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 screw you on burning dream caps.
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.
Your CG, it's all gonna be free.
Whether we take it by force or we take it nicely.
You feel that rattle in your bones?
When I tell you we just hacked out Jones?
And NASDAQ leaves you flat on your back?
Cause I am he who loves to hack and crack.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the criminals.
Cereal codes, source codes, ISOs, RAMs, SIFs, SIFs.
This is dedicated to the hackers and the crack.
Hello everyone, I am StankDawg and I did do it all for the cookie.
Welcome to...
Oh shit.
Welcome to Binary Revolution Radio.
You're making me laugh.
Talk to N-Theory for a while guys, I'm laughing.
Introduce, talk to the people.
Hey, what's up?
It's N-Theory and I'm gonna be your host for the night while Stank just laughs like a psychopath in the background.
Alright, well maybe I'm not gonna be the host for the night.
I'm gonna laugh like a psychopath and eat my damn cookie though.
Oh yeah.
Shouts out to my cookie girl again.
Um, this is Binary Revolution Radio episode 36.
As you heard, N-Theory is in the hizzy.
In the hizzle.
In the shizzle.
And boy do we have several pages of show notes today.
Uh, we are coming at you Tuesday, uh, March 9th I think, does that sound right?
2004 original air date.
And, you know what, let me delete this cut back on the foul language line because that's just not gonna happen.
Yeah, I messed it up already on the intro, sorry.
There's gonna be a lot more to come from on one of my favorite topics that makes me cuss AOL.
And then, one that I had you especially on the show so that we could cuss at together, the FCC, which is gonna be our main topic later on.
But, before we get into that, you know our format here.
We're gonna do a little housekeeping.
I had some email backed up that I wanted to mention on the air.
And the first one is from Melikin.
And he says,
What's the story on the book Culture Jamming?
Still forwarding it around the country?
I want to read it.
Yes, Melikin, it is being forwarded around the country.
Um, and amongst other countries possibly.
We'll see how that goes.
Check out the forums, forums.binrev.com
Under Hack Radio TV, the thread was started from that particular episode, but I'm sure you can find it.
Um, it was, I knew when Duel announced it, that it was a cool project and that it was going to, uh, get real popular.
So there's already a big waiting list, um, of people.
So it's gonna take some time before it gets around to everybody, but it will eventually get passed around.
Um, if we have other copies of it, maybe we'll have multiple books going around at the same time.
Um, and I think I was gonna mention on the air actually that maybe we should start a new thread or create a new topic or something, um, separate from that.
Maybe over in the links section or something for people who want to start something like this on a more regular basis.
Kind of a, a group library or something like that.
Um, of course there's always the real library.
Don't forget about that guys.
There is, you know, there are libraries out there.
So, um, but, they may not have the particular books that we as hackers might be interested in.
So, um, anybody wants to do it, check out the forums, feel free to start a thread, feel free to, um, you know, offer some books up.
And understand that you're gonna have to give at least one person to, I guess, actually when you send it out, when you receive it, a real email, a real snail mail address, excuse me.
Um, I guess you don't have to on the sending out part, you can maybe fudge it or leave it off.
But anyway, um, pass some books around and by all means share the knowledge.
I think it's very, very cool.
Um, it can get very pricey too.
You might just be able to go to the library and get it.
I would, obviously it would be copyright violation to scan it and put it online, but ideally that would be the best and easiest way to transfer the knowledge around.
Yeah, somebody's gonna get upset about that though.
Yeah.
But, um, uh, about giving away your real address.
I've actually found out recently that it's pretty easy to get a mailbox from, uh, the UPS store or maybe called mailbox, mailbox, etc. in your area.
But apparently all they really want is a utility bill.
So if you can just get a utility bill in anybody's name, you can go there and get a box.
Hmm.
Very good tip.
They claim they want two forms of ID and they don't take credit cards as ID.
Um, but I think that you can give them two utility bills in your set.
Uh, you can just tell them that you don't have a driver's license.
You don't have a driver ID card because you just don't ever give it a shot.
All right.
Thank you for inviting me a few seconds to eat my cookie.
Yeah, no problem.
And by the way, they accept packages from FedEx and UPS and all of them for you.
So you can have your packages delivered there and pick them up whenever you want.
It's the greatest thing ever.
All right.
Now weren't all of, I, I don't know if all of them, I assumed all of the mailboxes, etc.
All the ones that I knew of were all turned into the UPS store.
They bought it out.
So I don't know if there are any mailboxes, etc. left, but there's probably also knockoff
stores or similar stores that do the same thing as well.
Yeah, they still, they still maintain boxes that are a webpage though.
So I figured that probably somewhere they still have them.
Oh, interesting.
But I just, it's better than a post office box because they require, you know, less identification
and they'll accept packages for you and certified letters and all kinds of shit.
It's really cool.
Yeah.
Very, very good information to start the show off there.
I like that.
All right.
And I did also find out that they are in no way, shape, form related to UPS, believe
it or not, other than they're owned by them.
But I found out because I had a package delivered while I was at work and it was on a Friday
and I really wanted it before the weekend.
And, you know, don't get between a dog and his porn.
That's all I'm saying.
I had to go pick it up before the weekend.
Actually, it was something for my car.
It was something for my car.
But I called to see if I could have it delivered.
There is a UPS store very close on my route home.
It would have been an easy stop.
And I asked to see if there was some way they could have it put there for me to show up
and pick up.
And the UPS store guy was like, yeah, well, we don't really have anything to do with UPS.
If you have it shipped to them, obviously, they'll sign for it and you can pick it up.
But they don't have any direct relationship as far as forwarding packages over to them,
et cetera, et cetera.
So I had to go a couple of miles out of my way to pick up the package,
but not such a big deal.
So they are not directly related and, therefore, their computers are not directly related.
Just a little tidbit of information.
Not yet, anyway.
Okay, and that was Melikin again.
Thank you.
And he sent a couple other emails, too, that were kind of long
and touched on specific topics from previous episodes.
He's catching up listening to some of the past episodes, which is very cool.
We get a lot of people come on and try to catch up on stuff.
So they're kind of long to read on the air for the old topics.
But I did get them and appreciate them, so thank you for that.
Another email I wanted to mention this week was from Radman.
He says, I'm rather inspired by the last 99 episodes of RFA and current episodes of BinRev Radio.
Is there a link up anywhere with...
Oh, I'm sorry.
Is there a link up anywhere with what sort of hardware setup you have going to make the show?
In particular, how are the calls being fed, recorded?
We actually discussed this very topic with the one and only Duel Parallel himself.
Had him on the show, and that was our main topic for Episode 7 of BinRev Radio.
We also, on a past episode of RFA, we talked about it one time.
Probably back around Episode 50 or 60 of RFA, I believe.
I should have looked it up before the air, but...
Episode 7 of BinRev Radio was the most recent one where Duel and I both talked about it
because we both do the shows very similarly.
And you can go to the archive, obviously, radio.binrev.com, click on the archive link and listen to that.
It's probably easier for you to do that than it would be for me to re-go through the whole thing again.
And if you go through with it, by all means, come back to the forums and tell us.
We'd love to hear it.
We support anybody that wants to go out and do shows like that.
We're glad to help out as much as we can.
So, thank you, Radman, and hope we hear some shows from you in the future.
Now, email number three.
We need like some David Letterman email music.
We get letters, we get letters.
Please, no.
That's all the singing you're going to get out of the dog.
I am not the American Idol, despite what you may have heard.
We'll edit that out later.
Now we won.
I don't mind making a fool out of myself on the air.
I got an email from none other than the Walt Disney Internet Group.
That's right.
The Walt Disney Internet Group.
No.
It's not a cease and desist.
No.
It's not a copyright violation.
It says, quote,
Dear Stank Dog.
And yes, it does say Stank Dog.
I'm not going to register with my real name.
What do you think?
Isn't it crazy?
I'm going to get Disney my real name and information?
Dear Stank Dog.
When you registered with our site, we pledged to handle the personal information you provided safely and with great respect,
including being clear about how we collect and use your personal information.
Wait a minute.
I'm going to do my best Disney voice.
As part of this community...
Oh, I can't even speak in the Disney voice.
As part of this commitment, we want to advise you of important changes we are making to our general privacy policy.
They...
Let's see.
How should I approach this?
First of all, I love it when they give me set up emails like this.
It's so easy.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
I got to admit, they grandfathered me.
And it says,
If you do not proactively accept the updated general privacy policy and instead take no action, your data will continue to be handled under the previous privacy policy.
Say that ten times fast.
Previous privacy policy.
Your access to certain services within our sites will be limited and you will continue to receive emails from us in accordance with your existing contact permissions.
That's cool.
They're not forcing me.
That is cool.
I got to give them credit for that.
But they gave links all over this email, HTML format email, to accept it.
Clicking on any one of them would have accepted it, so I just deleted the whole email.
Any one of them would have clicked me through and updated me to their new privacy policy.
Alright.
Now, what are these new privacy policies?
Why...
Boy, why do they set me up with such a hard...
I'm having speaking problems today.
Previous privacy policy.
Say that.
Is it just me?
Policy?
Yes.
Privacy...
Right off the tongue.
Privacy policy.
Their previous privacy policies.
Whew.
Man, running a radio show is hard work.
Yeah, let's just quit right now.
Yeah, forget it.
Let's show over.
If it's hard, it's not worth doing.
Exactly, exactly.
Wait a minute.
Who was it?
Where was it?
Radman.
Radman, you're in charge, man.
You take over.
In fact, Radman is actually the handle of the guy who runs Asset, the art group.
So I don't know if it's the same guy, but if it is, then it's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Maybe if it is, he will follow up and let us know.
Even if it's not, it's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Whatever.
The new privacy policies, which I was trying to say, are as follows.
One, to provide seamless service...
Boy, what is with the alliteration here, Disney?
Disney, damn!
What?
Polish it down.
Written by some crazy English major, that's what it is.
I guess, to provide seamless service across our businesses, we may share your information
with our, quote, offline or non-internet based businesses.
Can you summarize that one in one word for me?
Hmm, I don't know.
Crap?
Spam?
Yeah.
Obvious?
I mean, come on.
Gonna share it with their offline or non-internet based business?
Yeah.
Of course.
They just want an excuse to renege on their previous deal.
Yeah.
Luckily, I didn't accept it, but I bet you they'll do it, mass change everybody anyway.
Yeah.
But, hey, everybody does that.
You know, I'm not gonna single out Disney.
Disney's doing it and it sucks.
It sucks when everybody does it, but everybody does it, unfortunately.
Yeah.
Number two, we may communicate with you through postal mail as well as e-mail.
In other words, we got you.
You're not getting away.
We are going to, if your e-mail changes, oh, we're gonna snail mail the hell out of you.
And we're gonna snail mail you asking for your new e-mail address.
We are not gonna let go.
It's like an alligator when they grab a hold of your leg and they pull you under water
and they just drown you because they're never gonna let go.
That's Disney.
That's what Disney's doing.
That's Disney.
How's that for a metaphor?
Dude, I'm slap happy.
I'm just slap happy tonight.
I'm punch drunk.
Acting a fool.
Number three, we may share your information with carefully selected third parties whose products
and services we think would interest you.
I.e., people who paid us money.
Yeah, spam.
No idea what they do at all.
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam.
Thank you for your carefully...
I'm so glad that...
It wasn't just randomly selected third parties.
They're carefully selected.
I'm sure there's a screening process and DNA analysis and all kinds of good stuff going on there.
Screening process is what's your bank account number?
Okay, pay us money.
Exactly.
Spam our people.
Huh.
And the fourth one, get this.
I joke, I said earlier about you're not getting away because they're gonna find you with your postal mail.
Four, the last one, we may obtain information you have provided to third parties to improve our communications with you.
For example, we might update your address after a recent move based on information you supply to the United States Post Office.
Hmm.
Dude, that's scary.
You are not getting away.
Once the mouse has got his little pawed gloves on you, dude, you are there for life.
You better be...
I thought that when you forward your mail, they don't give that information out.
They just forward your mail for you.
I didn't realize you could go to the post office and request it.
I thought...
Yeah, I thought that part of the forwarding process, I thought that's part of the...
I assume it probably means if you fill out change of address officially, properly with the post office, to have your normal mail forwarded.
They probably do provide that information to magazines and stuff like that who want to take it and forward their stuff to you on their own.
Hmm.
Yeah, they have...
I have a feeling that I said this on an earlier show, but the verification process for forwarding mail is non-existent.
So if you really don't like somebody, just forward their mail for them.
Hmm.
Not that you should do it.
They actually...
I think they do actually send a letter to the person whose mail is being forwarded to the old address, but...
I don't know.
I just thought that was ridiculous.
I went and forwarded my mail twice, and that was it.
I just sent them a form, and now my mail just started going somewhere else.
Yeah, and I've moved around...
Very bad.
I've moved around quite a bit.
So I filled out a lot of those change of address packets to make sure my magazines get forwarded along properly and stuff like that.
So, yep, apparently they can do it.
They're telling us right here.
They're telling us that they may obtain that information.
They...
And it says to third...
We may obtain information you have provided to third parties to improve our communications with you.
The example they use is the post office, but hell, the way that's worded, any third party.
What if they buy the database from MB&A Bank about your credit card, or Chase Manhattan about your mortgage on your house, or any third party, and join all that into their database?
Right.
Because they do...
You know, they just want to improve communications with us.
Is that so wrong?
Oh, no.
There's nothing wrong.
Is that so wrong?
Great to track you down like a dog to try to sell you crap.
Yeah.
Forget...
Forget about Big Brother.
The Big Mouse is watching.
Big Disney.
Big...
Big Mouse.
Alright.
Well, if that didn't piss you off enough, here comes my big one.
This is a follow-up.
We're still in the housekeeping section, because this is a follow-up on a previous episode.
Specifically, episode 22, where I had a very strongly, very strong rant on AOL Instant Messenger.
It's the one where I was really pissed off, and I said I was going to switch to Trillion, which I did, subsequently.
Excellent.
What?
Because AOL Instant Message was sending movie trailers, and occasionally I got a pop-up from that stupid little ad window that they put in the message up in the little advertisement box of AOL Instant Messenger.
Now, when it was just a little ad, it wasn't such a big deal, because I guess we're used to it, we see them everywhere, we can tone it out and pretend like it's not there.
And, I keep my shit minimized most of the time anyway, so I never even saw it.
Of course, that's where the pop-ups would get annoying.
Well, my problem was, now they're sending streaming audio and video through that thing.
A, my beef is, there goes any use of this in the office.
Because, all of a sudden, they're going to stream some shit, and they're going to start playing out loud in your office.
That's not acceptable, and that's just stupid marketing on their part.
They just lost a lot of customers with that idea.
But, the bigger problem that just drove me insane, I'm trying not to raise my voice right now, frankly, was the technical logistics of how do you stream audio and video to somebody.
It's an instant messaging program, isn't it?
Apparently not.
There has to be some way for them to, there have to be codecs involved for them to get that data to you.
And, I never saw in their terms of service, excuse me, I got the hiccups from eating that cookie.
And, basically, long story short, I saw an article talking about this very topic.
Now, I don't know, this was February of 2004, so it's recent.
I talked about it back in episode 22, which was, gosh, a few months back.
So, I don't know if they heard this from me, or if other people just got mad about it, the same as I did.
But, anyway, it's really a dangerous thing.
And, basically, they're installing these codecs and installing the streaming video, streaming audio stuff, without people's permission.
And, they're doing it over and over again, a la spyware.
Which, if they install stuff on your computer, and it damages something, or conflicts with something, and, in theory, you know damn good and well, that's very possible that that could happen.
Oh, yeah, of course, they overwrite some codec that you were using, because they're using a newer one, and now all your old videos don't work, that's no good.
Well, that's, okay, so those are the things I found.
And, I saw in this newsletter, this is Spyware Info newsletter, it says, quote,
quote, both AOL's internet software and the AOL Instant Messenger program, AIM, are force-installing unwanted software called Viewpoint Media Player on people's computers.
There is no option to not install Viewpoint.
You heard that, right?
There is no option not to install Viewpoint.
In fact, if you were, get this, I'm trying not to get mad, I really am, but it's not going to work.
If you remove Viewpoint, it will be reinstalled the next time you load a fucking OL.
You can't get rid of it.
It's going to put itself right back.
And it does mention it briefly in their privacy statement, but there's no disclosure whatsoever that it was going to bundle Viewpoint with AOL Instant Messenger.
I can't say that I'm surprised, but in the least, I shouldn't be, but damn.
I mean, that's a lawsuit.
It's exactly what I said in episode 22.
It's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Absolute.
But it gets even worse.
That's what I found.
I didn't like the annoyance of it.
I didn't like the potential of the damage that it could do installing stuff on my software.
But the shady part, the really disgusting, just makes you want to punch somebody at AOL, the shady tactics that they're doing beyond the media player, or even maybe this is how they're able to do it.
I'll quote.
I'll quote it from here.
It says,
There are other things that AOL software does.
For instance, some software such as Netscape and ICQ-2000B will insert free.aol.com into Internet Explorer's trusted security zone.
Oh, that's nice.
When you put a website in the trusted zone, Internet Explorer will allow that site to download, install, and execute any piece of software completely without interaction from the user.
And this is built in to AOL Instant Messenger.
Wow.
Okay, that surprises me right there.
That's fucked up.
I warned you there's going to be language.
That's just fucked up.
Yeah, that's not acceptable in the least.
Not only, okay, not only is that dangerous in case they screw up someone's computer with their shitty software, but the first time somebody takes over that site, the first time somebody pulls a man in the middle, or some kind of DNS poisoning, or anything that can parade itself, anything that can insert itself in between free AOL,
or masqueradeasfree.aol.com, now has full ownage over every computer that has AOL on it.
Yep.
Which is millions.
I mean, I know people are listening to this and hearing this, but let this sink in.
Anybody running AOL Instant Messenger, A, is going to get shit force-fed to them by AOL,
but B, all it takes is AOL just not properly secure that one server, and one person, somebody, can instantly have access to millions of computers.
Remotely install a Trojan, bam, it's done.
And I don't care what, I know there's a lot of control, and there's a lot of ways that, a lot of technology and a lot of things they're putting into service to stop denial of service and to help,
but you're not going to stop eight million.
I want to know how many AOL Instant Messengers, millions and millions of zombies out there, DOSing,
it's, the infrastructure would collapse.
Yeah.
It really would.
No exaggeration, I really, really think that's completely, it's probably improbable, but it is possible, doing stupid shit like this.
I'm laughing, I cannot believe.
I mean, am I way off on this, am I over...
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's definitely, you're definitely dead on it.
Nobody should ever start messing with your, your trusted, uh, your trusted settings like that.
That's, I don't know, I don't know what they were thinking, I don't know who decided to make that decision, but that's a really terrible decision.
Because exactly like you said, eventually somebody's going to take it over.
There's going to be some exploit that they don't patch, like the first ten minutes that the patch is available, and they're going to get owned.
Because somebody's going to be looking for it now, somebody's going to realize, oh yeah, now I can just own this one machine and then own millions, like you said.
Well, two things are going to save me.
One, I don't have AOL Instant Messenger anymore.
I'm using Trillion.
Two, I'm using Firefox.
I don't have the Internet Explorer trusted security zone.
So obviously you have to have those things, but, guess what, most people who have AOL are probably using Internet Explorer.
So millions upon millions of people have this very common, those are two hugely, hugely populated programs, very widespread programs.
Well now, wait a second.
You said you had Instant Messenger, but you don't have it anymore.
Did you uninstall it, or did you reinstall Windows?
I uninstalled it.
Who knows if it's completely gone?
With all that other shady shit going behind the scenes?
You're absolutely right.
You are absolutely right.
And you know what, I'm going to check that after the show.
I didn't even think about that.
You're absolutely right.
There's no reason to trust the uninstall to truly uninstall.
Within my Windows, nothing ever uninstalls completely.
And something that has that much power, I wouldn't imagine that it uninstalls completely either.
Now, I do have AdWare, which is a piece of software we've said many times on the show,
great piece of software that will find AdWare and Spyware and stuff like that.
Maybe it would have cleaned it up for me, but I don't know offhand, so I'm not going to blindly trust that.
I don't know.
I wouldn't think so.
It didn't warn you when you had it installed, right?
Not that I remember.
Yeah, I don't know that AdWare's got that on their radar, that AOL's doing this.
Maybe somebody should send them an email and say, listen, AOL's doing this.
Maybe market it as spyware, just so that even more people will know.
Right.
Absolutely.
And this, again, this came from spywareinfo.net, and we will put the link up online.
They have a newsletter, actually, that they deliver, I'm not sure how often, I think once a month.
No, actually, maybe it's weekly.
I'm not sure.
But they deliver a newsletter with all the news of different spyware and stuff that's going on.
And so this one just happened to catch my eye because it's exactly what I said several months back.
And, damn it, I'm glad other people are as pissed off about it as I am.
But even they added something that I didn't know, and that is the free.aol.com being added to the trusted zone.
That's devastating, potentially devastating.
I had never heard that before.
Now, honestly, this, I realize that people can still use Instant Messenger by using Trillion or by using Game or something like that.
But, honestly, I know this is never going to happen, but I would really like if everybody could move to something like Jabber.
It's got an extensible protocol.
It's completely open.
It does everything that AIM does and more.
But nobody's ever going to use it.
Why is that?
Just, you know, it's momentum.
You know, people are already using AIM.
They don't see any reason to switch.
Well, they do now.
Well, there is a reason to switch to a different client now but not switch off of AIM because everybody they know,
if somebody else is still using the old client and still using AIM, you know, whatever, that's their problem.
But you can still talk to these people with your new client and not have that problem.
So I think that people are more motivated to stay on the same service with different software.
I see.
Jabber is a different protocol altogether.
Yeah.
Oh, I thought you meant it was another program compatible with AIM like Trillion is.
No, no.
Jabber is a protocol and it's XML based so you can add in your own features, which is really cool.
If you have a Jabber client, you can, like, add in your own buttons and then you can have another Jabber client that, like, receives and sends these XML messages and does different things.
It's really awesome.
But nobody uses it.
It's a damn shame.
Yeah, it definitely is.
All right, well.
Anyway, so that's my rant about your trip.
You know, I can, the summary, every time I have an AOL story, I say the same thing.
AOL is suck.
And I'm through.
Is the suck, definitely.
They are the suck sore.
AOL is suck.
They just, they are.
They just are.
Now, on to the personal stories.
Now, I don't know if you made your meeting.
I know it's kind of awkward for your meeting situation there, but I went to my 2600 meeting this past week.
And, boy, I went to a 2600 meeting and a Jerry Springer show broke out.
Oh, yeah.
This I got to hear.
And it's, dude, this is bizarre.
Duel, I called, I had to call and share this story with Duel that night when it happened because it was just, oh.
And the frustrating thing is I go, I take my laptop, and I take my digital camera to every meeting.
And this is the one day I didn't bring the digital camera inside.
I only brought my laptop inside.
And, actually, I feel bad.
Honestly, this is a crappy situation, but it was pure comedy to watch, I have to say.
Maybe I'm, maybe this is rude of me or whatever, but basically 2600 meeting is in the food court in the mall.
And we were all sitting there.
There was probably, let's see, 2, 4, 6, 8, somewhere around 10 of us.
We had a new person show up.
Shout out to him.
We had about 8 or 10 of us there.
And we're all just, right, we're minding our business.
We're in our computers, talking, you know, doing the whole hacking thing, joking, laughing.
All of a sudden, we hear this commotion.
And this woman, this very large woman, starts raising her voice and yelling at her friend.
And we couldn't quite understand right away what it was.
It was a very heavy Haitian accent.
So it was kind of tough to even understand what this woman was saying.
And finally, long story short, we pieced together that apparently she had put down her shopping bags and her purse to eat in the food court.
And apparently she walked off and left them.
And when she came back to get them and realized she didn't have them, they were gone.
Really sucks.
Really crappy.
I feel for somebody.
I wouldn't want to lose them.
But apparently she had lost everything.
Her purse and she claimed she just had gotten her paycheck cash and had all of her money in the purse.
And she was just beside herself.
And I felt for the woman.
But, man, she lost it.
She completely lost it.
She was running around the food court looking everywhere frantically for her purse and for her bag.
She had a couple bags from, like, I don't even know what the department stores that they have down there.
But bags of stuff she had purchased, supposedly.
She's running around looking for them everywhere, pulling out chairs.
Security guard was there.
And he was, you know, he heard the commotion.
And he was kind of looking for them.
Called another security guard on the gate.
There's always a security guard around during the meetings.
They always pace around and watch us.
They haven't been too bad to us.
They don't like us plugging into their power outlets.
Other than that, they don't really hassle us too much.
We're patrons.
We're eating and drinking and stuff like that anyway.
So, anyway, calls in another security guard.
And while they're trying to help this woman and looking for her purse, she's just getting more and more upset.
She starts yelling what I think is her friend was there with her.
And anybody from my meeting that's listening is probably laughing because they remember this.
Her friend was there and I'm thinking maybe her friend was supposed to have been sitting there waiting for her to get back or watching and she left.
So, she's yelling at her friend for leaving it and cussing at everybody.
She goes back around the thing several times.
And I mean like one of those angry bumping into things because she's so upset.
You know, bumping in.
By this time, she was becoming so irate and screaming at the top of her lungs going,
My money! All my money is gone! Somebody took it!
I know it!
She's stomping on her, jumping up and down, pitching a fit and everything.
Now, again, I understand. I think it really sucks.
It probably really sucks to lose your money or whatever.
But she lost it.
The next thing we know, this woman picks up chairs and flings them across the food court.
Oh, shit.
I'm telling you, the lady freaked out.
Now, see, this was building up over a period of ten minutes, the first part of this story.
And all during that ten minutes, I'm like, oh, wow, this is kind of, wow, man, she's pissed.
That really sucks.
Damn, she's starting to really freak out. I wonder if I should go get my camera.
And I thought about it. I'm like, nah, I guess she's done. Security's here. It'll be fine.
You know, that's it.
And then she started up again.
And I'm like, oh, I should go get my camera. I should go get my camera.
And I was talking to my homegirl at the cookie place.
I was over there trying to be nosy. We were trying to check out what's going on.
And I told her, I'm like, I should go get...
Speaking of cookie, hold on, I might have a bite.
I only get through this cookie before this show was over, damn it.
I never went out and got my camera, damn it.
And I should because a few seconds later, she's flinging chairs across the food court, flipping tables over at the food court.
I mean, she was like the incredible fucking Haitian Hulk, flipping shit over in the food court.
And then, it gets better.
Obviously, security was like, oh, shit, they were all freaked out.
Called in the real cops, who got there rather quickly, I might add.
At least I think it was a real cop, or it was one head security guard who actually put his foot down and stood up and started yelling back at her, telling her to calm down.
And they kind of got her to calm down as far as throwing things and running around frantically.
But then this woman starts accusing everybody in the food court of stealing her shit.
And she ran, she started running over to people's tables, grabbing their bags, their shopping bags, out from under their table and looking in them going, where's my stuff?
You took it, I know you took it.
Accusing people, grabbing people's bags.
People were walking past like they had just been shopping in the mall for hours.
They didn't even know what they're coming past the food court on the way to the car.
They had no idea what was going on.
She runs up and she snatches a bag out of somebody's hand and Luke starts rifling through her bag.
It was bizarre.
And then, dude, it was straight out of Jerry's, it was like straight out of, I don't know what it was out of.
It was out of the Twilight Zone is what it was.
And her friend's trying to calm her down.
The security guards are all trying to calm her down.
And they're rent-a-cops.
They can't do a whole lot.
They're not going to put hands on her or anything.
They're trying to calm her down verbally.
And she, this was a big woman, like I said.
She was not calming down.
And then, she suddenly realizes that there was a guy sitting at the table next to her.
Oh, he must be the one that took it.
And she starts telling the guys, the security guards, you need to go find such and such.
You need to search everybody in the mall.
You need to go find, there was a little Spanish man sitting next to me.
He took my bag.
I know he did.
He was here and he had a stroller and he had, I bet you he put him in a stroller.
A few seconds later, totally by coincidence, that guy comes walking back by.
And she went after him and the guard had to step between her and restrain him, restrain her, excuse me.
And this guy's walking by and he's like, what in the hell is going on?
All of a sudden, this big 300 pound Haitian woman is coming after him.
And he's like, oh my God.
And she started pointing and yelling, you thief, you took my bags, where's my shit?
You know, she was accusing.
I mean, that's, I don't know what the false accusation or what kind of lawsuits and stuff could come out of that or anything.
But she was just publicly pointing and blaming this guy and he was with his wife and her child and they were coming up behind him like a couple of stores back away.
They had not gotten there yet, luckily for them, to see the scene.
But when they finally pulled up, one of the security guards, I'm raising my voice because I'm excited about this story.
One of the security guards went over and explained to her what was going on and kind of, I think, apologized and apologized to the guy.
Guy got on the cell phone with somebody, was pissed off.
I don't know if he's calling lawyer or what, calling what.
But the guard explained and the lady, the guy's wife, was nice enough to said, oh, listen, I don't want any trouble.
Listen, here's my bag.
Here's what we bought.
We didn't touch anything, you know.
And when she opened her bag and handed it to the security guard, here comes this big Haitian woman again and comes over and snatches it out of the guard's hand to look into it like they're going to lie or hide something from her or something.
So the guy jumps in front of her and, you know, basically another confrontation there.
But it was just all about the drama.
Wow, impressive.
Yeah, it was good stuff.
And the final summary of the whole thing, I never went out and got my camera, so I didn't get any of it on film, damn it.
I don't know if that was hack TV material, but I sure as hell would have put that up online on our, well, here's a good segue, on our FL2600 website.
But, yeah, I didn't have a camera and basically they finally get, she ended up sticking around outside and was like questioning people outside as they left, looking in their bags still.
It was just, it was kind of sick, that part of it, accusing everybody.
She had the balls to just go up to people outside and just start looking through their shit or did she ask them?
No, she, well, I don't know.
The guards finally told her to leave and told her to stop doing that.
So she left and the guards, and she walked out in the parking lot.
So the guards left, most of them.
There was still one who stays around the food court general area.
But we looked and there she was outside the door.
The guards had thought she had left.
She was outside the door and every once in a while when people would come out, it was some kind of blue bag she kept checking.
I guess she shopped at that store and everybody that came out with the blue bag, she was asking them.
I don't know if she's asking them or if she was just running up and checking.
I just looked up and I kept seeing her looking in people's bags.
I don't know if it was with or without permission or what.
But about this time, the mall was pretty much closing up anyway.
They filled out a report, I mean, which means nothing.
She's never going to get any money back or anything like that.
So I do feel for her, but, boy, talk about overreacting and just completely going ape shit.
She was just bizarre, man.
Yeah, no, see, okay, I feel bad whenever she lost all her stuff.
Right.
That sucks.
She lost her ID and whatever was in her purse.
That sucks.
You don't go around throwing chairs.
No.
Because that's just fucking stupid.
Right.
And you definitely, definitely, at least up here in New York, you definitely don't grab somebody's shit out of their hands.
Oh, I know.
Because they will punch you straight in the fucking mouth.
I was going to say the same thing.
I'm like, I wish she tried to grab.
Because, you know, we're kind of, we're the computer geeks over there.
And we're the hackers and we're like, you know, I don't, I'm not going to speak for the others.
But in the back of my mind, I'm like, listen, we're mining our business.
Don't you dare come over here and try to say we did some shit.
We've been here all night doing our meeting.
Ain't bothered nobody.
We didn't notice anybody.
You know, I'm like, I don't, don't even think about coming over here and starting shit, you know.
Luckily, she didn't.
Yeah, that would have driven, oh, my God.
But see, the thing is, like, she would come up and snatch my shit out of my hand and I'd punch her.
Yeah.
And then I would go to jail for punching.
Yeah, I know.
Isn't that the way?
Fuck.
Nope.
Oh, well.
So, that was my job.
That was the most exciting 2600 meeting I've ever been to before.
Yeah, man.
I've never had a 2600 meeting like that, man.
Maybe I should start going to them.
Maybe that type of stuff happens all the time and I just miss it.
Well, that was a first for me.
I don't know.
On one hand, I wish it would happen more often.
But at the same time, I don't want to wish somebody losing their money.
I mean, it really does suck.
But there's a way to handle things.
Yeah, it does.
And throw it.
Dude, I'm telling you.
Dude, she was like the fucking Haitian Hulk.
She picked up this chair and threw it across.
And like there were kids eating with their families.
And like some of these people in the food court, they grabbed their kids and ran away and left.
You know, this woman was freaking out.
Yeah.
I mean, she was going nuts.
I mean, they were protecting their kids.
Did she throw the chairs near anybody?
Mostly across, skidding across the tables.
And the funniest was like she would grab the edge of the table and flip it, you know, basically 180 degrees on its top or on its side.
I mean, she did that to like two or three different tables and threw three or four different chairs.
Kicked them and slid them across the floor.
Or not flinging through the air, but across the tables, yes.
Okay.
Yeah, it was pretty.
You were saying she was like overhead throwing these things.
No, it wasn't a shot put or anything.
It was more like a grab it, throw it against the table, and yeah, it would go scattering.
It was going, I mean, it went, you know, 20, 30 feet across some tables or across the floor.
But it wasn't airborne per se, exactly, you know.
Because if I saw that, man, she's got to be dive tackled and she's doing stuff like that.
Ah, dude.
That's unacceptable.
Yeah, if, and you know what, one of them was very close to a woman, a mother and her probably 10, 11-year-old daughter,
and it was kind of close to them, and the mother kind of stepped in front.
It wasn't, it was not real, real close, but close enough that it was like, what in the hell are you doing?
And she kind of stood in front of her daughter, and then after the chair, stumbled off the chair,
she grabbed her daughter's arm and took her off somewhere else.
You know, if she would have hit that little girl with a chair, then I would have dove on her.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I don't know.
People have no respect for anything.
People will just do whatever they want.
Nope, and then, you know, we were kind of thinking afterwards,
I wonder if it was just some kind of ploy that, maybe she wants to sue,
maybe there was never anything stolen, maybe it was all the scenes just to sue the mall,
or I don't know, what kind of scam or something.
I don't know that you could sue the mall if you get your stuff, you lose it,
or you get it stolen, or whatever.
No, definitely not.
I don't know, maybe there is.
I mean, you know what.
They can sue them for not having security, but no, I'll go to court.
There was four security guards there.
And it would have been a great time to go rob somewhere else in the mall, though,
because the security guards were all in the food court.
Oh, man, that's a pretty good idea.
I'm going to try that.
Yeah, right?
Go have your friend cause a commotion in the food court,
and then you can go do whatever you want to do.
I'm joking, of course.
All you people out there that don't know.
But, like I said, that's a good segue to my fl2600.com.
If I would have had that video, I could have put it up on there.
But that's something else I've been working on.
One of the things we talked about at the meeting is my friend ZeroDB and I
have been working on setting up our fl2600.com webpage,
the Florida 2600 group.
And I, this time, I wanted to try a different content management system.
Geeklog's fine.
I've used that.
Wasn't impressed with PostNuke or PHPNuke.
I tried those and was very much not impressed.
So, I went with E107 this time.
I don't know if you, have you had any experience with that one?
No, not at all.
You know, I, you know, obviously you're using a canned package,
so I'm not going for originality or anything here.
I'm going for usefulness and effectiveness and saving time
and setting up a webpage where we can put our stuff up.
I gotta say, E107 was tight.
It was good stuff.
It was nice, clean install.
The, the, the directions weren't, I don't know if there was a bug on the page.
When I click on documentation, it just plain didn't work.
It didn't go anywhere.
And there was no text file or installer or whatever with the package.
But, it's not that difficult to figure out either.
So, if you have any experience, a little bit of experience in doing this kind of stuff,
setting up websites and content management, it's not that difficult.
Once I got it started, a couple of minor glitches,
it gives you nice, clean errors on what, what's having problems with, what's wrong.
You make the changes.
It's pretty smooth install, very, very smooth install.
And, has every standard thing you can imagine, like most content management systems.
Has a calendar.
Has news headlines.
It comes with forums, which were pretty nice.
And, you can integrate those forums to the front page so that you can see the latest headlines
without clicking five levels deep into the forums, et cetera, et cetera.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah, and it had a lot of stuff that's kind of silly and not necessary,
like the chatter, what do they call it, a chatter box or something,
where you can just post quick little sentences on the front page.
Not a whole lot of use in that, but it's kind of a neat, fun thing.
Tons of those.
But, one of the really good things I liked about this one was that it supports,
it allows you to easily integrate XML news feeds.
So, like, I think, what was it, Sophos, no, what was it, the virus news feed?
I think it is S-O-P-H-O-S.
Yeah, that sounds right to me.
That sounds right.
I think that's what it is.
ZeroDB inserted that in there and put that into a module so that it pulls their headlines
and their news and puts it into a small module on ours.
And, he did that, and we're going to put a few more like that in there.
And, that was pretty easy because it's built in and ready to let that go easily.
There's a lot, there's a community that writes some nice plug-ins for it.
It's PHP-based, MySQL database.
And, the other cool thing, it's not really great for us, but it's a nice feature for this E107,
if I'm giving, I guess, a mini-review here, is it also generates XML feeds.
So, the news headlines that are normally just your little PHP database that pulls out of your database,
your local news or whatever, you can actually allow people to have access to your XML feeds.
So, whatever news you post, somebody else can use as their news feed.
I don't know why anybody would want ours, but I thought it was a very cool feature,
and that was a very professional feature.
If you wanted to create a site that focused on news, some unique type of news,
some type of opinions or anything like that, you could set your own local site up to it,
but you could also let other people use your XML feed and give links back to you,
credit back to you, drive people back to your site.
And, that was something that I thought was really cool about this one,
about how easily and cleanly it integrated with E107.
So, I'm, so far, E107, I'm giving a big thumbs up.
It's probably, I think it is the best content management system I've used thus far.
The others I've tried weren't necessarily bad.
Geeklog is good, but, so far, E107 has been the best I've tried.
I also want to try Drupal, D-R-U-P-A-L.
That will probably be the next one I try.
But, so far, this one's top of the line.
So, thumbs up to those guys.
Yeah, it looks, I'm checking out the webpage right now, actually.
It looks pretty cool.
Just the sample pages they have up, it looks neat.
Yeah, it's E107.org.
And, it comes with some, several skins.
And, we just use one of the defaults for now until we can get some people to do some new art.
And, I've said on the show many times, I don't do art.
My, you know, my stick people are crooked.
I can't, I just can't do art.
So, we'll customize the skins a little bit, put some graphics up for us.
But, for right now, we're just using one of the skins.
It comes with several.
And, there are several others to download.
Like I said, there's a fairly active community making different mods and skins for it.
So, that's pretty cool.
And, that's it for me.
That's enough.
Geez.
Let me get a drink.
And, you, what have you been, I know you were saying something about your Xbox earlier.
Did you want to go into any detail?
I, yeah, I finally bit the bullet and bought an Xbox.
Everyone's been talking about modifying it.
And, I went online, bought a mod chip.
I bought the Xenium 4, I think is what it's called.
Now, did you buy the Xbox just to, for the sake of modding it, because you're interested, or you already had one?
No, I got it for the sake of modding it, because, honestly, like, I play a couple Xbox games when I'm over at my friend's place.
But, I don't really, I don't really get into video games that much.
You know, I just, it kind of seemed like it was a cool toy to have.
Like, once it's modified, it seems like there's so much you can do with it.
So, I figured, you know, I bought a used one for $140, and, you know, what the hell.
It's a 733 megahertz PC, you know, at worst.
So, in any case, I just ordered the mod chip, got it in the mail, and then I sat down that night to install it.
And, man, I was missing all the tools I needed.
I needed to be soldering braided.
I didn't have that.
I needed some, like, you know, some stuff to clean off the board.
I didn't have that.
It was, it ended up being a real hack job once it was done.
But, sure enough, I fired it up, and it worked the first time.
So, pretty impressive.
Very cool.
The only problem after that is finding software for it.
And, like I said, I didn't really do all that much homework.
I just saw it, you know, I saw which chip was better than the others.
I looked through all the features, and I got the best chip that I could, or what I thought was the best chip.
But I didn't really look into, you know, after the Xbox is modified, like, all the software you have to get after that.
I didn't look into that.
So I spent a lot of time and effort looking for software the night after I did it.
Man, it was not fun.
But I had to give a shout-out to SubZero.
He hooked me up.
He messaged me some software that I could download for it.
And one of my other friends, Fallout Boy, he sent me a link to someplace where I could go and download some software for it.
And now I've got my Xbox up and running with some new software, doing some cool stuff.
And it's a hell of a lot of fun to play with.
If you guys got time and a little bit of soldering skills, I would suggest you go out and buy an Xbox and a mod chip and start playing with it.
Now, you'll, of course, avoid your warranty by doing that.
Yeah, there's a sticker, actually, on the bottom that you have to pull off to get to one of the Torx bits.
Yeah, by the way, it does not use screws.
Everything in it is either Torx 10 or Torx 20.
Right.
So if you don't have Torx bits, go out and buy them before you even bother.
But then after that, you've got a nice little machine that can play all types of emulators.
You can put big quotes around this.
Back up your games to your hard drive.
You can install a bigger hard drive.
You can watch movies on it.
You can watch movies that are in DivX files on another machine on your network.
There's just a lot of really cool things you can do.
You can basically turn it into a really cool entertainment system.
Yeah, there's a very active Xbox hacking community out there.
And I know Wintermute had a great book that he was reading about one time.
Yeah, actually, as soon as I started figuring out how all this stuff works together, now I really want to read that book badly and see what this guy went through to do it.
Because it's just amazing to me that somebody figured out how to do this mod.
I mean, this is not a simple, like on a ham radio or something like that, sometimes, you know, clip a wire loop, desolder a surface mount resistor, something like that.
This is, I mean, this is a real chip you've got to put on there.
It's all kinds of software you need to install, and it's very involved.
I'm impressed that somebody ever got all of this stuff to hang together and work.
As am I, as am I.
Now, and even more, the PlayStation 2, which I don't have, but that one, dude, I don't know if you've seen the mod stuff for that, but you have to solder stuff everywhere.
Oh, yeah, the, um, basically all I had to do was solder on a new pin header to put this chip in there, which basically looks like the pin's coming out of an IDE hard drive.
Had to solder something like that on and then solder one wire.
I mean, it was a, it was a really tiny solder point, but it was only one wire, so it was really no big deal.
Very cool.
Yeah, the PlayStation 2 ones, I've seen some of them, you know, like, you know, 25 wires or 18 wires or whatever it is.
It's a lot of work to do those.
Man.
So.
Wow.
Very, very cool stuff there.
And that's nothing new.
It's been out for a while.
It's just, like you said, getting around to finally getting the motivation or the desire to do it or the interest to do it.
Because I have an Xbox, but I just, like you said, I'm not much of a gamer.
I mean, I play Counter-Strike a little bit.
I got owned on our Counter-Strike server the other day, by the way.
Oh, yeah?
Dude, I'm the worst sniper.
Like, any map, like, they have one where, like, you start off with that sniper rifle.
Oh, I get owned.
I'm just so horrible at sniping.
I'm actually so far out of the gaming scene, I have no idea what Counter-Strike even is.
Oh, man.
That's the one.
I don't play a whole lot of games, but Counter-Strike is just mad addictive.
It's just, wow, what a great game.
What a great game.
If you want to be able to check it out, it's PC only or it's also on the Xbox?
You know what?
I think they did release, I'm not sure, Xbox, PlayStation.
I think they did release one.
They don't interact with each other.
Oh, that sucks.
Right, but I mean, I think you can play the Counter-Strike online with the, like I said, I don't know if it's PlayStation 2 only or Xbox only or GameCube or whatever.
It's released for some console, and I think you can play it online with other users of that console.
But you can't play it online with other PC users, I think.
Well, that's...
And that makes logical sense, I guess, if you think about it.
Right.
Now that my box is modified, I'm going to have to do some more work to be able to play it online safely.
Like, if I play it online now, I'm sure that, you know, Microsoft's going to realize...
I'm sure that they do check to see if boxes are modified.
I'm sure it's not that hard.
You know, just like the ALL thing, they can download code to your box.
You know, they have complete control over your box and you're connected.
Because they download updates to games and stuff, from what I've been told, so...
Well, what if you...
Or updates to the internal software, what they call the Microsoft Dashboard, which is what...
You know, when you start up your Xbox and you see, like, all the nice green and black screen that does all the management of it.
They download updates to that.
Yeah, but that can be replaced as well, I believe.
There's Linux distros or...
I don't know how thorough they are, but you can get Linux running on those boxes.
Oh, yeah.
I'm just saying that, like, they obviously have power to read and write files in your hard drive while you're online.
So they could go in there and they could check to see, you know, is this file missing or do they have this file
or does this file have the date changed or something and then they could just deny you from playing.
Right.
You know what I want?
Here's your mission.
You know what I want?
I want a screenshot of a blue screen of death on the Xbox.
That's what I want.
Hmm.
I could create a fake one.
I think I could do, but...
You know what?
There's probably a real one out there, I bet you.
Yeah, no, I'm sure that, you know...
I bet you there is.
The people who are developing this stuff, you know, I'm sure when they're creating new versions of software
that they do get blue screens of death.
I mean, it's Windows on there.
I'm pretty sure it's just, is it 2000, Windows 2000 embedded, maybe, that's running on there?
I thought it was a customized version of CE, actually.
Really?
I thought it was a compact edition derivative.
I thought I had read somewhere that it was 2000 embedded.
I could be totally crazy.
And, well, so could I.
So, welcome to my world.
Either way.
It's Windows, so, you know, it's going to crash.
There's no doubt.
I've actually had Grand Theft Auto crash on me like three times now.
Hmm.
All right.
Well, you know what?
All of our little story...
This is a fun...
This is a fun episode this time, but all of those stories have drug on here.
Let's go right on to our main topic, which was the FCC.
Oh, geez.
Yeah, and I know, because I know we might go long on this, too, so let's jump into this.
The FCC, what I want to talk about about them, I know this is going to go off into some tangents,
like the whole Howard Stern thing and Bubba the Love Sponge, et cetera, et cetera.
But the FCC, the big news, as far as I'm concerned, in my opinion, that relates to listeners of this show,
is in regards to voice over IP.
Now, voice over IP is...
I don't mean to be talking down.
I know a lot of our listeners already know this, but just to make sure everybody's up to speed.
Voice over IP can be anything from computer-to-computer calls,
traveling over the public, quote, public internet.
Things like Free World Dial-Up, which is from Pulver.com.
It also includes calls between computers and regular phones,
and that's the ones that we hear you guys talk about on default radio all the time,
Vonage, Packet 8, devices like that.
Yeah.
Now, voice over IP is just booming, incredibly popular,
and I don't think I'm being presumptuous when I say the reason is because people are tired of paying all these regulation fees and bills to the phone company.
Not only are they overpricing us for their infrastructure that's been in place for years,
but then they're going to pile on all these fees and FCC charges and network access charges that I bitch about all the time
that basically doubles your phone bill almost.
For someone like me who has a low-end phone bill, it basically doubles my phone bill.
So, voice over IP is drawing in people because they can get away from that
and get more features at the same time due to the technology involved.
Now, is there anything, did I leave anything out before I go into what's...
No, the only thing that I was going to say is on top of Vonage and Packet 8 and Voice Pulse and New Phone
and all these other voice over IP providers, Optimum Online, which is Cablevision in New York,
now has this system, Optimum Voice, which is their voice over IP, which is actually what I'm calling you on right now.
Right, and yeah, the cable companies are offering voice over IP devices as an alternative to the phone.
And it's $35.99 a month, or $34.99 a month, and it's unlimited,
and there's none of those bullshit charges like you were talking about, which I'm sure we'll get into right now.
None yet. Exactly what we're going to get into right now.
Right now, the FCC is studying voice over IP to determine if and how.
There's no if, I'm certain of that.
If and how they should address voice over IP technology.
They're going to determine whether or not their regulations should be applied to voice over IP
if it connects to the PSTN, Public Switch Telephone Network.
Now, let's, let me ask you, should they?
No.
It's using the Public Switch Telephone Network.
It's using that infrastructure.
Right.
But the difference is, and here's my reasoning behind why I don't think voice over IP providers should be regulated.
And maybe I'm completely off, but the reason why I thought the FCC regulated them,
regulated the real phone companies, and the reason why they did the whole divestiture thing
and, like, broke everybody up to these smaller companies was because they were a monopoly.
There's one set of phone wires going into your house.
So they said, we need to regulate you because if you have, you know, no regulation and just ultimate power,
then you're just going to be completely corrupt and raise prices and screw people over.
Now, there is no voice over IP provider that can have a monopoly on the infrastructure
because they're depending on either the cable company or the phone company or satellite
to deliver their voice over IP service to you.
So they're not the monopoly.
It's another company that's a monopoly.
So I don't believe they should be regulated until they can prove to themselves that they are a monopoly
and that regulation, you know, the government needs to step in to make sure that people aren't getting screwed.
That's my take on the whole thing, but maybe I'm completely off.
Well, they're, I shouldn't say loophole.
They're reasoning.
I mean, yes, it's a whole new technology.
It's a different way of carrying voice over the lines.
It's going, it's being packetized.
It's being transmitted differently than typical phone calls.
However, technically, it does still travel over the public switch telephone network, the same infrastructure.
And I guess they're saying because of that, that's their reason why they should be able to regulate it.
That's their...
I disagree.
Don't the voice over IP companies pay like, you know, they pay AT&T or they pay MCI or, you know,
they pay some company to use their network?
Shouldn't the company itself be smart enough to factor in all of their costs into letting somebody else use their network?
Why does the government need to step in and say, well, now you need to pay these extra fees that are for, you know, creating other services?
It just doesn't make any sense to me.
I'll play devil's advocate here.
I don't know.
But let's...
Well, first of all, first of all, not all, I'm a little unclear on where, like a cable company.
They have their own separate infrastructure, their fiber optic stuff that's, you know, their coax that's buried and stuff like that.
That's not public switch telephone network.
Right.
Okay, first of all, that's one thing.
But I guess what they're saying is not on the caller's end, the people providing the voice over IP, but on the receiver's end.
If somebody with voice over IP calls somebody without voice over IP, that's putting an extra load on the people providing the wires on the other end of it.
Well, maybe it is, but that's why they would charge, you know, the company providing the voice over IP service.
That's why, you know, when you make a call, you get charged for it because you're paying taxes to the other person's network.
They should work that into their charges.
The government doesn't need to tell these companies how to run their business and say, oh, we're going to have to charge this much for this and this much for this.
It just seems like the government's way to just put their hands into something else and make money off of it.
The government's not going to let the phone company become a monopoly and screw you.
That's the government's job to become a monopoly and screw you.
Exactly, exactly.
And I don't really see that, you know, all of this anti-monopoly stuff and all this regulatory stuff, I don't see it bringing cable rates down.
I don't see it bringing phone rates down either.
I mean, the per minute cost on phones has come down.
They're going up.
Yeah, everything else has gone up.
So, you know, I end up paying, you know, I used to get, it was maybe 50, I think it was 59.99 from Verizon for unlimited everything, right?
Well, obviously not international, but unlimited United States and Canada and, like, every feature they had and all that other stuff was unlimited.
But then my bill should be $60 a month, I would think, but it ended up being $85 a month because there's $25 and extra crap tacked onto that.
Because apparently, you know, my unlimited long distance to the U.S. and Canada does include local service, and then local service is $10 a month.
And then the FCC line charge is $6.50.
And then the 911 charge is $2.
And then, you know, all of these things just add up, and it's just insane.
And the FCC line charge is masked.
You know, people think, oh, well, you know, maybe that goes to the government to handle the regulation.
The FCC line charge doesn't go to the government at all.
It goes directly to the phone companies.
So, I'm going to keep in mind.
Yeah, they just, and they're all, it's not the size of the fees, it's the number.
Well, it's both, actually.
That $6.50 network access charge pisses me off.
But they also charge you another $0.75 for this.
And then $2 for 911.
And then another $0.47 franchise fee.
And then another, all these little things add up.
I mean, it's just ridiculous how much they keep adding and adding.
And then the government, in general, of course, this is an opinion thing.
It can get political.
But the government wants to control everything and wants to stick their hands in everything.
And every time they do, it costs us, the taxpayers, more money.
Well, we need to come in and regulate the phone system.
And since we're going to regulate the phone system, we need more money from you to taxpayers so that we can pay people to come in and regulate your phone system to not let them charge you more money.
When, ironically, they're taking, charging you more money in the form of taxes anyway.
And then they hit you and turn around and get it back with fees.
And it's just, it's odd.
The government says we need money to regulate.
And then the phone company says, well, we need to recover the money from the government, you know, getting in our way.
So we have to charge you these fees.
Yeah.
It just, it doesn't make any sense why anybody would think that the government would know how to run a business when, obviously, the government's in so much debt.
They have no idea how to do something successfully, monetarily, I'll say.
The government does do a lot of things that are good.
But monetarily, they just, I don't know, they're just screwing it up.
And they've really screwed up the phone system to the point where I don't want a landline anymore because I don't want to pay $25 on top of my plan just to, you know, line the pockets of somebody else or just to pay for services that don't even make sense anymore.
And thus, the big boom of voice over IP.
That's why it's becoming so popular.
And it, in turn, drives the secondary market.
Phones, 5.8 gigahertz phones, 2.4 gigahertz phones, expandable modules, stuff like that.
That's what I'm looking into, the 5.8s.
They're a little pricey right now.
I'm waiting to try to get a good deal on them.
But because of the, again, the logistics, you've got one box coming in with that Vonage or voice over IP that you're going to hook into one phone and get an expandable system.
You're driving a multimillion dollar telephone industry.
Look what it's doing for the economy.
Look at the good things that come and that happen when you allow technology to move forward unfettered and unbridled by a government holding us back.
You know, it drives so many other things, creates jobs, it stimulates the economy, causes people to be able to spend money and, you know, produce.
That's why we're eons.
I mean, look at Japan and their cell phones.
Their cell phones are light years ahead of ours.
They're playing games, networked games and taking two megapixel pictures and videos and, I mean, gee whiz.
Their phones do everything and we won't see them for a year and a half, two years.
Yep.
I don't know.
It just really irritates me.
It's just none of it.
I can't make sense of it.
No, but you're right.
The government does some good things, but doggone it.
We're pointing out some of the bad things so that maybe somebody will, maybe change will happen.
Maybe change will happen.
The whole thing of regulation was to keep prices down and it hasn't done it.
So, in my mind, if you look back and you say, well, we wanted to do this and we did this and the outcome was exactly the opposite of what we expected, stop doing it.
Exactly.
No, because that would be admitting defeat, admitting that they were wrong and that they don't want to do that.
Yeah, they need more money to fix it is what they need to do.
Yeah.
That's their view of the whole situation.
And that's just not the way to look at it, you know?
Right.
I don't know.
And on the topic, you know.
Cable companies, and I hate the phone companies.
I hate them all.
But, honestly, I would much rather get a cable modem with voiceover IP than pay both a cable bill and a Verizon bill and all this other crap because it's going to end up costing me like three times as much.
Yeah.
To get all the stuff that I want.
Absolutely.
And, you know, I think I said this maybe on my first or one of my first times ever on RFA.
Utilities are nothing but legalized government monopolies.
That's all they are.
Oh, yeah.
That's all they are.
Anyway, and, you know, and to go back, we were saying the government does some things good, some things bad.
Well, I'll give them credit when they do something good or when they make a good, correct, valid decision.
And, for example, directly with this case, one thing that they have done is so far, right now, they've announced that Pulver.com, which is that free world dial-up we were talking about earlier, they have decided that that is not subject to telecommunications regulation.
They classified it as a, quote, information service, no different than instant messaging or email.
It's an information service and therefore not subject to telecommunications regulation.
That's a good, valid, proper decision.
Right.
I give them credit.
They did that right.
It's going to be very, very short-lived.
They're just going to reverse it very soon when they –
That kind of gets me, though.
I mean, if they, you know, do an about-face on that and they start regulating free world dial-ups, somebody else can start another free world dial-up.
And are they going to have to go through the same regulatory stuff all over again?
People can just keep creating these things.
You get a couple of asterisk box, you know, boxes set up, and you can create your own phone system, no problem.
You don't have to touch the PSTN at all.
Right.
Well, they're – you know, again, this is emerging technology.
There are no laws in place, so they're creating them as they go along.
So once they are created and you try to do that, they're going to immediately nail you, whereas right now they're getting away with it because they still haven't officially decided anything yet.
They have temporarily allowed them to continue.
They have temporarily labeled them as an information service.
It's not fully announced.
The laws have not fully been established yet.
They want an excuse to say, oh, well, you're transmitting this type of data over your Internet connection?
Yeah, well, then we're going to have to charge you for it.
There's other type of data.
You can send terabytes of data out of it that's something else, you know, on IRC or, you know, AIM or Kazar or whatever you want to do.
But as soon as you're using it to talk on the phone, something that looks like a phone with somebody, then we have to charge you money for it.
If that's the case, you know what, all my traffic is going to go to some voiceover IP provider, totally encrypted,
and you'll never be able to prove that I'm actually making phone calls.
And you know what, that's a good segue to the last point that I wanted to mention on this.
And the scary part is that you know who else has a vested interest in the outcome of this, the FBI.
The FBI is completely begging.
They are backing the FCC completely to regulate voiceover IP.
They want the FCC to regulate it, and the reason why, I'll read the quote.
Quote, the FBI claims that, quote, leaving new voice communications technologies unregulated denies law enforcement the tools needed to tap conversations.
And it's just what you just said.
Go over and encrypt it.
I mean, there's so many things that you can do, and they're scared of the technology.
So let's, you know what, when you're scared of something, let's regulate it and get it in our control.
It's a method of control.
They don't want to let you have freedom of speech.
They don't want to let you to be able to do what you want to do with this new technology.
They're going to stifle it, and they're going to control it.
And they want, yeah, they want the FCC to regulate it, and they're looking for an exception under something called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act,
which is something that they use to be able to tap phones and tap conversations and stuff like that.
And, geez, if we didn't regulate it, we were able to actually speak freely to each other.
What a terrible, terrible thing that would be.
So.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think that if the FBI wants to watch people, figure out a way to do it.
But don't force us to pay for it.
You know, you're already forcing us to pay for it, you know.
Just being the FBI in general, we're paying you money through taxes.
Absolutely.
But don't start forcing us to do all this other crap.
Right.
You know, you've got the phone system locked down.
You know what, let VoiceOver IP do what it's going to do in a couple years.
Come back to it and see if there's some way that you can do it.
But right now, they're just going to screw it up.
Yeah, and I'm going to throw out a rhetorical question,
and I'll let the listeners, we don't even have to answer this,
but do we have, as citizens of the United States of America, do we have a right to encryption?
Is that a right?
I'm just going to leave that out there and let people think about that.
You know, the FCC in general lately has been in the news for more big, broad profile, broad things like,
well, I think a lot of people heard that Clear Channel has taken Howard Stern off the air
in all of their six markets, I think it was,
because Clear Channel was getting fines and stuff from the Federal Communications Commission
and pressure from them.
They took him off the air.
Clear Channel, by the way, is owned by Viacom.
Viacom, of course, the same company that had the whole Super Bowl incident.
So, yeah, they got fined.
They got lots of threats and stuff.
Bubba the love sponge, he was fired.
Another radio personality shock jock, whatever you want to call it,
fined, I think, $750,000 or something like that.
That fees and levies from the FCC, I mean, it's actually kind of funny in a weird kind of way.
It's all about Janet.
It's all about Janet Jackson.
Janet goes on television, whips out her nipple,
and all of a sudden the whole United States of America goes in a pussy panic.
Nobody knows what the hell to do.
Oh, my God, it was a nipple.
Was that a nipple?
Did you see a nipple?
Oh, my God, it was a nipple.
Yeah, it was a nipple.
Get on with life.
Fine her.
Do, you know, fine her.
Punish her.
Do something, you know, but, jeez.
All of a sudden we've got to put everything on lockdown.
And, okay, listen, there was a nipple on television.
So, as a result of that, no one is allowed to say anything ever again
because somebody might accidentally say nipple on the air.
Oh, my God, I just said nipple.
Is the FCC going to come after us?
Nipple, nipple, nipple, nipple, nipple, nipple.
Memories of Janet, man, that's no good.
Oh, man.
You better delete this whole show.
Yeah, I don't want the FCC cracking down on us.
See, we don't have to deal with them.
Screw them.
I don't have to deal with them.
Not yet.
I guess I should watch my mouth.
I've got to be careful.
You never know when they might step in.
We're using the public switch telephone network to record this show.
Maybe they'll, you know, fall under their regulation.
No, when the FCC steps in and says that internet radio, like,
I'm not talking about music and that stuff.
I understand that to play music you need to pay royalties and all that other junk.
Whatever, that's fine.
But when the FCC steps in and says,
even if you want to create a radio show where you're not playing music,
you're just talking on the internet,
you have to pay us some money or you have to get a license,
I'm moving to another country.
I don't know, man.
You better buy you some luggage because you just...
You know what?
I'll do it tomorrow if I have to.
It would not surprise me.
I want to go to some place where they're just not trying to crush everything, you know.
They're not trying to dig into everybody's damn pockets to get just a tiny bit of money.
Well, I really meant what I said earlier about, you know, my example of the phones.
You stop technology, you stop production, you stop people from moving forward technologically or intellectually or anything.
When you stifle this and you hold people back, other countries will surpass us in many, many different ways,
whether it be intellectually, technologically or morally or any, you know,
where you start stifling people.
You know, that's not what this country was founded on.
This country was founded because people were being stifled and not being given freedoms.
Anyway, not going to go into that rant.
Been there, done that.
Actually, we're not going to do much of anything.
I think we're way over.
Great, great show, man.
Yeah, I think we really are.
Yeah, that was a great show.
We had a lot of good stuff.
Sorry about the language.
I knew that was going to happen, but hey, life happens sometimes.
Whatever.
Shout-outs, man.
I only got...
I'm going to shout-out.
No way in hell this guy's listening.
We were talking about the reason I was laughing at the show.
Oh, yeah.
This guy's awesome.
I'm a Guy Gardner and to the other Guy Gardner.
That's my shout-out.
If some snowball's chancing hell that they're out there listening,
they can get in touch with me.
Radio at BinRev.com.
That's the email address.
What kind of shout-outs you got?
Oh, man.
Who am I going to shout-out?
I should probably be prepared for this, but...
Well, you already gave shout-outs earlier to...
To Sub-Zero for looking me up at the software and to Fallout Boy.
And...
I don't know.
I guess that's about it for this week.
Yeah, that's enough.
And I said it last week.
I'm going to repeat it again this week.
Send in your articles for Binary Revolution 2.2.
Issue 3, 2.1, is going to be out very soon.
But instead of getting into a situation where we're way behind on the next issue,
let's get it going now.
Let's get it going early.
Send me your article submissions.
Articles at BinRev.com.
Start sending them now.
Start sending them very soon.
So we won't have to wait so long to get this next one out.
That's not the only reason, but that's one thing that will help us get it out in a more timely manner.
So, that's it.
Closing music.
Again, we're back to Brad Sucks.
I really like this guy's stuff.
A song called Making Me Nervous.
And that is it for me.
So, in theory, thank you once again for being on the show.
It's always great to have you on.
And all the listeners, always great to have you out there again.
I hope you enjoy the show.
And we will see you all next week.
Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
Here we go.
One step at a time
They'll be living on the line
I don't need a friend
I got more than on my mind
Sunshine in my brain
Making everyone complain
Radio in my heart
Don't be being so strange
Think I'm losing it
Baby, where have you been?
Everybody says
That you're moving again
I want to be right
Baby, every single night
And I can tell you a thing
About taking your time
It's making me nervous
I want to be right
One step at a time
I'll be living on the line
I don't need a friend
I got more than on my mind
Gonna shine my brain
Make you never want to climb
Don't be being so strange
Think I'm losing it
Think where have you been
Everybody says
That you're moving again
I want to ride
Baby, every single night
I can tell you a thing
About taking your time
Let's make me nervous
That you're coming
Now you're moving again
That you're moving again
I won't be far
Yeah
You're moving again
That you're moving again
You're moving again
Thank you.
I want you right, baby, every single night I can tell you, I'm taking your time, let's make it a night, let's make it a night, let's make it a night.