This is dedicated to all the hackers and the crackers, to the hackers and the crackers.
I see in binary, I speak source code, step on my toes, I'll post a million jpegs of you
in a fag pose, in your digital stance, getting firewalls hoes, cause I'm riding the net in
my six foes, I was a dick with my 56, now with my cable I'm able to get that stable,
on the out, my name is Ace and I'm a Leo, on the digital highway, my name is Neo and
I'm a hero, in a flash, I'll screw you on burning dreamtap, you need some ISO, let me do my
hard drive rifle, our exchange you could never stifle, in a digital hood, you just caught the
love bug, I bootlegged your CD, I carved the fight between Un and Jay-Z, your CG, it's all
gonna be free, whether we take it by force or we take it nicely, you feel that rattling
your bones, when I tell you we just hacked out Jones, and NASDAQ leaves you flat on your
back, cause I am he who loves to hack and crack, cause I am he who loves to hack and crack,
this is dedicated to the hackers and the criminals, serial code, source code, ISO, RAN, SIP, SIP,
this is dedicated to the hackers and the crack.
Hello and welcome to Binary Revolution Radio episode, what episode number is this?
I have no idea, I'm just trying not to yell out boogers or anything at the beginning
of this time.
Yeah, isn't it weird, I think this is a 180 actually, this is somewhat of a milestone.
Why is this a milestone?
I don't know, 180, it ends in a zero.
So it's an even number and that's a milestone?
Nope, it's always a milestone.
It's divisible by five.
Anything divisible by ten to me is a cool number.
Yeah, I mean that's what I think too, yeah, so this is 180.
Well you know what, since we're on that topic and I always go into these tangents, let me
tell you about a weird little personality quirk, or not personality, a weird little thing I
have, a little obsession or something.
Tell me if this is just a weird stank thing here, but like, I can find significance in almost
every number.
Like, I can look over at a clock and there'll be like significance to the number.
Sometimes it's simple things like it's 123, so it's 123, it's an obvious number with some
significance to it.
Other times I'll look over and it's like 314, and I'm like, oh look, it's pi.
It's pi time, you know?
Or every time, like I call decoder on the phone at 1111 at night all the time, I'll look over,
it's oh, it's 1111.
I'll call and I'll go, happy default.
And he's like, what the fuck is it 1111?
I'll probably do that, I always do default time, because 1111, like when you're a kid,
oh, it's picket fence time.
No, no, no, it's default time now.
It's default time, yeah, I do that in IRC a lot, I'll go, happy default.
But like any number, like even silly ones, like for example, 248, well they're all even,
plus they're all multiples of each other, 2 times 2 is 4, 2 times 4 is 8, you know, like
weird stuff.
Like I find, I know, I'm telling you, there's something wrong with me.
Like every, I can find a significance in almost every freaking number that you can come up
with, whether it's mathematical, whether it's a literary reference, whether it's even like
a translation to a phone, you know, 337 is DDP, you know, like any, I can always find
a significance of the number somehow.
I'm just crazy that way, I guess.
You're just crazy.
Well, in many other ways as well, but yes, you are correct.
Anyway, today's date is January 2nd, we'll just toss that out there before we start talking
about numbers.
I'm Black Ratchet, and you can tell it's tank dogs here, because we're talking about crazy
ass numbers.
Yeah, leave it to me to talk about such bizarre things.
Numbers, woo!
Yeah, this is our show top tonight, we're trying to talk about crazy numbers.
Oh, we are in a way.
We are, we have a lot of different things going on tonight.
A shotgun show, right?
Yes, yes, we have a number of things to talk about.
We have a couple of major ones, I think, that are going to drive the whole show, I believe.
Yeah, we're doing the shotgun topics, and I think 178 I called holiday freestyling, so
this is holiday freestyling, too.
Freestyling in the new year.
Yeah, 2007 freestyling.
Electric boogaloo.
Yeah, 2007 is just, 2006 was a much more round number.
Yeah, true, but you know, 7 is a T in elite speak, so.
If you really, see this, again, this is my weird thing, you know, you got 2007, which
really, 2007 is R-O-O-T, so this is the year of the root.
I'm sorry, I can't, I can't help it, it's a weird thing, I'm sorry, I'd just do that.
Welcome to root.
I never even thought of 2 being, as a replacement for R.
Ah, you're not as fluent in elite speak as I am.
Oh, no, I just actually try to make my lead speak understandable by people.
Oh, I know, too, but you know what, the audience of this show probably would understand it, that's
the funny part of the whole thing.
Because you're all losers, I mean, uh, no.
I mean, winners, winners, yeah.
Winners, they rock.
Listeners to this show are awesome.
Oh, man.
Well, um, I got some housekeeping to do before we dive into any email.
Do you have housekeeping?
Oh, gee, just a little bit.
Well, I mean, we're, I mean, I'm talking about, like, stuff on the show here, I'm not talking
about, like, you're going to make your bed.
Well, maybe I can make my bed while I deliver the housekeeping for the show.
Did you have housekeeping you wanted to do first before I go into mine, or?
No, I'm all set, so you can go take it away.
Well, I guess I, uh, maybe I shouldn't do it again this week, because I guess I overcommitted
last time I was on the show, uh, saying that we thought we had the server issues hammered
down.
Well, I guess we didn't.
So, I've been working on these things non-stop.
Obviously, the holidays kind of threw a monkey wrench into things as well, and me traveling
for work, and then I have to travel for the holidays.
So, uh, finally got to sit down and really, really work on it and concentrate, and I've
been working really closely with Tabiz lately.
I worked with Savant a lot before that.
I even had Not Theory on again last night, looking at some things, and, um, we seem to
have gotten the box stable again, as stable as I think we can get it at this stage.
Um, basically the, I don't know how much detail to go into here, actually, um, we're not
getting errors anymore.
We were getting a lot of errors about unable to create new thread, error number 11s, stuff
like that, um, generated by the forums, but it wasn't related to the forums, and that's
what people didn't quite seem to understand.
It's not the forums that were causing any problems, it's the server itself.
Kind of choking.
It, um, I guess the simplest way to explain it, because I can't explain it exactly, we
do not know exactly what the problem is yet, but I guess the long and short of it is that
we are just putting maximum capacity on the box is the bottom line, I think, and MySQL
is just sucking the memory faster than we can, than we can get it.
So, um, we finally had to spend a lot of, damn it everyone, stop visiting the website.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, it's great that we're growing and all, but we just have to deal with the growing
pains that go along with it.
So, uh, I optimized MySQL, um, Tabiz and I have been doing that all week, basically, uh,
going through trying different optimizations, um, this, end of this week, like starting,
let's see, last week, actually, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, every night,
and, yeah, Sunday night, every night I was up until 4 or 5 a.m. reading MySQL documentation,
and long-time listeners know how much I just despise MySQL in general from a programming standpoint.
And, and by MySQL documentation, we need, well, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Um, that might have made it more interesting.
It's dry, just reading through every variable and whatnot.
See, I always hated MySQL from a programming standpoint.
It didn't support stored procedures.
In the past, don't write me emails telling me it does now.
Big fucking, well, great.
Um, it's still got issues from a programming standpoint.
Um, but now, I hate it even more because from a sysadmin standpoint, all this configuration
and tweaking and stuff is just ridiculous.
It's not, it does not scale well.
And as our site's growing, it's just causing, um, just a horrible load on the server.
It's eating up memory.
And I'm going in, I'm fucking, I'm looking at every system variable that MySQL has.
I'm reading their documentation.
I'm doing exactly what it would suggest you do.
I'm tuning it to exactly what our needs are on the box and what our specs on the box are.
And I keep, I must have bounced MySQL two, three hundred times here in the past couple weeks
and Apache and stuff like that.
And none of it seems to really do much or help very much.
Um, got it to the point where it looks like it's stable.
I haven't had any reports of errors since these last round of changes.
So we're hopefully just going to leave it like that.
Um, we still get some Apache processes that hang, which I believe is because it's needing memory.
It's not able to get it and it gets confused and it just kind of hangs there and eats up CPU cycles.
So that's the only ongoing problem that I'm aware of now.
And the solution is we manually watch the box and restart Apache whenever that happens.
But what we need to do is we need to like train like a little monkey to do it for us.
Well, yeah, or replace the monkey with a little Perl script.
But that's not a long-term solution either.
We can't just restart Apache randomly or whatever.
We need to find the cause of the problem, which is frustrating because as far as the system is concerned,
it's just a running process.
It doesn't know or care that it's eating up the CPU as far as it's concerned.
It's running.
So that means there's nothing generated in the error logs.
You know, there's nothing for us to look at and see, hey, what's going wrong?
So we're trying to figure out, okay, well, whose process, what is this specific process running?
Maybe it's hitting some weird URL that's got a bug in it or, I mean, it's just kind of so hard to figure out.
But that's where we're at now, and hopefully we'll get that shored out.
But even so, this is a short-term solution.
We still are pushing the box to maximum capacity.
So in the next month or two, we are probably going to be switching to a new hosting company
because we need to upgrade the box.
And our current hosting company has been okay when we do all the work ourselves.
But as soon as I start asking questions or try to get them involved,
they want to nickel and dime me for every little thing to look at
or every little thing that you want done, which is common for every hosting company.
So I can't really single them out and say it's their fault.
It's just time for us to kind of grow and evolve.
So that will probably be happening.
So we'll, of course, keep people in the loop and let everybody know because there will probably be a down time.
We'll minimize it as much as possible.
When we switch service, we're probably going to have to take a day or two off, maybe over a weekend.
We'll have to take the site down as we move everything over.
But we'll, of course, let everybody know before that happens.
So that's my housekeeping for the week.
What you're going to do is you're going to have, like, WWW1 bin rev and WWW2 bin rev.
It won't be leet and, like, all enterprise.
No.
See, and here's the other thing.
And, gosh, I hesitate to say this on the air because I know I'm going to get such backlash for it.
But you guys got to realize I've been paying for this out of pocket for years, you know,
dedicated server with a lot of bandwidth for the radio show and the videos and all the other stuff.
And now we've maxed the capacity.
Well, the next step up is a pretty big financial step up for me.
And I don't know if I can keep paying this kind of money for this kind of server.
I mean, as much as I love it and, you know, I love you guys and everything, but, you know, I've got to put food in the dog's mouth, too.
So we might have to work something out here.
I've always said that I don't ever, ever, ever want to have to put ads on the site.
But I've got to tell you, we've got to honestly consider it because the future of BINREV is kind of at stake now.
We just can't afford to pay for all the resources that we need anymore.
So we might have to break down and work something out or work out some subscription plans or some donations.
We're tossing around a lot of ideas, but we're probably going to have to do something in the future.
But once again, we'll let everybody know and solicit some advice or suggestions as we go along.
But I don't know, at some point it's just...
I think we should auction off dinner with Savant.
Well, okay, that might get us a nickel.
I was thinking a couple of cents at least, you know?
Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess technically Savant would pay up to a dollar to go have dinner with me.
But I'd have to guarantee him sex afterwards.
And, you know...
Yeah, I'm going to say, okay, you put out afterwards, huh?
Oh, who are we kidding?
We know I'm going to put out.
All right, so that's it for me as far as I think that's all.
That's enough, trust me.
It's frustrating, too, that I have to spend all my time doing sysadmin stuff.
I'm not able to participate in projects as much as I'd like.
I haven't been able to write as much.
I've got a few ideas I've come up with and some scripts I want to write.
And I just haven't had time because every waking moment is spent researching and tweaking the server.
So, okay, essentially what you just summarized, we're doing...
Pretty much that's what it feels.
No, we'll work it out somehow.
But bear with us as we go through some growing pains, that's all.
All right, well, that sounds fair enough.
Sounds good.
Shall we go into email?
And our first email is from Matt.
And it says, greeting Black Ratchet and Faceman.
Nice A-team reference, by the way.
Re, Faceman's Linux troubles.
Try Ubuntu, I like it.
Re, Faceman's statement, that's binrev does not condone getting hurt with Uzis or something like that.
And he has mattkaren.net slash interest slash shooting slash zombies dot php.
Boy, what is it, Doc?
I have not listened to these episodes yet because of my traveling.
I can't wait to go back and listen to them.
It's now triggering emails about bringing a maxi patch.
You know the human female is the only animal species that can bleed for 30 days and live for a week every 30 days and live?
Think about it.
They are meant to absorb blood and they are sterile.
I don't know.
I just, I heard that come around.
I don't know if it's true or not.
There you go.
It's on the internet.
It's got to be true.
Well, how do we know that animals don't do that?
I really don't.
My line was, I don't trust anything that bleeds for seven days and doesn't die.
It says, Purell or other hand sanitizers aren't just for cleaning your hands.
They're jellied alcohol, which makes them a great accelerant.
I don't know that I would use it if timber was dry and easy to start, but it might be the only way to get a fire going if it's raining.
As the alcohol burns off, you can use it to dry out and start your bird's nest and get something going.
Re-motherboard beeps.
This is a very, it covers everything in the episode here.
Why is it that the first 64K of memory isn't on the motherboard?
Hell, you could put 128K on the first 64.
You put 128K on and if the first 64 fails, they flip to the second.
We just need enough to admit the VGA card and print a useful message to the console.
Way easier than beeps.
Re-vintage computer stuff.
Remember the whole memory mess of the 1990s?
You've got conventional memory, which you had to keep as free as possible by pushing stuff onto the upper memory area
by running HiMem.sys and EMM386, or the QEMM replacement, which worked a lot better.
Now, once you get above the 1MB memory limit, which for many people, including myself, refer to as the 640K limit,
there are two solutions.
In the mid-late 80s, there was expanded memory, which, like Intel's physical address extensions of more recent memory,
allowed the system to access more memory than was originally designed.
The nifty thing about this is that it was an ISA plug-in card, which behaved like a bus peripheral.
Peripheral.
Okay, peripheral, yeah.
I didn't know why I said that.
Because this email is so freaking long.
It's like reading a book.
Yeah, it just jumps around.
It's a good email, though.
Yeah.
Okay, technically this isn't completely true.
The PAE is a CPU-level trickery to compensate for limits of the 32-bit CPUs able to address memory.
The 286 systems were able to access this memory, but the OS wasn't.
So this was more to fake out DOS than anything else.
It used a special driver to allow the OS to read and write data to the board.
Of course, the software had to be written for it, and anything wishing to go and take advantage of it had to be specifically written to do so.
This caused issues later on, as software written for EMS memory couldn't run on later systems unless a memory emulator was properly configured, or configured correctly.
Why did you feel the need to improvise an email there?
What was wrong with it saying it was configured correctly?
You had to change it to properly configured.
Because I felt that was better.
And I just like calling you out when you do it.
Yeah, shut up.
Once we grew out of this hack and the memory started resembling what we typically think of today, you get extended memory.
Various memory managers, including the aforementioned QMEMM and QEMM386, allowed you to specify amounts of different types of memory available to the applications.
And there used to be specifications options for these when specifying startup settings for DOS applications and older versions of Windows.
Though I don't think there's any way to do this.
I don't know if there's a way to do this now.
Of course, this all went away with protected mode memory access, which is a much-memory idea.
Woo-hoo!
Re-iCandy.
Have you checked out Barrel?
It's an OpenGL-accelerated Windows manager, which just has plenty of iCandy.
I got it working, and the iCandy is rather nice, but I'm not going to be using it because I prefer my XFCE setup better.
Until I can duplicate the way I have XFCE setup, I'm still using FXCE.
Still, it's pretty, and you folks might like it.
Take it easy, Matt.
Man, what did you do with all that money you'd been saving up?
What'd you do with all that money you'd been saving up?
All that money I've been saving up?
Ha!
Own!
I knew there was something coming there that I didn't want to have, but I...
Well, that was a long email.
I think I would have stumbled all through that one, too.
That was, like, a bunch of different topics in that thing.
And I think the summary is, be glad we're not still using DOS.
Because I remember having to carry around a floppy disk with all the configurations on it because, like, I go play games on computers in the university or something like that,
and I'd have to pop in my boot disk so that it would partition all the memory out the way that the game needed it because it could only use so much.
And, yeah, it wasn't fun.
Hey, hey, Pop Quiz, what does QEMM stand for?
Oh, hold on.
Extended Memory Manager, it's QA...
Oh, man.
What does the Q stand for?
Quarterdeck, yes.
I forgot.
Quarterdeck.
The software company for those...
Yeah, and didn't they actually later get incorporated into...
It was hardcore.
Wasn't that actually used in Windows 95?
Didn't they actually buy it up and incorporate it in to use, like, their version of legacy support, like the way you could run old DOS programs in a DOS shell window because it was still, at that time, based...
Underlying DOS was still around, DOS 7, I think it was.
And you still needed it if you wanted to play your old games.
Could be.
Frankly, you may still need it now, for all I know.
I haven't actually gone back to try to play Commander Keen under XP or anything.
Okay, they do have all that emulation stuff, so you never know.
All I remember is, like, if...
From Microsoft Flight Simulator, which I played back in the day, and still looks a fun game,
it was, like, I was running it on a horribly outdated machine, and it said, like, if you were running, like, certain maps,
you needed lots of expanded memory, but if you were doing certain other things, you needed lots of extended memory, too,
and, like, I was just looking at it going, dude, I have one meg of RAM.
Go screw yourself.
No, I never got out of too much flight work.
I should get that program.
If I was going to learn how to do a flight simulator, I'd learn how to fly a real plane instead.
Which I did, but got kicked out of.
That's a story for another time, though.
You don't want to go there.
Let's see, our next e-mail is from Anonymous.
Ooh.
There is one thing you can do to avoid detection from UAVs with IR.
If you have any survival blankets, you can use those to cover up your heat signature.
Survival blankets are the ones mentioned that have the one shiny side.
Make sure that that side is a little bit easier to reflect your body.
Would you like a baked potato, or...?
Well, no, you want your body heat reflected in, because that's what the kids are looking for.
I'll tell you what.
Do you want me to read one?
Yeah, sure.
So you can go get some sweet iced tea, or whatever it is you drink.
Yeah, sure.
Next e-mail comes from Neoino.
Interesting-sounding name, Neoino.
He says,
Hey, BinRev Radio host one, and BinRev Radio host two.
That's us.
Listening to show 178 at the moment, and earlier you spoke about culture jamming,
and my mind was cast back to a podcast idea I had, which I dubbed life cracking.
Life hacking is already a buzzword, sadly.
The idea to have a social hacking challenge to fulfill every X weeks, and then the challengees report back on the podcast with their experiences.
Could also be modified so the challenge is aired one week, and then listeners take on that challenge and e-mail their responses back in.
Actually, I think this is kind of an interesting idea.
Might make for a pretty funny segment, and of course, the advantages of having a multinational group of coordinated social hackers can't be discounted.
I think it would be kind of a neat thing to have on Grit Factor if it, you know, ever comes back.
I talked to him out there yesterday, and he's a busy man.
Anyway.
Yeah, well, you know, you do what you got to do, I guess.
Oh, and look, this next e-mail is something that I don't want to talk about, so I'm going to turn this one back over to you.
Nah, I hate MySQL, it sucks.
Oh, oh, sure, sure.
Whatever way, like, little coward you are.
Alright, let's see.
Oh, actually, this is from Anonymous as well.
In episode 176, Black Ratchet read an e-mail from a listener that wanted to store a GUID in a MySQL database.
The listener was having trouble because the maximum numeric type that MySQL will store is an 8-byte integer, but a GUID is 16 bytes, 128 bits.
Black Ratchet said that the reason for this is that the reason this is not very well supported is because it's unlikely that anyone ever bothered trying to index a table by GUID.
Since no one uses GUIDs other than Microsoft for the registry.
And MySQL is largely a Unix-based system.
However, there is at least one big system that heavily uses Linux-slash-open-source software and uses a GUID scheme for identifying data, and that's Second Life.
I'm not going to go much into Second Life at http-slash-slash-secondlife.com, all spelt out with the words,
except to say that it's a large, multi-user virtual world in which users create all kinds of 3D objects.
GUIDs are used to identify pretty much everything in the world, from objects to users to scripts and sounds.
Linden Lab, the maker of Second Life, has reportedly touted the fact they use MySQL databases for a fair amount of their data,
and I'm sure at least some of their tables index on GUIDs.
I realize with a lead-in like this, I'm supposed to tell you the right way of indexing a table by a GUID,
but I'm not that much of a database person.
I do store some GUIDs in a semi-big 300,000K record, or 300,000 record,
MySQL table of my own,
and I just made the GUID column to be of type car, char, char, whatever you want to call it, 36.
So, 36 characters.
And store the GUID as is, in a hexadecimal with dashes.
I'm pretty sure there's probably a better way, but I'm not a DB pro.
That said, doing this makes for pretty speedy lookups, so I'm happy.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that GUIDs aren't just from Microsoft Registry anymore.
I'm sure other services out there use them as well.
I never said that Microsoft is the only person that uses, or only entity that uses GUIDs.
I'm just saying that Microsoft-based systems are, they rely heavily on them.
Well, now, and fill me in here for a GUID.
Is this, what, just a unique row identifier and SQL server?
Is that what that says?
It is a global, oh, boy.
Is it equivalent to, like, a row ID in Oracle, or?
Essentially, you can use it for that, but it's more along the lines of, it's called a global unique identifier.
And I'm sure you've seen it.
It's that little, like, bunch of hex characters.
You see it in the registry a lot.
Random.
Yeah.
Right.
Kind of gibberish looking, but they're all unique.
They're unique numbers.
But they're unique, all that is is to identify, uniquely identify a row in a table.
No, not necessarily.
Right.
It can be used to, it can be used to uniquely identify anything.
Like, for example, in the registry, each program has a GUID.
And when you create a GUID, it takes the, like, the machine it was created on, it takes, like, its Ethernet address, and it takes the time it was actually created, and probably, like, the phase of the moon, and all kinds of other stuff.
Yeah, I didn't realize that that was also called a GUID, or I guess I didn't think about it.
I never really cared.
No, I really don't care either.
And I would love to know how in the holy hell Second Life is able to use my SQL on such a large scale.
I mean, they've got to have it, like, they must spend a lot of money on all these multiple servers powering the database, scattering the load across a data center,
because, for crying out loud, we can't even handle running one busy forums on it.
So, I'm sure they're, uh, I wonder how long that'll, how much longer that'll last.
Well, they owe, I'm sure they have loads and loads and loads and loads of servers scattered about various data centers across the United States.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, more power to them.
Mm-hmm.
Um, yeah, so that's about to wrap it up for email.
Is that it?
Yeah, I think so.
Alrighty, then.
Do we have, we don't have closing email music, do we?
No, we don't.
Ba-na, ba-na, that was the email, ba-na, radio at binrev.com.
There we go, now we have closing email.
There we go, there's our closing email.
We're just going to, I'm going to, I'm going to isolate that and I'm going to use that every week.
No, that was just for this week.
That was a special just for this week.
No, man.
Nobody wants to hear it.
Well, this show is, I was going to say this show is under release under Creative Commons, but I'm not sure about that.
Um, yeah, absolutely we are.
Um, actually, do you know what?
Oh, we are? I didn't know if we were.
I have something I wanted to, let me check something real quick here on the global interweb while I talk and stall for time.
Um, the last episode of Binrev Radio that I did with Knot Theory, which is what I'm trying to look up to give you guys the exact number online.
Notice how I stall while I do it, um, which was 169, the episode on virtualization, uh, one that, uh, that Knot Theory and I hosted.
Um, that was about the time that people were doing some remixes of my voice on the show, which is why it popped into my head.
And, uh, using my I'm a fucking moron remixes that they're making, well, Knot Theory and I had a few outtakes from that episode and some funny stuff,
that I slipped onto the end of that file.
And I know a lot of people will listen to the closing music or start listening and then turn it off when they think it's ended,
but sometimes I'll hide in a few little Easter eggs at the end of the show sometimes.
You might want to listen all the way through those episodes because there might be some other good remix material on there sometime.
Just thought I'd share that.
Well, are there Easter eggs now that you're on?
Well, I gave it how long and nobody found them.
I mean, people, see, and this is something like, yeah, see, here's the thing.
Yeah, like I do also do that thing in the forums where I talk about, um, post titles, for example.
You know, and I think somebody even posted this in the forums.
They got what I was saying.
It's noticing all the little details.
You've got to pay attention to every little thing that's going on.
We never, I mean, we have a regular pattern to the show, but we slip in some surprises once in a while.
We slip in a few new things.
We try different stuff.
We, uh, we like to try to keep everybody on their toes.
So, always pay attention to the detail, and if you see anything unusual, it might just be a screw-up or a mistake,
but it might be a little Easter egg that we've planted somewhere.
There are still stuff on the site that have been there for three, four, five years that people have never found.
Well, just so you know, it's on the radio show.
I was going to say, especially if I'm posting, then.
Ow.
That hurt.
I'll try not to, but I guess when you roll across the room and you've got big toes like me, you're just going to run over yourself.
That's going to leave a mark.
I don't want a picture.
That's right.
I certainly have no idea what you're talking about.
Anyway.
Oh, big socks.
Uh, we're going to do, uh, you want to move into some topics?
So, while you're driving the show, I'll sit back and shut up.
Oh, I don't know if you want to talk about personal habits, because I have nothing.
A little, okay.
Yeah, I got one quick one, because, um, this is kind of my first post-holiday episode.
Um, I got a new gadget.
I know last time I was on with you, we talked about some of the other gadgets that I take with me when I travel.
Um, I got a new gadget that I had been wanting for Christmas.
Um, I got the Harman, um, hold on, what's this damn thing called?
What's the, uh, Harman Universal Advanced or Universal Remote Control, the 880.
Because I have quite a few gadgets and devices in there, DVD player, VCR, et cetera, et cetera, big TV, all that good stuff.
And I wanted then one universal remote control to rule them all.
Dun, dun, dun!
Well, uh, I was kind of excited about this.
I was really looking forward to it.
Um, I got it for Christmas, and I was able to finally get a few minutes to sit down and try to program it.
A couple cool things about it.
I guess this is turning into a mini-review.
A couple cool things is you can customize the wallpaper.
You can customize the, uh, colors and look and style, look and feel of the screen.
You can customize the, uh, the background wallpaper, and you can upload pictures as a slideshow.
It's, it has a screen on it, but it is not a touch screen.
No, you touch the buttons next to the, to the appropriate visual button on the screen.
You can actually touch the screen, but, but it does have a little screen there that's customizable.
So, I guess you'd have to go to Logitech and, and look to see what exactly what I'm talking about, but, um, so that part of it was cool.
Well, the part of it that I'm kind of disappointed in, well, there's a couple parts.
Um, because I really, really wanted this, and I really was hoping, because it works.
First of all, they've got a huge database, a huge library of support for lots of different devices.
I mean, if they, I've had an old VCR that I've just always liked, um, and they had it on there.
They had my Apex 660, my, my hacked Apex region free player.
Um, they have just all kinds of stuff that I never even heard of.
They have a huge database of controls for different devices.
So, that's cool.
So, you go in there, and basically, they have a little app that they, pretty much one of those wizard-style things where they walk you through,
tell me your device and your model number.
It looks it up in the database and downloads everything to your remote control via USB.
USB.
This is also rechargeable, in case I didn't say, it's got a little docking station to recharge your batteries,
which lasts about a week.
Yep.
And the other really cool thing is it's got a little, uh, I think it's like the Nintendo Wii.
It's got one of those little motion sensors in it where, like, you can have it sitting there,
and if you reach and pick it up, it notices that it's movement.
It senses the movement with a little sensor inside and lights up so you can see it in the dark, which is kind of cool.
But, um, yeah, well, the performance is where it fell short for me.
It does what it's supposed to do.
It's just a little bit clunky about the way it does it.
It's just not as responsive as I would like.
Basically, when it walks through the wizard, it will, uh, it's, it's, um, I don't know how to say it,
project-driven instead of device-driven.
It's, it's action-driven.
So, you put in an action like, um, watch a DVD.
And what it will do is it'll say, okay, well, to watch a DVD, you want to, A, send the turn-off signal to the television,
or the turn-on signal to the television, turn-on signal to the DVD, change to this channel,
whatever channel you need to watch your DVD, or this input to watch your DVD.
Uh, same thing with the VCR.
They're, they're buttons based on action where it will do a series of events based on what you want to do,
which kind of sounds fine, you know.
If I want to watch a DVD, it's great.
I can push one button, and it does all those things for me.
Uh-huh.
Well, first of all, everything has to be off to begin with, which is kind of annoying.
So, if I've already got it on, and I decide, oh, I want to watch a DVD,
I can't push the button because it doesn't know what the hell's going on.
So, I have to power everything off just to begin with, or to do with something different, which kind of sucks.
Now, I believe that I can go in and customize and reprogram the scripts that are running behind it,
and I can tell it, turn off the TV, then turn the TV back on.
I can put it turn off in front of it, but that's like, I shouldn't have to hack it that much to do something
that I think is fundamental or commonly needed.
And it's like that for other things.
And the other thing I didn't like about it is there's no button for, like, the straightforward, obvious thing.
There's no button that says, turn on and watch television.
I have to, yeah, I know, I have to go hit the button on the remote to switch to devices,
and then under devices, select TV, and then hit the button that says on.
Well, if I've got to go through that fucking work, I'll just use the TV role in the first damn place.
So, it makes you have to go through too many steps.
Again, I can probably write my own program, write my own little script,
and assign it to a button that says turn on television,
and it'll send the turn on TV signal and maybe change to the input in the channel or something.
But I just don't feel like, and I probably will do that,
I just don't feel like I should have done that.
It seems to me like that's something that every consumer is going to want or need,
and they should have really put support for something that simplistic already into it.
But, what do I know?
Yeah, I know, people are starting to notice that, huh?
It's been four plus, wait a minute, we're four years?
Not much, actually.
Yeah, we're three, I don't know.
Let's just say it's been four years and people are finally starting to see through my facade of false knowledge.
Yeah, I think so.
That's right, that's right.
But, yeah, I guess that's my show on television.
I got that guy here.
I think it retails for $250, and you can get it on the street for $200.
But I'm pretty sure I'm leaning towards returning it,
because it's too awkward and clunky to use.
So, there you go.
I am, I really, really wanted this.
Because not only that, well, here's one other good thing that it would do for someone like me, too.
I have some really old, some other hacked DVD players, some old televisions and stuff that I've long lost the remote controls for from all of my moving around.
So, the universal ones you buy in, you know, Target or whatever for $5, $10 or Best Lie or any of those places, they never work right.
Or they'll only have the minimal buttons.
You can turn it on and change channels, and that's really it.
None of the other stuff actually works properly.
So, it's cool that I can go in there and program in, I think, up to eight devices that will allow you to program it in.
So, I can put in the three, four, five that are in my main living room, including your Xbox, Wii, PlayStation, whatever the hell you got in there.
And the functions and that, you can turn those on and play DVDs through them if you have the infrared thing on those and stuff like that.
But I would also be able to say, oh, well, I can take the remote control with me back and watch the TV in the bedroom and enter the second bedroom over here and turn that TV on and play a DVD and stuff like that.
You can program all those in there as well.
So, that is definitely a cool feature.
You finally get a true universal remote control that you can even walk from one room to the other with.
And the next one up from this, which I wanted, but I wasn't willing to pay the extra, I think it was $150 more, I think it was $400, is the 890, which has RF frequency in it.
So, I can actually turn it off around corners and stuff like that, which is kind of cool.
Good way to mess with people.
I didn't get that one, so I can't tell you, but I believe that they put an RF in the base station of the thing and plug that into the TV and sending the signal to the base station, which converts it into the appropriate signals to send to your TV.
But I don't know.
I'd have to, I didn't get that model.
Yeah, I know.
But, hey, wouldn't that be cool?
Plus, plus, yeah, plus the other thing is what, and I don't know if it supports this.
And, again, this is, would be a huge oversight in my opinion.
If I designed it, I would also have it, if it's going to do RF, I would have it have a support for all of the X10 devices.
So, not only can I control my electronics and my TV and stuff, but I can control my X10 devices, which would be lights, the garage door fucking opener, my electric ceiling fan.
Those are, a lot of those are RF based.
I want to control every, I don't ever want to have to get up.
I want to sit in the chair and never, ever have to get up.
Bedpan, whatever it takes.
Or, or, or even better, would I have to actually get in the electric chair, or would I just, well, maybe I can program a Roomba.
And just use that.
And send it through to Roomba.
Built in.
I'll hack a Roomba robot together and have it, oh, man, this is turning into a pretty cool project.
Oh, well.
Anyway, that's my show, I tell.
You got nothing?
Come on, you had to get something, you had to get something cool for Christmas.
Or Chris Mahana, Kwanzaa, whatever.
Festivus.
Festivus for the rest of us.
No, I don't have anything.
Chris Mahana, Kwanzaa?
Festivus.
Yeah, I was actually seeing a couple of Festivus-type cards out there and such.
And it's kind of sad, because I realized that that was actually thought up by a sitcom.
But, I mean, Festivus is fun, but it's just weird that it's a TV show.
A TV show thought of it, and people are, like, starting to celebrate it.
It's not just a TV show.
It was Seinfeld.
Whatever.
It's like M.A.S.H. thought of a holiday.
How about that?
Oh, M.A.S.H., come on.
M.A.S.H. doesn't even hold a candle to Seinfeld.
Are you kidding me?
M.A.S.H. can't even hang with Roseanne for crying out loud.
Dude, M.A.S.H. was, like, pretty pumped up.
I still think it's the highest-rated single moment of TV, isn't it?
Well, people weren't as smart back then, though.
See?
Boy, is that going to have a landslide of email coming in?
Dude, my first time...
Come on, I'd watch Hogan Heroes over M.A.S.H. reruns.
M.A.S.H. never did anything for me.
Oh, I loved M.A.S.H.
I'm not saying it's bad.
It's not bad.
It's just...
It's kind of like Frasier.
Frasier, I know it's good.
It got great ratings from...
It just didn't do anything for me.
Oh, because it was actually...
Oh, I'll say my name is Earl.
It attempted to appeal to people's sophisticated humor, and that doesn't work well.
I don't have any.
Exactly.
Oh, just give me dick and fart jokes, and I'm good.
Although there's a new show with Tina Fey in it, that's got some pretty smart humor.
I like that one.
30 Rock.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's got Baldwin and Tina Fey.
Yeah, and I don't particularly care for some of the others, but Tina Fey is hilarious.
Anyway, we're getting side-checked.
We need to do a television, like, not an episode of BinRev.
We need to start a new show about television.
You know, I should get Elonka to do a show with me about television each week.
That would be fun.
What happened on TV this week?
Yeah, it'd all be about reality shows, because that's what we both are into, but anyway.
Did you see Survivor this week?
Oh, my God.
This week.
Oh, are you kidding?
That show was over two or three weeks ago.
Yes, I know.
You watched it, too, didn't you?
I don't know.
No, I didn't, thank God.
That's one of those things that can scare me out of the room faster than a nuclear disaster.
What?
Scare you out of the room?
Why?
I can't stand that show.
It's stupid.
Oh, I thought you meant there was something on it that you didn't.
Never mind.
Like, watch, like, I can't, I don't watch Fear Factor, because, like, I don't know, I think
I've been in that rant before.
Fear Factor, there's nothing fear, like, some of the stunts I can see, but, you know, daring
somebody to eat a pig's asshole, that's not Fear Factor, that's Gross Factor.
I'm not going to fucking eat some, you know, cow's unwashed asshole.
That's not fear, that's stupidity factor, you know?
Oh, we want to eat, like, a fucking goat's nuts or anything like that?
What does that prove that you're brave?
That proves to me you're a fucking idiot and you'll do anything for money.
Aren't you glad we went down this road on the show?
Don't you think we should get on something tech?
I don't know, I always think, like, the host of Survivor has, like, the easiest job in
the world, because, like, when he's announcing contests, he just dates the obvious.
I listen to him, and I'm like, I could do that.
So is way ahead.
He's got the first lock open.
Well, gee, thanks, Brainiac 5.
And if I get to wear the spiffy hat, I'm still there.
I don't know if you could pull off the hat.
Oh, you know what?
I would watch it if you were the host and you had to be there in your full Eagle Scout
uniform with the badges and everything.
I'd fucking watch that.
Just to see you in that uniform with the hat.
Well, no, because if you're in the Boy Scout uniform, you have to wear the Boy Scout hat.
Is that against the rules to wear a different hat?
Well, it would not be part of your class uniform.
Whatever.
Well, no, but I could wear the big spiffy hat.
Didn't the guy in the previous episode say something about he didn't want to hear any
more survival stuff?
I guess I better shut up now, huh?
We're not talking about survival stuff.
Well, I guess technically not.
You're talking about survival stuff.
I'm talking about...
Well, Boy Scouts learned survival tips and techniques.
Well, yeah, that's how we learned it.
Anyway, let's go in here.
What's on the topic for tonight?
Well, I think that we're doing a shotgun style show, which again, I guess a little bit of
an explanation here is I read entirely far, far, far too much.
I subscribe to 50-plus magazines, and I pretty much read them nonstop.
I can't sit and watch TV.
I joke about watching...
You know, I watch a lot of TV these days with TiVo, thankfully, but I can't just watch it.
Yeah, I can't just watch...
Especially Survivor, honestly.
I mean, I like it, but I can't just sit and watch it.
I read while I watch television.
I always multitask and read something while I'm watching television because television
is not exactly stimulating my mind very often, so I usually try to read while I'm watching
TV and get a lot of stuff.
And what I do is, and yes, I'm a complete geek, and Black Ratchet and I were just discussing
that before the show.
As I go through these magazines, I pull out the articles that I find are interesting or
worth reading on the air or sharing or discussing online or something like that, and I end up
with a whole bunch of torn-out pages laying around the house back here in the war room,
back here in...
What is that called in war games?
What do they call it?
Yeah, something like that, whatever.
Central Control...
NORAD, there you go.
I'll call it NORAD.
The Hack Cave.
I like the Hack Cave, but now it's not a cave anymore.
It's kind of nicer, but anyway.
So, I have a few articles I thought we'd go through, and some stuff that we have online,
some stuff that Ratchet has.
So, which one should we start with first?
Do you want to do the...
Because, actually, one of my favorites here is an article from CSO Online, which is Chief
Security Officer Magazine, CSOOnline.com.
I think you can read all these online if you don't subscribe to the print magazine.
Well, Google didn't index those.
Well, they've got a website, maybe you have to be a subscriber to get to them on, I'm not sure.
But, what this is, is it's an article called...
How many times do I use is in that sentence?
It's an article called, What Guilty Looks Like?
A List of the Physical Visual Tells Used in Behavioral Profiling to Catch Potential Bad Guys.
Now, what the fuck did I just say?
They're basically saying, what kind of facial tics and nuances and things do people do that
trigger them or make you be suspicious of them that they might be a criminal, might be
a terrorist, that sort of thing.
You know, somebody's acting...
What defines acting suspicious, I guess, is a simpler way to say it, right?
Well, if I'm a terrorist, I'm not sure if facial tics are going to give you away, but maybe
my shirt that ticks.
Well, that might do it, too.
Well, I tell you what, there's a list of things here.
Let's see if a ticking device on your body is on the list of things.
There is some of the things TSA employees might look for, TSA, of course, being the security
in the airports.
And actually, let's go by these one by one and see if we agree with or see what we think
about these.
Actually, if you use all these techniques intentionally and go into the airports, see if you get frisks
and cavity searched and all that, if you're into that sort of thing.
Number one...
Oh, Eric.
And make sure it's by somebody in a TSA uniform.
Don't just bend over for anybody for a cavity search.
Unless...
Unless you like that sort of thing.
Exactly.
And who are we to judge?
Number one is rapidly darting eyes.
That seems pretty straightforward, right?
Maybe somebody's eyes are darting around.
Oh, did that do...
I don't know.
That's like something in the cartoons where the dog's eyes go back and forth real quick
and...
Or the evil monkey and family guy or something.
I don't know how many people really have shaky eyes.
You know what I mean?
But I guess...
Homicidal maniacs.
I guess.
I guess somebody who's suspicious that's like always looking over their shoulder, maybe
that's kind of along the same thing, I guess.
Let's see.
Number two...
This one's a good one.
Deliberate and forceful attempts to make eye contact or trade hand gestures with a specific
person, perhaps a co-conspirator.
And again, I think that's something you see in sitcoms, you know, like somebody's behind
the other person trying to get your attention, you know, don't say that, he's looking.
And then when they turn and get caught, they try to play it off.
Well, I guess I'm screwed if I want to, like, talk to my wife who's behind, who's out of
earshot or something.
I'm like...
Or what if, you know, if you had to sign somebody who's deaf?
Come over...
Yeah, exactly.
If you're deaf, you're ho...
Did he just say plant a bomb?
Swarm!
Another Seinfeld reference.
Let's see, number three, quivering or overactive Adam's apple in men.
I've never thought of that one before.
Oh, quivering, yes, I guess.
I don't...
Quivering sounds like a very feminine word, but overactive Adam's apple?
Do men...
I don't think I ever knew that one before.
Well, do men's Adam apples tend to move or fluctuate or something when they're nervous
or when they're...
You ever heard that?
I've never heard of that, personally.
Interesting.
I'm going to have to watch for that.
Get that Adam's apple moving.
Where's some...
We have to find some nervous men.
Oh, man.
Must resist joke.
Tom Carlson, not here.
Oh!
Okay.
Let's see, number four, profuse sweating.
Well, I don't know.
Yeah, I guess that's an obvious sign of nervousness, but what if it's hot?
Plus, you know, I'm kind of...
Yeah, don't tell me about it.
I'm kind of a big guy.
I tend to sweat more than, like, Natus or somebody.
There was no AC in my small airport.
Yeah, I guess, obviously, this is all in context.
I mean, if somebody's sweating in North Dakota in the airport versus in, you know, down in Miami in the airport,
then that's a little bit different.
Okay, I don't know what number this is.
Pulsing carotid artery, a tell used by a Utah State trooper who identified a wanted polygamist by his throbbing neck vein.
What a little extra information on that one.
What was that about?
I don't know.
I'm not sure if I want to look at it.
Yeah, neck, as in head and neck.
I think that's...
Yeah.
But that's the...
I don't want to look at any throbbing vein.
Throbbing and vein together, not a fun picture.
Period.
I don't think there's any throbbing vein that I would ever...
If you ever said, hey, do you want to see this throbbing?
I'm going to go, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop, no.
Whatever it is throbbing, I don't want to see it.
Don't want to know about it.
Don't want to hear about it.
Yeah.
So.
A pulsing carotid artery.
See, that's...
I think that would also be something that's really hard to see.
Wouldn't you have to be right up in someone's face to see that?
Well, I guess if you're...
I guess if you're, like, you know, looking at someone across the...
the Desco security that they have when you're putting all your stuff down,
you'd be able to see it.
I mean, I mean, just...
I mean, look at what you're probably doing from the Utah guy.
I mean, you've probably pulled him over and he's looking out from...
Well, I don't know.
It depends on what I'm doing, I guess.
I try to avoid having...
being pulled over, if I can help it.
But, I mean, if you see someone's carotid artery pulsing from, like,
across the fucking room, call a medic, for God's sake.
Call 911.
I mean, something's wrong with that picture.
Oh, the next one actually kind of goes back to what I just said on this tangent there.
It's inappropriate clothing for the weather conditions.
And this may go back to what you were saying about ticking.
I mean, if you're in Miami and you're in an overcoat that's ticking,
you know, that's kind of a telltale sign that there might be trouble.
That could be that, too.
Like, were you there, the guy in White Castle in New York at Hope?
No, not that.
Yeah, no, not that guy.
The guy who went after the show, not him.
But when I think it was...
Who was it?
I think it might have been Troops.
No, it was Zero DB and I.
Zero DB and I were in there for lunch in the afternoon.
And the guy came in trying to sell knockoff watches.
And I guess he must have been a regular for that
because as soon as they saw him come over and start talking to people,
they called the cops on him.
It was kind of cool.
New York's pretty late, I've got to say, for vacation anyway.
Let's see.
What else?
Voice changes overly combative or stressful tones of voice
regardless of what one is saying.
Hmm, regardless of what one is saying.
Interesting.
I guess it makes sense.
It makes sense, I guess.
That's weird.
I don't know.
How they say things is more important than what they say.
But what they say is pretty fucking important, too.
I mean, they walk up to you and calmly say,
yes, I'm going to blow up your plane.
Please give me a ticket.
They can be as calm as they want to be, but you know,
that's why they tell you, too.
Lately, I noticed, I know they've said this all along,
and maybe you've noticed this if you've been traveling,
but lately in the announcements over the airports
that I've been going through, which is quite a few of them,
they've added a comment that says,
basically saying do not joke or make humorous comments.
Any humorous comments will be treated as serious threats,
so please, for the sake of whatever,
or do not try to joke with the security agents
or something like that.
So, keep that in mind.
Really?
I never actually heard that.
I've always heard that.
It hasn't been recently or anything, but, no.
Yeah, I had never heard it on the announcements before
until recently.
So maybe it's just the airports I happened to go in
didn't have it.
But, I mean, we've always said that anybody who travels
has always known that they don't play
when it comes to that stuff ever since 9-11.
All right, a couple more left here.
This one is kind of interesting.
Loitering without luggage.
And I'm not sure that I'm completely with that one
because there's a lot of people waiting to pick people up.
No, I am, that's bull.
Well, my friend, he's a notoriously light packer,
and he came in from Costa Rica with his girlfriend.
He just, you know, went on a trip, stayed there for a week,
and went through customs, and the custom person said,
look, I see your bag.
And he said, sure, here it is.
But where's the other bags?
That's it.
No, it isn't.
Yes, it is.
I know what I think.
So, I mean, they basically harassed him for a bit,
but that's all he was thinking.
Well, and plus it depends kind of on where you are, too.
I mean, if you're back in the terminal area,
then it might be a little bit more suspicious
than it would be out in the luggage pickup
or something like that
because, you know, people are out there waiting
for family to get off and giving people rides.
So there's going to be people parked out in the terminal.
And I know back right after 9-11,
I remember traveling down from Fort Lauderdale Airport at the time,
and they were putting a crackdown.
They were not letting people stop to pick people up.
You know how you go out front,
you throw your luggage in the trunk,
and you take off, you know?
Well, sometimes, you know,
people would sit there for maybe two, three, five minutes.
They didn't want you to stay more than a couple minutes,
but after 9-11, they wouldn't let you stop, period,
unless the person was there to throw their luggage in.
They had to be there,
and you got maybe 30 seconds to throw it in
and then get the hell out.
They would not let you stop
and wait even for 15 seconds.
If they saw you stop
and people were not putting something in your car within seconds,
they would come over and say,
you got to go.
Logan does that here in Boston.
They actually are, I mean, it's not more of instantaneous,
but if traffic starts to get snarled around it,
they just send it, one of the troopers comes by
and just says, go, go, go.
So that's a...
You know, on a slightly, on a little tangent here,
I learned something new recently.
What airport was I at that this happened?
I think this might have been an Orlando International.
Yeah, I think it was.
It was the parking garage at airports,
which is a huge fucking ripoff, by the way.
But anyway, you get reimbursed.
I get reimbursed, so I don't care.
You leave, you go in, you take a ticket,
and it's like a luxury parking in, like, large cities.
Maybe you can back me up on this.
I've never had to park in a large city.
But you go get a ticket
that timestamps your date and time that you arrived.
And then when you leave the parking lot,
it's a controlled environment.
You can't get out without going through the,
basically the checkout lanes or whatever.
And they'll look at it,
and based on how many days or hours or whatever
that you spend in the garage,
that's how they determine what to charge you.
Well, I was driving out one night,
and I was chatting up the girl
that was working at the lane there.
And I asked her, I said,
hey, what if, you know,
I had forgotten where my ticket was.
It was in my visor.
And I was like,
what if you lose this thing?
I said, how do you know how long I've been there?
It's like a maximum charge
or a minimum charge or whatever.
If I lose my ticket,
how do you know I've been there
for a day, a week, or a month, or six months?
And I found out,
and I don't know if you know this,
but I did not,
they have someone who walks through that thing
every night
and writes down every license plate
of every car in the parking garage.
Now, I don't know if this is just at Orlando Airport
or all of them.
I would suspect that it's at all of them, however.
They go through,
they write down all of them
so they know the day that you got there,
if not the hour.
They'll know the day.
So they'll know that this license plate number
was not there on Monday,
but it was here on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
And if I come back Friday,
they're like, okay,
we know you've been there four days.
And when you leave,
of course, you know there are cameras
that have your license plate
and all that kind of stuff.
So a lot of it may be automated.
But she told me that they have people
that walk through there,
A, just for security purposes
and make sure nothing's broken into
or people aren't lawyering
or breaking into cars or whatever.
and logging what spot you're in even
and stuff like that.
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
I haven't heard that,
but actually in,
not for like an airport,
but I did manage to lose my ticket once
and they basically took all my information
and I said,
I was like,
I was on it with them.
I said, you know,
I've been here for about three hours,
but I don't have my ticket.
And they said,
oh, okay.
And they just said,
you know,
what my car was
and who I was
and, you know,
I guess so I couldn't like really,
if they see the same car there
like 15 billion times
and they're going to say,
hmm,
I think he could be pulling our leg.
Right, exactly.
It was like an hourly lot.
Oh, okay.
Well, let's see.
We're towards the bottom of the list here.
I did loitering without luggage.
Okay, here next to the last one is
long periods studying parts of the airport,
especially security areas,
security areas.
Now see,
that one's going to nail somebody like me
because I all the time
I'm studying everything everywhere,
not just at airports.
But yeah,
I'm the one that I like to,
first of all,
I like to shoulder surf anyway.
So yeah,
if I see that security door at the airport
with the little combination
you punch in to get in,
yeah,
I'm always watching over there
and see if I can find out what it is.
I don't know that I'd ever be dumb enough
to go try it
and use it after I got it,
but I just like to see if I can,
see how careless people are.
But any time there's a computer,
I always stop and look at the screen,
glance at the computer.
I'm not stupid enough.
Sometimes in airports,
in airports I'm extra careful,
but if I'm ever in like a,
I don't know,
a department store or anything
and I see one,
yeah,
I might reach up
and tap the space bar
to turn off the screensaver
to see what's under it
or to see if it's locked.
I might not do anything more than that,
but I'll check,
but not in an airport.
Don't fuck around in the airport,
people,
let me tell you.
No,
unless you want to go to the federal
pounding in the airport.
Yeah,
they don't play.
They don't joke with that.
And also,
when the people are,
like if I go in,
I'm trying to get on standby
for an earlier flight
or anything like that,
any time the,
I don't know what the name of the people,
the employees back there,
any time they're sitting there typing in,
I want to see what system they use.
What kind of,
what's it powered by?
Is it an AS400?
Is it a Windows box for crying out loud?
What are they working on?
Is it some kind of mainframe?
So yeah,
I'm always looking over.
I just want to see what they're doing
and how it works
just because I'm interested
in that sort of thing.
So I'm probably a bad,
they probably look at me funny
because I'm always doing that.
I want to know where every door goes.
I like to know,
you know,
oh,
that must lead out to the planes
and oh,
that must be where they go down
to load this up
and oh,
look,
that's where the pilots
must go in there
for break room or whatever.
And I like to know what's going on
just because I'm weird like that,
I guess.
Yeah.
I mean,
it's not just weird.
I mean,
I do the same exact thing.
It's just more figuring out
everything about it
and finding out
because a lot of people
just don't pay attention
to that stuff.
And you might find some,
you know,
like a lot of the airlines
offer hospitality suite type places,
you know.
You have to,
usually you have to be a,
you know,
a gold,
platinum,
gigantor,
frequent flyer,
master plan member.
Thank you.
And to get into those things
but most of the time
they don't have anybody
really checking.
So like if you just find out
where they are
from watching
where the other high flyers go,
you might find a lot of places
to hang out
instead of sitting out there
in those uncomfortable chairs
with the never ever enough
power outlets
to plug in your freaking laptop.
Yeah,
if they have them at all.
Yeah,
and then if they do,
I've had,
I've been come over
and I've had people come over
and tell me I'm not allowed
to use them.
What the fuck?
I need to power up my laptop.
Blotch!
You said what did they reply?
I'm not the asshole.
Well,
I am an asshole
but not always.
I'm only an asshole
when people are an asshole
to me first.
That's my rule.
Oh,
first of all,
I just wanted to find out
how they replied to Piazza.
Oh,
let's see.
And actually,
this last one's pretty vague.
It just says,
anything else that seems
intuitively suspicious.
So there's your kind of vague
catch-all for the whole thing.
I guess it comes back
to what I was saying before
about,
like intuitively suspicious
is if somebody's
obviously holding
a raincoat closed
like they're covering
something up,
your intuition tells you
there's something suspicious
about that.
You know,
or the guy that's wearing
heavy clothing
in Miami Airport
or something,
there's just something
intuitively suspicious
about that.
You know what I mean?
Yeah,
that kind of thing,
I guess.
But yeah,
that's like the global
catch-all.
I mean,
it's not like these are,
first of all,
these aren't hard
and fast rules.
These are more like training.
Just watch for these things.
I'm sure they're telling
the people,
watch for these
tortoise suspicious things
just to at least
get their attention.
Like if you're like me
and you're studying
parts of the airport
or whatever,
just keep an extra eye
on me.
Maybe not harass me
or cavity search me
or anything,
just watch me.
And then after a while
you realize,
oh,
he's just a geek.
That's all,
you know.
That's all.
Or if I'm sweating,
it's because I just ate
at one of those
stupid little food cafes
and now I'm about to
shit my stomach out
because of the nasty food
that's been sitting there.
That might be the reason
I'm sweating,
you think?
Call me on,
but I don't think
I can ever get hungry
or ever get hungry
at something called
the terminal snack bar.
Are you predicting the future?
Is that what that is?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Is it?
No.
I think it's George Carlin,
actually.
Oh,
well.
Well,
that's it for the,
there you go,
there's your lesson.
So if you want to
draw suspicion to yourself,
I don't know why,
because like I said,
they don't joke around
at the airports these days,
but if you want to go in there,
just,
I guess,
bounce your Adam's apple around,
look back and forth
with your eyes.
Exactly.
Sweat profusely
and wear an umbrella.
Oh,
man.
I'm going to have to have
a little sip of sweet iced tea.
Don't even get me started
on what a rip off
those food places are.
They jack the prices up
and they've been sitting there
under the heat lamp
for hours
and the employees
are so freaking rude
and sick,
but I digress.
I wonder what
the screening process is
for employees
that have to come in
and out of work.
I wonder how strictly
they're policed.
Oh,
like everyone else,
I actually saw
a bunch of,
but they get their own
little express lane.
I don't think
I've ever seen that before.
Actually,
I think I might have
seen that once before,
but...
Well,
it was at the...
I'm not sure
if it's different,
but it was at the
Providence Airport
and...
The Providence Airport,
which is not actually
in Providence,
but we won't get into that.
Yeah,
and there was like...
It was...
We got there early enough
before the...
Because it closes at midnight
and opens at six
for flight operations,
and I saw like a bunch
of workers go through
like special...
I think federal regulations
require that they're
screened also,
but I've seen a lot
of airports.
I have seen that before.
I can't remember
which airport,
but I think they've
probably got like
a back entrance too.
They probably are screened,
but it's not in public view,
that's all.
Because there's so many
of them that the airports
are so confusing,
there's no way
they're coming in
the public entrance
that everybody else is
and walking through
the same screening
that everybody else is,
even if they have to
with the FastLand,
but I think there's
a way they can park
and employee parking
come in a back way
where they're scanned
and checked that way.
And I wonder
if they half-assed
those searches
because they all think
they trust each other
and know each other.
I wouldn't be surprised.
Because, you know,
anybody in the security industry
will tell you
that the majority
of your hacks
or break-ins
or thefts
or whatever,
the people want to say
their company was hacked,
the majority of them
come from insiders.
I'm just saying.
Yeah, wouldn't they sure?
Yeah, that would be...
Never seen...
Has that ever happened
historically?
And post offices,
of course,
are famous for it,
but I wonder
if there's ever been a...
No, because they've
always been pretty...
I have no idea.
I don't know.
Anyway, let's get back
on a security topic.
You want to go
to another article?
Are we okay?
Are we okay on time?
Yeah, sure.
What do you want to...
Oh, crap,
there's no way
we're going to get through...
Are you serious?
Only ten minutes left?
We've only got about
another ten minutes left.
Oh, my gosh.
Well, then you tell me.
Where do you want
to go from here?
Yeah, we've been
gas-bagging around
for a while.
Encryption.
How about we talk
about encryption?
Sure, we can do
that one, I think.
And actually,
why don't you get
started on that one?
Let me see here.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, actually, yeah.
Okay, this one was...
Yeah, this is an article
found.
Well, that's only from CSO
because I can't read that one.
The first one was from CSO
also, wasn't it?
This is the chief
security officer.
It's, I do not...
It's one of those
trade magazines.
It's free for qualified
individuals, but I'm not
sure how strict they are
and who they give it out
to.
So, I mean, a lot of
these...
DDP.
Well, I'm Mr. Ratchet
of the...
Yeah, C-S-O, online,
all one word, C-S-O-N-L-I-N-E.com.
I'm sure there's a thing
you can fill out and say
you want to subscribe to it.
All of these trade
magazines are, for me,
they're skims.
I skim through it and the
articles that strike my
interest I will read more
thoroughly.
And then the ones that
really I find interesting
are the ones like these
that I pull out to talk
about on the show or to
bring up in the forums or
whatever.
So, it's very hit and
miss.
But, yeah, there's been a
couple good ones.
This one is from November
2006.
It's called How to
Protect Mobile Data.
And it's basically a
discussion.
And keep in mind, CSO
online is aimed or CSO
magazine is aimed for
chief security officers.
So, kind of, as much as
I hate to admit it, people
that are considered higher
ups and management level
executive type stuff.
It's not nuts and bolts
very much.
It's kind of that, what
do they call it when you
write the introduction to
your whole thing that's
dumbed down for, yeah, the
executive summary that's
dumbed down for management.
It's kind of that mindset.
They don't want to know all
the nuts and bolts a lot of
the time.
The executive summary.
This one, however, had a few
things in it.
But the general gist of the
article is about protecting
mobile data.
And I'm sure all of our
listeners can have lots of
stories.
And we're not going to go
into listing a bunch of
them.
But stories where laptops
were sold on eBay that still
had sensitive data on them,
either not erased at all or
that were easily recovered,
though hard drives weren't
wiped properly, the data
wasn't encrypted or anything
like that.
So there's lots of stories
of people's laptops get
stolen in airports quite a
bit, or anywhere for that
matter.
If you lose your laptop, it
gets stolen.
If you don't properly wipe
it before you sell it on
eBay, that sort of thing.
So this article kind of
discusses that from a
security officer standpoint,
but it just had a few facts
in here.
And since we are running
long time, I'm just going
to kind of skip because
there's a couple parts that
I highlighted, and I'm
just going to kind of read
them.
And I actually like to hear
what you have to say on
some of them.
For example, let's see,
this first part is talking
about full disk encryption,
which I think has been a
topic for in the forums
lately.
Full disk encryption or
file-based encryption.
And the article points out
that Windows XP comes with
file-based encryption built
in, as do Linux and Mac OSX.
It's tempting to use that
quote, free technology.
Anything stored in specific
PC folders, like my
documents, is encrypted
automatically.
But this approach has
significant, has a
significant security flaw.
It relies on users putting
files in encrypted folders,
which is absolutely
correct.
If you don't put it in my
documents, and I've got to
admit, I'm bad, at least
not on my laptop and on my
home computer, I just
download everything to the
desktop.
And then move it later,
because a lot of the stuff
is just temporary.
I open it, I unzip it, and
then I delete it anyway.
But for documents or
something, from a security
standpoint, from a business
standpoint, yeah, you want
one of them encrypted.
But how do you enforce that?
And again, think from a
security officer standpoint.
If you're trying to make
your company more secure,
how are you going to
enforce a policy like that
where it's up to the
individual people to
actually follow up on it and
put it into those proper
encrypted folders?
And yeah, and how are you
actually going to make sure
that they're opening up on
those folders because they're
on laptops, and those
laptops are stuck in some
executive's home someplace.
Well, and then it goes on to
say the other option is full
disk encryption, which protects
everything on the hard drive.
With this approach, there's no
uncertainty as to what data is
actually encrypted.
It takes human judgment out of
the equation, so I can tell the
regulators that the entire disk is
encrypted says blah, blah,
director of security, blah, blah.
I'm not going to drop any names
because they might not want to
be associated with a hacking
show.
Yeah, now they go on and say,
you know, there's of course
drawbacks to all these
different things, and this one
that they point out, the fear,
and I'm quoting here, the fear
widespread amongst users is that
full disk encryption will slow
laptop performance.
That's a valid concern, I guess.
Fortunately, laptops built in the
past three years or so,
have the horsepower to run full
disk encryption, so, quote, the
performance hit is non-existent from
the user's perspective, says blank.
The performance hit would be not
on my list at all.
My main concern, as both a user and
as a person who would be probably
the first one they would run to if
something bad happened, is, you
know, say Johnny or Susie user
accidentally deletes their
encryption key.
Whoops.
Yeah, well, and that's where, like,
single sign-on comes into play a lot.
And boy, this topic we could really
go into a lot more, but I guess we
have, for the sake of time, we'll
stick just to the article side of
things, I guess.
But yeah, and this person, again, in
the article points out that, yes, a
slowdown is noticeable, but just
slightly, or it's most noticeable as
it system boot up and when the
laptop hibernates, which, of course,
makes sense.
Now, a couple other, and here's some
interesting things.
I think they're not, most people
might think about these if you sat
down and thought about it, but I
found them interesting.
He talked about how, yes, even with
all this said and done, that, and I'll
read the quote here, in all cases,
data is decrypted when moved to CD
and DVD media, since the usual goal
of copying data to external devices is
to make it available to systems that
may not have the same encryption
tools, which is definitely interesting
to think about.
You know, you can have all that
encryption on your hard drive and
everything, but if you ever email
something to somebody or copy it to
a USB drive that's not encrypted or
burn it to a CD or DVD, the whole
point, like he says, is that that's
to make it shareable, well, you've
got to be careful what you put on
those and maintain them as securely
as you would maintain your hard
drive.
You can have all the system security
on the hard drive itself, but if
you're going to burn a copy and
forget it on the table at the
airport lobby, you kind of shot
yourself in the ass there.
That's true.
Or whatever your encryption of
choice, encryption is good in any
form.
So, and yeah, thumb drives is
something they mentioned, too, which
is another topic of, you know,
people getting data out of
companies.
Some vendors offer encrypted
thumb drives.
The encryption works only with
their hardware.
So, that's another interesting
thing, and they also go and talk
about the BlackBerry, which comes
with sufficiently strong full disk
encryption, which I did not know
that, as well as email encryption,
not to mention remote management
features such as the ability for
IT to wipe out the contents of a
stolen or lost device.
That's cool.
Yeah, I know.
I've got to say, that is pretty
cool right there.
So, those are like the things that I
highlighted from the article.
So, I mean, we can kind of expand on a
little bit in general now, but those
are the things that I underlined as
interesting points.
Oh, yeah, totally.
Speaking of BlackBerry, I said my
thought to BlackBerry to do the
whole lock the person out if she
can't enter her password three
times, because, hey, that's what
she wanted, so I'm not going to
disagree with her, but I'm waiting
for her to come out and say, I
locked myself out of my BlackBerry,
I forgot my password.
Which part, I'm going to say,
call the help desk, not my
problem.
Right.
No, no, she's okay, but just
like I told her, don't forget your
password.
Call someone who cares, look.
Back my head's going, this is the
person who can't remember her
password a couple of times after
she comes back from vacation.
Well, right.
Funny you mention that.
That's one of the articles I
actually wanted to work on.
I wanted to type up for.
Actually, I was going to submit it
maybe to CSO Magazine or
something, but I digress.
But, yeah, I mean, again, the
overall point is, first of all,
there's been an ongoing concern
lately of all these devices.
Particularly USB keys.
And there's been several stories
of security companies, like I
love the one where they went
out to a big company and dropped
USB keys in a parking lot that
had viruses or backdoor stuff on
them.
That's great.
I love that.
I thought that was brilliant.
But it just shows, you know, that
you can go in there and on a USB
key you can, A, do a lot of
offensive attacking damage,
passive sniffing damage, or, you
know, just somebody with ill
intent, you know, so one of your
disgruntled employees can come in
and copy up.
You're going to have the hard
drives encrypted, the server
encrypted, everything backed up
on an encrypted SAN device.
But if he puts it in the USB key,
copies it over and takes it home
with him and puts it on the
global interweb, what good is all
that security and all that money
you've got on there.
So a lot of companies, that is a
valid concern.
That's right.
What?
In your armor.
There's lots of different ways to
do it.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, it was, I was thinking of
the missing link, but that kind of
goes caveman style, I guess.
The missing link, Java man,
Neanderthal man.
There's a great thing on Discovery
Channel this month, by the way,
about that exact topic.
But I digress once again.
All right, well, I think that's
about it.
Yeah, I was just saying that not
only USB keys, that's the big
thing that stemmed interest in this
lately, but, you know, burning
CDs is so easy now.
Employees, most computers are
coming with CD burners, DVD
burners.
A lot of companies are starting
to buy them without that.
Yeah, a lot of companies are
worried about it, that they're
buying systems now that do not
have CD and DVD burners.
And there's a comeback on regular
CD-ROM drives, because not a
lot, but a few of them that are
really, really security conscious
are starting to crack down a
little bit.
Oh, iPods are the great
secret white railings.
And iPods, of course.
They're all ready to go, oh,
iPods are horrible.
And places.
Okay.
You know, I do have one iPod
topic before we close out here.
It's 30 seconds.
It's called i...
And I know I hate iPods, and I
hate even sharing this, but it
is kind of cool.
It's called iSubway Maps, and
it's basically subway maps that
you can download for different
cities.
It's at iPodSubwayMaps.com, all
one word.
iPod offers free downloadable
transit maps for 23 U.S. and
international cities for
viewing on your photo-enabled
iPod.
In most cases, chopped it a
smaller.
Oh, really?
Is it?
No, I actually have another
side of the week.
I have a different side of the
week.
Are we at side of the week
time?
Yeah.
Yeah, because I think this
side of the week is really
uber cool, because this is
something...
See, Nathiri and I have had
this thing we've wanted to do
for the last couple of years
now.
We wanted to go to...
I don't know if you...
You probably remember the
significance.
I don't know if our
listeners remember the
significance of Mink,
Louisiana.
I don't know, really.
Does that ring a bell?
It was the last city in the
United States to finally have
fiber cable pulled into it.
So it's this little, small,
backwater town in Louisiana,
and we always thought how cool
and how funny it would be.
We wanted to go, like, set up
a hacker commune or something,
or we wanted to go down there
and just, like, a population,
I think, of maybe 14 or
something like that, or some
bizarre small number.
We wanted to go down there
and basically just buy it.
Like, we're going to buy all
of your houses.
We're going to set up our own
city hall, our own police,
our own government.
We're going to buy it, and
this is going to be hacker town
or something like that.
I don't know if he wants me
sharing this idea on the air,
but I just did anyway.
Well, this side of the week is
kind of like that.
I mean, it's a pipe dream.
I mean, what are you ever
actually going to be able
to go through with that?
And think of the scrutiny
we would get if we did.
Well, this is kind of like it.
This is an article from,
I think this was from
Wired Magazine this month,
I think, or maybe it was
last month.
It's called Webocracy Island,
and this side of the week,
it is Tribe Wanted,
T-R-I-B-E-W-A-N-T-E-D.com,
all one word, Tribe Wanted.
You pay $230 a year,
where you get membership
in a global tribe
located on the undeveloped
island of Voro Voro,
just a short connecting flight,
jeep, pride, and boat
from Fiji's Nadi International Airport.
And basically what you're doing
is becoming not exactly a citizen,
kind of, sort of,
a citizen of this virtual,
real, non-real,
but unreal place.
I don't know how to describe it.
I guess go to the website
and check it out,
because it's kind of a cool thing
where you actually get voting rights
and determine what they do
with the money that they've got
and how it gets spent
and things like that,
which is kind of a cool thing.
Yeah!
So that's our side of the week.
If I dump the gun,
was it side of the week time?
Yeah, we're doing side of the week.
No, I don't know.
Do we have any announcements?
Other than the little
me whining and bitching
about the server
and housekeeping at the beginning,
I think that's about it.
Oh, we should think
we're just going to learn
the JennyScan,
so go contact him.
Oh, yeah,
we didn't announce
the JennyScan is done.
Yeah, that's awesome.
We actually...
Oh, okay.
Yeah, it is done.
He and I did it on,
let's see, Monday.
Actually, he finished it Sunday night,
sent it to me,
and I kind of glanced through it.
We both put it up on DocDroppers.
It is officially on DocDroppers,
locked and loaded,
final version,
formatted and everything properly,
and I think he posted it
in the forums on Monday as well,
so JennyScan 2007
is now in the books,
so we will do it again next year.
So, yeah,
I'm glad you remembered that.
I'm glad we thought about that
because when he mentioned it on the air
and I said that was definitely
a cool project
and I like it
and it's fun,
it's something everybody can do.
And I need to give a shout out,
if I may,
to the BinRev 561 meeting.
The guys down at BR561,
Blunderbuss,
Tabiz, of course,
StankDeezy,
down there,
actually Downer was down there,
which was really cool.
A whole bunch of people,
they postponed their meeting a week.
Meetings are normally the third Friday,
but I was going to be down there
for the holiday,
so they bumped it back
to a week late,
which was cool
to accommodate me,
so I appreciate that
and had a great time down there,
a cloak dagger,
a bunch of us.
I went to the BinRev meeting
and then,
of course,
to the traditional
BinRev 561 meeting.
After the BinRev meeting ends,
they proceed to head over
to an Irish pub
and the BinRev meeting begins,
which is pretty much
the same thing
except drinking
becomes involved.
And actually,
of course,
I'm not much of a drinker,
so we just basically
continued the meeting,
sat around talking
and had a free Wi-Fi access.
So we hopped on
and I had my GPS device
and we found a geocache
right there in the parking lot.
How weird,
how bizarre is that?
That's kind of freaky.
We didn't actually find it,
though.
That's a funny thing.
We knew where it was,
we were standing on top of it,
but it was a micro cache,
which if you know what that means,
it's tiny, tiny.
It means it's the size
of a pill bottle
or smaller.
And this one was
apparently the smallest one
on geocaching.com.
We never found it.
It was a pin.
You got to find a pin
in the haystack.
I guess so.
Well,
when I was digging,
I got a handful of roaches
and I said,
fuck that,
I'm not going any deeper.
Ew, ew, ew.
Yeah,
tell me about it.
I don't know
who was on shout-out,
so I'll just send
a shout-out to you
because I'm lazy.
Okay, fine.
That'll do.
Yeah.
Closing music tonight
is Ghouls and Ghosts
Poltergeist Remix
on ocremix.org.
And,
yeah,
that sounded pretty interesting.
All right,
hopefully I didn't
go on too many tangents
and drag us
over the limit.
It's freestyling,
it's freestyling.
And plus,
limits are like,
you know,
I'm starting to completely
go out of the box here
with the limits.
So,
actually,
it's kind of good.
I think we're kind of
on time here,
so.
Good,
works out perfectly.
Yeah.
All right,
so as always,
we will see you next week.
Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
Bye.
Thank you.