This is dedicated to all the hackers and the crackers, to the hackers and the crackers.
I see in binary, I speak source code, step on my toes, I'll post a million game pegs
of you and 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 dream packs, 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 rattling
your bones, when I tell you we just hacked out Jones, and NASDAQ, leave you flat on your
back, cause I am he who loves to hack and crack, cause I am he who loves to hack and crack.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the crackers, serial codes, source codes, ISOs, RAMs, SIFs,
SIFs, this is dedicated to the hackers and the crackers.
Alright, welcome to Binary Revolution Radio Episode 11, I am StankDawg here once again for
your listening pleasure, or pain as it were, whatever you prefer, and I am joined this
week by another special guest, someone you've heard of and known before, but you've probably
never heard, I don't think you've ever been on the air before, have you?
Uh, no.
No, so, Voodoo Hal, say hello to the people.
Hello everyone.
Voodoo Hal is on here today, cause we're gonna talk about some programming topics, and some
source code and open source ideas, so, um, we're gonna jump into that in a minute, but
before we do, I want to pimp the IRC channel.
Now, I know a lot of the regular listeners know that we have an IRC channel, but, um, I
want, I wanna emphasize that it's, it's open all the time, that channel is 24-7.
The show doesn't have to be on necessarily for you to go out there and visit and have some
intelligent conversation, um, so, for those of you who don't know, it is irc.esper.net,
that's E-S-P-E-R dot net, channel binrev, which is pound B-I-N-R-E-V, and that is the
main channel for, where most of us hang out and just talk when we, we're come and go,
and a lot of people idle in it, but for the most part, you can always see a few people
in there, so, stop in, say hi, talk, ask questions, it's a pretty good environment,
pretty good place to hang out, especially during the show, we, you, we get upwards of
10, 15 people in there at any given time during the show, of course, depending on everyone's
schedules, I know a lot of people listen to the MP3s, um, and download it and listen when
they have time, I know, I think you do that, don't you, Hal?
Uh, for the most part, yeah.
Yeah, see, I, I listen to a lot of the shows while I'm coding, while I'm at work, so, um,
I know a lot of people do that and they can't make the IRC, but, just wanted to let people
know that it is out there, um, so, come on, hang out, and check it out, and we also have,
you know, there's some other channels, there's an RFA channel, there's a DDP Code channel,
which we're going to talk about in a few minutes, so, uh, yeah, go check that out, it's another
source of, um, hanging out, meeting new people, talking about, uh, hacking topics and things
that you may have in common.
Um, also, before we go into some of the news topics, um, I got an email from, well, it
came from a person, but I never give out people's real names on the air unless they specifically
tell me so, or authorize me so, or give me a handle, so, I'm just going to say from an
anonymous person who, uh, informed me that the server was down, and he actually got the
contact information to send me the email from Google, so, I thought that was kind of
cool, um, basically just called to say that he found the show, and he liked it, so, I'm
glad to hear that, thank you very much for saying that, and I hope you stick around and listen
to the show, I hope we, uh, keep it up a good show each week, um, but, is there, is there
a hosting company out there that doesn't suck?
I just, I, I keep trying all these different hosts, and I don't know why the
servers go down, there's no excuse for it, I'm supposed to be guaranteed 99.9% uptime,
and I've never found one that will guarantee me that, it's just, I don't, I don't know what
else to do, I don't know if there's a point in moving around again, because every time
I go to a new server, I have the same problems, and I lose a lot of development time, I lose
a lot of time preparing, and fixing, and modifying stuff to run on the new server, because everyone's
got it set up differently, no two control panels are ever the same, they always
got different naming conventions, yada, yada, yada, so, yeah, that gets kinda old, so, unless
it becomes a severe, severe problem, I guess we're gonna stay there for a while, um, I'm
actually probably gonna break down and sign a year contract, right now we're month to
month, and actually Bland is taking care of that right now, so I'd like to take that off
of him, um, so he, he's actually got some ideas in mind that he wants to pursue as well,
so I'm gonna try to, try to get that transferred over, and we might be committing to this current
host for a year, even though they're not the greatest, at least they've got a fair price,
and for the most part, they're up and running. So, um, thank you again for the email, I hope
you stick around, and actually, we've had a lot of new visitors lately, a lot of, a lot
of new people on the forums, a lot of new, um, uh, emails I've been getting and hearing
from people, and, um, I guess we thank the Googlebot for that, don't you think?
Uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's doing its job, but.
Yeah, I actually did not intend, as people in the forums know, I didn't intend to invite
all the bots out here, but, um, again, because of the, the logic of moving from one server
to another, I mistakenly took out the exception rule to stop them from coming in, I was blocking
all user, user agents from coming into the forums folder, so, um, I took that out and
moved it to the new server, thinking that I would also move the forums over that same
day, something came up, and I didn't get it done, but I forgot to go back and reset the
damn exclusion rule, so, along came the bots, and the rest is history, so, everybody wave,
say hi to the Googlebot, say hi to a hot bot, hot bot's a big fat twat, just throw that
out there, um, and actually, it's good, you know, really, yeah, you gotta take the good
with the bad, but, you know, there's, there's a lot of good, a lot of good people coming in,
a lot of information that could be brought in, and, um, we just have to, uh, deal with
it, I mean, growth is a part of life, and we are gonna have to make the site grow and continue,
so, um, I think it's a good thing, so, uh, we'll deal with it, we'll take it as it
comes on, and there's no point in blocking it back out now, and, and putting the exclusion
back in, because it's, it's pretty much out there, so, let's just ride it out and see
where it goes.
Now, I have actually been having something fun to do at work for a change recently, um,
I've been working with, uh, PGP, I've actually been assigned to do some PGP stuff at work,
and it's something I've wanted to do for years, and I've never had an excuse or a reason
to sit down and force myself to do it, I've always had something else higher priority,
so I finally got to sit down with, uh, PGP running under Solaris, and I'm finally tinkering
around with that, I've been working with, uh, Psy2, we've been doing some testing, he knows
a little bit about it as well, um, we're both kind of playing with that, and I actually,
it's not as bad as I first thought, you know, it's, it's a little intimidating, it's definitely
not ready for prime time use for, you know, your everyday user at home, um, so it's a little
disconcerting that only the hardcore tech geeks of us will actually be able to sit down
and make use of encryption, I think everybody deserves to have the same access to encryption
and privacy, but there still hasn't been a user-friendly front end, I still, I, and I've
tried several, I've tried several plugins for Outlook and for, for, uh, Eudora and stuff
like that, I, have you, uh, Voodoo Hal, have you ever used or found a, uh, PGP front end
that a normal, what you would call a normal everyday user could use?
Actually, back in the day, uh, for the company I worked for, we used a, one of the Outlook
plugins, which I think was the, uh, off of, uh, IPGP.net, I believe it was.
IPGP?
I believe that's what it was called.
Okay.
Um, but it worked well, um, never had really that many issues with it, and then if you,
I don't know if you've seen PGP Phone, but that's kind of an interesting tool, um, completely
encrypted voice over IP program, um, Zimmerman and that whole group brought up quite a while
ago.
Hmm.
Yeah, everyone that I've ever seen added an extra step or two to the process of sending
and receiving mail, and they, I think for your typical user to use it, it needs to be
more invisible, it needs to do all that stuff behind the scenes, and, you know, as, the least
intrusive it could possibly be.
I mean, the most it should do is pop up and say, you know, uh, here's the, someone has sent
you their public key, you know, do you want to add it, and then it should automatically
show you the message, and unfortunately, I just haven't seen one.
Yeah, I, I'm actually still would like to have a, I, I can use the command line one, like
I said, but I would still like to have a nice, simple plug-in, so I might, I might check
out ipgp.net, you said, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I might go check that one out.
Um, another thing that I've had to deal with this week, and actually, it's not me, it's
our good friend, Dual Parallel, um, I thought I'd bring this up on the air, even though he
posted this in the forums, I want to make sure we explain to people, um, last week we
had Logan 5 on, and we talked about a lot of the, um, issues we have with publishing
a magazine, and believe me, it is not a simple thing, and it's definitely not something we
have mastered yet, so we're learning as we go along.
Um, one of the things we have discovered is that we're not a warehouse, we're not a retail
outlet, we don't exactly have the capacity to keep inventory, so, um, Dual has a few
issues of 1.1 left, and he's actually going to print some more, uh, I guess by the time
we air this, it'll actually be, he'll actually have those printed, hopefully, but, um, he is
basically, and, and not just him, but everybody is basically moving on to 1.2 as far as distributing
and, and being able to access them at your 2,600 meetings.
Um, definitely, absolutely, the back issues are available, but unfortunately, we're only
going to be able to offer them on binrev.com at this time, and that's using PayPal.
Um, unless you get lucky, if somebody at one of your meetings, if you, if you go to Chicago
meeting and, and Mute is there, or if you come to my meeting, I will have them on hand,
um, but Dual basically has run out of them, and it is not a simple task for him to go get
them printed up, you know, on demand.
He can't really go print one or two copies.
It's very, very cost-ineffective.
So, anybody who wants to order the past issues, and I hope you do, I really hope you do, it's
a great issue, um, you're going to have to come through binrev.com, um, possibly if there's
extreme circumstances, we'll try to work something else out, but frankly, uh, he's run out of
them, and we can't just keep boxes and boxes of them in everyone's house, especially as the
number of issues starts to add up.
Um, so, I am going to do that.
I am going to have issues of, back issues of the old ones available, but, um, yeah, it's
just too much burden for everybody in DDP to have boxes of these on hand.
So, unfortunately, we are going to have to, um, cut off the 1.1 orders, um, from Dual, from
the P.O. box, which is, again, I should remind everybody also that that is a cash and carry
operation, uh, no checks, no money orders.
That's not something we are capable of handling right now, either.
Unfortunately, it's going to have to be cash only.
Put it in an envelope, cover it with a piece of paper, you know, so nobody tells that there's
cash in there, but there's just, that's really the only way that he can do it, um, so keep
that in mind if you're sending orders to them, or, again, the easiest way, I know a lot of
people don't have PayPal accounts, or don't trust PayPal, or don't want to use them, and
technically, you don't need an account.
You can, uh, pay for it with a credit card through PayPal, via PayPal, without any problems.
You don't actually have to create an account, but I know people aren't comfortable with
that.
So, um, like I said, for the most part, uh, the current issue will work around, and Dual
will still take them through the P.O. box.
Uh, the directions are on magazine.binrev.com.
Um, so, I just wanted to throw that out there, and that has been my week.
I, uh, went back to work this week, for listeners know I was on vacation, and I went back to work
this week, so I've been working a lot of hours, and, uh, really haven't had a lot of, a lot
of hacking time, and, um, hopefully, upcoming, this upcoming week or two, I will have some, uh,
better stuff to talk about.
Uh, maybe, maybe this will make up for it, if, uh, Voodoo Hal, if you can talk a few minutes
about your OOP classes, your object-oriented programming and C++, which actually, we probably
shouldn't pigeonhole the C++.
You want to keep it more emphasized, keep the emphasis on the object-oriented programming
part, do you not?
Right, um, mostly, definitely want to keep it on the, the concepts of programming right
now, so that it can be applied to C++, to Java, hell, even Python, I believe, is object-oriented.
Right, yeah, I absolutely agree 100%.
Um, but, yeah, uh, the, the, the lectures are going well, um, hopefully, I, I don't know if
I have time, but we may, because no one seemed to log the last one, which I didn't think about
doing myself, um, I may try to, if some people want to redo that one, um, I don't know if
anybody's up for that.
Yeah, that, I would definitely be up for it.
It's, it's just so hard to find one set time that everybody can make it to.
I mean, everybody has real world, and jobs, and school, and all those issues, so, um, it's
just so hard to find a good time.
Um, what, what have you decided?
You're going to do it every other week.
Do you want to explain the, the timing you've come up with?
Sure, um, basically I've posted a, uh, a poll for everyone, and it looks like Friday
is the best.
I know it's not perfect for everyone, but it seems to work out for the majority of people
interested, um, so we're going to do those Friday, every other week.
If, for instance, it falls on, well, one of the 2,600 Fridays, we're going to push it
back to probably the next weekend, or the next Friday, and we're going to try to keep
them at 9.30 Eastern Time.
9.30 Eastern Time for approximately an hour, or however long it takes, obviously, but approximately
an hour?
Yeah, the first time, I think the first one went for two hours, um, the second one may
have made it an hour and a half, so at least, at least an hour and a half I'm going to try
for.
Good, good.
However long it takes to cover the material.
Right.
Um, yeah, and that is also, you can go to irc.esper.net, and the channel, however, is...
DDP Code.
Yep.
Pound DDP Code.
Um, and I went to the first one and listened in, uh, actually, it was kind of funny, we
were actually taping last week's show while you, when you started, so I came in late, but,
um, I was, I mean, my jaw dropped at how many people were in the channel.
I mean, there were a lot of people in there, there's definitely people interested, so, um,
I, I think it was a huge, huge success.
Definitely, um, this last one wasn't so, there weren't that many people, but the first one
was just amazing.
Yeah, the first one had, like, a full month or so build-up, so it was, everybody knew the
date, and I think, since we didn't quite have the timing issue down, we might have missed
a couple people.
It might be a good idea to kind of rehash number two, rehash the second one, cover some
of those topics again, and maybe even add to it kind of a two and a half if you, uh, if
you want to do something like that.
Um, and definitely go to the forums, and check out the calendar.
Now, are you, you're posting that out there, maintaining it on the calendar, so we all,
we can depend on it being out there, whatever, whenever the date and time is scheduled, you
can put all that stuff out there?
Yep, I'm trying to manage that.
If you don't, one of us will, between Bland and I, we'll, we'll, we'll try to make sure
it gets out there so everybody can count on, I think the calendar helps so much, because
between doing this show, and between RFA, and Off the Hook, and all the stuff I want
to listen to, and need to like to listen to, um, in addition to the once a year, or once
every few months, things like the conferences, and, and DEF CON, and InterZ0ne, and, and H2K,
whatever, whenever that comes along, adding all that stuff on there, I can look ahead
of time, and, and plan to be in certain places, and plan to be, you know, in the monthly 2600
meetings.
It's, it's, it's been tremendously helpful to me personally.
I hope it helps other people.
I don't know if anybody else uses it as much as I do.
I think it's fantastic.
I've started looking at it more, actually, um, and, and really am finding it useful, especially
now that we're having so many things come up, you know, once every couple of weeks, and
actually, what, two radio shows a week now?
RFA and BinRev?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that definitely.
Lots of stuff now.
Yeah, there's, there's, there's, and there's even more than that that we listen to, but
yeah, there's definitely those two that we put out, um, of course, dual putting out RFA,
um, but, I, I mean, I assume that in your, at your job, at work, you have, well, I shouldn't
assume.
I'll say, in my job, we have, um, Microsoft Outlook, in addition to, uh, plug-in for a web
access to calendar information, where they list, uh, group meetings, and scheduled appointments,
and stuff like that, and that's not exactly something I can list the 2600 meetings on,
or the BinRev radio show, and, and release dates, and stuff like that.
I can't put it out there, because of, obviously, the subject matter.
So, to me, the calendar is just a place where I can put all the other, the personal, the,
the, uh, stuff that I can't talk about, and, you know, you don't tell people about it
at parties, you know, that kind of stuff.
So, it works, it works great for me, so I hope other people find it useful, um, and
anybody can post something to it.
I know, um, a lot of people are posting their back to school and stuff like that, which is
okay, but, um, starts to clutter up the calendar, so, but if you have any, another thing I think
would be good on there, too, is the, um, the phone conferences that have been going on
lately.
I know Decoder has been, uh, getting on the phone conferences.
He lives on the phone conferences.
I know he's been doing a lot of the phone conferences lately, and Icon, and a bunch of
those guys, so if they can use the calendar to put them on there, that would be awesome,
and we can, maybe that would help organize, because I know sometimes people will say,
oh, I was on for 15 minutes, and no one was there, or I didn't get home until this time,
and I didn't know if you were still there.
Maybe if we put it out in the calendar, it'll kind of keep people, uh, uh, in sync together.
Definitely.
Not to be confused with Justin Timberlake's in sync.
Um, you had something else you were telling me about earlier that I thought was interesting.
You were saying something about, um, some ghetto driving.
Oh, yes, I'm expanding my, uh, ghetto driving horizons.
Uh, this week I went to pick up, uh, looking for a used calculator for school, ended up finding
a 5-inch LCD at a pawn shop, and I had a video in.
That's almost like a calculator.
Yeah, pretty much.
Well, not exactly.
Okay, go ahead.
But, um, basically I'm designing, I shouldn't say designing, I don't know, I'm implementing
a war driving slash mp3 player for my car, and that's going to be the key item.
Well, the key item is the screen, the LCD screen?
For me.
Well, that's because you already have the real key component.
Well, true.
The laptop itself, the wireless equipment, things like that.
And you, and it's because, basically, did you say that your, the LCD of the laptop had
died on you?
Um, yeah, um, it burned out, so it's getting mounted under the seat.
So, that is definitely, that is absolutely the epitome of ghetto driving.
Mounted under the seat, run the cables up to the LCD now, um, this actually sounds like
a very interesting project of, I wouldn't know, it's definitely going to be some troubleshooting
involved in this whole process, because how does, how does the detection work for a three-inch
monitor, you know?
How do you set up drivers and resolution, and there's going to be some guesswork in there.
Oh, definitely.
Um, hopefully it won't be too, too much of a problem, but I'm assuming because as video
out, I think it only supports up to, what, 640 by 480, maybe 800 by 600 anyway.
Or is it three, actually, is it 320 by 240?
Oh, really?
So it's even, I'm not, you know what, I'm really not sure.
It's definitely no more than 640 by 480, I'm pretty sure.
That shouldn't be too large.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Well, that's, that's.
It's not ghetto enough until there's duct tape involved.
Well, I'm sure, you're going to have to duct tape it under the seat to keep it from sliding
around.
Exactly.
You have to have some duct tape in there somewhere.
Um, actually, you know, I don't, I joking, I joke about, you know, getifying some
things, but even, even though you're going to use some ghetto equipment, you can still
make that look really, really nice.
You can put the laptop under the seat, no one will see it or know it's there.
I don't know what you're going to do for an occasional reboot, but you'll be running
some flavor of Linux, I assume.
You might not have to reboot so much.
Well, probably not, since it's all memory resident and I don't have to worry about anything
dying.
You know what, that's a good idea.
And then when you shut the car off or when everything gets powered down, it's no big
deal, you reboot from the CD again.
Right, well, and plus, with the, uh, with having a hard drive, I can actually, and being
wireless, I can upload my MP3s and things like that to the hard drive and not have to
worry about the OS ever dying on me.
Right.
Like me and Windows X fucking P.
Ah, dammit, I didn't even, I made it halfway through the show before using the F word this
time.
Dammit.
God, my Windows XP died again this week.
Again.
Oh, God, it makes me so fucking sick.
I am trying my best to migrate everything to Linux.
I am trying my absolute damnedest to migrate every single thing that I do to Linux.
I won't be able to do it at work.
They won't let me.
They won't support it.
But at home, I am making the, I'm going to keep one box for playing games until I find
even that I'm going to try to, to get away from using Windows for.
I'm going to try to, if I have to use a virtual PC or an emulator or whatever, I'm going to
try to even get away from it for that.
Or, just, I don't play that many games to be honest.
I can play some of the bigger games on Linux anyway.
So maybe I'll just give up on the whole gaming.
I'm just so sick of Windows XP dying every week and it requires a full reinstall.
It just, it makes me sick.
Absolutely makes me sick.
Don't put any flavor of Windows on that.
You know better than that, right?
Oh, come on.
You mean 3.1 isn't a good idea for what I'm doing?
Well, no.
You know, actually, now that I think about it, maybe Nopix won't be the best thing because
if you are going to have to have some tweaks or some configuration for that monitor,
if it auto-detects and runs at a default resolution that's acceptable, that would be great.
But I don't know if it will do that.
You might have to actually do some modification to the Nopix image and customize it and make
the new, make a new image, redistribute it to yourself.
Is that a term?
You know what I'm saying?
And the same thing also with the, depends on what kind of wireless card.
I think Bland has had some issues with some wireless cards.
They had to work up some hack jobs to get the wireless card to be recognized and work properly
in some of the different distros.
That's true.
I would say very proficient at the Linux terminals, so I'm not too worried about getting
my hardware working.
Yeah, the thing is that if it's Nopix, though, when you reboot, I mean, you can't do that
every time it reboots.
Where would you, where would you, maybe even just fit some small files on the diskette and
have it read from the diskette somehow?
Well, also, like I said, I'm going to have the hard drive for MP3 storage, so I can actually
store config files and things like that there.
Nopix is pretty good about that, unbooting, telling it where config things are.
Oh, it is?
Okay.
See, I never, I was wondering if that's, the problem would be how would you point the Nopix
to look on your hard drive or on the diskette for that information?
Right.
Hmm.
Well, plus the other thing is I'll more than, definitely have SecureShell running on it,
so when it's on, I'll have a SecureShell server that I can actually just use the wireless
to get to from, like, more than likely from my own bedroom, because I park, like, five
feet from my window.
Well, that's, that's convenient.
Um, what about, um, let's see, what about Nopix STD also?
That might be, I think that has a few extra drivers for some wireless cars that might be
helpful, and it comes with, um, comes with, um, what is it called, um, Air Snort.
Ah, okay.
Actually, I think, um, the original Nopix did, too.
Oh, did it?
Okay.
Regular old Nopix.
Um.
I use that every day, actually.
Yeah, and a lot of, a lot of other stuff on the STD.
I, I, I know Bland talked about it and tried it, but I haven't tried the STD distro myself,
but I was, that was going to be the next one I spend some time on.
So, well, good deal.
Um, you know, there's something else that we probably should talk about since you and I
are both on the line, and we both spend our days doing similar things.
Um, since we both, I, I don't know what your official title is, or if you want to bring
that up, but, you know, my official title is Senior Programmer Analyst.
I am a computer programmer for a living, not just, you know, as a fun side thing in the
whole hacking.
That's what I do for a living, and I think you can relate to that pretty well.
Am I correct in that?
Uh, yeah, I've been a programmer for a while now, more or less a, uh, mainframe tape monkey,
but I've been that.
Well, you know, been there, done that.
Uh, backup technician.
Yeah, you know, actually, it's kind of, I guess this is, probably sounds lame to say,
but I'm going to say it anyway.
Everything I say sounds lame to Duel, but, you know, I won't go there.
Um, I started when I was, when I started in college, I actually got a weekend job at a
software company, um, I'm trying to pick my words carefully here, um, working on an AS400
shop, working in an AS400 shop, three AS400 systems, and I had never seen, I had never
ever seen any heavy metal.
I'd never seen anything other than PCs, Macs, you know, standard, fair, standard issue stuff.
When I walked into this company for the first time, and walked back into their computer room,
I was just, I was in heaven.
I was just blown away at the equipment that I saw there.
I was a tape monkey.
That was basically what they hired me to do, was I was a weekend job, where they would
just, I would just have to go back there and run some backups, um, maintain some systems,
operations type stuff, um, and load and unload tapes all night long.
But, while I was there, I used that opportunity to teach myself a lot about the systems, and
from a system I knew nothing about, kind of work my way up into a programming position there.
And then, move on to another company on a real mainframe, because the AS400 is a mid-range
system, move on to a real mainframe, and kind of learn some more, I guess a lot of people
think mainframes don't exist anymore, and that they're, they're gone, and everything's
PC, and yada, yada, yada, but, you and I can attest that that's not the case.
Definitely.
Actually, what's funny, and this was, we didn't discuss this earlier, because it just happened,
actually, um, I'm in the atrium of the building that I work at currently.
While we're recording this.
And, uh, I don't know if you were on the phone line there, Con, that I was, the other night
when I said that we have, uh, Ethernet outlets in the atrium in our cafeteria, for public,
complete public cafeteria.
Right.
Well, some genius just left, oh, about 50 pages of our internal mainframe system's manual
sitting on one of the tables.
Well, why don't we just open the door to the computer room and give them the passwords next
time?
Uh, that works too.
Uh, and I assume, is your, is your, uh, uh, computer room, uh, freezing?
Oh, uh, God, yes.
Uh, we have, we have probably a 5,000 employee campus here, and so our machine room is giant.
I mean, it's massive.
And it's like 60 degrees at all times.
Yeah, and that, again, that's another thing that I had never experienced before.
Uh, I was completely new to the environment, and I walked in, and their computer room had
the electronic, um, you had to punch in a, I think it was a six-digit character to get
in, um, password to get in, and it was freezing.
Actually, I like it colder, so it didn't really bother me too much.
If you're going to spend more than 10 minutes back there, you probably would need a jacket.
That's right.
For hours.
Yeah, most people, most people, if they go back there for one or two minutes, would want
a jacket, but I was kind of comfortable with it.
So, um, only if I had to actually go back there and run something from the main consoles
for some kind of emergency or, or IPL-ing the machine, something like that.
Um, but I'd never been exposed to that kind of environment.
Um, again, I don't, I have no idea what kind of similarities we're going to have here.
We didn't think about this ahead of time, but for mine, my environment, my computer room,
we had three AS400 systems, and these systems, for those of you who have never seen them,
or have only seen them in pictures, let me try to visualize it for you.
There were, each, each AS400 consisted of about, well, of course it varies from installation
to installation, but we had about eight racks, eight actual parts to the AS400, and each
part was like a server rack, if, if any of the listeners have seen what a server rack looks
like, um, if you haven't, think of them, I don't know, as a refrigerator, is that a good
comparison?
I think a vending machine.
A vending, yeah, a vending machine or a refrigerator, each one single unit is about that size, and
think of seven or eight of those, they're all side by side, and that makes up one system
in my particular circumstance.
Now, on the other side, behind me, was another system very similar to that, and then, the
third system, which was like, even bigger, had, I think, twelve, um, units to it, and
basically, it formed kind of a maze, back in this old computer room, and you would, when
you're facing one machine on the far right-hand side, you would basically turn, and you'd be
facing the second machine, and you'd kind of walk through the maze to the other side, and
you'd be facing the third machine, you were basically surrounded by these gigantic, again,
vending machines, whatever you want to describe them, that put off a lot of heat, and in our
particular, when I first started there, um, this was a company that was growing really
quickly, they didn't actually have a professional computer room, for lack of a better term, it
was an old basement that was converted, and there was no raised floors, or anything nice
like that, so all of these systems, with all of the wires, you think wires coming out of
a PC are bad, everybody complains about how many cables and wires, and rightfully so, you
ought to look in the back of one of these big boys sometimes, and normally, in most good
computer rooms, you have raised floors, and you feed the cables and the wires down underneath,
where they're hidden, they keep airflow pushing through there, they keep everything cool, they
have water detection, stuff like that, so that nothing stays damaged, well, we didn't have
that, our machines had the wires coming out of the back, and because there were so many
of them, they were stacked on top of each other, our computer room was like the biggest fire
hazard you could ever imagine, even though it was cool, they had these cables piled on top
of each other behind the machines that were as half as tall as the vending machine itself,
they basically would come up to your knees, a stack of cables, if any of them died or
had a problem, it was god awful trying to find which cable in that jumble of stuff, and
like every once in a while, you got used to it after all, but every once in a while, you
just see sparks and shit flying from some corner somewhere, and it was just kind of accepted
because that was the way it was, so it's, for anyone who's never seen it, it is definitely
a sight to behold, something very much to appreciate, it's not like seeing, you know,
you sit in your house, and you're happy, and you think you've got this powerful computer
room, I've got, I'm sitting here right now recording the show, and I've got one, two,
three, four, five PCs staring at me, and I'm like, wow, that's a lot of computing, no, that's
nothing, when you get to a company, or to a mainframe company, or an AS400 shop, and see
this equipment, it will just stagger your mind, you might not even appreciate it until you
start to play with it, but it's definitely something to be appreciated, do you have a
similar environment that you work in now, or have worked in?
Well, it's similar here, I remember the first time I was brought here, it was almost awe-inspiring,
I mean, we have probably 15 to 20 RS6000s all lined up, we have, I would say, 30 to 40 racks
of rack-mount servers, I mean, we have, we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
machines here, it's amazing, I don't know what we do with all of it, I think.
Yeah, oh yeah, there's too much to keep up with.
We're an owner-assimulator, but we're basically an insurance company, so we have a large number
of databases, and we've been around a long time, we have an even larger number of databases,
databases, but yeah, here it's massive, I mean, the tape back, we have one IBM ATL, which
is a giant tape archive, it holds 10,000 tapes.
Now, what kind of tapes?
I believe they're DLT-4s, I don't ever touch it, but I'm pretty sure that's what they are.
Okay.
But it's massive, I mean, it's, you were talking, we're using vending machines as a comparison,
I think the thing is like 15 vending machines long, it's huge, it's got a robotic arm inside
of it that moves the tapes on its own, I mean, that alone just makes me kind of go, wow.
Right, oh yeah, it's, yeah, I've seen those, we don't have one of those actually, well, we
didn't at that company.
The company that I worked at, like I said, they were growing, and that was when I first
started with them.
Now, later on, like I said, I proved myself, got a programming position, and we moved to
a new building, and they built a very nice computer center that was pretty much the nicest
in the state, people would come by and give tours, IBM would come by and show people, it
was like a demo model of how to make a computer room, so we went from the rock bottom with sparks
flying from everything to this new computer room.
Didn't you have a Halon story, I believe?
Oh, God.
Did I already tell you the Halon story?
I think so.
Did I tell you the Halon?
Oh, God, man, you're going to, this is going to be so embarrassing, but this is the funniest
story that I've ever, ever, unfortunately I'm the butt of the joke, but imagine yourself,
again, this was all new to me, I had never even seen or been in, it's very intimidating,
awe-inspiring to be in this situation.
Well, my job was on third shift, and, you know, that's awfully late.
So, I wasn't always in the best state of mind sometimes, I would be in there and be, you
know, half passed out, dazed, dozing, you know, falling asleep, nodding my head.
Well, because of the situation with the computer room, and because of the data and the machines
being so incredibly valuable, there is a, I guess, fire control system, a safety system
in place in case of emergencies, in case one of those sparks gets out of hand, and it is
a Halon-based system, which I don't think they even do those anymore, I think they've
gone into something else now, but I'm not sure about that, but this was, when you first
walk in the computer room, there was a sign on the front door that says, warning, deadly
Halon.
So, like, here I am, this total newbie, walking in for, like, training on the job for the first
day, the first thing I see is, A, that you have to use a combination to get into the room,
and B, this big sign that says, deadly Halon, warning.
Once you get inside, they have these two big tanks, they look like a jet pack or something
over on the side, and they have tubes running from them, to, through the ceiling, to different
parts of the room, and the tanks, of course, have the big, uh, uh, do not touch symbol, danger,
warning, blah, blah, blah, and there's deadly Halon signs on each one of the walls.
Very, very intimidating, especially since I didn't know the first friggin' thing about
Halon, or what it, so they tell, you know, I asked about it, I'm no dummy, I asked about
it, and check what's up with that, and they said, you know, if there's a fire, if something
happens, the tanks will kick in, the, well, the sensors will go off, the tanks will kick
in, and you have, I think it was 20 seconds, it was 10 or 20 seconds before the Halon would
come into the room. Well, this room was, you know, a big bedroom, I guess, if you want
to think of it, like, uh, uh, say two bedrooms put together about the size, you could easily
get out of it in a second or two. But when you're in a certain situation, you don't really
think clearly, especially when you're half asleep. So the story goes like this, I'm in
there one night, I'm working, I'm half asleep, I got the lights out, I'm kind of dozing, and
with the tapes that we used to use at the time were 3490 cartridges, and you'd load about
six or seven of them at a time, and, um, basically that would run for an hour before you'd have
to reload six or seven more tapes. So I was in the middle of one of these tape changes.
I go back there to one of the three machines, I'd unload the tapes, um, there were two tape
drives next to each other, one for each machine. So I go in, I have six tapes in my left hand,
balancing them against my chest. I have six tapes in my right hand, balancing them against
my chest. All of a sudden, I hear sirens go off in the room. I am here to tell you that
self-preservation is alive and well inside of Stank Dog. These sirens went off, and they were
ear-piercing. I didn't know what they were. I didn't care what they were. All I know is that
before those 12 tapes hit the ground, I was out the back door, full, dead-on run, and the only thing
in my feeble mind was, deadly halon, deadly halon. I ran out the back door like OJ fucking
Simpson. I hit that door like, uh, uh, Eric Dickerson with a shoulder. I spun off the door,
flew right out. I never hesitated, didn't miss a step. Fuck the tapes. Fuck the AS400s. Fuck the
building. I ain't going out like that. I am not gonna die like a punk. I hit that door,
and that place could burn to the ground for all I care. I ran out the back door to the
computer room, the emergency door. I run out. We had two buildings next to each other. I run
full blast to the next building, punch in the combination, because again, this is the
middle of the night. Everything is locked up. I run to the building next door. I call the
manager. I call my manager, who again, I'd only been to this, you know, maybe this was
within a month this happened, so I was still a complete newbie. I go in. I had run between
buildings, fully out of breath, scared shitless, half asleep. I get on the phone. I call my
manager at home. It's about 3.30, 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm out of breath on the phone
with this guy, and I'm going, computer room. There's a fire. Everything. Deadly halon.
Deadly halon. Completely in panic mode. It was, I would give any, any amount of money in the
world to have jumped out of my body and watched myself in full panic mode. I think it's the
only time in my life that I've ever been completely, oh my God, I'm gonna die. I was so scared and
so blown away by that incident that, I mean, it traumatized me, dude. I'm still to this
day traumatized. That is the deadly halon incident. That's the deadly halon story I mentioned
to you that time.
I think you saw, I remember my post about my traumatizing incident when all the lights
and the power and the entire floor went off. I'm just sitting in this dark room with this
hum and all these little LEDs staring at me. It was the most bizarre feeling.
Yeah. It's like, uh, open the pod bay doors, Hal. It's like the computer took over.
Exactly.
Yeah, the same thing. It, what it turned out to be was the, it was just the general fire
alarm for the building. It wasn't anything to do with the halon sensors. Of course, I
don't, I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about getting my ass out. So I call
him up. I'm completely in panic mode. He basically says, oh, oh, that's just the fire
alarm for the building. Don't worry about it. It goes off all the time. What do you
mean it goes off all the time? Why didn't you tell me? I'm fucking about to piss myself
running from this shit. And you're going to tell me, oh, just go in and punch in this
code and it goes off. So I go in, I punch the code. Sure enough, it goes off. I go back
down to the computer room. I'm still, even though I turned it off, even though I'm still
scared shitless. I punch the code in the door. I open the door and jump back like Halon's
going to come rolling out. I don't know what Halon looks like. I don't know what Halon
smells like. I didn't know what the hell to expect. So I pull the door open and jump
back. Everything seemed okay. I peer my head in. Everything was fine. There's 12 tapes laying
scattered on the floor, which I had not labeled yet. So they're all out of order. So I screwed
up the whole backup and had to start over, which sucked. But the moral of the story is I actually
was proud to know that self-preservation works. And then you could run a sub 4 second 40, huh?
Oh God, I swear. I don't know how in the world I got out of there so fast. I, I hit that door
with my shoulder and spun. I was so, I was like, forget it, dude. I just, I ain't going out like that.
I am not going out. No weekend, midnight, third shift. You know, I'm not going to be a, a,
in the paper deadly Halon victim. Uh-uh. That's not, that's not for me. Oh God. I'm actually in
tears right now from telling that. I, that was the funniest thing. I, I wish somebody would have
had a video camera taping me. I wish somehow I could see myself because I know how I felt.
I know I must've looked like I have no idea what I must've, it is 4 30 in the morning. I'm running
out the back door of this building at full run in full panic mode with alarms going on
around me. It has to be the most comedic scene. It would make a great scene in a movie. I'm
sure. You know what that's called? Movie initiation. Well, you know, and I got, and you know what?
I went back in there. I went back down and did my job, spent the rest of the, the, uh, the
shift. And yes, I got a lot of cracks from the guys about it. I'm like, Hey man, y'all got to
tell me this kind of stuff. So that's the thing. Now, like I said, I don't think they
use Halon much anymore in these places. Um, when we went to the new building, we got a
nice computer room, like I said earlier with raised floors, uh, water sensing, temperature
monitoring, this huge equipment that made me, there was no sparks flying out. It was the,
it was a combination of all those bad things that made me panic, you know? So when we got
in the new computer room, I was much more comfortable. We had a tape library with racks
that you could go up and down. It was just a beautiful, very, very nice place. But yeah,
that, that whole Halon incident is just the, probably the low point of my life.
You get a kick out of this. Not only do we still have an active Halon system, but we have,
you mentioned the 3490s. Those are our high tech mainframe backup units. We even have 3420s.
The real, the big, like movie projector type backup systems. Yeah.
Hmm. Well, actually out of our three machines, two of them were on 3490Es and one of them was
still on the old 6250 reel to reel tapes. That's what our 3420s are. Yeah. So I go, I would,
we had these big, um, they, I call them magician trunks. Like they put the magicians, put all
their props in these big heavy duty trunks and it would fill up three of those. I think there
was, I think there was 30 or 40 to a trunk of the 6250 tapes. And we used three trunks full to back
up the one machine. And then the 3490s, we would use about 25 or 30 on each of the other two machines.
Now, later on, we got rid of the 6250 finally and replaced it with an eight millimeter drive. And we
were backing it up to two eight millimeters. What used to be three giant trunks of tapes were brought
down to a two eight millimeter tapes. So huge, huge technology. Now it was still slow. It still
took at, uh, it took even longer on the eight millimeters, frankly. But, um, that's something
else that a lot of people might not appreciate or know if you've never loaded a reel to reel
tape before and seen a reel to reel tape drive. It's you get some appreciation for where we've
come from, where the computer industry started and came from and where we are now. I mean,
it's not all about diskettes. There's a lot of other stuff out there that people have
never even seen and thought of or heard of. And it's still there. And it's still in use
today. Like you just said, I would now you got me wanting to come visit now. I want to
come see your setup, man. I'll bring, I'll, I'll come in with a doctor's mask to protect
me from the halon. I was going to try to take pictures one night. Oh man. Oh God. I'm, I
probably, maybe that's why I have trouble sleeping today. Maybe I'm traumatized. I have, uh, some
kind of deep psychological problem because of the halon incident. I could do it. Oh man.
That was good. But, um, back on the topic of, of our jobs and what we do. I mean, there's
an occasional story like that, but for the most part I spent eight hour shifts, seven and
a half, seven hours and 45 minutes were sitting in front of a terminal and the other 15 were
loading tapes, you know, back then. Now, now that I'm an actual programmer for a living, I'm
in front of the screen eight hours a day. And I think you told me earlier, you're pretty
much like that too. Correct. Right. Where I'm at, I'm actually 12 hours shift. So it's
even worse. Oh man. So anybody listening, I know a lot of people ask me sometimes about,
you know, how do you get into programming and what should I study and, and what books and
you know what, more importantly, let's address the topic of what it means to be a programmer,
a professional programmer for a living. You are going to be spending eight or 12 hour shifts
sitting in front of a terminal. It's a very, very big difference than sitting down and writing
a Pearl program in a half an hour. You know, programming you might think is fun and I still
think it's fun. It's, but what my point is, it's very much an acquired thing. It's only for
certain people. If you like to program, that's one thing, but think about whether or not you
want to commit to spending eight hours nonstop programming. I do. I love it. I absolutely
love programming. I can do it for 24 hours a day and have before, you know, but some people,
if you think you're going to program for a couple hours a day and then spend the rest of the day
getting coffee and surfing the web, you're going to be programming nonstop. So make sure
you understand that going in that it, you know, most people say, Oh my God, you have
the most boring job in the world. Well, yeah, to most people, it is the most boring job in
the world. I guess, you know, some ways it is, but I love it. And unless you have that mindset
of wanting and knowing and just feeling the accomplishments of getting programs completed
and debugging and pushing through obstacles and figuring things out, unless you're comfortable
doing that all day, it might, you know, just keep that in mind before you go deciding whether
you want to, you know, become a professional programmer. You might be, you know, admin job might
be more up your alley or operations, things like that. Um, do you see sometimes you're
also, I've known programmers who had to sit and monitor systems. They didn't actually even
get to do programming. Their job was to sit there in case something screwed up in case
a program halted in case something went down and they had to fix it. And the only programming
they would do was reactive programming to fix something that had happened earlier.
There seems to be a lot of what we do. We have, I think you wrote an article actually
on JCL and that's one of our functions here.
Oh yeah. I actually, and most people have never even seen JCL unless they, well, obviously unless
they've worked on some kind of heavy metal systems, unless they worked on a mainframe, they're
not going to know even what JCL is. I don't even know how to describe it to someone. How
would you define or describe JCL to someone who has, you know?
A nightmare?
Well, I, I don't know.
Yeah, it's a, it's a different animal. It's, it is, JCL of course stands for job control language
and it is the interface between your program and the system. It is a way that you can tell,
you can write a program that says, read this file, process this data and make this file.
Well, your program can say, okay, file in and file out. That's what you name them. But
the system doesn't know where the hell file in and file out is. So that's what JCL steps
in and it points and connects things to the system as well as some security, some authority
issues, um, job control of the job flow and scheduling and, um, disaster recovery, error
recovery from the steps of the job. Um, and actual, you can actually do some logic and programming
within the JCL. If the first start part of this program doesn't work, run this, stuff like
that. So basically it's, it's an interface between the program and the system itself. Is that
a good, did I cover it pretty? I still think nightmare is a good term for it. Yeah. In
other words, the short version is nightmare. Yeah, it absolutely is. Um, I think you hit
on one really good thing, um, and it's about being especially professional. Hey, that's one
more than usual. Go ahead. Even though I'm not doing it now, that's what I've been doing
for the last three years or so. And the, the two biggest themes, um, about being a programmer,
one is not necessarily pure respect, but coworker respect. Um, you are everyone's bitch for
the most part. I mean, that's the easiest way to describe it. Yeah, frankly, yes. Um,
I mean, the VPs bitch about something which gets bitched to someone else below them and
it all comes back to you. This doesn't work. Yeah, shit rolls downhill. Another one of your
great things. There you go. Um, but the other, the other definite thing is, I mean, I've, it's
almost like, unless you have a true, just absolutely love for programming, it, it almost kills your
desire for computing at all. I mean, I've got tons of coworkers before who, you know,
would code all day long and they would go home and they would loathe the idea of even touching
a computer. Right.
So, I mean, those are just two major things. And also, if you're a programmer and anyone
who doesn't know anything about computers knows you're a programmer, the first thing they
ask you, hey, can you fix my computer? Yes, and Wintermute has a shirt that he loves that
says, no, I will not fix your computer. You know, I tell, I tell Duel a lot of these stories
of complaining about, you know, that situation at my job too, lack of respect. And, and it's
from my peers as well. Um, from the VPs and from people who aren't IT people, that I can
take pretty well because it comes with the territory. They don't understand the,
see, like, like our listeners right now, they may not have experienced the mainframe environment
and some of the things we're talking about, but at least I think they understand it and
they can respect and appreciate what goes into it and what all it entails. Um, most,
most of the people, most non-technical people that you're going to work with, like you said,
VPs and, and stuff like that are going to come down on you and they don't understand
what all you do and how, how much knowledge you have and how you can handle things and
there's, there's not much appreciation and respect. Duel gets a lot of my grief where I
complain about, oh, they don't appreciate this and they don't respect that. But, um, it's
definitely a reality, again, to keep in mind, even though as a programmer, sometimes you
will get little or no respect. And also one of the biggest fears that is the first time
it happened, and if you become a programmer, you'll know this one day, aside from the deadly
halon, um, are these things, wonderful things called code reviews. I remember my first one,
it was the most terrifying thing I've ever had to go through. I mean, you just couldn't
imagine how bad it was. Hmm. Well, actually, I, I have no idea what you mean by a code
review. I'll be honest. They, we don't have that much organization. Well, basically a code
review is the programmers and the development team sitting down with the, the VPs, the heads
of the company to find out, you know, exactly where you are on the project and things like
that. And unfortunately, on the last project I was on, I was a lead developer. So most all the
questions came to me. Right. Which is just terrifying. Yeah. I mean, I, um, we don't have
a term like that, but of course you have to go through that process as part of a project
implementation. Um, for the most part, we just have meetings every so often. Um, I know
the information that I need, so I take charge and lead and say, okay, we need to do this,
we need to do that. I'm putting you on this. I need you to work on that. You need to get
this information to me. And, um, that's really, it can be, if someone knows what they're doing
and can take charge of it, it's not so bad. But when you got VPs, like you said, in there
and people, directors of a department who are completely unqualified for their positions
or don't know what they're talking about, come in the, it's a frustrating feeling when,
and this is something I have to deal with on a daily basis. It's a very frustrating
feeling when you know the way something should be done, the right way to do it. You know that
this is the most efficient, cheapest, most reasonable, most secure, most efficient, cleanest,
easiest way to do something. But your project manager or somebody says, no, no, no, I'm going
to do it this way. It's the most frustrating feeling in the world. And that happens to
me regularly. I don't know about you. Happens to me regularly. And that's something else to
keep in mind as a programmer. You, like you said earlier, I mean, that's, you are everybody's
bitch. You know, if you are a manager or director where you have some decision making control in
it, that's great. But if you're just a programmer, then you are going to have to do what you're
told. And sometimes you don't agree with it and you have to make the decision of whether
you want to go through with it, whether you want to do it the right way, how you're going
to handle and react to that situation. It is a very stressful job. I mean, that's, that's
definitely a true statement. I would say, would you agree with that? Oh, definitely. It's very,
very stressful job. It's not sitting back like they show you in the movies. It's not kicking
back with your feet up in the laptop and your lap and, uh, um, you know, eating a can of
Pringles and it's, it's not all fun and games. It's a very, very stressful job. And you have
deadlines and you have people breathing down your back and you're trying to do something
and write code the wrong way because someone told you to do it that way, even though you
know it's not the best way or it's a downright wrong way to do something. It's, it's definitely
a stressful job and you know, it all comes back to non-IT related. Just in general, I, gosh,
I sometimes hate saying this because it comes across as very, um, arrogant in a weird sort
of way, but it's, it's all about dealing with the normals. People don't understand, not only
hackers, but just people who are different, people who are smarter, people who have different
experience and knowledge. It's hard for us to deal with people who don't have that same
knowledge. That's why we have such a close knit community, a close bonded community, hacking
community is because we can have mutual respect for each other and appreciation for each other.
And it's something that the normals can't do. I don't care if somebody has a, uh, vice president
position or a director of a department just because they have a master's degree or a doctor's
degree. I've met some pretty fucking stupid doctors in my life. All that means is they
could afford to go to college longer than me. That's all that means to me. So it's frustrating
when you're in a situation like that, but that's something else to be prepared for. You know,
we had a lot of news topics to cover and there's no way we're going to get to them. You know
that, right?
Yeah, we think about business.
We, we ranted, we went on. Hopefully, I think this actually might've been very enlightening
for people who didn't already know. Um, a lot of people are like us and that we live
in it every day. So maybe they'll, maybe we'll get some emails going, you know, preach on brother
that, you know, fight the fight. They can understand and relate to it. But, um, for some of you
guys out there in high school and college that haven't experienced this yet, keep it in mind.
I don't want to chase you away from being a programmer. I don't want to scare you. I don't
want to put anybody away. I just want to educate you on what it entails. Just be prepared to know
what you're in for because, and don't be afraid, you know, sometimes you're going to be in a position
where, like I said, you're forced to do something that someone tells you to do and you might not
agree with it. You can't be afraid to move and leave and go somewhere else and, and, you know,
do what's right for you. And I find myself in that situation right now comes a point where
you need to move on. You need to, you know, look out for number one to help, to, to move
on with your life and do what's best for you. So, um, if you're wanting, if you're a person
who's lived in the same place their whole life and your grandparents and your great grandparents,
um, programmers might be doing some traveling from place to place too. It's not really a,
uh, otherwise it can be a dead end job if you're not willing to move around and move
up in the world. Uh, well, I hope that wasn't too depressing there, was it?
Well, I mean, on a lighter note, I mean, it's, there are some fun things. It's not all bad.
And actually you're, uh, sitting down with a laptop and a can of Pringles actually reminded
me, uh, one time there was two weeks that, uh, my boss said I could go white coat on the
roof. So that's what I did. Wow. Computer nerd with a tan. Wow. See, now see, we have
wireless all over campus that I could use. I could, I could do my job from home. I could
do my job from sitting out in the park in the middle of the, I could do it from the middle
of the cafeteria. I can do my job from anywhere, but they won't hear of it. Oh no, you must be
in there chained to the desk. Ah, anyway. You know, we're going to have to wrap this
up. Um, we're going to have to bump a couple of these things, um, to next week. Um, let
me see if there's anything I really want to touch on though. Um, yeah, most of this can
be bumped back. Most of this can be moved back. Um, actually I will mention that Microsoft's
new operating system, Longhorn, has been bumped back again. It was originally supposed to come
out for 2004, bumped to 2005. It's been bumped again. Looks like it's going to be 2006 before
it comes out. Um, so that was announced. I will make sure in case anybody didn't hear
that. Um, it's a good thing because, you know, that gives us another year or two to
push Linux. It's gaining a foothold. It's reaching out. It's, it's becoming, uh, more and more
standard, more and more accepted. So the more they push back Longhorn, the more Microsoft
pushes back anything, the better it is for us. So, and actually there's a little conspiracy
theory that goes along with that we'll talk about next week as well. Um, I guess that's,
that's going to have to be it. Um, I, let's see, I have closing music tonight is going to
be from Auditory again. It's called Blowing Up Your Speakers. Um, shout outs. Do you have
any shout outs you want to give?
Uh, just the guys on the DVD boards, uh, people showing up for the IRC lecture sticks, um, bizarre.
Just definitely fiend for helping to log this the first time. That's pretty much it.
I forgot anybody. Sorry.
Yeah. He put a lot of, you know, he and, and Gluco, a lot of those guys put in some
time setting those channels up and getting some stuff organized. So definitely shouts
out to them. And again, to Decoder, hopefully we can do these conferences, get them going
more often, more regularly. And, um, yeah, I guess we're going to have to end it. Uh, as
usual, you can email us at letters at binrev.com. If you can relate to these experiences, if
you want to add to, um, what we described, if we missed something, if you want to make fun
of me for the Halon incident, uh, or, or convey your, uh, your newbie initiation story, by
all means, letters at binrev.com. And I think that's going to do it. So Voodoo
Howell, thank you very much for being on here. And I think, I hope you know how we end the
show every week. We will see you guys next week. Same hack time.
See you next channel.
Have a great week.
Bye.
Thank you.