This is dedicated to all the hackers and the crackers.
To the hackers and the crackers.
I see in binary, I speak source code.
Step on my toes, I'll post a million game pegs of you in a fag pose.
In your digital stance, getting firewalled ho.
Cause I'm riding the net in my six-fold.
I was a dick with my fifty-six.
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 dream cats.
You need some ISOs? 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.
Cause 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 Al Jones.
And NASDAQ leaves you flat on your back.
Cause I am he who loves to hack and crack.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the criminals.
Serial codes.
Source codes.
ISOs.
Rans.
Sips.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the criminals.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen.
I am StankDawg with you once again on Binary Revolution Radio.
And I am here with a mystery guest.
So mystery guest, would you sign in please?
Hey, how you doing?
No, I need more than that.
Nobody's gonna guess off of just that.
Hmm, hi-ho.
Well, let's see.
Yes, I am a criminal.
My crime is that of curiosity.
My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think.
Not by what they look like.
My crime is of outsmarting you.
Something that you'll never forgive me for.
I am a hacker and this is my manifesto.
You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all.
Well, after all, we're all alike.
You know, that sounds vaguely familiar.
Is Kermit the Frog, is that my special guest host today?
Celebrity Frog impersonated.
Celebrity Frog impersonated very well by a voice that the old school listeners of RFA,
and actually you've been on a recent episode of RFA would recognize,
the one, the only, Rax.
How's it going, man?
Welcome to the show and thank you for being on the show.
Hey, sure enough.
I'm going to jump right in because I know you and I can talk for probably five,
six hours straight without taking a breath.
I figured we'd jump right into the housekeeping segment of the show,
which as you know is where we answer email, take care of the little things like that.
And the first thing I want to address, if you'll indulge me,
is that this will be streaming on Veterans Day.
So I wanted to shout out a happy Veterans Day to everyone and thank all the veterans that may be listening, if any.
And jump into email feedback from last week.
Now I had an email from Shatter.
Last week I talked about the different hacker conventions out there and what little bit I did know about them.
And granted, I admittedly know very little about them.
And I had heard the reputation that DEFCON has kind of the party atmosphere going on.
And I got an email from Shatter who says that, yeah, they party.
They party at night, but they learn at day.
And, hey, there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm looking very much forward to going to DEFCON.
So if anybody got the wrong impression like I was putting it down as nothing but a big party,
that's not what I meant at all.
But I guess I'll judge for myself when I go up there this upcoming 2004, hopefully.
Knock on wood.
Yeah, I ended up, I volunteered and worked at H2K2.
So I worked my ass off and didn't get a chance to hang around and do too much else.
But it seemed there was like a little bit less of that.
And I think part of the thing, I mean, it's Las Vegas, Sin City, you know, the whole thing like that.
Yeah, I'm sure that helps.
You're right.
I didn't think about that.
Turning the swimming pool purple with dye and shit like that, you know, people really get into that.
Well, isn't, but I mean, H2K2, H2K4 upcoming, whatever they announce it,
is in the middle of New York City, if I'm correct, right?
Downtown Manhattan, right across from Madison Square Garden.
Well, isn't that like an all-night party?
I mean, it may not be called Sin City, but I mean, isn't that pretty much an action-packed place too?
Well, again, I didn't get much chance to go out and check stuff out.
I worked my butt off, so.
Hmm.
Well, I assume then from those statements you're planning on going to the upcoming H2K4,
whatever it's called?
I got a name for it.
I emailed it manually.
I said, call it HOPE4 Planet Earth, right?
Because HOPE being the recursive acronym for Hackers on Planet Earth.
Oh, wow.
And, you know, HOPE is the fourth conference, and you're, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, so I thought it was kind of clever.
Right.
F-O-U-R is F-O-R.
Okay, I gotcha.
I gotcha.
Did he acknowledge or anything?
No, no, no.
He's one of those guys you've got to keep emailing, like, over and over and over.
Yeah, I kind of get that impression about him, yeah.
Well, maybe we...
I wish they would hurry up and name it something.
I don't want to call it H2K4 if it's not what it's going to be.
Yeah, just call it the HOPE conference.
I mean, that's technically what it is.
Yeah, and that's what I've been saying on the air.
That's what I've been saying on the air.
Regardless, I'm going to be trying my best to go.
And I am going to also try to go to DEFCON.
And, frankly, I want to go to as many as I can this upcoming year.
I'd like to compare and contrast all of them.
See what I like about some, what I don't like about others.
And there seems to be a lot more of them lately.
A lot of them coming out of the woodwork, so to speak.
And a lot of them that are billing themselves as security conferences
as opposed to hacker conferences.
But they still seem very hacker-oriented.
And on the opposite side of the coin, there's some that are billed as hacker conferences,
but they seem to be aiming and sending ads.
I don't remember which one I got an ad for at my job where I get solicited for business stuff.
And it was touted, however, as a hacker's conference.
You know, that's the thing.
I actually made up a t-shirt at DEFCON.
It says, I'm not a hacker.
I'm a, quote, security professional.
Yeah, yeah.
But, I mean, that's the thing.
And the whole thing of it is that it's a tool, just like anything else.
And it's how you decide to apply it.
So probably saw it more at DEFCON than at H2K, too.
But, I mean, you've got the, you know, the penny loafer, khaki pants, and polo shirt-wearing NSA guys,
you know, sitting next to some pasty-faced kid with a green mohawk.
You know, so that's the kind of thing.
And literally, I mean, that's why they do the spot, the Fed, and everything.
So they have people from the French Foreign Legion and, you know, the Israeli intelligence are all going there.
And they're just mixing in with everybody else and just learning all about the same stuff at the same time.
Well, except everybody's pointing at him playing spot the Fed.
Yeah, well, that's half the fun of it.
All right.
I have another email here.
And I bet you this is something you're going to go off about.
We'll see.
I got an anonymous email.
Well, someone who I didn't want to give out their name because they're in the gaming industry.
And I don't want to give out a name.
Talking about Half-Life 2, I mentioned also on the last show.
And it's been quite a bit in the news about Half-Life 2 source code being stolen.
Now, we mentioned on the show, I don't know exactly, but, I mean, I basically said that I am opposed.
I mean, it's a bad thing.
However, I chastised Valve for being broken into that easily, for being vulnerable that people got in and got it.
Well, this person explains to me, and I did go out and do some research after this because, no offense if you're listening to this person, but, you know, I got to verify that the information I'm getting from sources is true.
So I went out and looked, and sure enough, what he says and what I confirmed is that this was not a simple script kiddie thing, to use this person's word.
It was not a script kiddie issue.
It was not an easy oversight of some sort.
Apparently, they were actually under three weeks of attacks and attempted infiltration of people, so they were trying really hard to get in here.
I heard the word organized used a few times.
I don't know if I would go that far, at least not without more information and seeing some of the details, but it definitely looks like somebody was trying really hard.
It wasn't just somebody in there for the fun of it or because they found a simple oversight and grabbed it.
So that part of it, I guess, was a little bit – I guess I was underselling it a little bit.
You know, half the time, too, or probably even more than half the time that a lot of these security breaches are actually internal.
If you think about it, you've got a disgruntled employee, someone who's ticked off, and they want to get back at the company for whatever reason.
So they, you know, grab stuff and they email it out or they, you know, stick it on a floppy disk or a thumb drive or something and then email it when they get home.
Right. Absolutely. Any security professional, anybody that comes in and does an audit, that's the first thing they're going to tell you.
They're not going to tell you to look outside. They're going to tell you to look inside.
It's called an eggshell defense. It's hard on the outside and soft and gooey in the middle.
Yeah.
That's most – again, that's where so much of this stuff has gone.
And if you're dealing with programmers, I mean, any employee you have to trust, you know, to a certain level.
But, you know, so if someone has access to some of the source code, I mean, if they're smart, you know,
and depending on what kind of versioning system, if they have anything to check it out, you know,
check out from the source code repository, they would know who would have it at different times and what have you.
But so if someone – if it was an inside job and someone was smart about what they were doing, they would, you know,
try to get someone else's password, do the old shoulder surfing or what have you, and get that password and, you know,
grab someone else's stuff, something that someone else had access to, not the stuff they had access to, so they wouldn't impugn themselves.
Right.
Well, and, you know, the other thing is people – I don't know if I should go too far in here – but people have a tendency of leaving themselves logged in anyway.
So if someone were to take a trip to the restroom or something like that, you don't know what someone else could be doing at your computer.
Right.
And you have to wonder – well, a couple things, too, and you brought up a really good point last week about the genie being –
Are you sure I brought up a good point last week? I don't think that's possible.
Yeah, well, you know, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.
But once the genie gets out of the bottle, you know, it's impossible to put it back in.
So once that code is out, what are they going to do? Are they going to rewrite it?
If they need the same functionality, basically it's going to do the same type of thing, as long as it wasn't the entire source code for everything.
I mean, people are going to reverse engineer and, you know, find whatever they can and patch stuff and whatever.
So I don't know if they're doing this – you know, like they say, any publicity is good publicity, so maybe they're doing this a little bit for a publicity thing or who knows.
But I don't know, it's –
Well, you know, I also, you know, had a little bit of a conspiracy theory is maybe they use this as an excuse to push the release date back.
But the thing is, the game industry is pretty infamous about that. They don't need excuses. They just postpone games all the time anyway.
Right, right.
Actually, this person brought up two points. They brought up a couple, but two points specifically that made me kind of step back and think about it.
And I thought about them on the surface, but when you think about them a little bit more deeply, it's kind of – it makes you realize that it is kind of pretty bad what happened.
But I mentioned that I wasn't sure and I didn't know how much code was stolen because I have not – I still have not yet to see anything compiled.
No one's got bootlegs of this game out there available or anything yet, so I theorized that they probably didn't get all of the code or how much of the code did they get. I have no idea.
Right.
Well, it doesn't really matter. One of the points he was making was that it's not really whether or not they got everything so that they can compile and have bootlegs of the game.
That's not really the major – I mean that is a major concern, don't get me wrong – but another very important concern is the fact that there's an engine being developed upon which this game is built.
You know, it's not just a game. It's a game engine with a game on top of it. And when people go in and steal the source code, even parts of it, it's very valuable because they license that engine out to other game developers.
You know, the Unreal Engine and the Quake Engine, those aren't the only games built on them. They license that out and they build Star Trek games on it and they build – I can't even think of names off the top of my head.
I'm not a big gamer. But they license that out and make money off of that engine. Well, now that some of the code is leaked out, these other companies have some code to build off of and learn from and reverse engineer something that I love.
I love looking at code and decompiling, reverse engineering, seeing how it works and stuff like that. And now these people have something to build from.
It's not as simple as a cut and paste, but in not so many words, they can cut and paste and reuse a lot of this code. It is suddenly – I don't know if I should say public domain, but it pretty much has become that.
Once it's leaked, you know, like you said, you can't put it back. It's out there now.
The thing is, you know, if Valve is developing the engine – and not a lot of companies out there can do it.
It does, and a few others, you know, do it and develop that engine – and these other gaming houses take and build on that engine,
and the content is what these other gaming houses provide, like the Star Trek thing or the Matrix thing or whatever, right?
Right.
If Valve, first of all, assuming that it was the gaming engine code that was stolen and someone else gets it, no company is going to be able to put a product out based on that
because Valve would very easily be able to prove that, you know, it's using this, you know, new engine, whatever it's called.
Right.
The Half-Life 2 engine.
And if they license that out to, you know, company X and company Y, all of a sudden company Z comes out with a product based on that.
Company Z is going to get their butt sued off.
Right.
But with only bits and pieces of it, it's going to be that much harder to prove.
Right.
If they're only using the module for, say, the physics module for the weapons or – gosh, I can't even think.
Maybe they use just the engine or the module that powers the water effects.
It's awfully hard to pinpoint specific functions that are used within a game.
The whole engine itself, yeah, you could probably find a lot of similarities and enough to nail it down.
But if you use just bits and pieces of it, it's going to be awfully hard to find.
I don't know if there's enough companies out there that would have the capabilities of building the engine.
That's why other companies license the engine from the ids and the valves of the world.
It's because they don't have that skill base, that talent to do that.
You know, they're content people and they make the game and do all the other stuff.
Build it on someone else's engine.
Right.
And, you know, another factor to that which we probably shouldn't go into too much is what are they going to do if some country – like, for example, Sirius Sam, Croatia – you know, what are you going to do if some country – some programmers or developers in another country get a hold of this?
You know, how are you going to force U.S. copyright law and lawsuits, etc., etc., etc.?
I don't want to even open up that can of worms, but, you know, you've got to think on the global scale.
Yeah.
The second thing that they mention – and this is just kind of a pet peeve of mine – I hate people in any online games that, well, for lack of a better word, cheat. I guess there really is no better word. They cheat. And a pet peeve –
I'm up with a creative euphemism. I don't know if you caught RFA when I was giving Duel all kinds of hell about his euphemism, you know, trespassing. No, it's urban exploration. It's trespassing.
Yeah. Cheating is cheating. You just call it what it is.
And, you know, cheating is – like you said, it's cheating. There's no way around it. And it's a pet peeve of mine when I go on to a game like – what is it? Counter-Strike I play is pretty much the only game I really play. I hate it when I'm on Counter-Strike and somebody's cheating, but you know they don't call them a cheater. You know what they call them? They call them a hacker.
No, you're not a hacker. You're a cheater. They're two totally different things. You downloaded some cheat, some tool or whatever, and you're using it to cheat at a video game.
Where did hacking come into that whole thing? But anyway, that's a whole different side run. I didn't mean to go off on that tangent.
But the reason it relates to this is because the person pointed out to me that the security module for this game was one of the ones that was taken.
So people can, again, look at that code, reverse engineer it, and do one of two things.
They can either develop cheats because they know how it works, or B, they can create admin accounts or grant admin authorities and have ultimate power to run through the thing.
Or even worse than that, they may find loopholes or ways to crash the server, overload the server, whatever.
So there's a lot of damage that could be done, and the security module probably, at least, I don't know about the rest of the modules, but the security modules probably going to have to be changed.
Very likely.
And you know what? And I'm going to end it like this, because like you just said, a cheater is a cheater.
There's no other way to call it.
And stealing source code, breaking into a company and stealing it, is wrong.
A thief is a thief.
You know, it would be great if they released the open source, and we could all take it and make our own games,
and, you know, sometimes you buy a game, and it sucks, and you get mad, and you think you could write something better.
It would be great, but this company spends time developing and writing this code to make this game, and there's nothing wrong with that.
There really isn't.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with making money and having a company and developing software.
There's nothing innately wrong with just doing that.
Right.
In my opinion, anyway.
Here's the thing, and so many people kind of justify this because it's so easy to do.
You know, you need a computer.
You can't, you know, clone, you can't copy someone else's computer and have that hardware.
Since it's just all zeros and ones, people figure, well, it's so easy.
There's nothing wrong with it.
I mean, you know, and that just doesn't make sense.
Especially what gets me is when companies do that, you know, they'll be using bootleg software, you know,
and you'll say to them, well, look, when you need another desk, do you go out and steal a desk?
Well, no, I go out and buy a desk.
Well, when you need another computer, do you go out and steal a computer?
No, I buy a computer.
Well, so how come you go out and steal software when you need another copy of the license?
You know, people just figure, again, because it's so easy to do, it's okay for some reason.
It doesn't necessarily make it right.
However, to a certain extent, what I will commit to saying is that I understand it sometimes, but I don't justify it.
You know, it's two different things.
I understand that the RAA makes people angry and that they've been ripping consumers off.
I absolutely understand why people dislike them and why people fight against them so much.
I understand that.
But I never, ever debate the fact that downloading music or downloading pirated whatever is, by the letter of the law, illegal.
Understandable, yet illegal.
In some circumstances, anyway.
And that's all I have to say about that.
That was my Forrest Gump impression.
That's all I can give you.
No, that's for your voices.
Yeah, I don't do a Kermit, sorry.
What about Marvin the Martian?
What would Marvin the Martian say?
Oh, drat these computers.
They're so naughty and so complex.
I could pitch them.
In Q36 exploding space modulator, that creature has stolen the space.
It's modulator.
Maybe you can make a 3D Marvin the Martian game where you can have all the big green, what are those turkey buzzard things?
Actually, Marvin wasn't a Martian.
If you go back and watch that one, it was instant Martians, those vulture looking things.
Those were the Martians.
Marvin was not a Martian.
So what was Marvin?
It's never defined.
Of course he was a Martian.
Just because they were Martians doesn't mean he wasn't necessarily.
They could have been a whole different race of Martians.
Yeah, instant Martians just add water.
I'm not buying that.
He was a Venusian or something.
I don't know.
He was not a Martian.
It's just the alliteration.
No, see, I'm thinking all those turkey buzzard things.
They were from the other side of Mars.
Marvin was over in the ghetto somewhere.
He was just looking for a space modulator.
Yeah, I'm just saying there were two separate parts of the hood, but I think they're all Martians.
And you're just, that's a pretty, you know, bold assumption.
Just because he was black, you assumed he's from a ghetto.
That's really bad, man.
Oh, see, now you're going to put words in my mouth.
I'm just saying he was from the opposite side.
I mean, I'm from the ghetto and I'm not black.
Uh-huh.
All right, see.
How do we know that?
We've never seen you.
Well, actually, that's a lie.
There are pictures in the BinRev Gallery.
Pimp, pimp.
All right, speaking of blatant advertisement, but go ahead.
Yeah, well, hey, you know, you do what you got to do.
By the way, Binary Revolution magazine, issue three, coming soon.
Now, that's enough for whoring ourselves out.
We normally this time will also talk about what we've been working on lately.
And me, I've been doing nothing but coding all day, every day.
I've been coding my butt off at work,
so I don't really have a lot of exciting stuff to talk about this week.
I've been doing a lot of Oracle programming,
and I may have found a nice little backdoor through Oracle database security,
but I don't really know for sure if it's consistent or if it's going to work,
so I don't want to really go into too much detail on it now.
Wait, coding Oracle, what do you have to do to stay awake for it to take, like,
no-dos and Red Bull or something?
Put toothpicks on my eyelids to keep them from falling.
Oh, man.
It's very, very, very dry.
Yeah.
Very dry.
It's actually, it's not just SQL.
It's something called PLSQL, which is a customized SQL for Oracle,
which means basically it has some pre-compiled functions
and a little bit different syntax.
It's not really, I mean, if you know SQL, you know PLSQL.
It's not that big of a jump.
And this segment of BinRev Radio Botch brought to you by Oracle and Larry Ellison.
Man, we're just, we're turning this, we're not supposed to have commercials and advertising,
but so far, you're turning...
We're just doing corporate horrors, that's all.
Yeah, gosh, man.
I should at least get some money for it if I'm going to pimp this stuff out.
Yeah, well...
I'm looking ahead in the notes.
Who else am I about to pimp coming up?
Oh, man, I got another...
Oh, man.
Well, maybe we won't get that far in the notes.
Maybe we'll come back.
Actually, you know what?
I have a dilemma.
Not a big dilemma, but a funny little anecdote, we should say.
I have been getting email and my personal email account.
That would be not the Stank Dog account.
Stank Dog is very rarely confused with other Stank Dogs.
I don't think there are any.
You mean your mama didn't name you Stank for your first name?
Stank Diggy Dog.
My middle initial is Diggy, D.
No, I'm getting these...
The thing is, I'm getting people's personal medical records.
I'm getting attached Microsoft document files.
And, I mean, these things are very in-depth.
I mean, obviously it has demographic stuff like name, address, phone number, social security number,
but it also goes into a lot of detail about, basically, it's the doctor's notes and what he did
and what his treatments and their medical history and stuff like that.
And I got one, and I didn't really think anything of it.
I just opened a doc file, and I'm like, what is this?
I deleted it.
I'm like, oh, this isn't me.
Somebody made a mistake.
Well, I got another one.
So now I'm like, how exactly do I handle this?
I mean, obviously I have to contact these people and tell them to stop.
It's obviously not a one-time mistake, but, I mean, that's kind of an awkward thing.
What am I supposed to email and go, hey, you're sending me your customer's private medical records?
You know what?
That's actually a violation of HIPAA, the health insurance portability, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever act,
which is major, major, you know, big-time serious stuff for getting the hospital,
the doctor, and everyone else involved in trouble.
Well, see, I mean, I'm sure it was innocent, but, I mean, you've got to think.
They're sending this to, I mean, granted, the doctor's name that they're sending it to is the same as mine.
No, not stank.
So if your name was Joe Doe, this is Dr. Joe Doe?
Yeah, he was stank Doggy Dog, and I'm stank Diggy Dog.
So everything was just almost identical.
I mean, it really was.
Actually, his real name was very close to mine,
and they obviously have put it into their database wrong,
so I'm probably going to get more of these.
I emailed them back and just said, you know, I think you made a mistake.
I asked them to confirm with me to make sure that they've taken me off their mailing list
because I don't want to get in trouble for reading them or getting them.
You know, I'm not intentionally intercepting these emails, but, you know.
Well, I would say, you know, if I were you, I would maybe, you know, do a who is lookup,
find out the technical contact, or call the hospital or whatever else,
ask for the IT department and explain what's going on.
Yeah, you know what, that's a good idea.
I can contact the technical listing on who is or on their registrar, at least email them.
I mean, I'm assuming this is like a Hotmail or a Yahoo account or something.
Yeah, and that's the thing.
It's a webmail account.
Why would they?
You should never send anything that personal.
I mean, if someone in mind would send anything confidential, you know,
and who's going to trust the doctor, you know, DrJoeDoe at Yahoo.com.
Exactly.
That to me, I didn't know if that was just me thinking that.
I'm like, wait a minute, why would you even send something like this?
If it's not a, you know, DrJoeDoe.com, you know, then you have a little bit more.
I guess, I don't know, do you have a little bit more faith because of that?
You're still sending.
Well, no, but you know what they really should do?
I mean, it should be.
Yeah, I know an easy one-word answer, but you go ahead.
Well, I mean, it should be PGP'd.
Exactly.
It should at least be digitally signed.
Encrypted.
That's what I was going to say.
Encrypted.
You know, it's something because just think how easy it would be for someone to intercept this,
change the things around a little bit, and, you know, potentially, you know,
damage someone's health and someone's life because they decided to be malicious with this.
It's just unfathomable that in the days of regulation with the HIPAA and everything else,
that someone would just be so blatantly careless in sending this personal information out.
Yeah, and, you know, not only the carelessness of what somebody might do with it,
but, I mean, I assume the reason they sent this is because that person's seeking medical help or attention
and the doctor they're going to needs this medical information, so somebody could be...
Right, but he's probably not getting it.
Obviously not.
So, yeah, that's...
That's a bad scene, man, that's all in all.
Well, I emailed them and I, again, asked them to confirm with me,
and I explained to them exactly what we said.
I was very concerned that someone might not be getting their proper medical attention,
so hopefully they will straighten it out.
But, you know what, just to be the extra nice guy I am going to contact or who has information...
Or even just call them up and ask for their director of IT, you know, because the who is thing,
that could have been...
But it's probably...
No, I think it's probably coming from a secretary or somebody in the office that, you know,
the IT person might not even know them.
It could be outsourced.
It could be, you know, a whole medical complex, and this is only one office that's sending it.
But ultimately, he or she is where the buck stops, right, if it's relating to something in IT.
And if they don't know, you know, they'll find out.
And, you know, just mention the word HIPAA saying, you know,
I'm sure this probably isn't HIPAA compliant that I'm receiving this,
and you'll probably have their complete undivided attention.
Well, I guess it won't hurt to contact as many people as I can get a hold of just to make sure.
Well, anyway, I've already sent one email.
I'll give it overnight.
I'll give it till tomorrow.
Well, it's a holiday, though.
I'll give it till Wednesday.
And if I haven't heard anything, by the end of the workday Wednesday,
I will send out follow-ups to as many people as I can find to make sure it's covered.
And, you know, that's pretty much it for me.
It was a pretty light week.
Now, you, on the other hand, it's been a while since you've been on the radio.
What do you got going on, man?
What's your deal?
Well, I tend to keep busy.
You know, on top of everything else, I work in, you know, in the IT business.
I also teach IT courses at a local college here generally in the evening.
So I've been working on that and developing that.
We're actually developing an associate's degree in information technology security.
So that's taken up a lot of my time and, you know, just the regular kind of life stuff.
Yeah, and, boy, life takes up time.
Life really takes up a lot of time, doesn't it?
Yeah.
And, you know, so I've been focusing on doing security stuff lately.
Went to a really interesting train-the-trainer session up in Chicago last week
for another course in security and learned a lot of stuff.
You know, that's one of the things you can never stop learning with computer stuff
because it's, you know, the quote-unquote lifelong learning.
I thought when I got done with college and I was doing the computer stuff,
I said, well, this will keep my interest for about five years
because I have a short attention span.
Well, fortunately, every 18 months it's changing.
So, you know, the computer stuff is always going to keep me interested.
Right, right.
And, you know, if you don't adopt that mindset of constantly evolving
and changing and learning new things, even though you're done with college
and you have your degree, I kind of thought that myself too when I was younger
that I just want to hurry up and get that degree
and then I'll be done with school forever.
Well, no, if you really think like that, then, yeah, 18 months later,
the world's going to pass you by and you're not going to be up to par.
Well, think of it like for doctors, too.
I heard someone use this analogy, if you will, that like for open-heart surgery,
you know, they used to have to, you know, cut the chest open, spread the ribs,
you know, put the zipper in, as they call it.
Now they can do open-heart surgery through a half-inch incision in the chest wall.
So doctors, you know, have to relearn all that kind of stuff.
Which doctor are you going to go to?
Yeah, no, not a witch doctor, but, yeah, I mean, you know,
so rather than having something invasive and all that, you know,
where your whole body cavity is cracked open, you know, they're doing it.
So they have to keep on top of things.
Well, you as an IT person, and, you know, for all the listeners out there, too,
you know, as you're doing this, you know how quickly stuff changes.
And, you know, pick any technology you want or any software or whatever else.
It doesn't matter.
But it's constantly changing.
And you can't afford to be, you know, two versions.
You can't really afford to be any more than two versions behind on something,
whether it's your word processor or your operating system or what have you.
Because, you know, as we know, like with Internet time and everything,
it can only be made sense of when you look at it in terms of dog years.
But, you know, things change so quickly.
The computer industry changes more in three months than the rest of the world does in a year.
So every year in the computer industry is kind of like four years in the real world that things are changing.
And you can't afford to get that far behind.
No, you cannot.
You absolutely cannot.
Because there's somebody there waiting with the knowledge to jump right in and take your place.
Man, I can't tell you how many people I've met that said,
oh, yeah, I used to be in the computers ten years ago and they got out of it.
I'm trying to get back into it now and it's like it's a whole different world.
It's like, duh.
Yeah.
Completely different.
I could tell you stories, but I won't.
How about did you go to your 2600 meeting?
I had a really, really good 2600 meeting this past week.
Yeah, we had ours here.
We moved it, for those folks who listen to RFA, we moved it out of the Arizona Mills Mall in the Phoenix area.
There's a whole big, long thing about that.
But anyway, it was time to move it.
We really needed to move it out of there.
We moved it up into Borders.
They have a cafe at one of the Borders stores.
So we moved it up into there.
And you may have heard about the story.
I'm sure you covered it on BinReV Radio here, too.
But there was a company, it just happened to be out of Phoenix as well,
that came up with a, quote, new copy protection scheme for music CDs.
If you put it in the computer, their, quote, unquote, copy protection scheme would install some other software
and would do some other stuff, and you could not play this music CD on your computer.
Well, all that, quote, unquote, security software was, is putting an autorun.inf file.
Which you can bypass by?
You can bypass by either, A, shutting it off or hitting the shift key when you're doing that.
Well, this company decided to threaten to sue the guy who figured this out.
And the true hacker ethic, right, you figure out a solution to something and you share that information.
That's the true hacker ethic.
And so this guy decides to share, well, they're threatening DMCA lawsuits against this guy.
So anyway, long story short, Dual contacted them and invited them to the meeting.
And, you know, he had a good dialogue and stuff with them.
And apparently they were just blowing smoke up his tailpipe because they didn't contact, didn't call back.
So we didn't have any formal presentation.
We just had general conversations.
And I think a couple of, Fiend and Zapper ended up popping out their laptops and doing some kind of online gaming there.
And everyone just kind of standing around looking and seeing, looking kind of funny.
And when you get non-computer people, you know, looking at them, what the heck are you doing?
So, yeah, it was pretty good.
It was kind of cash this time.
But, you know, I think half of it is just the social aspect of things, you know,
just getting out with other people with similar kinds of outlooks on technology and on the world and sharing your views with them.
Right.
And, you know, actually I was talking with the guy who runs, he hates to say that, the person who started my 2600 meeting.
And we kind of talked about, you know, having presentations and stuff like that.
And we were saying that it's, you know, it's a lot of time, obviously, to put that kind of stuff together.
And we're going to try to start doing that.
But at the same time, you know, it's like it's awfully structured.
It's awfully, it's like trying to nail down.
It's trying to just get everyone to sit down and look at a presentation that, A, they may not be interested in.
B, they may already know.
It's, you know, it's like, oh, we came to the conclusion that it's, you know, the social aspect of it that's more important.
And possibly once every three or four months we might bring a presentation or something like that.
Or more often if they become popular.
But it's just so much going on.
And our meetings have grown to, like, I don't know how big your meetings are.
But ours started off when I started going with, like, geez, even the first one I went to, nobody showed up.
And I talked about that before.
Not a single person showed up.
Now, miscommunication, people just happen to not be able to make it, whatever.
The rest of the meetings were, like, three to five people.
And now here lately, the past two or three months, it keeps growing exponentially.
There was about 15 people or thereabouts at this last meeting.
Up from about 11 or 12, the one before that.
So they're growing, they're adding people on.
So I think it's just kind of a cool thing to hang out and talk to like-minded people, like I said.
Plus, since a lot of these people are new, there's that feeling out process.
I mean, you've got to admit, it's kind of awkward and kind of not intimidating in an imposing kind of way,
but intimidating in a weird, I don't know any of you guys kind of way for newbies or for new people to come to the meeting.
I mean, not derogatory newbies, but for people to come to a meeting for the first time, you don't know anybody.
It's just like any other social situation.
It might be more comfortable for them to just come in, kind of hang out to the side, listen to people,
maybe meet one or two people at a time and ease their way into the group instead of being told,
you sit here, you sit there, we're going to give this presentation, yada, yada, yada.
So, it's kind of, I don't know, we're kind of choosing the direction, I guess, right now.
And regardless, I'm very happy with the way it's been going and growing.
And do you guys have regular presentations or?
Well, we actually want to get to that.
We've been talking about that for a while.
So, I did the presentation last month.
I did a thing on tunneling VNC through SSH to have a secure remote connection.
And that went over well, and I actually did that for the local ISSA security meeting as well.
So, actually, one of the guys there, a younger guy, his dad or something came,
so he was kind of hanging out to the side.
But when the presentation started, he was interested as well.
And he was in the ISSA, and he asked me to, if I'd like to do the presentation there.
But, you know, I don't know.
The other side of things, if someone new is coming there,
and, you know, if you don't know anybody and just kind of hanging and trying to talk,
it may be a little difficult, you know, not knowing how to break the ice or whatever.
I always try to go up to everyone and say, hey, you know, hi, I'm Rax.
Yeah, and I do the same.
You know, just to kind of break the ice, because that is awkward.
You know, it's just human nature to kind of be in little groups, little cliques,
and it's kind of hard breaking into that.
So, you know, if you're out there, if you're listening,
if you haven't gone to a meeting because you don't know anyone, you know, give it a try.
There are some good groups out there.
There are some bad groups out there.
You know, there are some groups that, you know, they'll just completely, you know,
shun you and not want you to be there because they don't know who you are.
And there's some groups that will welcome you with open arms and, you know,
just invite you to, you know, just kind of sit back and enjoy and stuff like that.
So if you haven't gone there just because you've figured, well, I don't know anyone,
at least give it a try.
Go out and give it a try.
Go with friends that you do know as a couple of, you know, two or three guys interested,
and go check it out.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think there's more of the latter.
I think there's more people that will accommodate you and let you in than not.
I really do.
And, you know, something else you mentioned that I like to do and I like hearing this story from you
was the fact that someone was there with their father.
So that's very, very cool to me.
I have invited a couple people, like someone was listening to BinRev Radio,
and I was chatting with him on IRC, and he noticed that I was in Florida.
So I mentioned to him about the meeting.
He said he, you know, he'd never been to one before and was a little apprehensive.
And I told him, I said, come on, I'll be there.
You know, I'll meet you there.
I'll ask you, you know, whatever.
And, you know, you meet them, you let them get comfortable.
At least they know one person.
And you have to start somewhere.
You start with one person.
And there have been other people who said that they didn't know how they were going to get there
or they didn't know if their parents, you know, were going to drive them to a meeting.
Because you've got to remember, some of these people are not old enough to drive
or they don't have, you can't afford a car, don't have an automobile, don't have access, whatever.
So there was also someone one time who came.
And, you know, I spoke to the gentleman's, the young man's mother and explained to her, you know,
and told her my real name.
I'm not, you know, if you're worried about, you don't know any of us people, you know,
I kind of met her and I thought that was a very cool thing.
So I try to be as open as we can.
And if more people did that at their meetings, you know, I think a lot more people would become involved.
And that's part of the thing, too, for the meetings is that, you know, it meets in public
and everyone's welcome and all that kind of stuff.
Because, you know, whether law enforcement people, they're welcome just as well.
I mean, it's not, you know, it's not about doing illegal and illicit stuff.
It's about sharing the information and, you know, sharing opinions and things like that.
You can agree to disagree if you don't like something about that, but, you know, with people in any kind of situation.
But, yeah, it's just all open and out front, you know.
Yeah, and you know what, you'll meet some of the most open-minded people you've ever met in your life.
So very seldom do you have those kind of arguments and, you know, closed-mindedness.
And at our meeting this past, this is a good segue.
Watch how I set this up.
This is learning professionalism from Rax, the master.
Watch this segue.
After my 2600 meeting, several of the members gathered to go watch Matrix Revolutions.
I was going to say at ours, one of the big topics of discussion was Matrix Revolutions.
See, we're on the same page.
Now, we talked about this before the show, of course, but we didn't go into details because we're going to talk about this on the show about the movie.
Now, I went to see it this weekend and I, you say you saw it, um...
I saw it opening night.
Yeah, you probably saw it a lot earlier than I did.
I actually had my second cyber law exam on opening night.
So, yes, most of my friends, they went to see it without me.
Thank you.
I do not shout out any of you.
They went to see it without me while I'm taking a three-hour exam.
And I don't know how it went yet.
So, um, I went to see it this weekend with some other friends who also didn't go see it for one reason or another.
And, I don't know, should I start...
What did you...
I'll start with you.
What did you think of the movie?
I liked it.
The guys I went to see it with were complaining about it.
They were saying, oh, there was too many religious overtones.
Oh, it ripped off too many movies.
Everyone admitted, yeah, the special effects were great.
But I liked it.
I enjoyed it.
Let's break it apart.
Let's do an actual critical review point by point.
Because I couldn't help but looking online before I went to see it.
I didn't want to read anything.
I didn't want to ruin it.
But I couldn't help notice that there were a lot of people giving it bad reviews.
Well, people gave the second movie bad reviews as well.
And I thought it was fantastic.
I thought Reloaded was great.
And I agree with you.
I think Revolutions was also a darn good movie.
Here's the thing about that, my opinion of it, is that, first of all, when The Matrix came out in 99 or whatever, it was so groundbreaking.
It was so different.
People did not have a frame of reference for it.
So they were just blown away because it was so different, which is a good thing, right?
Right.
Of course.
Now, people had expectations for the second movie.
And they knew what the characters were.
And they said, well, this should be this way.
This should be that way.
And when it didn't quite fit, people weren't happy about it.
Well, now with the third movie, when we've known so much more about the characters, about the environment, about everything else, I mean, there's tons of things online.
They will give you some URLs to pop up in the show notes as well.
But there's tons of stuff online, I mean, about all these various theories that people had about things.
Like, there's going to be a Matrix in the Matrix.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I mean, on the forums, on the BinRev forums, you can go back and search.
And we, myself included, I was very much into them.
And I'm like, any movie that makes you think about it and talk about it with others, and maybe it's this, and how cool would it be if it was that?
When's the last time any movie did that?
And how can you say it's bad when it does prompt you to do stuff like that?
Anything that simulates the gray matter can't be that bad.
I mean, normally, if you leave a good movie, you walk out going, wow, that was so cool.
This person kicked butt, or that person was just, oh, the special effects were great, and the acting was just super duper.
I'm trying to use controlled language, you notice that?
Yeah, very good.
And, you know, you walk out of there, and you're like, when you drive home, you go to bed, that's it.
You know, the most you'll ever talk about that movie again is, oh, yeah, I saw that.
It was really good.
But with the Matrix, you find yourself talking.
Well, wait a minute, but what did he mean when they said that?
And, oh, did you notice that was snuck in there?
And, oh, did you see that Trinity used Nmap, and the SSH connected, you know, all these things that are just amazing.
They're still finding stuff.
What was the one I read recently about the license plate?
Oh, the license plate was Isaiah something on one of the cars in Reloaded.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
No, I didn't hear about that one.
I will, doggone it, I wish I could remember it right now.
I think I posted it in the forums, but I will put it in the show notes after the fact.
There was a license plate, and it was about the architect.
There was a license plate that said I-S, like, and then a verse from the Bible.
And if you go look that verse up, it was something about, I am the architect, I have created all which you can see, or something like that,
which was on the, I think it was on the license plate of a car that had Smith in it or something.
And it made you think again, well, wait a minute, is there a relationship here and there?
And, you know, all these little things, and these are still coming out.
People are finding, after they go to DVD, they're still finding little tidbits like this.
I think, you know, just the nature of DVD more so than even, you know, videotape allows you to do that and stuff.
As a matter of fact, Meme talked about something on the bench that, I guess, Neo and the Oracle said it.
There was a little plaque on there, and she stopped it and did a freeze from it.
She didn't want to spoil what it was, but she said there was something really there that was really insightful or whatever else.
It was just like this little park bench that had this little plaque on it.
And when I'm watching, I got reloaded, the DVD for reloaded, you know, a few days before the movie.
So, actually, I didn't watch reloaded again.
I watched all the making of and all that other stuff.
And you can see someone sitting there as they're talking about making the movie.
They're sitting on this park bench, and there's this little brass plate about stuff.
But, yeah, there are multiple levels of meanings, and that's specifically what they went for.
Right.
And, you know, another good plug-in, or whatever you want to call it, was the Animatrix.
You have all these extra stories that also tie into the movie.
And I did the same thing on the Animatrix.
I freeze-framed on a couple spots, and you could see the names of the ships in the background and the date that it was launched.
And they were accurate.
You know, they made, I mean, accurate to the storyline, that is to say.
You know, it was put into commission 50 years before the movie took place.
And, I mean, everything was, I mean, they thought out every little detail.
And that's, first of all, for the whole trilogy and the whole series, there was a lot of thought put into it.
Now, I mentioned earlier about the Isaiah and the Bible verse, which, again, I'll look that up for the show notes.
But you mentioned earlier that people were complaining about the religious undertones and the allusions to religious topics and themes, obviously with Neo.
Do you think that there was, did it cross a line?
Do you think there was too much?
Well, there was definitely some symbolism in there, and I'm sure it was deliberately done.
And, obviously, for the listeners, we're trying not to, you know, disclose any of the specifics about things, just talk about things in generalities.
But there was even, I read an article on...
I'm sorry, actually, let me interrupt you, Rex.
You're right, we should have actually prefaced this.
And I may go back afterwards and edit in the beginning, put a disclaimer that if anybody who hasn't seen the movie, I don't want to give too much away.
So far, we've been pretty general, but we may go into some detail upcoming.
So, if you have not seen it, this might be a good point to stop listening and listen after you've seen the movie.
Right, absolutely.
So, I'm sorry, go ahead.
I didn't mean to interrupt that.
I just thought we ought to throw that out there, though.
Right, right.
But, anyway, there was a website that was talking about that.
I mean, lots of websites were talking about this.
This was a Buddhist website called killingthebuddha, kvd.com or .org or something.
But, anyway, so the thing is, depending on who you are, and deliberately the Wachowski brothers decided to do this,
that you can look at it from different perspectives.
So, some of the obvious things is, you know, that in Christianity, right, so Neo is the Messiah.
That's a very obvious thing.
Matter of fact, someone even noticed, you know, if you rearrange the letters in Neo, it spells one, so he's the one.
And even, like, in the first movie, the door that, you know, his apartment was, like, 101 or something like that.
So, all those other layers of things.
But then someone else brought up the fact that, you know, it's very much like the Jewish hero myth.
And then someone brought up the fact, well, there's a lot of Buddhist overtones in these things.
And, again, that was, I'm sure, deliberately done because they want to, as Stank said, you know, there's so many layers of things.
When you go back and look at this thing over and over, you start to see all these various parts and pieces.
Now, in the third movie, Revelations or Resolutions or whatever you want to call it, there's just spoofs out there already.
But, for example, in one part, and this really isn't too much of a spoiler, but as Neo is doing his stuff there,
he's kind of, like, outstretched, so it's kind of like Jesus on the cross type of thing.
You know, so that was a very obvious one.
But, you know, I don't think that there was too much of that, at least in my opinion.
Well, you know, it's funny.
I am a Christian.
I'm not afraid to say that.
But I didn't pick up on any of that.
And that's, I thought that was very odd.
I didn't pick up on any of it until after, like at the very end, at the very end, I kind of got a little bit of a feeling of it.
But it wasn't until afterwards reading some of people's comments and I'm like, oh, yeah, good point.
Oh, I see that now after the fact.
So I don't, to me, it didn't come across as very obvious, which obviously some people disagree.
They thought it was very forced and it was, you know, I don't know if it was negative or the people seem to portray it as though it was a complete, I don't know if you can say a ripoff of the Bible, but a ripoff of the whole, the one, the story of the one, the Messiah.
Yeah, exactly.
I didn't get it as being that obvious, but maybe I was just more open-minded and willing to accept things for what I see.
I go with what I see and hear and I was willing to accept the simple fact that, yes, I know Neos is the one.
I know that.
I also found, even these weird little things like the first human city was 01, or excuse me, the first robot city was called 01, which ironically, you know, binary, that's kind of a really good fit.
And then the human city was Zion, which is like, I don't know, maybe a little elite speak coming out of me where the one and the zero, the I and the O, the fact that it began with the letter Z, the complete opposite of 01.
I mean, little things like that.
All this stuff I noticed afterwards, while I was watching it, I was able to just suspend myself from being analytical and looking for things to dislike and looking for parallels.
I was enjoying myself watching the movie.
First of all, I should also say, I am definitely not the person to go to the movie theater with.
My friends will tell you that I'm the worst.
I will yell at the movie.
I get excited.
I get into the movie.
And I found myself in revelations, revolutions.
Now, you messed me up when you said that now.
In revolutions, I found myself several times jumping up and saying, you go, Neo.
You know, I was into the movie.
Very few movies pulled me in as far as this trilogy of movies did.
The other thing that people were criticizing was just broad generalities.
And I only saw the one point that they were mentioning.
But it was the fact that this Matrix 3 ripped off all these other sci-fi idioms.
They did all these little things.
There was one scene in Matrix 3 that hearkened very much back to Matrix 1.
Again, we're trying not to spoil the thing for you.
Well, they should have stopped listening at this point.
Don't hold back.
Go ahead and make the point.
Well, all right.
So we've got in Matrix 1 the famous lobby scene, right, where they're running through and running off the walls and hiding behind the pillars and all that.
So there's a scene in Matrix 3 that has very much like that when they come out of the elevators and the bad guys are there and they're shooting and they're going behind the pillars and stuff.
Now, though, of course, everyone's not only running off the walls, they're completely upside down with their feet on the ceiling and stuff.
And if it's borrowing from yourself, I don't consider that a ripoff.
I mean, you came up with that, right?
Okay, it's fair game.
You can use that again if you want to.
Yeah, and, you know, first of all, it's very dramatic to open an elevator door and it's a very dramatic entrance.
So, you know, there's nothing wrong with using camera angles and scenes to develop, especially when you came up with it.
But also, I did notice that one.
When I was watching, I'm like, okay, this was a lot like the other one but much, much cooler.
So I thought it was much better this time.
And, again, that it was, I mean, that's like saying, oh, well, every boxing movie is always ripped off of Rocky or whatever, you know,
whatever the first boxing movie because, you know, everything is the same as that one.
I mean, it's really, I mean, what do you expect?
There's nothing wrong with having action scenes.
It's a little bit different each time.
You can't come up with, there's a lot of other original fighting scenes.
There's a lot of other, like, here's another one I hear criticized.
The very end, and this is giving something away, so definitely stop listening if you haven't seen this.
The very end fight between Smith and Neo.
The one that starts off on the street with all the Smiths lined up on the side.
Right.
It turns into this giant one-on-one, mano-a-mano finale to the movie that just took my breath away.
I was amazed.
I thought it was the most fantastic thing.
And then I see people online saying they ripped it off of Dragon Ball Z, which apparently is some anime.
I know it's an anime, but I never watched it.
You know, it's on, like, every day after school or something, so it can't be, you know, I won't even go there.
But I don't see how you're ripping off a cartoon.
The way I see it, it took three movies to build up.
Like, back to the fight scene from The Elevator.
The first movie, you had to open your mind, and they had to slowly open your mind as a viewer to say,
Oh, my gosh, they can do those kind of jumps?
They can climb the wall like that and shoot and spin and flip?
Wow, that's really cool, you know?
I understand The Matrix gives them extra freedom.
It took until the second and even the third movie before you realized they are improving with age.
They are improving as the movie goes on.
They are learning and mastering the art of The Matrix themselves.
They are learning how to move and control The Matrix, which is the whole premise to the whole thing.
So by the time the third movie got there, I expected them to take it to the next level.
If they would have put that final scene in the first or second movie, it wouldn't have been believable.
It doesn't have to be realistic, but it has to be believable.
Plus, you know, they didn't have the state of the art of technology in 99.
We were talking about how quickly technology moves, right?
Between, you know, the whole CGI stuff and everything else,
what they are able to do now versus what they were able to do in 99, four years ago.
You know, it is just a quantum leap ahead.
Yeah, it is.
I really think that this is the greatest trilogy of movies since Star Wars.
Well, since Lord of the Rings.
Since, well, yeah, darn, you got me on that one.
Lord of the Rings is phenomenal.
Right, yeah, that is like the greatest piece of literature, English literature in the 20th century.
So, I mean, you have got to give it its due.
You know, here is a little tidbit of trivia that no one cares about, about Stank.
I actually took the fantastic in literature as a course at a university where I got credit to read Lord of the Rings.
I got credit to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
And it was taught by, geez, I can't give out too much information.
It was taught by a very famous fantasy author.
See, if I give out too much, see, that was like a bad, I shouldn't have even brought that up.
Because if I give out too much away, that will tie it down to me pretty closely.
But I actually got college credit to read those books.
And I had, of course, read them before that anyway.
So, great piece of literature.
And what do you think of it?
We probably didn't mean to go into this tangent, but what do you think about those movies?
Oh, they're just phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.
Yeah, phenomenal. Phenomenal.
It doesn't bother you that the whole Liv Tyler, the adaptation, and giving her more screen time.
Yeah, not at all.
No?
Not at all.
Now, mind you, I'm not a Tolkien purist or anything.
I'm sure some of the people are really ticked off by anything of that nature.
Right.
That's the same people that said,
Wolverine wasn't wearing his tights and his claws don't come out the middle of his fingers,
they come out the top of his hand.
Just shut up and watch the movie.
Yeah, I've got to go back to something you mentioned earlier about the Animatrix.
By all means.
And there was really, they really called like the Animatrix in this second DVD for Reloaded.
They said that Animatrix was really like the Matrix 1.5.
But between that, to really get the full experience of it now,
because there was so much of a time like between, you know, 99 when the first Matrix came out,
between Matrix 2 and Matrix 3, right?
Matrix 2 was like in May, Matrix 3 is now in November.
Right.
So for Matrix 2 coming out, you know, I was watching the first Matrix again.
I went out and I got the Animatrix as soon as I could.
I also went out and I bought the game, the Matrix game.
And I played that the whole, took the day off.
I played that the whole day before going to see the movie that night.
And there was a bunch of us from the 2600 meeting all went out together and saw that.
But I was really, you know, I was really kind of focused back into it the whole time.
Now, is there stuff in there?
I heard that the game actually has some expanding on the story or some relationship.
Oh, yeah.
There is about an hour and a half of extra live footage or an hour of extra live footage in the game.
Plus, it's going on in parallel with the second Matrix movie.
And the game ends with the logos being stuck down in the tunnels, which is where the Matrix 3 picks up.
So, really, to get the full experience of it, you've got to watch the Animatrix reloaded and then do the game as well.
And they actually used, they even had on this DVD, which obviously I'm highly recommending,
that's about the making of the game.
And they had this, the Wachowskis wrote it.
They had the same people doing the music, the animation.
They had the actors down there, of course, doing the voice work.
But they had all the little dots on them, you know, so they could do motion capture and everything.
Right.
It was really completely an integral part of the story.
So, if you want to really see and get the full experience, get the Animatrix, get the game, and do Reloaded.
Yeah, and, you know, this was the first time in my life, in my lifetime,
and historically we didn't have the technology and everything.
For example, what I'm trying to say is, Lord of the Rings, let's go back to that.
Great, great movies.
The Matrix is, it's not just the movies.
I can't quite even think of the words.
I can't even think of vocabulary to explain.
It is immersive.
It's the most immersive experience.
It's not just about seeing the movies.
The video game brings you in.
The website brings you in.
They had the greatest hack the Matrix thing going on in the website.
I don't know if you followed that at all, where you could go on and play with some of the interfaces
and come up with hidden things and tricks, and you could hack the site.
It was designed and written to be hacked.
And that was really fun.
You've got, like I said, the video game.
You've got the Animatrix that pulls you in.
I mean, it's the most immersive use of...
I just don't even know how to put it in words.
I've never felt more immersed in a world or an environment before.
You go to a movie, you watch it, you leave, you're happy, you're not happy, you're disappointed.
But I felt like I was a part of this.
I felt like I knew what was going on.
All these little side stories.
I mean, there was so much to get involved with that I just can't see...
I really can't think of anything bad to say about the whole trilogy.
There are, I mean, if I want to be really critical, yes, there were some scenes in certain movies
and a couple little flaws or holes that I found,
but I could suspend that disbelief for the sake of the movie and for what it was.
And I didn't, you know, I don't want to nitpick little things here and there.
So, I think all in all, it was...
Again, one of the greatest trilogy series of all time.
Yeah, I mean, again, it's actually had an impact on culture at any time a movie or something can do that.
I guess that's a hallmark of a great piece of work.
Yeah, I mean, am I getting at a...
I know I'm struggling for words, but do you understand what I'm saying?
I mean, that it pulls you in.
Like you said, you spent the whole day playing that game because you were immersed in that game.
It drew you.
It made you want to play and learn more.
Right, and by the way, too, the game, you can play it as two of the different characters,
either as Niobe or Ghost, and you can go play through the whole game
and you actually do different things if you're different characters,
which is kind of a neat aspect, too.
But I think part of, you know, what makes the Matrix that immersive environment, as you're saying,
as opposed to a Lord of the Rings.
A Lord of the Rings is a fantasy escape.
You know, there's dragons, there's evil things and, you know, monsters and all that other stuff.
Well, the Matrix is so close to reality, or so close to our quote-unquote reality, right?
And it's even set right about approximately the same time frame.
So with the computers, with everything else.
And you can get, you know, if you stretch your mind not that far,
you can see, you can almost see how that, yeah, that could really be almost real.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because it's not set, you know, in the land of Middle Earth
and, you know, sometime in the, you know, undetermined past and so on and so forth.
That's set right now in our modern times with things we can see.
And the other thing, I think, that, you know, teenagers and younger people may seem to do with that
and really get into it is because they're disenfranchised.
And, you know, here's some psychology coming out, right?
But anyway, it's because they're disenfranchised now with the world.
And, you know, they feel like they're an outsider and all that other stuff
that I think people really identify with that.
Yeah, sometimes you feel like you're in the Matrix.
Absolutely.
You know?
So it's escapism, which is what movies should be.
It's what movies are for to escape reality, even if it's only for a few hours.
Yep.
Well, you know, the last, well, first of all, there's, they left enough of an opening
that potentially there could be a fourth movie.
Or maybe they'll just do it as an anime thing or whatever.
Well, let's talk about that.
Did they, I, the one thing that would have made me mad is if they would have ended the
trilogy without closure.
I felt like I got the closure that I wanted.
Did you feel like they left the, were there any unanswered questions that were critical
or that made you feel, you know, leaving unfulfilled?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
What happened to Neo?
He's taken away by the machines.
Well, the machines know enough about human beings.
And if you, again, if you've seen the Animatrix, you'll know that the machines understand the
physiology of humans.
The machines had to understand humans well enough to hook them up to be the batteries, right?
So, yeah, Neo's blinded and he's, you know, exhausted and whatever else.
Now, if the machines take them away, are they going to rebuild them?
Are they going to make them better, stronger, faster?
Are they going to stick him back in a pod to power their, uh...
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, so what's, what's going to, so that was very open-ended.
But see, I, I took it for the simple fact of, I'm going to assume for the sake of this
trilogy and this story that he died at the end, which again goes to the whole Messiah
thing, the whole, maybe that's the next thing, the born again, the coming back from the dead.
Right.
We won't even go there.
I'm going to assume for the sake of this short, enclosed part of the whole story that
he died, that he allowed the machines to pass through with him to kill Smith, in turn,
killing him at the same time they killed each other because the whole issue of balance,
the architect and the, the, uh, the Oracle, excuse me, the whole thing of how it's balanced.
One is the yin, one is the yang.
They're both, the only way that it could be healed and stop everything was for them to kill
each other.
I took it like that and I was happy with that.
Now, yes, obviously, absolutely.
It's wide open that they could say, ah, ha, ha.
You only thought he was dead.
You know, it's very open that they could, but for right now, for closure of this story,
I was content with that.
I was still a little, I guess I, I still am a little confused onto the ending as to exactly
if I'm reading too much or not enough into it, like, I kind of almost wish the story
would have ended with Neo face down in the water.
I'm kind of thinking if the, if the movie would have ended there, I would have also been
happy, maybe even more so.
I think coming back as the Oracle, I think that was a little bit more, made me scratch
my head going, what?
Well, you saw that the Oracle was assimilated by Smith, so that was the one that, uh, just
happened to be the one that stepped out to, to take and do the fight.
Mm-hmm.
But, uh, you know, the other thing that's kind of unanswered is that little girl that
was with the Oracle at the end, and, you know, when they're off, and it's a, you know, the
beautiful rainbow sunset thing or whatever, or sunrise.
Right.
The Oracle says, little girl, did you do that?
And she says, yeah.
Exactly.
She was a program without a purpose, right?
First of all, programs, making other programs and that, but she was a program without a purpose,
so what's, what's her purpose?
Now, is she, is she the new one?
I was getting ready, I was getting ready to say that.
The only thing I could think is that they were alluding to her being the next one.
Yeah.
But if that's the case, how did she exist with the current one, which was Neo?
But she, and on top of that, she's not, quote, unquote, a real person.
She's a program.
So, there's a lot, I think there's a lot of unanswered questions.
I think they have enough range, enough space, they could, they could certainly make a fourth
movie if they wanted to.
Oh, they have an infinite range.
I think they could make an entire series, and I think they could also spin off a lot of
things.
Speaking of series, let's, let's hope and pray that they don't make a television series out
of it.
That's the way to kill anything.
Yeah, you know, well, I don't, I tend to agree with you, but going with that whole immersion
thing, they've done the web, they've done the anime, they've done music, they've done
movies, they've done DVDs with all the extra stuff, hidden things here.
You know, I'm sure books, you know, comics will be coming out, comic books.
I don't know, is TV part of that equation?
I don't think so.
I don't think so, because you look at all the great movies that they've done, that they've
turned it into a TV series, just to try to cash in on it, and I don't think it's really
been effective.
So, hopefully they're not, I'd rather see them, you know, do more anime, just do, like
the first one in the Animatrix, you know, the CGI, you know, the exquisite CGI anime,
stuff like that, rather than doing a, you know, rather than doing anything else.
You know, the one other thing that we didn't mention, we talked a little bit about the
game, and there is going to be a online, massively multiple player online game of the Matrix.
Right.
And that's coming out, so that's probably the next step that they're doing, as, you know,
you'll be able to buy the program and spend your hard-earned money every month to be
addictive, I think, as you called it before, like the Evercrack Syndrome.
Right.
Now, see, I'm not sure what to make of that.
I think that could have been something, obviously two and three came out pretty close together.
That could have been something between movies, where they, you could be a player in the Matrix
world, and you could see things happen, and you could, as a player in the game, wonder
and think about things, and what is that over there for, and what is the significance of
this person, and, you know, every once in a while, run into a Smith and watch him, and
make you wonder what's going on, and then when the next movie comes out, you get answers to
the questions that you came up with while you were playing the game.
And that's the kind of immersion I have felt all along, was they keep leading me along with
more questions, and I keep getting more answers, yet more questions, and then I get more
answers, and more, you know, that's what it, I think that would have been something
between movies, and like you said, maybe they do come out with a fourth, or another
trilogy, or another series, or whatever, which I don't know, I haven't heard anything, have
you, I don't want to give people some thought that there's going to be another one, I don't
think so, I haven't heard anything to that effect of you.
Haven't heard a single thing about it, no, not at all.
Yeah, so, don't get your hopes up anytime soon, especially, the money that they've made
on this must just be staggering.
There's, I didn't get a chance to read it yet, I subscribed to Wired Magazine, and you
can probably get it online, but there is a, there's an article about the Wachowski
Brothers, that's coming up, so I've got to, I've got to read that, and we'll see if there's
maybe anything in there that, you know, alludes to the next phase of the Matrix.
Hmm.
Well, I guess time will tell.
So, um, and you know what, let's, let's, we gotta, I think we're over, but there's
a couple scenes I still want to talk about it, I want to see what you thought about.
What do you think about the whole mech, mech army?
Did you have a problem with the guys climbing into the big robotic mechs?
No, no, I actually thought that was kind of cool.
I did too, I thought that was incredible, and the best scene of the movie to me, my jaw
dropped, and I said, I can't, because I'm not cursing, I'm not going to say it, but I
said, oh, shoot, when I saw that thing drop through the ceiling, and all of those little
octopus things come through, that was the scene of the movie for me.
Yeah, it was interesting, the way they were swarming around, like the, you know, the hive
intelligence.
Exactly, it was so primal.
And the other thing that was interesting about that drill, is that after it dropped and fell
through, you know, so it could just be the juggernaut drop and break, well, no, it, these
little legs came out so it could keep drilling.
Yeah, yeah.
That was very interesting as well.
Them machines are smart.
Um, the, uh, whatever his name was, that main general or whoever that was doing the thing,
he was a real kick-butt kind of a guy.
Yeah, you know what, and he was, he was such a jerk in the previous parts of the movie,
and he was a jerk in this movie, but I still liked him, I still liked the character.
You know, all the other mechs, you got to see how many there were, I mean, there were
hundreds of them, right?
Yeah.
Out of all the other mechs, he was the one left alive at the end.
He was the last one.
Oh, you're talking about that?
You're talking about the big general.
I thought you were talking about the guy who was underground organizing the defenses.
Yeah, no, not, uh, not, uh, Niobe's, uh...
Yeah, X or whatever he was.
Yeah, the, uh, uh, Asian, the kind of Asian guy, uh, his name was, but he was the, you
know, he was the kick-butt kind of thing, like, right at the end, you know, gung-ho,
semper-fi kind of stuff.
Yeah, the, the great, it was just so cool because if you've ever, obviously none of
us have ever been in a mech war against an alien race or against a race of robots.
However...
Speak for yourself.
If you've ever played a video game and you think strategy-wise, you know, there's a choke
point and you'll aim your fire at that and try to stop things.
Well, in that movie, when that hole came through, they knew where they were coming.
You knew what was about to happen.
You heard them.
And every mech and the entire thing was aimed and locked on.
And that was an, it was just a magnificent scene.
As fast as this hive of things was coming in, they were getting mowed down.
But there was such an overwhelming number of them.
And I think, I think it did a good job of that.
Feeling overwhelming.
Feeling just like, like, again, like a hive taking possession.
You know, coming in and they had all of these mechs trained on it and one or two trickled
through and one or two mechs would chase him off and that's one less gun on the choke
point.
And they slowly got pulled away until you realized, that's it.
You know, they're in.
But yeah, that was, that was the scene of the movie for me.
Um, the, the scene where, what do you think about the scene at the very end with Neo and
Trinity going to the robot world?
I was going to, I was going to bring up one point from there too that actually kind of,
uh, gets back, gets back to the idea of potential for the next movie.
Uh, as, uh, Neo and Trinity are doing the thing and they're making it to, you know, going
there at the, uh, I thought it was awesome.
Those mountains were actually like huge, you know.
Yeah, they came alive.
Bulldog kind of things, you know, shooting out the stuff.
Uh, again, even, even for suspension of disbelief, you know, Neo being able to sticking out
his hand and, uh, knocking those missiles or whatever those things were out of the way.
That was, that was, that was a little bit of a stretch, but what I found interesting
is that when they went up through the sky.
Right.
Go with it.
I'm, I'm with you.
That was all going.
So, you know, potentially I'm thinking that that's, that's, you know, that's another thing
that could be played in the next movie because let's face it, right?
The machines have harnessed the human beings for energy because they can't do solar energy
anymore because, as we know from the Animatrix, the, uh, people of Earth, you know, blackened
out however, whatever they did, whatever technology they used to, to screen the, uh, sunlight off
from the Earth to hopefully knock off the machines.
Well, if the machines would know that that's out there, they could apply their technology
to doing that and getting solar energy again.
So maybe they could live in peace.
Well, and now see, here's where this, that's, I got a little bit confused at that.
They peeked up and got through the clouds or whatever and Trinity saw the sun and saw the
sunlight and said how beautiful it was before they dove back in.
I must have, I must have misunderstood in the Animatrix.
I thought they actually like blew up the sun.
I thought they didn't blacken it out.
I thought they blew it up to get rid of the source of energy for the robots.
No, no, they, well, think about it, you'd blow up the sun.
Well, I know, and they, I think they, the whole point was they had given up.
Like I said, I, obviously I misunderstood it.
I thought they were saying, listen, we're going to take you out with us by taking away
your source.
No, they didn't, the humans didn't want to kill themselves.
And there was the one scene in the Animatrix where these, these flying, they kind of reminded
me of a fish, but anyway, uh, these big B-52 kind of bombers are flying through the sky
and you see these black clouds coming out behind them and this, and the sunlight being blocked
off.
So then they, and they refer to it as burning off the sky or something.
So I thought they messed up the atmosphere, the ozone layer or what have you, but no,
they didn't, uh, the humans didn't, the humans weren't going to blow up themselves,
you know, kill, take out the robots and themselves.
The humans still wanted to live.
Well, how is it that Neo was able to fly the ship, Neo and Trinity were able to fly
the ship up where they could see the sun, but the robots couldn't?
I mean, wouldn't they have, A, followed them up that high?
Well, B, have they never tried before?
They may have, A, never tried, but think about it.
When they went up through that, all the, uh, all the electrical activity, the storm, like
thunder and lightning type of stuff, knocked out their engines.
So that's, they kept going up on momentum and that's when they dove back down is because
they reached the apogee and then they started descending again.
That's when Trinity had to start the motors back up.
Right.
Probably, with all that electrical activity, none of the, uh, you know, none of the, uh,
robots, for lack of a better word, uh, you know, could, could, could go through that.
They probably just never tried.
It was too dangerous and they never tried to do that.
Hmm.
Well, they have Neo now.
Yep.
If he's alive, they have him.
I wonder if they can, I, again, assuming their technology and knowledge of the human physiology,
they can read his mind and know that it's up there.
Maybe they will, maybe we can infer or read ahead and make our own conclusion that they
do understand now that the sky is up there and figure out how to break through and they
all live peacefully, happy, happily ever after.
Well, the other thing is though, that Neo, even though he was blinded, was able to see,
you know, what was going, what was going on.
He could see, you know, like the outlines, the energy patterns or whatever of all the machines.
And when they went up through the clouds, uh, they didn't show Neo recognizing that there
was sky.
Trinity saw it.
Right.
And felt, you know, that maybe they, they felt the warmth, whatever, but she saw it.
Uh, but Neo didn't.
So if the machines have Neo and they don't know, and Neo isn't aware of that fact, uh,
how are the machines going to find out?
However, however, did Trinity really die?
And could the machines bring her back?
Obviously they could, but again, another open, you know, unanswered question.
But again, I had closure.
I was very happy with the movie.
All in all, I gave it, I give it, you know, thumbs up, thumbs up from me.
You know what?
And the little side note here, um, we, I, I saw the, uh, reloaded on, you know, in a regular
theater initially.
And then, uh, a couple months later I saw it at IMAX, which is, by the way, is awesome
at IMAX.
Well, for, uh, Matrix 3, they had it available on IMAX at the same time.
And every place else that, which, that had an IMAX, I'm guessing, because they didn't go
to all the other cities, but every place else that had the IMAX played Matrix 3 on opening
day.
In Phoenix, in their ultimate wisdom, they decided not to play Matrix 3 on the IMAX.
They were still playing Matrix 2 for one showing.
How dumb is that?
I wanted to see it on the IMAX.
I went to see it at the, at the new theater.
It's the largest theater in the state of Arizona, Seneca Pri, so it was great.
It was big as, it wasn't as big as an IMAX, but talk about total immersion.
Right.
That's the place to see it the second time.
Yeah, you gotta have that surround sound and the stadium and all that for these big
movies.
Yeah, but I mean, you know, it's a very high screen.
Right.
The IMAX, though, it wasn't filmed in the IMAX film and IMAX format.
It was just stretched.
And I didn't know if that would really add very much to it, other than being really big.
Actually, it works very well.
Really big.
It works very well.
I saw IMAX, I mean, I saw, um, Matrix 2.
I also saw, um, Star Wars.
This is the Star Wars Episode 2.
I saw it on the original digital screen, I saw it again on an analog screen, then I
saw it on IMAX.
The only thing with the IMAX, some of the action that happens very close to the front of the
screen, your eyes can't focus on it quick enough and you can't pan it going through.
But, um, yeah, the technology for porting over a regular film to the IMAX format works
very well, I think.
Well, on that note, I think we, uh, we just give credit to Neo being the ultimate hacker.
It started off with a movie about a hacker falling asleep at his computer following the
white rabbit and we are a hacking radio show and I think we ought to, we're way over time,
I'm pretty sure.
And one last thought on that, you know, is that, uh, the whole thing takes place in about
six months from when Neo has woken up to the end.
That's roughly about six months.
Yeah, you want a bad, anybody who's complaining, if you wanted a bad ending, the bad ending
would have been, Neo wakes up in front of his computer and it was all a dream or a game
or something like that.
So, believe me, the movie could have been real bad.
Keep that in mind.
Absolutely.
So, um, closing it up, I'm going to shout out 954-2600, my 2600 meeting, and Cy Pete,
who's, uh, got that started and organized and, uh, been working on some things with him
lately.
Um, and shout out to Decoder, uh, for doing the show.
Um, next time we have Decoder on, we're definitely going to spend more time talking about freaking.
Um, we really didn't last time.
So, did you have anybody you wanted a shout out to?
Yeah, shout out to the whole, uh, gang out here in Phoenix with, uh, the 2600 thing and,
uh, uh, I don't know, but I guess my, uh, P2, my, uh, robot dog.
Oh, well, yeah.
If he's listening, shout out.
And, uh, any email feedback, tell us that we, tell us how bad the Matrix sucked if you
want.
You can send the letters at binrev.com.
And that is it.
Same cliched ending for every show that Rax loves.
We will see you next week.
Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
And for those people who remember it, as I always used to say on RFA, keep knowledge
free.
Keep knowledge free.
Oh, and, damn it, I ruined it again with our, I gotta mention our closing music is, uh,
scheme determined.
Now, keep knowledge free.
Peace out.
All right, good episode, good episode, we are now off the air, and I gotta add the editing
music onto this, and...
But, you know, it was cool, I think you, uh, made it all the way through that swearing.
I didn't, I didn't swear a single time on this whole fucking show, did you hear that?
It was fucking awesome.
I know, that was fucking sweet.
Man.
Man, and nobody knows that we can start cussing after we've stopped recording.
Yeah, well, good thing, you know.
Yeah.
Uh-oh.
Wait a minute.
Oh, shit.
You cannot stop me.
Yeah.
You cannot stop me.
Excuse me.
I'm not.
You cannot stop me.
Yeah, I know.
That's time to get on my...
Yeah, check it out.
You cannot stop me from doing what I want to do in life, doing what I want to do with
the mic, doing what is right, doing what is tight, and just know that you cannot stop
me from living in my own shoes.
You don't know what I'm going through, looking forward to, but what I'm showing you is what
I told you, yeah.
I don't give up to know why.
The rap scene isn't happy with me rapping, but the sad thing is that I ain't gotta go watch
a gun to blow the whole spot, but it's because I'm so hot.
I'm the man of the best.
You can't handle the threat.
Me to you is like, yeah, he's the mess.
Man's scheme is the best.
Chill.
I'm the biggest fan that I got.
You cannot support more than I support myself.
Then all of them fail, all of them fail.
But it's how that you get up, how that you set up, your next move, how you talk to the
next dude that makes you, the person at your walk, now you are, ready to live your life,
win the play.
By the way, by the way, this is the kind of way to let you know that I did things my way.
You cannot stop me from doing what I want to do in life, doing what I want to do with
the mic, doing what is right, doing what is tight, and just know that you cannot stop
me from living in my own shoes.
You don't know what I'm going through, looking forward to you, but what I'm showing you is what I told
you, yeah.
So I'm willing to evolve with the chords when I'm getting involved, yeah, I'm predicting
it's all I told you, better leave me alone, better leave it and go, better dream you can
float, but you know, you ain't even really close, man.
You getting home with your own fuck, man, only revoking a man that can't be done, so why?
Cause the focus, man, determined it will, even if it hurts to feel, it hurts to build the
feeling, still I keep going on the path that I chose, happy to know, that's what I wrote
to the plateau, that I'm standing on, the one that I get abandoned on, it's your hand that's
on, take your brains to fail and they cancel them all, put your hands on the call,
it goes like this, you cannot stop me from doing what I want to do with life, doing
what I want to do with the mic, doing what is right, doing what is tight, and just know
that you cannot stop me from living in my own shoe, uh, you don't know what I'm going
to, looking forward to, but what I'm showing you is what I told you, yeah.
And now I told y'all once, and I'll tell you again, can anyone vent without hesitating
offense, without further precaution, cause so often I'm off the course because someone
is talking, now I need to alter this, alter that, alter this, alter that, nah, I'ma keep
being my individual self, doing what is dealt, whenever I fail, cause I cover it up, smell
it up, nothing other than what, scheming, hand gleaming, cause I'm really, a visual scenery,
of whatever MCB, so that, should be determined to do what you do, but if you're losing to lose,
and pick it up, listen up, and just know that, if you've been enough, doing enough to be able
to say, you cannot stop me, from doing what I want to do with life, doing what I want to
do with the mic, doing what is right, doing what is tight, and just know that, you cannot stop
me, cause I'm living in my own shoes, you don't know what I'm going through, looking
forward to, but what I'm showing you's when I told you that, you cannot stop me, cause
I'm a do what I want to do with life, doing what I want to do with the mic, doing what
is right, doing what is tight, and just know that, you cannot stop me, cause I'm going
You gotta understand that
I'm determined if you're what I do, man
And I ain't trippin' off it
I'm just doin' me
You know what I'm sayin'?
I know you feel me
Steady on, man
Do your thing
And just remember one thing
Throughout all that
Do yours
But you cannot stop me
Yeah