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 firewalled 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 dreamcast, you need some ISO, let me through
my hard drive rifle, our exchange you could never stifle, and a digital hug, you just caught
the love bug, I bootlegged your CD, I caused the fight between Un and Jay-Z, cause CG, it's
all gonna be free, whether we take it by force or we take it nicely, you feel that rattle
in your bones, when I tell you we just packed 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 crackers, serial phones, source codes, ISO, RAM, this,
this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this,
Hello and welcome to Binary Revolution Radio, episode 181, and today's date is January
9th, 2007. I'm Black Ratchet. And I'm Not Theory. And I'm going to cruise in this evening.
When's the last time you've been on? I think I was last on episode two.
It was a long time, it's been a long time. I've been... I think you did one with Stank
Doug, and then right before I took over, and that, that, that was the last time you were
on, but I don't, I don't even remember how many shows I've been doing, so.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I've been, I've been wrapped up in, in real life for a while.
So.
Damn real life.
I know, it's the worst.
Yeah.
All right, I don't have any housekeeping. Do you have any housekeeping?
Um, I wish I did, but I don't, so.
Well, the only housekeeping I have is, like, you know, I need to clean up my room, because
it's still a bit of shambles from Christmas. I have, like, all my stuff sitting around,
and it's driving me nuts.
Do you get any cool stuff for Christmas? Any cool geek stuff?
I, I got a wireless weather station. That, that's my cool geek thing.
Cool. Wireless, it's like a standard, or wireless, like Wi-Fi?
Wireless, like, uh, it's, it, it, it, the, it has a sensor on the outside that picks up all
the weather, and that's how it relays it back to my comfort of my own home.
Ah, okay, okay. So it was one of those, like, ones that hooks up to the computer, and then
does all kinds of craziness.
That would be cool, and it, it, the thought has crossed my mind. However, it's like, 915
megahertz, and I'm like, yeah, I'm never going to reverse engineer this.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, radio is such a thing.
I do not have the elite skills.
Word.
All right. How, did, are you getting anything good for Christmas?
Um, well, Verizon gave me a PPC 6700, or, sorry, an XV 6700, uh, to replace the pre-dose.
Yeah, I can't, can't have that PPC, you know, PPC has tethering in it. I can't have that.
Tethering? Wait a second. Maybe I'm new. What exactly? Are you talking about, like, using
it as a modem?
Oh.
Yeah.
Okay. Uh, you know, you can do that on this phone, too. You just have to, you know, break
it in terms of service and all kinds of stuff. Yes, the Ryzen really sucks. I understand
that. Uh, but, I actually get service in places, which is nice, and when I had Sprint, I didn't.
So, even though Sprint has the same phone, and the wireless plan is $15 a month, and you
can use it as a modem, uh, if I can't use it anywhere, I'm spending $15 a month for a
modem.
That's very true.
But, uh, yeah, I like it. It's, uh, it's good so far. It's better than the Trio. It's
faster. Uh, the keyboard's not as nice, but the screen is a little bit bigger. It seems
like if Bluetooth works a little bit better. The camera is definitely better, and it has
Wi-Fi.
Yeah.
Ooh.
And?
Trio doesn't have Wi-Fi?
You can get a Wi-Fi card for it.
I wasn't aware, though.
It has to take up the SD slot, which then means that you can't use a memory card, because
they've discontinued the combination memory card, Wi-Fi. So.
No matter what you do with the Trio, you're screwed.
I'm just not a fan.
Yeah.
Which is why you dropped it.
I have so many problems with it, and finally, um, if you, if you bitch at them enough, and
you tell them that you've had a lot of problems, and you've been a customer for a long time,
and just go on and on and on, eventually they'll say, okay, we can swap it. Which they should
do, because for whatever reason, the 6700 is $100 cheaper than the Trio, even though it's
faster, and looks better, and works better, and has Wi-Fi, um, it's still cheaper. I don't
get it. But, what the hell do I know? So, in any case, that was.
Well, it doesn't have the, it hasn't, it hasn't, it's, A, it's not a Trio, and B, it doesn't
have the, the ultra cool, you know, one-handed dialing thing, which all the Trio users like
to tell, saying, oh, I can dial mine with one hand. Um, okay, yeah, and? Yeah, I can
do two on mine, when I have the MDA, which is more or less, I think, the same form factor.
I mean, size-wise, I mean, not the form factor, but, I mean, I can take it out, and I dial
with one hand with my thumb, you just have to make sure you tap the buttons, and you've
got to be careful, and you've got to hit it with your phone, your finger, your fingernail.
Dialing straight-up numbers on my Trio, people said it was so easy, it's, I mean, it's, it's
just the same as dialing on the screen, to me, it's just a pain in the ass, I don't like
it, and I have everybody in my phone book anyway, so it doesn't really matter. So, so,
blah to them.
I just like voice-assisted dialing, that's good.
I bought myself a, and I thought that voice-assisted dialing was the stupidest thing ever, but I
programmed it once or twice, and, you know, it's, it's kind of convenient, I'm sitting
in the car, and I can tap the button, and leave my phone on the floor, or on the windowsill,
or, you know, wherever the hell I want, and, you know, I don't have to do anything, just
calls, but calls a number for me, it lets me be fat and lazy, I love it.
I, I have a Bluetooth headset, which I'll, technically, I still have one, and the audio
is so low on it, I can't use it with my cell phone, it drives me, I was, like, really
pissed off, because I said, oh, it has Bluetooth, and I already have a headset that I, I got
for my PVA, because, I don't know, I just had money to burn, and I was like, oh, I'll
set it up, and I'll use it, and I was like, oh, man, I can, I mean, I left myself a voicemail
message, and I'm like, I can't hear my cell phone, this damn thing.
Yeah, I had a lot of bad luck with, uh, with headsets, I, I had a really good one, um, maybe
a year or two ago, it was Bluetooth, and it had caller ID on the headset, so if you had
it laying on the desk, you could just pick it up and see what it was, even if your phone
was in your bag, and I used it all the time, and I loved it, and I went out to a bar one
night, and somebody bumped into me and smashed the whole thing, it was in my front pocket,
and just crushed it, it was still usable, but it had no more display, and it didn't charge
right anymore, and it started doing weird stuff, so I chucked it, um, and didn't care
about it, but then when I got this new phone, I was like, all right, I'm going to get a Bluetooth
headset, and let me tell you, I got a Plantronics headset, because it said something about
15 hours talk time, and you could use, like, a AAA battery, or whatever, and I had rechargeable
AAA, so I was like, all right, this is great, I can just pop a AAA in it, and just keep a
couple around, and I don't have to worry about charging it if I'm on the road, because I
was on the road all the time, um, maybe two months ago, so I get the thing, and I open
it up, yeah, you can use a AAA battery to recharge it with this other weird thing that attaches
to it, but you're still, you still can't use it, you know, when the battery's dead, you can't
replace it with the AAA battery, so I was like, all right, this is stupid, and it sounds
like shit, let me return it, so then I got a Motorola one that was half the price, and
everybody said that it sounded like shit, so I was like, all right, so I took that one
back, and then I got a Jabra one, which is the people who made my original caller ID
headset, I got that one, which was half the price of the Motorola one, which is now a quarter
of the price of the Plantronics one, and it seems to work fine, nobody's complained
about it yet, I'm talking on it now, maybe if it sucks, then I'll go back to the store
and return it again, but so far, it's been good enough where people haven't been complaining,
and the battery life has been long enough where I don't have to worry about getting cut
off, so hopefully those things will hold up tonight.
I've got to say, it sounds pretty good to me, so, yeah, I don't know, yeah, who knows
what's going on, that could be Bluetooth, it could be the VoIP connection, it could be
GSM to CDMA to ULAW, and it could be the lame-ass Bell's Mind server, who knows?
From Bluetooth to CDMA to Bell's Mind to, I don't know, what the hell you're on, you're on some
kind of VoIP, probably? Yeah, I'm going, you're going Bell's Mind to new phone, to my computer
at home, to my Cisco phone. I think that, I think that path is all ULAW.
Well, we don't have a big round trip, because the, the phone company that I'm using is, like,
you know, 1,500 miles, maybe 1,000 miles away from where my server is, so you've got round
trip time to and from there twice. So, in any case, it's, it's a long route that this
call is taking, so it's surprising that it's actually working at all.
Hey, you never know, we could, like, bounce it off a few satellites or something. We could
have, like, that scene in sneakers where they're, like, routing it through, like, 15 billion
points, and we could have the really cool, really cool graphic of, like, the voice going
back and forth. I was reading Winamp, and it's got all those, like, Melsa video channels,
and I still think it's done, so I flipped it on, and it was that scene, where he's like,
Bishop, Bishop, they've almost got us, you know, they've almost got us, hang up, hang
up. I'm like, dude, this is the dumbest thing ever. Like, the blind guy is staring at the
screen, seeing where the call trace is going through. It's just ridiculous.
Well, you can listen to the South, I gotta say, that movie rocked. It still does. I
mean, you, you look at it today, and it's, it's pure teeth, but at the same point, you
look at it and go, man, that was a cool movie.
Really, really, really pissed me off. It was just dumb. However, I gotta say, that, uh,
man, what was that guy's name?
Whistler? Blind guy? Yeah.
His Braille terminal was the most badass thing I've ever seen.
Whistler?
I don't know if you remember that part.
I actually know someone who has used one of those before, so.
Okay.
No, he's blind. He has to use one. Of course, that now uses text-to-speech, but he used to
use one.
Maybe he was.
He actually used to work for the telephone company, so.
Ooh.
Anyway, so.
Yeah.
Well, wasn't, wasn't, wasn't Joe Ingressia the, the, the inspiration for Whistler?
Yeah, I think that was one of, one of the blind phone freaks. Of course, this man is also
a blind phone freak, but I don't think he was the inspiration. So, who knows?
I guess, uh, I don't know how we got on the topic of, well, I guess I do know how we got
on the topic of sneakers, but in any case, headset is cool. Um, but like I said, I returned it
a bunch of times and now I'm having problems. I'm trying to get a video camera, not a video
camera, but like a webcam working with a microphone, USB on Windows. It's just not working for me.
I've, I've, I've been through probably five of them now and every single one of them has
a problem. Either the video's crappy or the audio's crappy. And the audio's crappy in almost
the exact same way every time, even if it's a different manufacturer. So, I don't know
what's going on. And on two different computers by two different manufacturers. However, on
my, my, my, my father-in-law has been having an issue with his webcam and I, I, I think it's
an issue with his computer. And I, I, I don't know if it's a physical hardware issue or something
that's just really followed up in Windows, but when he starts chatting online with his
video webcam conferencing software, which is, I think, I think he's in whatever they call
Microsoft Messenger these days. Windows, Live, MSN, Messenger, Mobile. They keep on tacking
new names onto it. I don't know what it does anymore. But, um, his processor overheats and
it eventually shuts down. And I'm curious if there's something, you know, taxing the processor.
There's something like seriously wrong with his fan.
Oh, okay. You know, I've noticed that there's a creative something.
The video is really crappy, but the video seems to always work at least. And it, it didn't
have a microphone on it, so that wasn't a problem. But the Logitech ones, I could see
the processor overheating because just capturing the video on my laptop, it takes like 60% of
the CPU. And it's not like my laptop is all that great. It's like a 1.8 gigahertz, uh, uh,
Holy crap.
But, no. No, I'm just saying it's not like some, some...
Oh, geez. You know, it's trash. Throw it out.
Oh, some kind of crap. Um, okay.
Uh, you know...
Go take it down in Las Vegas and go film yourself destroying it.
...might free me to that point.
Uh, no, I don't think I'm going to do that again.
I think...
Actually, here's the question, you know, since, since, since you, you're, you're frustrated
at the trio, is, is it intact? Is it, has it been broken off into 10 different pieces?
I don't know how to answer that. I, I, I...
Okay. Um, I had some...
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Or how's the anger management classes, uh, actually worked?
The first couple of trios I had, um, one just stopped working entirely. It kept telling
me it was flight mode. Uh, it turns out that it had lost the, uh, the programming that tells
it my cell phone number, so it kept connecting to the network, disconnecting, and whatever.
Verizon replaced it. Um, the next one had Bluetooth problems, the next one had Bluetooth problems,
but in between, there was one that, uh, met with an untimely demise. So, I was trying, I
was, I had lost a whole bunch of money, so hardware that I bought from my business had
gone sour, and the warranty had just run out, like, the month before. Um, and everything
that I had at the time was on it, because of a million other factors. I had backups and
all that, but it's just frustrating, because I had to go down to this colo and spend all
kinds of time there and fix things and rent new machines. It was a mess, so I was pissed
off, and I figured, I was, I just got off the phone with somebody.
And you saw the trio standing there, and it was, like, looking at you the bad way, and
you're, like, you little shit, you're going to be destroyed.
I just got off the phone with somebody. I was furious. They had, you know, it was completely
unrelated, but they had just totally ruined my day with something else, and I took my phone,
and I went to throw it into this couch that I have, and at the last second, I don't know
what came over me. I was, like, no, fuck this. It's gone straight to the wall, and it just
exploded everywhere. So, I lost the one gig memory card. I can't find it at all. But I
didn't have insurance on the thing, and I was, you know, milliseconds away from returning
it anyway. So, I was, like, all right, I'll learn my lesson. I'll pay the $50, and I'll
get a new one, and I'll have them replace that with, so.
Oh, I dropped it.
So, how did you explain this to the insurance company?
I dropped it into the wall very quickly without the incentive of gravity.
Oh.
I mean, they don't need to know that gravity is not a part.
Not serious.
Smash.
Drop it.
I let go of it.
No, I don't stand by this.
I guess not, but I don't know. Most people drop it from, like, a, most people drop it
from, like, a, a, a, a, like, you know, five feet, six feet. You probably look like you
dropped it off a 12-story building.
Faster than terminal velocity for a trio. I don't know what that is, but I'd really like to find
out what it is. I'm sure that this device was going faster than that. So, the only way
I could say that I dropped this is if I put some type of aerodynamic, you know, casing
around it and dropped it while I was skydiving.
Not to an aerodynamic.
Which could be possible. But, like I said, it was in my hand. I let go of it.
Which could be possible.
So, it's just not my fault.
Here I was actually thinking, you know, oh, it's a trio is expensive. He's not, he's not,
he's not going to hurl this at anything. Oh, no, no. He just got really angry one day and
decided to throw it into a wall, you know, $400 piece of equipment.
No, I'm, I'm actually fairly good with it.
Remind me never to let you use my laptop, okay?
If it's mine, I can deal with it if I smash it. No big deal. But, like I said, I had just
lost, like, thousands of dollars and I was just, there was nothing I could do about it.
I was also 150 miles away from the colo and I was just totally miserable. Everything was
going wrong that day. So, I had to get a leak. Yeah, exactly. Like I said, had I, had I just
thought at the last time, you know what, now it's no big deal, it'll be fine. But, I decided
it's going to meet the wall or the floor. I was actually just, I threw it so hard, I don't
even know where it hit. It had these weird, like, red marks on it and I looked around
and I'm like, well, the wall's not red and the floor's not red. So, what the hell is
this? So, yeah, the trio will bleed.
You made it bleed.
The streets will...
You can't get blood from a strone, but you can get blood from a trio, just so you all
know.
So, anyway. So, yes. I have to admit, I did smash my device. I was so good. I didn't smash
that thing for a year. Come on. You've got to give that to me.
I'm still ticked off about, you know, for those of you who don't know, not theory-owned a sidekick,
which we actually will cover in this show, because the topic is smartphones and stuff
like that. So, we'll let not theory go flip out on the sidekick for us. And I had a sidekick
one and he bought a sidekick two. And I was like, oh, okay, well, sidekick two, that's
pretty cool. You know, when I initially asked him about it, he said, oh, it was pretty good.
And then he ran into some issues with it. And I ran into a lot of issues. And not very much
with the phone, more like the phones, the political side of using the phone. Am I correct
in this? Yeah. So, not even the phone had an issue on it. It was just not theory being
frustrated with the company who was in charge of software development. So, I'm talking to
him one day. He said, oh, yeah, well, you know, I got rid of the sidekick. Oh, what
happened? And he explained it to me. He said, yeah, so I got really frustrated one day and
I just decided to throw it in the wall and the screen smashed. And I was like, you're
not, you just wanted to get rid of it. So, you threw it against the wall. Yeah. I could
have really used that. Oh, sorry, man.
I didn't mind the sidekick two. I mean, initially I decided to grow up and, you know, actually
get something that was not designed for the Paris Hilton crowd. But I mean, that could have
got me a sidekick two about a year early and I probably could have lost it like I lost
mine three months later. But nothing I can do about it now. Hey, I told you then, you
knew then that I hated that phone and I made like no bones about what I hated and why. So,
can't say I didn't warn you.
And for those of you who haven't seen the opening to, what is it, Hack TV 2? Yeah, Hack TV 2,
if you look at the opening sequence, you'll see Natus using a phone and typing on it and
then you suddenly see Not Theory just come up to him and throw it out of his hand. And that
is a sidekick two. Oh, yeah. It was great. It was, it was thoroughly destroyed after
that. Oh, no. I got my, I got my use out of it. It was, it was good for a while, but
my big problem was danger. Maybe we can talk about this later, but, but I don't know. I'm
pretty happy. Yeah. I'm pretty happy with 600, 700 now. Yeah. I think we shouldn't do
that. Let me think. What else? Oh, the last thing that I got for Christmas that I will not
be smashing is a Wi-Fi camera, which is pretty cool. Yeah, the Nikon Coolpix P3. It's an
8.1 megapixel Wi-Fi camera. So, there's basically just this little piece of software you install
on Windows and you set up an ad hoc network and as you're taking pictures, you can transfer
them right to your PC. Now, there's a bunch of DSLR cameras that already have this type
feature, but this is the first consumer model that, that has it. And I'm in the process
right now of trying to reverse engineer their, their protocol so that I can write my own application
that'll pull the pictures off of the camera. Because their software is okay, but it doesn't
do exactly what I want. So, that's what, that's what I've been fiddling with recently. And I
got to tell you, reverse engineering, reverse engineering is a lot of fun, but it's, it's
not theory is hardcore. It's really difficult with this particular piece of hardware because
it sends back so much data. You know, it sends back like a two megabyte picture with all kinds
of crazy header information. It's going to take me a while to figure this out, but hopefully
I will.
I assume you fired up Ethereum or WiderShark, whatever they call it this week.
Yeah, definitely. I fired up WiderShark.
Got it, right? You know, sniffed the stream.
A bunch of negotiation back and forth from the camera when it starts up, when it goes
into a certain mode, when it's taking a picture, all of that stuff. So, I've got all the data
there. It's just, you know, kind of plotting through it, plotting through a bunch of different
scenarios and, and seeing which bytes change, which bytes don't change, and trying to figure
out what's going on. Some people have tried to document the protocol, but I don't think
it's the exact protocol that, that they advertise it as. I think it's kind of their own
magical thing. But it doesn't look complicated.
Yeah, exactly. My little pony protocol.
It's a magical protocol with ponies.
I don't know. I think it's, uh...
MLPP colon slash slash.
Is it like, so can you, like, pop the camera up someplace and, like, fire it over the 802.11,
like, have it, like, take a picture and, like, tell it from your computer to take the picture?
I won't stop, you know, I won't derail the show to do it now, but I'll, I'll kind of fiddle
with it as we're talking, see if I can find that. I know that they do have control, uh,
applications for this, for some of their cameras. I don't know that this camera supports it.
They do have something, when you go into Wi-Fi mode, um, it's got a listing of all of the
different types of, uh, types of, like, Wi-Fi sub-modes that it can go into. Um, and I think
there's PC mode, shoot and transfer, which is when you take the picture and
save it to the internal card, it transfers it to the computer. Or you can save it to the card
and transfer it to the computer simultaneously. Um, and then I forget, oh, there's, like,
transfer all pictures, transfer marked pictures. So as you're taking pictures, like, you can mark
them and say, yeah, I want to transfer this to my laptop. And then instead of hooking, instead
of, like, swapping the card out, if you don't have a reader, you can just, you know, pop the
thing online, set up your AdHawk network, and just move all the pictures across. It's, it's
kind of convenient, but if you've got a reader, you know, it's faster to, to use the, um, to
use a, to just take the card out, pop at the reader, and then drag all the pictures. But
it is.
Yeah, because the, the bandwidth, the bandwidth for 8 or 2 to 11, whatever it is, I mean,
even if you're talking about, like, G, it's, it's not as fast as the reader would be.
G, but I imagine that the process, unless you have, like, USB one, is really not all
that beefy. And when it, when it's taking control of, you know, the Wi-Fi hardware and trying
to read off the card and negotiating this protocol, it's got to take some type of formative. So
hooking it up with a USB cable or putting it into your reader is probably faster. What
I found out, actually, is I have a, it takes SD, I got a 2 gigabyte mini SD for Christmas
also that I put into this thing. But when I put the 2 gigabyte card in my laptop, it doesn't
work. Because my laptop's reader, for some reason, just doesn't understand 2 gigabyte
cards or something. However, in my 6700, it works, no problem. I put it in, it says, hey,
it looks, it looks like you've got a bunch of pictures on here. Would you like to check
them out? Would you like to email them to your friends? It's crazy.
Yeah, that's the one thing I did not get for Christmas that I was actually, can I just
point out, I did not get a mini SD card.
You have the MDA, which MDA is supposed to?
Some point in the future.
The MDA, it's the HTC Wizard, which is the T-Mobile MDA, which is the, I don't know what it's
called internationally. But HTC makes it, Wizard is the, not what it's called, but over here
it's marketed as the MDA. Magician, I think? No, no, no, the 6700 is the Apache. Yeah,
which I always found amusing, because I always wanted to run, like, I got a 6700, I wanted
to run Apache on it. I think there's probably some, well, the PPC, the 6700 is also CDMA
and mine's GSM, and I think the processor's beefier on it, and I think it might have some
more storage, and the hardware's slightly different. But, I mean, more or less, all of
the phones, they all have the, more or less, the same form factor, I mean, different buttons
and such, but the, ah, crap, I don't know if the, the next step up from mine, which is
the new, oh, Hermes, Hermes, that's what it's called, is the one that just got released by
Singular. It's, essentially, it's my phone, except it has, like, a couple more buttons
on it, and the processor speeds faster. And the keyboard layout is slightly different.
But, I mean, using it, it's, like, almost identical to my phone. The keyboard flips out the
same way, all the storage slots are the right one. Titan is, like, the latest, greatest new
one, and I think the only, I don't know what the Titan is, I've never heard that one.
I think it may have either the 416 megahertz processor, 417 megahertz processor that mine
has, and it has a 2 megapixel camera as opposed to one, as opposed to one 3. Ah, man. Are we,
are we getting onto the, the show topic already? Maybe we should save this.
I think we kind of, like, kind of, like, both on there. So, let's go, oh, maybe it is the
Titan. Maybe that is the one I'm thinking of. I, I think it's slightly different because
the Titan is, um, has certain features that, um, the one, from, the one in Europe has certain
features that the one in America doesn't have. Like, for example, it has a, you could use the,
you could use a built-in camera to make video phones calls, and Singular apparently doesn't
want you to do that, but. I can't wait to check them out overseas, see how much better
they are. Yeah. All right. So, actually, let, let's take a pause here and read the email
and take a, and we'll let everyone slobber go over for more with, uh, talking about smartphones
and generally just a, sort of a conversation between Knot Theory and I.
Um, our first email tonight is from VoltageX and it's, hi, host and co-host. Uh, any ideas,
for what? 1-800-418-6264 is. Has to be one of the stranger numbers I called. Keep up the great
work, VoltageX. And I gotta say, this is the first time I actually gotta, we gotta have an email
asking us to identify a number. And, uh, something, something, like, right now, if, like, people are
listening to the stream, if this one streams, I guess that's kind of housekeeping, uh, that we haven't
been streaming over the past weeks because of the, uh, server issues. And last week we had
a twofer of 179 and 180 being released almost at the same time. So, I'm gonna add this up
and we're gonna try to put it on the stream this time. I'm not sure if the stream's working,
but we'll find out tomorrow night because we're recording this on a Monday. But, um, did you
actually call this number? Oh, okay. Well, I, I, I, I, everyone's probably calling it right
now as they're listening. But, um, I, I think, I think the older generation, like, the old
farts like you and myself will actually understand if we, if, if we hear this number. Because it
says, enter your message and then it beeps three times. And for those of you who don't
know what that kind of stuff is, it's a beeper number. It's a 800 number that goes to someone's
beeper. So, you can essentially, if you want to talk to this person, just dial in your phone
number and hit, hang up and you'll get a phone call relatively soon. Probably becomes some
guy saying, who is this? Yeah. What's a beeper? I've never heard of a beeper. Why don't
they just use a cell phone? Actually, the, the, um, I, the beeper, my friend and I, we
were trying to figure out when beepers will actually come back as a retro craze. Because
he actually, he has, he has a beeper for his work because he goes into certain areas that
he can't carry a cell phone in for certain security reasons. He works for the government.
We'll just, we'll just leave it at that. And, um, he has this beeper and like, for the
longest time when he says, well, here's my beeper number and you can get to me if, you
know, if you need to contact me at work and I'm not at my desk. And like he, he told me
and two friends and we all basically just looked at each other and saying, okay, well, how
do you use a beeper? Cause we forget. Like we couldn't, we couldn't remember if it was
like, I actually remembered how to use it, but my friend just kept on calling the number
and hanging up thinking it was going to grab his caller ID, but it didn't. Oh, that was
cool. I was smart. I knew how to punch in the digits after the things beeps and then
hang up and wait for the phone call. I'm leet.
Actually, I got into a discussion with a younger guy a couple of months ago about beepers and
he was like, dude, I've never known anybody who had a beeper. Why would you have a beeper?
Like cell phones were super expensive back in the day. That's why. Not even the cool
alphanumeric pagers. I'm talking like straight up just. Yeah. Like the, like the 12 digit
LCD display with like eight segments or seven segments or whatever. Oh yeah. Yep.
That's what I was actually, I remember when I first actually got like played with one,
like my, um, uh, I had, I had a friend who was able to, who gave, let me borrow his for
like a, like an hour or so to like, let me fiddle with it. And I thought it was the coolest
thing ever because I could call a phone number and make it, and make it like do something.
I think it was like 12 at the time. So I was easily impressed.
Well, surprisingly, there still is a lot of pager traffic out there. Like doctors have them.
And then like you said, your buddy at work has them and all that kind of stuff. If anybody's
interested and you've got an old scanner lying around, you can build what's called an FSK
decoder, a two level or a four level FSK decoder. It's a very simple schematic. You can hook
it up to your scanner and you can plug it into some, uh, I think, trying to think what the
software, I think the software might be called WinFlex because there's a couple of pager
protocol standards. There's POCSAG, that's P-O-C-S-A-G, GO-L-A-Y, G-O-L-A-Y, and
FLEX. And if you've got a four level FSK decoder, you can listen to all of them and you can
hook that up and you will just have a crazy time watching all these doctors' pages like,
you know, patient, you know, so-and-so has gone into labor, please come to the hospital
or, you know, so-and-so has had a heart attack, all kinds of stuff like that you'll see.
So if you got, if you got a couple of spare bucks for some parts and you're willing to do
some soldering, look up FSK decoder, hook it up to your scanner and, uh, and screw around
with it.
Well, can I, like, say if I have a scanner and I have, like, a line out, can I just
literally, like, you know, put a, plug that into my computer and have my computer do all
the FSK decoding?
No, the problem with that is the audio out from it goes through a little bit of, uh, special
processing to make voice sound a little bit better.
So it kind of mangles the signal that comes out, like this, and it's very important,
phase shift of different things.
It's very important to be able to do the FSK decoding properly.
On some scanners, supposedly it works because they have what's called a discriminator output
as opposed to just a straight audio output.
But if your scanner doesn't have that, you can wire up a discriminator output.
You can just Google whatever your model scanner is, discriminator output, and there'll be somebody
who's got a page that describes how to do the model.
But it's usually just one very simple, um, you know, solder a wire to this part and hook
it up to your FSK decoder.
Should be, I mean, even if you haven't soldered all that much before, um, if you're feeling
a little adventurous and you're willing to void your warranty.
I'd be willing to void my warranty and I'd be willing to crack my scanner open.
However, I wouldn't be willing to risk losing my scanner because that would make me sad.
Yeah.
Well, there are also places that you can take your scanner and send it away.
Yeah, of course, that'd probably cost like an arm and a leg.
You know, I don't think it's that expensive.
And you know what, honestly, if you have like some type of local ham radio group or something
like that, if you bring your scanner there and you tell people, yeah, you know, I want
to do some, you know, amateur radio work and I want to listen to these signals, they'll
probably hook you up and say, oh, this is how you do it.
Oh, let me show you how to do it.
You know, all those old timers will get excited.
Yeah, I want to own some pagers there, old dudes.
Can you help me out?
Oh, you've got to tell them that you want to listen to like, I don't know, some type
of Ritty or Bordeaux or some other weird obscure protocol that's coming.
Dude, Ritty's elite.
Ritty is elite, I've got to say.
It's pretty cool.
Oh, well, I mean, just go on a complete tangent here as we're talking about ham radio buffs.
Have you heard the news?
No, ham radio has dropped the Morse code requirement for HF.
Oh, you know, I did hear that from someone.
So what does that mean?
That my old technician no code that then became like some kind of worthless?
Oh, yeah, your previously worthless for HF no code license now entitles you to HF privileges.
Now, does that mean I'm a technician or a general class?
You're a technician.
You're not general.
So technically, you know how tech, for those of you who don't remember, listen to our ham
radio episode with myself and not theory.
I don't know when it was, but just look at the archives.
And no code techs now have the same privileges as what was then just a pure technician class.
So we can now operate on HF.
I don't think we can operate yet, but they've released the bureaucratic processes.
They say, we're going to go drop this requirement, get ready for it.
And then they say, like, 30 days later, okay, the requirement's dropped.
You can do this now.
And I don't know why they do that, but.
Yeah, see, when I did my license initially, there was novice, no code tech, tech plus, general, amateur, and extra.
And then they dropped tech plus and then made it, I thought, novice, technician,
and then anybody who was tech plus became general.
No, I don't think that's how it happened.
I think you're wrong.
No, I think they dropped.
I could be wrong.
It's been like, I don't know, six years.
I actually sort of fell back into it about, oh, six months ago,
and then all of a sudden the antenna got ripped off my car.
So that kind of dropped that right in the tracks.
But I think as it's, I don't know.
But if you, you know, get an amateur radio, it's cool.
Just leave it at that.
Listen to our, listen to.
Oh, I want to hear this.
Oh, I was driving, where was I driving?
I was driving, no, I was driving to the Walmart parking lot in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
And I was driving along, and there was a low tree.
And I heard my antenna scrape across it, and it just sounded funny.
And I just thought it just scraped across it.
And then I look when I get home, I just, you know, I think it was like the next day,
I come out to my car, and the bag mounts there, but not the antenna.
It got ripped out.
Yeah, I was like, oh, man.
And actually, I think this was, well, probably at least six, maybe even nine months ago.
And I haven't taken the mag mount off by car.
It's just sitting there.
It looks cool, whatever.
I'll go break down a coat hanger, bend it out, make it to the proper wavelengths,
jam it in there, we'll be all set.
Yeah, I'm insane.
I'm Decoder Jr.
Chats Decoder.
I'm not even going to attempt to put myself up on that pedestal.
So our next email is from Anonymous, and this is a long one,
so I'm going to stumble through this one.
I heard another listener bring up GUIDs again.
I was the first guy to write in this using them in MySQL.
GUIDs are called UUIDs in Unix environments.
I probably should have mentioned that or just asked about 16-byte integers to avoid confusing.
As for the Windows registry, classes are represented by GUIDs, not necessarily programs.
The purpose of GUIDs is to uniquely identify something with sufficient assurance
that unintentional collisions will not occur, ever.
Second Life likely chose GUIDs to identify objects because they can rest assured that they will never run out of them
and very likely never generate the same one twice, assuming the rules are followed for generating them.
In times long past, UUIDs slash GUIDs were generated based in part on the MAC address of the computer and the date and time.
People didn't trust computers to reliably generate random data.
As technology advanced, computers began to have multiple MAC addresses or share MAC addresses in clusters,
and were becoming capable of generating strong pseudo-random data to use in GUIDs.
The current rules are to use pseudo-random number generators and generate GUIDs.
UUIDs are certainly not new, and the general idea of whereas sequential primary keys must be generated or verified by a single central entity to avoid duplicates.
UUIDs have sufficient entropy to be assumed unique regardless of where they were created so long as they were created following the rules.
Also, from what I understand, if you throw enough money at MySQL, it can handle unimaginable amounts of use.
And Second Life is liquid money.
They virtually have no cost in our pure profit.
At heart, a GUID slash UUID is really only 16 unique bytes.
In Windows, this is commonly expressed by an opening brace, curly brace that is, 8-4-4-4-4-12 hexadecimal characters.
Closing brace.
Storing hexadecimal characters as a plain ASCII in a car 66...
Is that car?
I don't know how you pronounce that.
Char or car?
I always had a problem with that.
Char 36...
Hmm?
Char, okay.
I think it's car.
Sorry, I was right.
Car 36 column is sloppy at best.
Car 36 sounds like hyphens and braces are being stored in the column as characters.
That's like storing date times by converting them to a string and saving them to a column.
It's just not efficient, especially not for a primary key.
It is good database practice to keep primary keys as concise as possible.
If a GUID is 128 bits or 16 bytes and a byte is the same thing as a char,
then it should be accurately represented in a char 16 field.
It's not good practice to use a char as a primary key, so I didn't want to do that.
If my memory served me right, my SQL also pitched a fit when I tried to.
Even without assigning a primary key to a column, it merely displaying it in the terminal would scroll up the terminal,
because it would literally be trying to print control characters,
and that made DB maintenance a pain in the butt.
The project I was working on was eventually canceled,
but had it continued, I would have used an 8-byte integer column in lieu of a car route.
Car route.
It's a shame that to use MySQL, I'd have to sacrifice half the entropy of the primary keys, though.
What do other people do when they use unique identifiers that can be generated disparately
or merge into a central MySQL table?
This cannot be a new problem.
By the way, it just occurred to me that in the near future,
we're going to have a new name to call these GUIDs or UUIDs.
IP addresses.
IPv6 addresses are, in fact, 16 bytes long.
Whew.
Boy.
Yeah, I know.
Seriously, people are writing, like, epic letters.
I mean, not to discourage them, but, man, I'm just not good at reading this stuff.
And I've got to say, that's the most complete definition of GUIDs slash UUIDs I have ever heard.
Whew.
He really should attach, like, a KRAD handle to the letter
so he can give it to, like, proper attribution and stuff.
Yeah.
So you're the database genius.
Do you know how to store a GUID into a, I can even say, Postgres table?
Sure.
You make a byte column and you put an index on it.
I don't see.
Just use Postgres.
Yeah, you know, yeah, I'm pretty sure that Postgres doesn't have this type of limitation that he's talking about,
where it kind of gets upset when you use a car 16 as a primary key.
But, you know, I could be wrong.
I'm pretty sure that Postgres does have some type of row ID mechanism that can be used so that if you have multiple machines,
it sounds like he was talking about what do people do when they need unique identifiers that can be generated disparately
and merge through central MySQL table, I think what a lot of places do is they take unique, like,
each database server has a unique machine ID and it has its own row IDs,
and when you take those two numbers and put them together, then you have a unique ID no matter what.
Even if the row IDs overlap, you still have that machine ID to make it unique.
So I worked on a database application for a retail application, and that's what they did.
They had machine ID, row ID, and there was never a collision because all the machine IDs were unique.
They were negotiated when the machines were configured.
So it was very simple.
And a lot easier than generating GU IDs because, you know, if your index is something like that,
only index is the first couple of characters of it.
You don't have to worry about collisions and the index and all kinds of other fancy nonsense.
They just used two integer columns, made a composite key, and that was it.
They never worried.
Boy, leave it to not theory to solve the problem in, like, five minutes.
Not even that.
Well, it was the last job I had.
That was what they did.
It's definitely not the cleanest solution.
I mean, it would be nice if you could just depend on these keys to be generated and never collide,
but these guys didn't have faith in that, and they were dealing with a lot of money,
so they said, let's make sure that they...
Well, doesn't SHA-1 have no collisions found in it yet?
No, I thought SHA-1 did.
I thought the only safe ones were 256, 384, and 5.
Oh, okay.
Well...
Perhaps I'm just not caught up with that kind of stuff.
There we go.
Just have a 256-by key for each row column.
For each...
For the primary key for each row.
Yeah.
That's face-efficient.
Yeah.
Just for shits and giggles, SHA-1 broken.
Oh, boy.
I'm way behind those.
Ah, no big deal.
It's not really like it's that important.
Everybody's using 512.
They're cool anyway.
I still use MD5, because MD5 is elite.
I'm old school.
Dude, I use ROD-13 on everything.
I don't care.
Nobody figured it out.
Yeah, but it's a hell...
You've got to, like...
For, like, not theories, like, you know, Uber Elite CD collection,
you've got to download the CD,
and then you have to download the ROD-13 of the CD
for, like, you know, 650 megabytes each,
and then you've got to run and compare against them,
just to make sure it's okay.
It works, though.
It works.
I mean, I'm not going to knock it.
That's what I'm saying.
I don't have to worry about people breaking it.
Yeah.
That's what I'm going to create.
I'm going to create a ROD-13 project bovine.
I'm going to get, like, 15 million computers
and use, like, you know, a nanosecond each,
and we're like, yeah, it's broken.
All right.
We broke all the RODs.
All multiples of 13.
Yeah.
No problem.
All right.
So, let's, like...
Well, technically, we've technically already covered
personal hacking stories,
and I guess we kind of already made headway
into these specific show topics.
So, we're talking about smartphones.
Originally, this episode was going to be sort of a...
This is one I've always kind of planned out
and tried to get it to go this week,
but it didn't work out.
It was going to be a, you know,
cell phone grudge match of why my cell phone
kicks your cell phone's ass,
and we're going to have Natus on here
talking about, lead about his BlackBerry,
and Savant was going to be on here
talking about his Razer and his SDA,
because he doesn't really like his SDA.
But, of course, I think his SDA is kind of broken,
so perhaps that's why he doesn't like it,
but it's good stuff.
But now it's just me and not theory.
We're going to talk about smartphones.
Word to your mother.
Word.
So, I don't know.
For me, when it comes to smartphones,
I guess that there's three platforms, maybe,
that are relevant, maybe four.
There's, like, the standard Java platform
that just runs Java apps.
There's the Windows Mobile platform,
and there's Symbian.
I can't really think of anything else that jumps to mind.
Maybe Linux, if people are considering Linux phones now.
Well, what does the BlackBerry run?
Because I was actually curious about this,
and I really couldn't find much.
Is that just a Java-based?
Yeah, it's got its own proprietary operating system,
embedded operating system.
It does run Java applications.
I don't know which standard.
That's my problem with Java,
is that there's so many standards.
It's just J2SE, J2EE, J2ME, J2ME,
Midlip Profile 1, Midlip Profile 2,
CLDC 1, CLDC 2.
Like, guys, it's fucking Java.
I thought it was supposed to be standard,
so I can use it anywhere.
I can't use Java apps on my MDA.
Well, I can't use, what is it, Google Maps
for my phone.
Ah, that is...
Well, there's a way, like,
if you go to, like, the forums,
you have to download this runtime environment
from IBM, because it runs on Windows Mobile,
and then you do that,
and then you grab Windows Mobile,
and then you, like, you know,
run three times in a counterclockwise pattern,
and you've got to do it while the moon's full.
It was complicated enough that I looked at it
and said, ah, screw this.
I'll just deal with it.
Do you have to use Windows
Genuine Mobile Advantage or something crazy?
Do you want to make sure
your Windows update is correct or something?
Actually, I was in my car...
You want to make sure that...
I was in my car the other day,
and I heard on the radio
an ad for Google Maps.
It was kind of creepy.
Really?
That's...
Yeah, I was like, whoa.
They were advertising it for...
It was Google Maps Mobile,
and, like, they were, like,
talking about this ditzy girl,
and she was like,
yeah, Google Maps folds up the maps
and make them really small
and they fit up in your phone.
I'm like, oh, my God,
I can't keep my car on the road.
It's so bad.
It burns.
Oh, it burns.
It's a deep...
Bleeding out of my ears.
Damn you, Eric Schmidt.
Damn you.
Oh, man.
It's crazy.
I have not heard any...
Perhaps Boston's just leading the way.
Yay for me.
Well, I have actually...
I haven't really been listening
to regular radio.
I've been listening to XM a whole lot,
and I've got to say,
I feel like,
unless it's on the BBC News,
that I completely don't know
about it at all,
and I don't think the BBC
is going to happen.
Hey, you never know.
Well, there's Google Maps in...
They have them for London,
so you never know.
Oh, they do.
I just...
I don't think that the BBC
would have somebody like that
advertised.
I don't know that they really
had anybody advertised
on the BBC at all,
except their own shows.
That's really...
Yeah, they're all
government support over there.
That's socialism
and all that stuff.
Hey, the fucking BBC
is awesome.
I don't care what anybody says.
BBC is like the coolest station ever.
I listen to it
pretty much all day.
All right.
So there's...
I guess you could say
three or four operations.
I don't know.
Technically,
do you...
I don't think you're
the person I should be asking this,
but do you count the hip-top
as a smartphone?
Okay.
Actually, yeah, I would.
It's like weird
proprietary nonsense.
You can't, like,
download regular stations.
No, you can't, no.
Unless they change it
with the Sidekick 3,
which I would not really
bet that they would.
Yeah, I would definitely
consider it a, you know,
smartphone platform.
I don't know how many...
I mean, the last time
you had your Sidekick,
how many applications
did they have released?
Probably both.
Applications or games?
Or both?
No.
Oh, applications?
Probably, like, under 10.
Yeah.
They had, like,
Calorie Cruncher
and, like,
fucking Wallet
something or other.
Hey, it had SSH,
so I was a happy duck.
See, that's true.
You know what?
And I gotta admit,
the SSH client
on the Sidekick...
Well, that originally
was called...
Yeah, I think it was called
Monkey Terminal.
And then they decided,
oh, wait,
we shouldn't co-op that.
We should call it
Terminal Client.
Okay, well,
it was pretty good.
The only thing
that I didn't like about it
that they didn't really
have any answer for me for,
I had to figure out
by myself,
was that when you connect
to a server,
you have to have
some SSH option enabled
that's, like,
allow passwords
to be tunneled
in clear text
or something like that.
Like, some option
I had to set
on my SSH server
before it would
accept the connection.
Otherwise,
it would just silently fail.
And I told them about it,
and they said,
oh, thanks for the bug report.
That's great.
We'll be sure to
update the document.
We'll check back,
and we never did it.
Thanks.
Yes, and this was part
of the reason
why Not Theory's
hip-tough
was in, like,
three or four pieces
by the time
he was done with it.
Listen,
if your users
report a genuine issue
that affects them
and you say,
oh, we're going to put it
in documentation,
you never do,
you're an asshole
because they're doing
your QA
and all that other shit
for you,
and you're just
throwing it away.
You're just frustrating
more of your users.
I've dealt a lot
in the past year
with QA
and documentation
and all kinds of stuff
at this, you know,
fairly large company
I was working for,
and when users
reported an issue
to me
and told me
it was a big deal,
we documented
that shit right away,
but nobody else
seems to do it.
So, screw them.
Bad company.
Naughty company.
I slapped your wrist.
I thought the only thing
he slapped,
so, oh, boy.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah, hip,
I've got to say,
I enjoyed the hip-top.
It was nice,
but the problem is
it was just,
you were locked into it.
There was no expandability.
Like, those six apps
that we were talking about,
those were the six apps
you could download,
and I'm not sure
if they've improved it
with further versions,
but I think they're all
connected to the same one.
So,
it's definitely,
Yeah, I don't really know.
My real big,
I was just saying,
my real big issue
with them
was how close
the platform was,
and even if you wanted
to be a developer,
apparently with the
original sidekick,
it was a lot easier
to get developer access,
but then they started
seeing that everybody
who wanted free ringtones
and stuff
was signing up
as a developer,
so they just locked it down,
and they said,
nope,
you've got to go
through this approval process,
and if you ever want
to release an application,
you can only release
to other developers
unless you go through us,
and you're screwed.
And then,
for me,
it's no motivation
to work on an application
because what if I found
something that was,
you know,
a viable application,
and then they said,
no,
we're not going to support it
because I'm not
going to have people
who use it.
So,
I was like,
you know what,
fuck you.
My sidekick's getting back.
Right before the trio.
Yeah,
that was the major issue.
I mean,
I got into the developer
program,
I think.
I don't know.
I'm not sure exactly
where it goes,
but if you got into
the developer program,
you had to void your
warranty with T-Mobile,
and I was like,
no,
I don't want to do that.
I spent a lot of money
on this phone.
Sorry.
And,
I mean,
it was,
I actually played around
with the emulator
and,
like,
looked at the developer forums,
and there was basically,
like,
you know,
tons of software
you could download
because you were a developer,
and some of them
were pretty interesting.
I will say,
like,
there was,
like,
a peer-to-peer
messaging client,
and I actually think
someone wrote a peer-to-peer
file trading app.
They just couldn't
actually put files on it.
And there was just some,
there was some really cool
stuff out there,
and just none of this stuff
got published.
That was,
that was really frustrating.
And,
when I looked at it,
I had the choice to go,
when I,
so I upgraded to a Sidekick 2
because,
ah,
there was really nothing,
nothing else out there
at that time
within the market.
So,
you know,
I went up to a Sidekick 2,
and I eventually lost
my Sidekick 2,
like,
three months after I got it,
and that was very sad.
And so I went back
to Sidekick 1,
and my contract was up,
and I said,
okay,
I can either get the MDA,
which runs Windows Mobile,
or the Sidekick 3.
And I looked at it,
and I said,
you know,
I really want to go
with Windows Mobile
because the Sidekick
was really starting
to get frustrating on me.
So,
here I am today.
And I'm,
there you are.
It's really sad,
when Windows Mobile 4
Yeah,
that's actually kind of
weird,
isn't it?
Hey,
I've got to say,
Windows Mobile 5
isn't half bad.
I mean,
there's some odd quirks
about it,
but there was some odd quirks
about the Sidekick 2,
and you just learn
to work your health
around them.
Have you actually
ever used,
hmm?
Have you ever used
a HIPTA,
not a HIPTA,
a BlackBerry?
You know,
I've turned around
with Nattices a little bit,
and it was,
you know,
overwhelming.
It seemed like,
okay,
it's a phone,
and it can run
Java applications,
but other than that,
it was,
I mean,
that's all it did.
And for some people,
that's great,
because it's simple,
and it's,
you know,
serves its purpose,
and it doesn't crash
like my Windows phone does.
I will admit wholeheartedly
that my Windows phone
crashes,
even my new one,
but you know what?
I need something
that I can get in
and screw around it,
so.
I can't say I've ever
actually had my phone crash.
I've just had applications
that walk up on my phone.
Like I have this little,
I have,
like I said,
I have a T-Mobile MDA,
and I have like on my
today screen,
like it grabs the weather
for me for like the next
four or five days,
and I told it to update it
once,
and I lost my connection,
and the program locked up,
and it was just like,
you know,
constantly,
in Windows Mobile 5,
you don't have an hourglass,
you have this little round thing
that like changes color,
and it was just sitting there,
and actually,
I let it sit there
for a while,
and then I got a phone call,
and none of my buttons work.
I couldn't answer the phone,
and I was like,
ooh,
okay,
I think I'm going to
have to reboot now.
Yeah.
Yeah,
that's unfortunate,
but,
you know,
again,
for me,
it's worth it,
because I can get in there
and write applications for it,
and it's just stupid.
Oh,
it's amazingly easy,
and you don't have to
void your warranty,
but,
yeah,
exactly.
And the emulators are amazing.
The emulators are amazing.
I mean,
you get a copy,
I mean,
you have to buy,
unless you have,
like,
connections someplace,
like not there,
and I do,
yeah.
Or you go to a release event,
and they give you a free copy
of Visual Studio 2005,
you're like,
thank you.
Like,
you have to pay,
like,
a good chunk of change for it.
I think it's,
I don't even want to know
how expensive it is,
but you have all,
like,
the mobile emulators there,
and you can grab them,
install them,
and you essentially have
this,
like,
smartphone up on your screen
that emulates everything
that it would on an actual phone.
It's uncanny.
But,
it's easy to develop before.
And you can develop stuff
for,
like,
BlackBerrys,
but I like,
I had to set my,
I'm basically the support person
for my supervisor
and her BlackBerry,
because she doesn't understand
really how to use it.
Actually,
she,
I won't say that.
She has improved greatly
over the past couple of months.
I've actually become
quite impressed.
But,
like,
I played with her BlackBerry,
and I was just,
I was very underwhelmed
compared to,
like,
my Windows mobile phone.
I mean,
it,
it was,
it's,
I,
I wholeheartedly agree
with,
uh,
not theory.
It's simple,
it works,
but I just was like,
this is,
this sucks.
I really didn't like
the interface either.
Yeah,
it seemed kind of clunky
even the thumb wheel
to get around.
I didn't really like it.
I'd like to be able to,
like,
touch the screen
and do things.
I don't think any BlackBerry
No,
I don't think so.
Yeah.
Yeah,
for me,
that's a problem.
I like the touch screen.
I like to be able to
click around on my applications,
click around on the web browser,
you know,
draw shit on the screen.
Boobies.
I like to do all that kind of stuff.
I have a strike again.
Yeah,
I,
I mean,
I,
I'm,
I'm pretty much the same way,
but,
um,
like,
I,
I see people with like BlackBerry
is like,
like the first generation models almost,
like the,
like black and white screens
and they're still plugging away on them.
So,
I,
I will give,
I will give RIM like lots of props
for making a hell of a reliable system
that seemed to work for years on end.
So,
you really don't see that much
with Windows Mobile Phone.
I mean,
how many people do you know
that are actually running Pocket PC 2003
on their phone?
Yeah,
not too many.
I,
you know,
I have one phone
that I,
that I plan on using for a little bit
that's got,
uh,
Windows Mobile 2003,
but honestly,
I'm,
I've gotten so used to Windows Mobile 5,
I'm just not excited about going back to it.
So,
and who knows,
I'm sure they'll come out with another version soon
that'll make me decide.
Yeah.
Well,
apparently it's already out there.
They call them there.
It's codenamed Crossbow.
Yeah.
Ooh.
Um,
I've never used Symbion.
Have you?
Um,
actually,
I have a,
sorry,
I don't know,
I just got a bad reception.
Um,
I have a Sony Ericsson P910,
and I have a Nokia,
I think it's a 3650.
They both run Symbion.
Um,
Symbion,
by far,
lets you do way cooler stuff
than Windows Mobile.
Blast for me.
But when I went to get into the phone,
no,
I'm serious,
you can access anything on the phone.
That's why there's all,
there's so many viruses
and all kinds of worms
and crap like that
for Symbion phones.
Because anything you want to do
with the phone,
you want to turn the phone on silently
and call a number
and hide it from the user,
yeah,
you can do that,
no problem.
You know,
you want to turn on the microphone
and record something
and then,
you know,
send MP3 files
or whatever,
you know,
encode them into MP3
and send them off to some website
and just spy on people,
yeah,
you can write an application
to do that.
All silently
without the user having
any clue what's going on.
Windows Mobile,
you really can't do that.
Like,
you make a call
and it shows up on the screen
and there's just no way
to hide it.
But Symbion,
you can get right down
into the guts of it
and you can say,
I want to do this,
this,
and this.
I want to turn on the camera,
I want to illicitly send pictures
to Russia,
you know,
whatever you want to do,
you can do it.
But the development
is a lot more complicated
than Windows Mobile.
You've got a program,
I think you've programmed
I think so,
yeah.
I don't know
that there's anything
any easier than that.
It's not really a big deal.
It's not like it's hard
to program in C++,
it's just,
you know,
you've got to be
a little more careful
about it.
But I just remember
getting the development
environment
was just really annoying.
It reminded me a lot
of Palm development.
I don't know
if you've done any of that,
but Palm development
is a nightmare.
I guess that's another
platform we could say
for smartphones.
The Palm,
like Trio 600,
Trio 650,
700.
That's something
I didn't think of.
Yeah,
I didn't think of it now,
honestly,
because I've had
such bad experiences
with Palm.
I know people
that have old Trios
and they're like,
oh,
it's so easy to use,
it's so great.
You know,
I love feature X,
Y,
and Z about it.
And I looked
at my 700,
my 700W
that I had
from Verizon
and it had
all these features,
but only because,
as I find out now,
going to the 6700,
that Palm had gone in
and made those
modifications to Windows.
Like,
Windows by default
is definitely not
as user-friendly
on the Today screen
as the Palm.
That's interesting.
It's easier to search
for a contact.
Yeah,
like if you want
to search for a contact,
you just start typing
it on the main screen.
I'm pretty sure
on my phone,
if I try to do that now,
it'll just start.
Hold on,
I think I have my phone
right here,
so let's go try that
on mine.
But,
yeah,
I used a Palm
Trio
and it was nice,
but I just,
I don't know,
Palm seems to have
lost the usability war,
or at least
the mindshare war.
And it just
doesn't really seem
to be going here.
Actually,
I really need to reboot
my Windows mobile phone
because it just woke up.
Yep,
it's just staring at me
as I type away here.
Theory sucks.
Well,
the,
I don't know,
the,
the Palm
based phones,
they're nice
from a usability
standpoint,
but again,
from a developer
standpoint,
just like Symbian,
it's too much.
If I want to make
a simple application
that does something,
you know,
like connects
to a website
or,
you know,
draws something
on the screen,
I should be able
to do it
in 10 minutes.
It should be
stupidly simple.
If I want to get
in and do crazy stuff,
yeah,
it's going to take
longer,
but it seems like
Palm and Symbian
err on the side
of letting you do
nearly anything
you want to do
at the expense
of making everything
really hard to do,
whereas Windows mobile
lets you do
some things,
but not really
everything,
but almost everything
you do
is really,
really simple.
You can get
into native code,
which is C plus,
you know,
embedded visual C plus plus
code and do
complicated things,
but for the most part
you can stay
in C Sharp
or Visual Basic
and make,
you can just
churn out apps.
You can even
stay in C Sharp
and import
native code into it,
like,
for example,
if I wrote
an application
for Pocket PC
called MFR cubed
and it was
a blue box,
red box,
and 16 touch zone,
yeah,
that was pretty cool.
I got to say
I was kind of
impressed with that.
I think I wrote it
in, like,
quite literally
an afternoon
and I think
most of that time
was actually
sat down
trying to figure out
how to get it
to play sounds
because that's
kind of important
when you're
making a blue box.
Yeah,
you know,
I wanted to ask
you about that.
I remember
you had mentioned
you wrote
something like this
a while back
and I haven't
really played
around with sound yet
so I'm going to
have to find out
where you found
all your cool
sound info.
I know I found
it back in the day
but I don't know
where anybody was.
It's all MSDN
and it's actually
you kind of import
this unsafe library
and do some
like slight
technical
tiggerly pokery
and get it working
but after that
it works fine.
It's simple
and I mean
the one plus
about Windows Mobile
is that when you're
developing stuff
the documentation
is incredibly impressive.
The one thing
Microsoft does right
is their MSDN.
They document
everything for you.
I was having
this conversation
today with
Blunderbuss
and IRC
about how we
were comparing
the PHP
documentation
website to the
MSDN
and MSDN
just blows it
out of the water
and PHP
is pretty good
for documentation
but it just
pales in comparison
to MSDN.
I really wasn't
all that impressed
with MSDN.
I guess the things
I was looking for
just weren't really
documented all that well
or maybe I just
I don't know
where it looks
for the stuff
I was talking about.
Well Nathiri
was sitting there
on MSDN
typing in
search for
mobile phone
virus creation.
Damn it.
Mobile phone
rootkit.
Damn.
I hold the mouse
up to my mouth
and say
computer
transparent
aluminum
and MSDN
didn't do a damn thing.
Well that's because
you were on a Mac.
Very.
Oh that's right.
I didn't have the button
to click.
Damn it.
I needed to
right click
for that.
Wasn't Scotty
on a Mac
for that I think?
I think he was.
I think back then
those were the
only computers
that had mice.
It was like
1984.
It was good stuff.
A keyboard.
How quaint.
Best line ever.
Yeah and then
you know what?
That's ridiculous.
Okay.
Somebody who
types on a keyboard
their whole life
they can't type
as fast as a guy
who never had to
use a keyboard
before because
everything was
voice commands
and now all of a sudden
he's like one
with the computer.
He's Scotty.
He can do that
kind of stuff.
What an asshat.
I don't like that.
Dude if Spock's
walking over there
he just has to put
his hand up to the
monitor and like
you know
controls everything.
He becomes one
with the interweb.
He's got like
some kind of
crazy Jedi mind
trick.
Spocky
mind melds.
Good stuff.
There you go.
All right.
So another thing
with smartphones
is the whole
everyone's talking
about you know
new stuff.
I mean we're
putting out
acronyms.
GPRS,
ED,
CDMA,
UMTS.
Did we talk
about HSPDA?
I don't think
we did.
HSDPA.
I kind of
completely
bumble over
that.
That's the
old when you're
talking about a
smartphone.
I mean a
smartphone is a
phone basically
with you know
all the interweb
stuff included
like email
and you know
internet connection
web surfing.
Mine has an
SSH client on
there and there's
all kinds of
like you basically
have a network
connection on the
phone.
Depending on
what you're going
to what kind of
smartphone you're
going to get
you're going
to get
various you
know speeds
depending on
what protocols
it uses.
GPRS,
GPRS is 2G
right isn't it?
Or is that 2.5?
I always get
confused on the
whole .5 thing.
No I don't
really know
what they
consider 2.5
or 2 or
whatever but
it's definitely
not 3G.
No it's not.
But I want to
say that too
GPRS has been
around for a
long time.
Yes it has
actually.
GPRS is
pretty good.
GPRS averages
about 60
kilobits a
second so
you're basically
going to get
the maximum
throughput because
you know when
you're talking
about wireless
connections and
telephones you
know we can
talk about we're
going to talk
about some
crazy numbers
here but the
lag is noticeable
like there's a
definite lag to
it.
I don't really
know how to
compare it but
like you know
when I'm talking
my hip top was
GPRS and like I
would come back I
would like tell it
to load up a
web page and
it would take
about anywhere
between 30
seconds to a
minute for it
to haul down
which I mean
it's good in a
pinch but it
was slow and
even with my
MDA I mean
it's much
better I think
it's much
zippier but
the lag's still
there and I
mean it's not
going to be
replacing my
broadband connection
anytime soon.
No definitely
not.
Yeah well since
we're talking
about MDAs
MDAs and
no you're
just CDMA
why am I
thinking that
MDAs and
a lot of
other GSM
phones now in
the United
States are
actually using
EDGE which
I did not
write down the
acronym and I'm
a moron.
EDGE is like
something like
extended data for
GPRS something
I don't know
it's basically
it's GPRS with
a speed boost on
it and that can
go up to all
the way up to
236.8
kilobytes a
second theoretically
I did some
speed tests with
my edge
connection and
I think I
averaged on a
download about
20 kilobytes a
second so I
don't know what
did that average
out to about
160 kilobytes
and that was in
the middle of
downtown Boston
so that's
probably as good
as it's going to
get for you.
EVDO which is
not GSM
but GPRS and
EDGE are all
GSM based.
EVDO which is
currently in use
in the United
States and I
think that's
about it right?
I thought that
Japan used it.
I don't know why
I think that but
I don't know.
I think WCDMA is
something completely
different.
Who knows?
I don't know.
I just googled
Japan and EVDO
and it's just
something about
Japan rolls out
new EVDO
phones.
Oh perhaps I'm
wrong.
Anyway EVDO is
a CDMA base
which is a
code division
multiple access.
That's just a
meaningless real
acronym unless you're
really getting into
cell phone networks.
EVDO goes up to
about 2.5
megabits a
second download
and 154
kilobits a
second upload.
EDGE on the
other hand has
20 kilobytes
both ways or so.
20 kilobytes
both ways.
My elite speed
tests.
I think I
actually I
think when I
uploaded bin
rev 178 I
uploaded it via my
EDGE headset.
My EDGE
headset.
Let's try it
again.
My EDGE
handset.
Boy I guess I'm
getting tired.
Yeah I think
I think upload
speeds were
slightly slower
but I think it
was actually the
ironic part is
it's faster than
my DSL
connection on the
upload side for
throughput because
my upload on
my DSL at home
is only 128
kilobits.
So my EDGE
I can upload an
episode faster over
my cell phone than
my DSL at home.
my DSL connection
which I found
kind of sad.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Another
standard out
there is
UMTS which is
not deployed in
the United States
yet but Singular
is touting that as
their new protocol
and they said
they're going to
come up with
stuff in 2007.
They're already
selling handsets
for it.
We're talking
about the HTC
Titan and that's
their 8525 I
think that's
their model.
and that's
a new thing
and that has
UMTS support.
Hmm?
I said
no no that
sounds I think
that sounds
right 8525.
Yeah I think
the old one
was the
8125.
UMTS supports
up to 11
megabits a second
down and up
to 384
kilobits a second
up.
So I've got to
say that's
pretty impressive.
and eventually
it might go
up to 3.6
megabits a second
up.
So hey I beat
the hell out of
my edge connection
what can I say?
Also there's
HSDPA which I
don't think is in
the United States.
I haven't heard
of it.
I heard Moo
talking about it
on IRC a lot
over in Britain
and I don't
think it's even
released over there
yet.
It's coming
though so who
knows.
The current
AHSPDA
deployment support
101.8
megabits or
3.6
megabits down
and actually
further steps
are going to
come out soon
to do 14.4
megabits both
ways which is
just crazy.
I remember
when I thought
I was hot
shit when I
had a 10
megabit
ethernet
connection.
Yeah not
anymore man
it's no big
deal.
Yeah.
Now you look
at 10
megabit
cards and
go crap
I can't
sell this
anywhere.
Yeah I'm
looking at
sorry I'm
looking at
HSDPA
on Wikipedia
and they
show the
category 10
the fastest
is max
data speed
14.4
megabits
per second.
Do you
imagine all
the porn
you can
possibly
download
for that?
Oh yeah
you could
have like
four windows
with porn
open easily.
I'm pretty
sure more
than a few
people are
actually saying
what good
does this
do on my
phone?
But you
do surf
the web
on your
phone.
Pulling down
email you
can pull
down like
if you
watch TV
you see
those stupid
little sprint
ads when
they're comparing
themselves to
singular going
look sprint is
so much faster
never mind we
don't have
coverage
anywhere.
But
what really
pisses me off
about sprint
have you seen
these commercials
is you're
using the
guy from
office space
now.
And I'm
like I've
lost all
respect for
you.
Oh really?
I haven't
seen that.
Yeah.
I don't
actually have
TV so I
can't.
Oh you're
lame.
I actually
have everything
TV-ed so it's
sort of like I
don't watch
commercials but I
slowed it down
when I saw the
close movie.
Oh cool I
wonder what the
hill he's in.
Oh he's working
for sprint?
Oh fuck him.
So that may
be sad.
The main
character.
I'm drawing a
blank on his
name.
I can't even
remember it.
In the movie
Peter Gibbons?
Peter yes that's
it.
See if they had
like Lumberg on
their advertising
sprint I'd be
like yeah.
Go do it.
But whatever.
Yeah I'm
looking at some
sprint commercials
on YouTube but
I don't see that
guy on it.
I don't know
he's talking
about this is
the other thing
that gets me.
They're talking
about how they
moved their
free nights and
weekends to 7pm
for us and
that just really
that totally
reeks of 1984
because I
remember when
like my parents
got their first
cell phone and
they had the
free nights and
weekends on it
they started at
7pm and then
they creeped it
up to 8 and
then they creeped
it up to 9.
Now they're
moving us back
to 7 and
thinking they're
doing us a
favor.
I mean
seriously I
expect to get
a little memo
in the mail
saying my
chocolate ration
has gone up
to 3 grams or
something.
Nice.
But yeah
there's my
tirade against
sprint here.
But like so
like these
fast speeds
you're like
oh no just
this to my
cell phone.
One of the
cool things
about like I
know that
my hip top
didn't do it
and this was
one of the
things that I
constantly
waited for when
I was sitting
on my train
diddling with
my hip top
and that
just sounded
really bad
but we won't
get into that.
Diddle yourself
on the train
that's cool.
Yeah.
I bet you
could do it.
Actually one of
the first thing
I did when I
get with a
hip top was
dude I can
surf porn
anywhere and
I like loaded
up like this
little cheesy
porn site and
I showed it to
all my roommates
and they're
like that you
can get porn
anywhere.
Ah college.
Very nice.
But like the
newer phones out
there you can
actually plug
them into your
computer and use
them as a
modem.
So like for
example like when
I take the
commuter rail back
and forth from
work so on the
train in the
morning on the
train in the
afternoon you'll
see me at one
of the desks with
my phone hooked
up to my
laptop and
chugging away
there and it's
amazing.
It's just the
fact that I can
surf on the
train do
anywhere catch up
on my email
you know upload
a bin rev episode
or check the
bin rev email or
check my own
email and surf
the web or I
mean do whatever
you want the
full fledged
interconnection.
It's kind of
slow I will
admit.
I mean it's
not pulling down
uber fast
internet but it
works and I
think mine
supports natively
but you're you
just have to break
Verizon's rules to
get yours.
What do you mean
exactly?
Well you're
tethering or
using your phone
as a modem
because Verizon
says no no?
Right yeah they
don't allow it but
there's a program
called I think it's
called PDA net and
you can download
that and I think
they want like 25
bucks for it and
it re-enables
everything for you
so you can use it.
You're not supposed
to but honestly you
know what you want
to charge me 45
bucks a month for
unlimited data you
know you've got to
expect people are
going to use that
and from what I've
heard the way that
they detect to see
who's using this is
they just give you
this artificial cap of
how much data you can
use per month and
go over it.
Oh what's that?
Two gigabytes I think
it was.
I thought it was I
thought it was five
gigs or five
gigs three months in a
row and then ten
gigs one month or
something like that.
I don't know in any
case it's really not
that much data when
you think about for
a whole month but
then again you know
what I use I actually
do have a PC card
and they have the
same limitations on
that and I don't
even come close any
month going over
because I'm just
using it for SSH
and you know some
other kind of database
work and things like
that stuff that's
really not bandwidth
intensive so I never
come close so it works
pretty well for me.
I think Robert X
cringely decided to
put a test because he
has a PC card and he
just he basically he
found this program
that you know
meters your internet
access and keeps track
of it and he just
set it up over one
month just to grab
his email and he
went over the limit
whatever the limit
was I'm not sure if
it was five or two
and he got like and
he just said I just
use this for my email
and yes I get a lot
of email.
Yeah well you
gotta I also I also
think if you're
working for a big
company and the
company is like you
know putting the
bill for you in
order to not lose
that company's
contract a lot of
time they'll make
deals usually if
you're a regular
person from the
stories that I've
heard Verizon will
be like no it's
impossible they send
you a form letter
that says the only
way you could use
more than 256
megabytes in one
month is to because
they say that you've
used you know 40 or
80 or 160 times the
amount that a
normal user would
use and they say
the only way that
you could possibly do
that is by streaming
video and audio and
shit so.
Yeah like their
term Verizon's terms
of services are like
draconian you can't
use like streaming
video can't use VoIP
can't use streaming
audio like for
example can't stream
your MP3s from your
home server because
that's a no-no it's
it's crazy like it's
stupid stupid Verizon's
a poopy hidden.
All right well I
think we didn't
really cover most of
the topics we
actually wanted to
cover but hey you
know it was a fun
show but I think
we're gonna have to
wrap it up right now.
Really already huh?
Yeah I think we're
actually kind of
running out of time.
If not you know
we'll try to get it
short this week we'll
make up for all those
two hour epic episodes
we've had over the
past couple of weeks.
All right um no
announcements is
actually the
announcements we do
have we announced
that Pooder was still
looking for people for
his Jenny scan.
Pooder's Jenny scan is
done.
I think we uh I
talked to StankDog
StankDog made that
announcement so it's
on DocDroppers.org if
you want to check it
out and call up some
Jenny's.
Do you have any
shouts?
Um I'm gonna shout out
StankDiggy.
Aww that's so nice.
That's love right
there.
That is total love.
Um I'll send shouts
out to I'll send a
shout out to you.
Thank you for coming
on.
I mean I haven't
talked to you in
forever.
Um shouts out to the
guy who's talking way
too much about GUIDs
and uh shouts out to
people who still use
pagers because people
who still use pagers
are cool.
Uh closing do we have
a site I don't have a
site of the week this
week.
A site of the week is
ocremix.org where we
get all of our closing
music and um we are
closing music tonight is
the Hyrule Party Mix
by Knops from uh
Zelda 64 or Ocarina of
Time.
I probably mispronounced
that.
Uh email radio at
binrev.com and um I
guess we'll see you next
week.
Same hack time.
Same hack channel.
I'll see you next week.
Take care.
meet you next week.
Take care.
Bye.
Take care.
Bye.
Thank you.