste of real TV, reality television.
Well, no, no, no, no.
The first taste of reality television is my all-time favorite show, Cops.
Cops.
Cops is the shiz fucking nit.
Damn it, I said the F word.
Oh, I didn't say the other one.
I didn't say that other word, but I said the F word.
I was going to...
All right, how far into the show were we?
I didn't make it.
Pretty far.
That show is the bomb diggy.
I love it, except they went through a couple bad years.
I guess there was just no drama or anything going on.
It's a tough time.
Yeah, you'd have...
I just got tired of seeing 75-year-old men get busted in prostitution stings.
That's not exciting.
Hey, come on.
I want to see some domestic disputes, baby.
I want to see some car chases and some shootouts.
I want to see criminals getting what comes to them.
I saw a good one today.
I saw a guy who got stabbed, and he got...
It was kidnapping as well.
Oh, see, I...
It was a new episode on, and I missed it because my sucky cable company
put on, like, a Miss Teen Florida pageant or some stupid...
You've got to go spam them, man.
Yeah, oh, yeah, that's a good idea.
I need to hook up with my friend up here, but no, I don't want to...
I can't afford to spend six months in a halfway house.
I'm going to pass on that one.
You can't spend one month.
Yeah, that's true, actually.
Oh, here's one little irony in that story.
This isn't...
Actually, I dug this up, or I caught...
This caught my eye.
The smoking gun is a unit of Court TV, which I said,
and you know who owns Court TV?
AOL Time Warner.
Well, I see the way we wrap the episode up by keeping it all contained,
you know, keeping a whole chain of consciousness going.
AOL Time Warner owns...
Partially owns Court TV.
So, I wonder if the smoking gun would...
See, now they're going to pervert the smoking gun.
If they ever did find information on AOL or something like that,
or a Time Warner celebrity or something like that,
do you think now they're going to have to have that media bias
where they're not going to share that?
They're going to stop them from putting that on the air?
It's going to suck that.
No, no, you can't put up Ruben from American Idol
because that's one of our shows, and you'll kill the ratings, and, you know...
I'm thinking about that.
They're not going to put anything up now
because almost everything's going by AOL.
It's like the new Microsoft.
And I hope this does not mean that the smokinggun.com is also...
I hope that's still independent.
I mean, they may have control over the TV show,
but I hope they don't stop the stories on the smokinggun.com website.
That would really bite.
Hmm.
All right, I got...
Let's see.
How much time do we have here?
I'm going to hit one more story.
I'm going to make this quick.
Again, I'm going to stay off the soapbox on this,
but this one really pisses me off a lot.
Intuit, which is the company that makes TurboTax.
Tax reporting software, which a lot of people use.
A lot of listeners, I assume, probably use it.
I've tried several different ones, actually,
but I have to admit TurboTax was the easiest and quickest for me.
Intuit, the makers of TurboTax report
that there were two to three times as many TurboTax printed returns
than the number of copies of software sold.
Remember, this is also the same TurboTax
that put little tiny pieces of code on your hard drive
so it wouldn't even be erased when you format it.
These guys are sick.
They're trying hard.
I mean, they're trying hard to, I guess, anti-piracy or something like that.
They also, this year, they added some activation stage to the software
where you install it.
That's what I'm talking about.
They would drop a little piece of, a couple bytes on your hard drive.
Right.
If you didn't have formatted, it would never go away.
So, I installed that software on my computer
and because my system had some problems and crashed,
some of my software got corrupted,
I tried to uninstall it and reinstall the software
and when I did, it never would reactivate the damn thing.
It never would reactivate.
It kept saying that it was already on here
and that it was illegal copy
or some crap that's already been registered
and I'm like, no shit, it's already been registered.
I already, I ended up having to call this,
I called an 800 number and they didn't want to help me
and they ended up giving me a long distance number
that I had to call
and they finally issued me a new key
to register the damn thing.
Basically, I, you know, even if they are easier,
even if they are, you know, cheaper,
actually, the other ones are all,
you wait until it gets a little bit closer to tax time,
they're all, you'll get them for 10, 15 bucks, you know.
I'm going to try something different.
I mean, I'm just not dealing with that.
And just, I mean, think about what I just said though.
I mean, the more important thing here,
they claim, they reported that there were two to three times
as many TurboTax printed returns
than the number of copies of software sold.
You can track the number of copies of software sold
because you know how many you manufacture.
How do you trace or report or tell
how many printed copies of your TurboTax,
how many printed copies of the return from TurboTax were made?
How do you count how many were printed?
There's got to be some way for them to tell
that it was printed by TurboTax
and not by some other software
and not by, you know, the federal government
still makes printed forms.
How do they tell that it was printed by TurboTax?
A.
B, the scary one,
is how the, I almost said it again,
how in the heck do they know?
My federal tax return
is a government document.
I send it to the IRS.
You know, I'm required by law
to send it into the federal government
that has my personal information on it,
my social security number,
my salary,
my tax,
all the money I've given to charities,
all my whatever.
Are they telling me
that they disclose that information
or any of it
into it
and to TurboTax?
That's just evil.
I mean,
I don't know.
Do they,
maybe they just report
the number.
Maybe they count and say,
okay, we got this many million
that were printed by you guys.
But even if they told me that,
I don't believe them for a second.
I don't know what they send them.
I'm wondering if they don't
send them copies of the thing.
They might have all that information.
Maybe I'm going overboard
with a conspiracy theory here,
but I don't want them
to have any of it.
I didn't accept,
I didn't agree to participate
in any statistics.
I didn't agree
to let them know
what program I use.
I don't want them to know.
I don't want them tracking me.
That's way too big brother for me.
That's just way,
way,
way out of line.
So,
you know,
based on how the software performance
worked this last time
and how they're going to try
to track my stuff down,
I'm gone.
I'm boycotting,
at least myself.
I'm personally,
I'm off the TurboTax.
I'll use TaxCut,
Kiplingers,
whatever,
there's tons of others out there.
I,
no,
I'm not going to support
a company that's going to
invade my privacy like that.
Do I have an opt-out?
Is there any way I can,
can I,
you know,
not participate in that
or do I even have a choice?
For all I know,
the IRS
and some other
cost-saving move,
they're probably outsourcing
the whole thing too
into it.
Intuit probably has a contract
that says,
oh yeah,
yeah,
we'll file all the taxes for you
and they're the ones
probably doing it
and licking stamps
and sending out checks
at the same time
tracking every little bit
of information on you.
You know,
they have some big data mine,
this big data warehouse,
I should say,
that they're mining.
Who knows?
I mean,
I hope that doesn't happen,
but I don't put anything
past these people nowadays.
I really don't.
I mean,
am I,
is this another one
of my over-conspiracy,
over-analyzing things?
No,
because I think
that it's kind of unfair
to have them know
what the hell I'm doing
with my personal tax return.
I mean,
hey,
it's their business
to keep their piracy
under control,
but it's not
your business
to invade my privacy
going into my tax stuff.
What if they don't have,
let's say that I'm going overboard,
let's say they don't have
the tax information,
all they do is get
statistics on how many,
let's say after tax day,
a month after taxes
are due,
April 15th,
they report to Intuit,
okay,
it's all done now,
you guys,
we had 40 million,
I don't even know
if that's a good,
I don't know what the population
of the United States is
to be honest with you,
I probably should be ashamed
to admit that,
but they say we got
40 million forms
from TurboTax.
Maybe that's all
the information they give.
Is even that good?
Is even that right?
Does that bother you
if they did that?
Would it bother you?
Is this thing on?
Yes.
Does it bother you
if they just report,
like,
what is it,
is it Microsoft Media Player
and Winamp,
for example,
they have those little options
that says,
do you mind if we record
your statistics
for analyzing,
you know,
that little dialogue box?
They should put,
you know,
a way to,
like,
spam should have,
but we'll never have,
a way to opt out.
Right.
You know what they should do
on the next tax return?
If there's anybody
from the IRS,
from the government listening?
Oh, there is.
Don't worry.
Yeah.
And even if they did decide
to listen to my suggestion,
it would take them,
like,
12,
15 years
because they're so damn slow
to actually make a change.
But if somebody's listening,
I'm going to make a request.
Right down there
where you beg me,
and this is something else
that's kind of funny,
they beg me for donations
to the presidential election fund
or some shit like that.
I remember they used to just say,
check here if you want
to donate a dollar.
Now it's like $3,
$5.
I mean,
jeez,
man,
times are tight
and you guys are asking
for even more money?
Hell no.
Anyway,
put another checkbox
that says,
do you want us
or can we disclose
your information
so that I have a way
to opt out
and say,
hell no.
I don't want to share
that information.
Don't track me.
They all do as well.
Yeah,
it should be,
yes,
it should be like our polls.
We never do a clear
yes or no.
We always have some
little smart ass comment.
It should be yes
or hell no.
Oh.
Alright,
I'm going to end on that.
I didn't rant too bad
on that one.
I reined myself in.
But that,
that really,
I don't know,
maybe it's me overreacting again,
but that bothers me
that they,
they didn't tell me.
I just don't,
I like,
I don't like when they
try to hide it
because when you try
to hide something
it makes me think,
why did you try
to hide it?
If it's that,
if it's minor
and it's insignificant,
just come out
and tell me.
Yeah,
oh by the way,
we're going to track you
when you do this.
Maybe it was in that
400 page licensing agreement
that you click through
to say,
yeah,
I agree,
sure,
whatever.
Maybe it was in there.
Whoever reads that crap.
We should,
for all the crap
they're putting in it
and I think we might talk
about that
but yeah,
that just bothers me
because if they're
going to hide it,
they're hiding it
for a reason
and I want to know
what that reason is.
Well,
I think we are
at the end
of another episode,
mute.
Hey,
where did it go?
I think we got
a con line
to be a part of.
Con line time?
Yep.
Boy,
and oh,
let's shout out again
anybody listening
in the IRC channel.
Gluco,
thanks a lot for,
he's been emailing me,
keeping me in touch
and answering me
some questions
and those guys
are taking care of that.
I think they were
talking about
putting up a bot
in the channel
so it stays open
all the time
so hopefully
we can keep
some fun
and mature conversation
in there
or even some fun
immature conversation
as long as
it's not too
off the wall.
Again,
email letters
at binrev.com
which,
on that same note,
by the time
this episode,
by the time
you're listening
to this,
you will notice
that binrev.com
we finally redesigned
and rewrote
the entire website
so everything's got
a much more fluid
and flows a lot better,
it's a lot more easy,
a lot more easy,
boy,
my English is real bad today,
I'm mispronouncing words
and using poor grammar,
it's a lot easier
to navigate
is what I was trying
to say.
I guess we're even
for you saying
stupider last time,
huh?
Yep.
Alright,
so by the time
we air,
you'll be able
to check out
the new site,
download past episodes,
the first episode
I did finally
get that put up
and I didn't want
to fool around
with the pilot,
I just went ahead
and put that up
to download also.
I also got a couple
requests through IRC
and through the forums
and email about
the theme song,
I knew everybody
would like that a lot
so again,
that is Zerl
on our opening theme song
and I went ahead
and put the high
quality version of that
up for download
as well,
which he had given
us permission
once again to do
so enjoy that
and Mute,
did you have any
shouts or anything?
Did we touch on
everything you wanted
to touch on today?
It was a good show
and I think we got
everything they needed
to cover.
Yeah,
it was a fun show
and hopefully,
again,
I hope the person
who was a little bit
disappointed with our
first show,
I hope he found
this one a little bit
better.
Again,
I'm sorry,
it's just the way I am.
I'm going to rant
sometimes,
I'm going to complain,
I'm going to have
my little conspiracy
theories but I
will try to not
make a whole episode
on it and move on
from topic to topic
so probably started
off this episode
talking about it
more than he would
like but hopefully
he stuck around
and hopefully he'll
stick around in the
future.
Again,
anybody has anything,
email it to us
and I guess we'll
see you guys again
next week,
Sam Hack Time.
Sam Hack Channel.
Peace out.
Go.
Thank you.