Episode: 1014
Title: HPR1014: Radio FreeK America 15 (2002/06/05) - Special Rax-only Episode
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1014/hpr1014.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 17:27:27

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Hi, you've reached to a parallel. I can't make it to the show right now, but if you please
leave your name and number, Radio Freak America 15, you'll get back to you as soon as you can.
The number you have reached has been disconnected.
Welcome to Radio Freak America 15. I am not, repeat, not dual parallel. Dual, as you
heard is unavailable this week. He is, as they say, in TV land off on assignment. And who was that?
Walter Cronkite or somebody that used to be off on assignment? Well, turns out years later,
people found out that assignment was the name of his yacht. So when he said he was off on
assignment, he wasn't lying. They weren't lying to you. The media wouldn't lie to you. They
were stretching the truth. Well, they weren't even really even stretching the truth. They were
telling you the truth. Technically, he was on assignment. They just didn't tell you that
assignment was the name of a boat. So anyway, dual is not on Walter Cronkite's yacht or anything
like that. He's working hard and wasn't going to be able to do the show today. So I stepped in and
oh yeah, my name is Rax. In case you're tuning in for the first time,
dual is the phone freak in the crew. I'm the hacker. I'm the hack. I want to get my jolies on
figuring out clever kinds of solutions to things. Well, maybe sometimes they're clever. Maybe
sometimes they're not so clever, but one of the things that we do here on Radio Freak America
is give out free knowledge. And that's one of the things that's sort of the hackers' term,
Radio Freak America. Radio Freak America. Well, the free K is free knowledge. And it's also kind
of a wordplay on freak, like phone freak, which is what dual's forte is. But I want to talk to you
tonight about hacking. And we're going to go back a little bit in time and look at the origins of
hacking and see where and why and how come hacking has gotten to be a dirty word. Well, the
blame it on the media, if you will. As always, on the sign out of the show, we always
says, be the media. Well, why do you want to be the media? Do it. Well, you've got to do something.
You can't just sit back and let them pour all that slap on you on TV or on regular radio. So
that's why avenues like this and rant radio are so cool because they give you and me and anyone
out there who cares to take the time to do it gives you an opportunity to give their viewpoint.
And hacking goes back, oh, quite a ways. I mean, you know, there's hackers, golfers,
called themselves hackers, and you know, it's someone who's not a professional, but you know,
hacking kind of got started or that as it got applied to computers and technology anyway,
got started at MIT, yes, good old Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And hacking was
something that people did there. I mean, it was a higher education institute dealing with
technology. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was an institute of sports or medicine
or whatever. It was about technology and technology can take various types of forms. Of course,
they're doing all kinds of nifty things at MIT these days, but hackers back in the day when things
got started were mainly computer programmers and they would work hard and they would be diligent
and they'd be there all night. And oh, yeah, they forgot to take a bath or a shower when they
came in today because, well, God, it is just so important to work on that program and get it
all figured out who can afford to take the extra five minutes to take a shower. So, but hackers,
aside from that less than admirable trait, had the tendency to be very diligent and work on things
and come up with clever solutions to things and not only would they find those solutions,
they would tell other people, they would tell their peers, they would tell other hackers,
hey, I found this really cool way of doing this. I found a neat way around, oh, I don't know,
maybe getting this donated super secret Xerox laser printer that's in the mid-70s at Richard
Stolman had to deal with and he's being one of the, you know, quintessential hackers of our day.
And we'll talk a little bit more about Stolman later on. But there was a problem with printing and
they couldn't get into things. They couldn't get the source code because, unlike in the hacker
tradition where you share that information, people at Xerox decided to start doing this thing called
proprietary software. And with the proprietary software, they just kept all that stuff to themselves.
Well, hackers didn't do that. Hackers shared their knowledge. So, when someone found a solution
to something, someone invented a better mouse trap or came up with a better algorithm for sorting
or whatever, they would share it with everybody. Why should someone else have to reinvent the wheel?
I just figured out this, you know, cool binary tree or bubble-sort algorithm. I want to share it
with everybody. Let them, you know, I've done all the hard work on it. Let them benefit by it.
That way, people won't have to spin their brain cycles on figuring out a way to sort data.
They can build on what I've done and take it from there and come up with other great things.
Well, that's what hackers originally were. That's where the term came from or that is near as
urban legend can tell that that's the sort of area that it came from. But hacking and hackers,
like everything else, the media got a hold of and twisted it around to their own liking,
to their own devices. Because let's sell it to face it, folks. The media is out there to sell.
And think about it. You watch the 11 o'clock news or 10 o'clock news or whatever time it comes on
for you and what are they talking about? Hey, this cool thing happened or that cool thing happened.
No, it's this train wreck happened and this fire was going on and this many people were killed. Well,
I don't know what it is about our society, but it's kind of like an accident at the side of the road.
You just got to watch. You just got a rubber neck. You know, we've got this rubber neck society
where people just have to stop and look and see the tragedy that's going on somewhere else. Well,
the media knows that people like that and they sell that. They sell advertising, right? That's how
they make their money, one of their ways. So if people didn't have all this rubber necking kind of
iffy stuff to look at, fires and theft and God knows what else. Who'd watch the news? Well,
maybe you'd watch for the weather. Yeah, that's okay. Maybe you'd watch for the sports scores or
if you're into that kind of thing or whatever, but the media found out that that other kind of stuff
sells. The dirty laundry as the song goes. So the media wants to make money. Hey, they're big corporate
America or corporate insert your own country here because we know that listeners out there are
we've got listeners in Germany and Norway and hey, if you're listening from one of the other
countries, please do feel free to email us. Go to oldschoolfreakphreak.com and click on one of the
links. Drop us a note. Let us know where you're listening to us from and let us know how we're doing.
Give us some ideas. Tell us what you like. Tell us what you don't like. And if you got some ideas,
just share it. That's you know, keep knowledge free. Share the knowledge. Keep the things going.
So anyway, the media, the media, the media, they want to have people tune in because hey,
the more eyes that are glued to that set or the more eyes that are reading that newspaper,
does anyone read newspapers out there anymore? By the way, but the more eyes that are watching TV,
the more they can sell that advertising space for the abdominizer or whatever kind of thing or
fast food place. You know, the more people that are watching, the more they can charge and that's
how they make their money. So good news, unfortunately folks, doesn't sell very much. Why do you think all
the human interest stories as they call them appear at the end of the show? It's like, oh yeah,
you know, we had this death and this war and this famine and oh yeah, by the way, here's something
really nice that someone in your community did. You know, they help their fellow man, isn't that
special? Well, thanks for tuning in folks. Be sure to watch for war and pestilence and famine
and everything else tomorrow. Tune back in, same bad time, same bad channel. So that's what the media
wants to do. Well, as computers were coming along, they didn't understand it. They were afraid of it
and let's face it, everyone listening to the show right now probably knows someone or knows
someone who knows someone that's afraid of technology. You know, the 12 o'clock flashers out there
every appliance in their house is flashing at 12 o'clock because they have no idea how to
quote unquote program their VCR. They don't know how to set the clock on it. So they're just afraid of
it. Hey, they think that microwave technology like heat up your coffee in the morning or cook your
jiffy pop popcorn. That's about the peak of technology. That's as much technology as they need to
stick a cup of water in there, turn the dial, push the button, and away you go. That's the technology
they need. That's what Joe six pack out there wants. And let's face it, there's a lot of Joe six packs
out there. You know, guys who in gals, whoever come home from work, grab a beer, sit down in front
of the boob tube and watch and see what's going on. Well, the media as they found out that, you know,
these computers things were coming on and there was these various stories and oh my goodness. Look
at this. Here's some dirty laundry. Here's some people who aren't necessarily playing by the rules.
Hey, they're not coloring inside the lines. They're going outside of those lines a little bit.
Well, there's got to be some name for them. There's there. There has to be some term for that. Oh,
look at that. Hackers. Yeah, that's what they are. Those hackers, those programmers. That's what
that guy is. That or that girl is that just broke into a computer or did something nasty. They
must be a hacker. And unfortunately, Joe six pack set back there and said, you know what? Now I've
gone. That is a hacker. Boy, them hackers are bad. But anyway, there's a lot more to it. But just
over simplification, that's kind of where it came from. That's kind of how it got messed up. So
hacking isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's not a bad thing in my book. I don't I call myself a
hacker. I like looking for creative solutions for things, finding out information, delving in,
and then sharing that knowledge with other people. So if a hacker is someone who's
enjoying the technology, finding out information, sharing that information,
it's not necessarily a negative thing. What should someone who has negative intentions for
using that technology be called? Well, some people have tried to use the term or tried the
popularize the term cracker, like a safe cracker. Someone who's breaking into things and
you know, it just hasn't seemed to stick quite as well. People, the media are still calling
people hackers who are not necessarily bad as the media tries to make it say. But there's
a book active defense. I know we talked about this before in the show, but since this is our
hacker special, I'll read this again. It's Chris Breton and Cameron Hunt wrote this book called
Active Defense. They've got a great passage in here that goes, people from trade magazine writers
to Hollywood movie makers often use the words attacker hacker and cracker interchangeably.
The phrase we got hacked has come to mean we were attacked. However, there are some strong
distinctions between these three terms and understanding the difference will help you to understand
who is trying to help reinforce your security posture and who is trying to infiltrate it.
An attacker is someone who looks to steal or disrupt your assets. An attacker may be
technically adept or a rank amateur. An attacker is best resembles a spy or a crook.
The original meaning of hacker was someone with a deep understanding of computers and or
networking. Hackers are not satisfied with simply executing a program. They need to understand
all the nuances of how it works. A hacker is someone who feels the need to go beyond the obvious.
The art of hacking can either be positive or negative depending on the personalities and
motivations involved. Hacking has become its own subculture with its own language and accepted
social practices. It's probably human nature that motivates people outside of this subculture to
identify hackers as attackers or even anarchists. In my opinion, however, hackers are more like
revolutionaries. History seems with individuals whose motivation was beyond the understanding of
the mainstream culture of their time. The Vinci, Galileo, Byron, Mozart, Tesla were all considered
quite odd and out of step with the accepted social norm. In the information age, this revolutionary
role is being filled by individuals we call hackers. Hackers tend not to take statements at face
value. For example, when a vendor claims, quote, our product is 100% secure, unquote,
a hacker may take this statement as a personal challenge. What a hacker chooses to do with the
information uncovered, however, is what determines what color hat a particular hacker wears.
To distinguish between hackers who are simply attempting to further their understanding of any
information system and those that use knowledge to illegally or unethically penetrate systems,
some of the computer industry reviews the term cracker to refer to the latter.
This was an attempt to preserve the traditional meaning of the term hacker, but this effort has
mostly been unsuccessful. Occasionally, publications still use the term. The law, however,
does not recognize the difference in intent only the similar behavior of the unauthorized system
penetration. So I think it's a pretty good description. Hackers are trying to find out information.
It's like any other kind of tool. Knowledge is power. Power can be used for good things,
and power can be used for bad things. You have power like electricity to light your homes,
or it can be used to carry out a best sentence, an execution, the electric chair.
The same electricity that would be running through your house is the electricity bad because
that's how it's used? No. What else? Airplanes, right? September 11th, still in the minds of most
of the people around the world. An airplane's a wonderful tool. Those people who chose to use it
as a weapon on September 11th, perverted the use of that tool. So just because you have a tool
does not mean that it's necessarily bad. The airplane itself wasn't inherently bad. Certainly,
all the other people who died, the passengers and the crew on the airplane weren't bad. They
didn't have evil intents. It's just those few people who went on there that had bad intents to do
things. So hacking with all those negative connotations really can be, and is, in my opinion,
a positive thing. You want to go beyond the obvious as it's said. You want to delve in, dig in,
find out information. There's the hacker's dictionary. It's a book that, if you look it up online
on your favorite search engine, you'll find that it is available online, and it defines all the
little terms and the little techniques. Not so much techniques, but terms that people use
to identify things. So hackish terms, just like any other subculture or any other group,
you know, words and terms are developed and used for different meanings. And the hacker's dictionary
does a pretty good job of keeping up with that stuff, so you can know what's going on with that.
The editor of that, Eric Raymond, is the guy who edits that, and he wrote a little article
in 2001, I guess, called How to Be a Hacker. And he just talks about it. And I think it's a
really good read. Gives lots of information. The hacker and slash nerd connection. Of course,
I prefer the term geek over nerd, but that's just a personal opinion. Talks about basic hacking
skills and, you know, what you should do and why it's important to know some programming language
and even get some suggestions of some of the things in that to do with it. But hacking in itself
is in our form. It can be used to, well, I make a living at computer technology. That's what I do.
And I use my skills as a hacker, my creative thinking to do more mundane things. Of course,
it doesn't take a lot of creative thinking to form at a hard drive or install an operating system.
But when you come up with the problem, being able to think outside of that box, think creatively.
Remember reading something about, oh yeah, I remember someone read something about this,
and someone wrote something about this. You know, let me look it up and see and get that information.
Again, that's why it's so important that that sharing of knowledge is sharing of information.
Keeping knowledge free is important. And that's one of the big
creeds, if you will, the creedos of the hacker culture is to share that knowledge. And that's
part of the thing that makes it so difficult for the open source community is they're working at
sharing that knowledge and sharing the source code. And companies, Microsoft, being one of them,
certainly not the only one, but being being a very influential one in that regard.
It's closed down their source code, proprietary source code. You can find out, I think it's called
the letter to hobbyist by Bill Gates talking about why it's important for companies to close their
source code. And it's kind of interesting. I was talking about this with someone else the other day,
but for those of you that can remember back in about what was it, 1987 or so, IBM came out with
their PS2 line of computers. Computers were around before IBM. Personal computers were around
before IBM, certainly, but the ones that were popularized, the IBM PC, the Intel,
standard, the IBM compatible, whatever you want to call it. IBM developed that specification
came out with it in about late 1981, early 1982. And it was very untypical IBM. I mean, they took
off-the-shelf components. The 8088 chip was made by Intel. I'm not sure what else it was being
used for at the time, but basically all the components that they had were off-the-shelf type of things.
Hell, even their operating system was from this little start, you know, little company up in
Seattle, Washington called Microsoft. They talked to digital research who had an operating system,
but that didn't go through. So they even took this off-the-shelf quote unquote off-the-shelf operating
system from this little, you know, nothing company called Microsoft up in Seattle, Washington,
though, of all places. I mean, you know, IBM was headquartered in Bocawood's own Florida,
and they had things in Armak, New York, and all the other thing. But they took all these off-the-shelf
components, put them together, and in another non-traditional IBM move made those general
specifications available. Now they didn't let people just copy everything. They didn't open-source
the BIOS or anything else, but the specifications were published, so other companies, other people
could make components that were compatible. They could plug them in. Now I know the Mac fans out
in the audience there might be taking exception to some of this stuff, but think about it for
second folks, you know, Macintosh is great computers. They always have been, but they were always
very close, very proprietary. And to Apple's credit, they've done a great job with it. They've kept
the quality control, if you will. They specify everything from start to finish on Apple programs
that are not only the hardware itself, but any component that was going in there. They had all
the specifications for the programs, and they've done a phenomenal job, especially of late OSX,
you know, being, well, we'll get into that a little bit later, but being, you know, Unix or
Mac-based for the kernel is building on all that work that had been done before. But IBM,
in a non-traditional IBM type of move, made this type of information available. Well, you had
companies like Compact, which was formed of former HP engineers and other double-ease electronic
engineers coming together, and they reversed engineered it. Another yet another traditional
hacking type of thing. You look at the outputs that something does. You look at the inputs,
and you figure out what went on in the middle. So here's an example. The output is a house.
The input is a bunch of lumber, and wires, and pipes, and whatever else. So you know what the
output is. You know what the input is. So you figure out what goes in between. You figure out
how to build that house. That's reverse engineering. And just for, you know, legal reasons,
they got to make sure that anyone who's working on that, you know, didn't actually build the house
or help build the house or anything. They have to keep that completely clean. So they're doing it,
you know, just from that available information. But Compact came along and reversed engineered
things and came up with an IBM compatible computer. And that was great. And other companies came
along. Well, what they weren't so great necessarily at first, but eventually they got to be great.
And we had all these compatible computers going around, and you know, millions of people were
buying them all over the world. Anyway, fast forward a little bit to 1987. IBM says, hey, wait a minute,
you know, we developed this. We started this. Here's Compact and HP and all these other companies
that are making money. We should be making that money. Well, let's take, let's take this standard
and let's change it a little bit. Let's change the things instead of having these ISA slots. They're
which are kind of slow. I mean, they were okay for their day. We're going to develop our own. Let's call
it a microchannel architecture. And let's not quite publish everything like we did before. Let's
make people license it from us. So if companies want to make cards, well, hey, they got to pay
us royalties for that. If they want to, you know, other companies want to build compatible systems
for that. Hey, we license this technology. Other people can come and buy it from us. And we'll make
money on it, whether we're selling it or someone else is selling it. And they did that. They came
up with the PS2 keyboard connector and mouse connector rather than being serial mouse or the five
pin then larger one for a keyboard. They came up with all these other things.
Bottom line folks, some of the things stuck. PS2 mice and keyboard connectors. Now that's
pretty much gone. Goll gone to USB. The VGA, videographics array, stuck with the PS2. But you know what
IBM found out? They found out that the standard was bigger than IBM. Here's the company that
quote unquote pioneered the personal computer. We all know that's not true. But the company that pioneered
the IBM personal computer was no longer in charge of the standard. Even though they had their name
on it and they had the nice three little letters with the stripes in it that said IBM, they did not
control. They couldn't control what people were doing. They people didn't want to buy that.
It was too different. It was non standard. The changes didn't make it worthwhile enough to
adopt it to move over. So after whatever kind of period of time microchannel architecture finally
died. The PS2 series of computers, they have a finally died to Boohoo. But that's what IBM found
out. Matter of fact there was something on the net today that IBM has gotten out of the hard drive
business. I think they've turned that over to Fujitsu or somebody. But IBM used to make hard
grants. Oh, here was a fun thing too folks. When they came out the PS2 line, IBM decided to change
the terms. Everyone was calling it a hard drive. Well, IBM decided to call it a hard file.
It wasn't a hard drive anymore. It was a hard file. And not only were they trying to change
the hardware, they were trying to change the terms that people were using. It's like it's a hard
file. And the motherboard was, I think it was a planar board. It wasn't even a system board. I think
it was a planar PLA and AR. It was a planar board. And people just said, you know what? Call it
what you want IBM. I'm still calling it a motherboard. I'm still calling it a hard drive.
Anyway, they say those who can't remember history are doomed to repeat it. Take a look at what's
going on now folks. Microsoft is pushing really hard. They're pushing on their licensing
technology. Licensing technology. Yeah, they even call it license 6.0. It sounds like a product
doesn't it? Well, I got to upgrade my license 6.0. And that's exactly what they want you to do.
They want you to think like that. Well, you know, I've got to get a new license. I've got
whatever. Anyway, I don't get into this stuff. I don't understand it. I don't know a lot of
people who we actually can't understand it. But I'm sure there are people out there not only
Microsoft employees. There's probably non-Microsoft employees whose business it is to understand
all that stuff. But so they're pushing really hard. They're making you making it difficult to
say the least for people to use their software even to use it properly and ethically. What do
me about properly and ethically? Well, one copy of the software for every computer that you're
running it on. That's what you're supposed to be doing when it's licensed software, when
it's proprietary software. Now when it's open source software or free software as Richard
Solomon likes to call it. But when you do that and you try to do something other than that,
Microsoft is losing money. Well, yeah, it's true. They're losing money on that. And there are
various people who have different arguments. I'm not here to debate that today. But people say,
well, if it didn't cost so much money, if it was more affordable, I would buy it more. Well,
if you look back on it, folks, software is a whole hell of a lot cheaper now than it was before.
You know, think about it. You used to buy a word processor or buy an accounting module,
like an accounts payable module or something. And I mean, it was like $900 for the one thing. Well,
quick books. Now, you know, for a couple hundred bucks is a thousand times better than what that
one module was, you know, ten years ago. Or look at the prices of computers. 1989. I bought
a hundred and fifty meg SD hard drive ESDI extended. Oh, I can't even remember what it stands for.
A more hundred and fifty meg SD hard drive. First of all, that was huge. You know, I was going from
like a forty meg. Now, that's not gig. That's meg megabytes with an Elm. I bought that from a
friend of mine who had a computer store. He gave me his price on it. How much do you think I paid?
Nope. Nope. I paid more than that. I paid more than that. $1,300. $1,300 for a hard drive.
150 megabytes. I was living large. I got files that are bigger than 150 megabytes now.
$1,300. Well, fast forward that, right? The last one I bought was an 80 gigabyte hard drive for
$89. Dollar a gigabyte. I can't even remember how it was like, you know, whatever, $100
megabyte back then. I mean, it's crazy. So if you look back with that kind of perspective,
the amount of horsepower, everything else we have going now is far better. And that's because
of more's laws, they call it, you know, if you haven't heard about more's laws, type it into a search
engine, check it out sometime. But so computers and technology have been marching along, and that's great.
And some people say, well, you know, if it wasn't for Microsoft Windows, you know, the fact that you
have to have bigger hard drives and faster processors and everything, you know, we can still be all
getting along with 486s. And hey, you can't. Linux runs great on the 486. Well, it runs reasonably
well. Let's even face it with all the graphical things and everything else going on that people
are doing now with days. You know, it's it's turning on to be in reality. If you want to do anything
more than just run like a single app on it, like, you know, I have a dedicated firewall box per
your Linux or your BSD or whatever you're doing. You're those unish kind of things, those unix
ish or unishes, I like to call them operating systems. You need something more than a 486
processor these days. But I mean, you can still get some work done. It's still possible to do that.
But I think Microsoft is starting to find or starting to fall victim to the same type of thing
that snuck up and bit IBM on the ass in 1987 that the standard is bigger than they are.
So Windows XP. Yeah, it's great. I run it. I've got it. Yes, I have a license copy of it just in case
you're curious, but it came with my laptop. But it is it's great. It's even better than Windows 2000.
Windows 2000 is a pretty good operating system. I mean, XP is even better. It, you know, and I can
imagine people are groaning and moaning and rolling their eyes and everything else. But hey,
it's out there. It's being used. It's being used a thousand times more than any Linux or BSD or
alternate BOS or Macs or even Macintosh operating systems being used out there. So face reality folks,
it's out there. It's being used. It's going to be used. So, but what's going to happen when
Microsoft finds out that, as they've been seeing, it's like, you know what? Hey, I don't need to
upgrade to Windows XP. My Windows 2000 is working fine. Or my, my, well, I don't know how many people
would really say this. My Windows 98 is working fine. The, uh, the whole Windtendo, you know, Windows 95, 98,
ME, all that stuff, Windtendo, like Nintendo. You know, it was kind of a toy operating system.
I mean, it helped bring us along to where we're at now. That's great and good and everything else.
Microsoft is finding that it's own, it's only competition in the, in the, in the commercial world
anyway, is itself. So when a person has Windows 98 on their two-year-old computer, why are they
going to go out and spend $99 to upgrade to Windows XP when all they have is a Pentium 2 with,
you know, 64 meg of RAM? Well, then they're going to have to start buying memory. They're going to
start buying hardware and everything else. Hey, you know, it's, it's your aunt Sally and, and,
and Podunk Idaho that, uh, just checks email, you know, keeping in touch with her grandkids or
something. I don't know. And, you know, that's all she needs. So why should you go out and buy
that? Well, that's what Microsoft is finding out. There's so many people out there with that
that are working on those things. It's like the only competition they have is themselves.
Same thing with, with the office suite, Word Excel, PowerPoint, all that stuff. They're competing
against themselves. They have Office XP. Well, maybe people are buying it when they're getting
their new systems, but how many people, whether you're in a corporate America or corporate, uh,
Euro, you know, corporate Europe or whatever, how many people are going out and buying and upgrading
that? Office 2000 works just fine. Hey, Office 97 works fine for enough of the people that are out
there that they say, you know what, I can really afford to skip this. I don't need this version.
I don't need the next version. Matter of fact, I'm not needing any version because I'm going to go
with OpenOffice.org, but that's, that's getting off into the other side of things. So as we're looking
at that, as we're dealing with this kind of thing, we have to realize folks or Microsoft really
has to realize that the standard is getting larger than they are. Just because Microsoft comes out
with a new operating system doesn't mean people are going to jump into it. Just become,
because they come out with a new network operating system, Windows.net doesn't mean people are going
to jump to it. Now, there's probably servers out there still with Windows 35, and Windows NT 351.
There are certainly lots of Novel 3.1 servers with 3.1 or 3.12. There's lots of servers still running
out there. Let alone the fact that people are still running Novel, but hey, it's doing the job,
it's getting it done. You know, do you run out every year when there's a new car? Well, it's,
it's car 2000. It's, you know, it's car, you know, 4.5. Kind of silly the way Microsoft was changing
that first. It was like, you know, numbers. Everyone kind of dealt with numbers and they wanted to
change it was Windows 95. So you could sell where it was. Well, gee, I'm using Windows 95. That's
seven years old now. Maybe a better upgrade. Well, so they had 95, 98, ME, Millennium, Secondation,
all that other stuff. Came with Windows 2000, and then they decided, you know what? Maybe it's not
such a good idea to go with numbering, you know, by years. Let's call it XP. What's the next one
going to be called? I mean, other than the code names like Longhorn and everything else, your
guess is as good as mine. But if you, just by the way, if you, if you have access to a Windows 2000
or Windows XP machine, drop to a DOS prompt, click on start, click on run, type in CMD Charles
Mary David, command, CMD for command, and type ver, and see what you come up with. You'll see
the version number that you come up with. So internally, they're still kind of referring to it
with those numbers. But Microsoft is finding or is going to find out pretty darn soon that the
standard is bigger than they are. If you didn't catch it on a slashed out a couple weeks back,
go take a look at it. Maybe a little bit longer than that now. But in South America, I think it
was in Peru, one of their elected officials, and typically, or an atypical show of intelligence
in elected office actually said, you know what? We need to look at saving money. We're spending
all this money. We're sending it off to those damn Americans. You know, Microsoft is taking all these,
you know, thousands and millions of dollars out of our countries. We're buying the software.
Maybe there's an alternative. Oh, looky there. There's open source software. There's free software.
And as Stamen says, it's not only free as in free beer, meaning it doesn't cost you anything.
It's free as in freedom, as in you can do with it what you want. You don't like the way this looks.
You don't like the way this works. You want something else. You've got the source code. You can
change it. Oh, you're not a programmer. Hey, find someone who is. You've got the ability to do
that. You've got all the tools in your hands. You can change things as you need to. So anyway,
this South American politician, I think he had a PhD in economics or something as well,
which probably didn't hurt, came with the proposal for the government that as they're looking at
software, they have to just to be responsible with their taxpayers' money. They have to look at
other alternatives other than proprietary software. Well, Microsoft in that country wrote a nice
letter back kind of rebutting all the points and saying why commercial software, as opposed to
proprietary software, why commercial software was a good thing. And you know what, it is a good
thing. It's not necessarily bad. Lots of people are using it. Lots of people are happy. It's just
when you see things happen where they're trying to force those proprietary solutions, those
commercial solutions down your throat or worse, they're taking advantage of the fact that they've
got these hundreds of millions and billions of dollars. In case you haven't heard, Microsoft has
$40 billion in cash reserves. So think of which of your favorite companies. Think of which of your
favorite countries they could buy with that money. But that fact aside, being responsible politicians,
which is almost an oxymoron by itself, they're saying we have to look at alternatives.
Microsoft wrote this rebuttal back and there's some interesting things you can find that online.
Again, one of my favorite places for keeping up on that new stuff is slash.org. But as you go there
and take a look through things, you will see that things are happening. Things are starting to
shake up and if Microsoft doesn't see the writing on the wall, they really should. There was something
posted online today that Ralph Nader wrote to Congress or something and saying that the government
should use its purchase, the US government that is should use its purchasing power to say,
if we're going to be using your programs, you have to, we're going to require you to make those
file formats available. That's not such an outlandish kind of request. The federal government
spending millions and billions of taxpayers dollars on things, that's not an outlandish request.
Oh, by the way, that would just happen to benefit the rest of the computer using world by
making those file formats available. Other things you may have seen, like the Pentagon,
they're looking at their spending, how they're spending their money on that and should things be
proprietary software, commercial software, or can you actually go with open source software,
free software? And in all the difference to Richard Stullman, I know there are some differences
out there with it. I'm not completely versed on that, so I'll try to, if I use the term open
source, I'll try to make sure I put it in the term free software in there as well, because there
are some subtle distinctions between that. But I've been playing with OpenOffice.org,
which also happens to be the website, but that's for legal reasons, it has to be the name of the
product. And I'm telling you what folks, it's looking pretty darn good. I mean, I played with some
of the betas. I had a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation that I did, I decided to open
it up in OpenOffice.org. Well, the Windows Metafiles didn't come out quite right, this didn't
quite work, that didn't quite work, but it was a beta. It was working pretty well. Got the 1.0 release
code. I'll be darn it, all those little problems I was having went away. Everything is displaying
just fine now. So, companies, individuals, governmental agencies, not only federal government,
but state government, municipal government, or you know, insert the proper governmental agency for
your country or municipality in here. They are looking at some of these alternatives and saying,
hey, you know what? Maybe there is another way other than what Microsoft is doing.
And that's probably part of the reason that Microsoft is pushing back so hard on a lot of these
things is because let's face it folks, Microsoft is not dumb, okay? There are a lot of smart people
there. You know, I'm not going to comment on the, you know, greed or anything else in that,
say what you want about that, that's fine, that's your opinion. Whether you like their products or
not, hey, they're out there, it's a fact of life, you know, it's like talking about the weather,
something going to happen with it, who knows. The U.S. federal government is taking steps against
them, the federal trade commission, read articles and see things in Europe that people are getting
fed up with things, the European Union and some of the individual countries are looking at
doing different types of things. And there was even, again, today online something about Taiwan,
the government of Taiwan is looking at using free software to save all that money. If you think
about it, you know, technology is, you know, the cost of all that technology. I mean, in Taiwan is
great for hardware, you know, I don't know what kind of percentage of hardware that we have here in
the U.S. comes from, you know, Taiwan and Korea and Japan and China, but certainly a large percentage
of it does. The Apple iMac computer is made by quantum corporation in Taiwan. Some of the delaptop
computers are made in Taiwan. So, you know, it's an international marketplace here, folks. So,
you know, those companies, the countries are making money on that, that's great. Nothing wrong with
that. But as they're starting to look at things, they're saying, well, we're making money on this,
but look at all the money we're shipping back out to the United States, back off to Microsoft.
Maybe there's an alternative. You know, now maybe things are mature enough that there's an alternative.
And, you know, what I really resent is when you see a large company taking advantage of the
fact that they have the power, they have the money. I mean, money is power, knowledge is power,
that's true. Money is power as well. So, they're taking advantage of the fact that they have all this
money that they have this power to squelch the competition. The cool thing about free software,
about open source, since there is no one person out there doing things. I mean, with Linux, you know,
Linux Torval, certainly the key figure in that hole realm. You know, in BSD, there's a whole series
of people who are committers. And there's, you know, there's other things for that in various
projects that are distributed. So, rather than having one centralized place or one centralized
company, they can go against, they have to change their tactics because they can no longer just
threaten to sue one person or one company. They have to change their tactics and start competing
on, start competing on their merits and face it. Microsoft has the lion's share. They have the
lead. We have a long way to go to catch up with open source software, with free software, with Linux,
with BSD, and even to some extent with Macintosh. Macintosh is great products again these days,
but look at the percentages. And people in countries, as they said, are starting to look at that type
of thing. What kind of alternatives do we have? If we can't get it from Microsoft, who could we get
it from? If Microsoft was blown off the face of the earth, which I know some people would certainly
like to see, what could we do as an alternative? And guess what folks? These days, alternatives
are starting to show up. Okay, let's change directions here a little bit and let's talk about
some of the tools of hacking or some of the resources for hacking. I mean, that could be a whole
separate show just on, you know, various utilities and things out there. Let's talk about some of the
resources for hacking, for finding information. One of my favorite, austulavista.com,
A-S-T-A-L-A-V-I-S-T-A.com. Great information there. And there's a matter of fact, if you go there
and do a little search, you'll find a tutorial basically by someone calling himself rabies,
B-I-E-Z, on how to basically develop a serial number generator, a key number generator.
And the interesting thing about this, other than the obvious fact of, you know, what you can get
as a result of it, it goes through, and it uses Adobe, for example, but it goes through and it talks
about looking at that information, the various segments of the information that make up serial
numbers. And then it gets down to the numbers that are really involved, and they're basically
seem to be random. The last segment is a checksum, an mathematical algorithm applied to the
previous numbers that results in a specific number. And he walks you through a little tutorial
figuring those types of things out. So I'm reading that and saying, well, that's very cool.
You know, I've never written a key generator, never had a need to do anything like that,
but it was just interesting and intriguing when you look at something like that. And he walks,
again, he walks you through. So it's a tutorial. There are tutorials for tons and tons and tons
of information, different types of things. I mean tutorials from everything of, you know, setting
up your Windows box to let it do internet connection sharing to writing key generators to just
about anything else you can think of. So, ostilevista.com or ostilevista.net is a great resource for
that. Another one that happens to have ostilevista as well in its name is ostilevista.box.biox.sqs for
sweeping. And at that site, there is tons and tons of information as well in various categories.
As a matter of fact, if you just go to ostilevista.box.sqs, they have the whole box network
that you can go to. New order, which basically deals with, it says the resource for helping people
avoid being hacked security and exploitation files and related links. So that's neworder.box.sqs.
There's an area there for Linux. There's a code area. There's a mobile area, DVDs, MP3s. I mean,
there's just tons and tons and tons of information at the boxnetworkbox.sqs.sqs. So,
and oh yes, just by the way, in case anyone's sitting here in the, you know, the great planet of North
America thinks that all this stuff is just developed and just done here. Sorry folks,
it's definitely international. It's live. It's large. It's out there for the whole world.
And that's the other kind of neat thing about the net is that in addition to being a very
democratizing type of force, it's, it doesn't matter, you know, if you're coming with a cool idea and
you're in, you know, Silicon Valley, California or you're up in some fjord and, uh, you know,
in the Scandinavian country or no matter where you're at, South America. I mean, name any,
any place on the earth, if you can get a net connection, you have as much power and the ability to
publish information as anyone does anywhere else. And, uh, for our international listeners,
here's, you know, a great little joke is what do you call people who speak three languages? Well,
they're trilingual. People who speak two languages, they're bilingual. People that speak one language.
Well, you call them Americans. It's, uh, anyway, oh, it seems kind of funny to me. And, uh, you
talked to anyone who's, uh, from a different country, they, they tend to chuckle what that as well
because we don't necessarily hear in the U.S. We don't necessarily take the time to learn all those
other things that we could out there. But the whole box network definitely is a great resource.
Ostelevista.box.sk has tons and tons of information for you. What else? 2600.com.
2600. It gets back to the, the, the phone freaking type of things that, of course, was the frequency,
uh, for making, uh, blue boxes, for making dial tones to play with the phone system. But 2600.com,
in the magazine is called, you know, they're, they're, uh, magazine now. It's called the Hacker Quarterly
comes out four times every year. But, um, there's tons of information that's shared there as well.
And, as a matter of fact, as I'm taking a look at it here, uh, 37 days remain today. So, when
you hear the show, 36 days remain until H2K2 conference in New York for those folks going there,
um, H2K2, uh, the, um, stand, you know, the original one was Hope Hackers on Planet Earth. And,
um, anyway, long story made short. That's a new one coming up July 12th to 14th in New York.
Uh, if you're going there, maybe we can hook up, check out, hang out, we'll be there, uh,
dual and I are both planning on going up there and being there for the fun and festivities. So,
2600 has a lot of great information. Um, when you go there, click on the meetings section as well.
That talks about meetings in hopefully your local area. Now, you may find that it's not necessarily
100% completely correct or completely updated. Uh, I started going to 2600 meetings back in about
August or September, I think it was. And went to the 2600 mag, uh, you know, picked up a magazine,
saw where the meeting was, went there and actually ended up running into a few folks, you know,
there at the, at the designated meeting place. Kind of easy to see when they had, uh, you know,
t-shirts with, uh, you know, various computer type of sayings on there. You know, you just walk
into someone and do the, do the old greeting. You say 2600 and they say, yeah, or they say,
what are you talking about? And you just walk away. But, um, you go there, uh, what we found out and
we've, we've moved it out into, uh, it was in a mall and it was in one of the, uh, one of the
stores in the mall and the restaurant. Well, we found it wasn't very conducive. So, we moved it
out into the food court where most places seem to be for the 2600 meetings. And we're having a
heck of a time trying to get them to update that for the 2600 in our area. Maybe when we're off in
New York and seeing people face to face, maybe we'll be able to get some action for that. So,
bottom line is if you don't, uh, find it there, you know, don't be discouraged, uh, you know,
look around in the area. If there's a food court, generally things two people seem to
hang out. The kind of the fall thing is to, uh, meet by the telephones and then, you know,
pick a place to sit down after that. So keep that in mind as you're, uh, as you're doing your 2600
things. And if you're, uh, you know, if there's not one in your area, think about starting one.
Check out. They've got the meeting guidelines online that you can see and, uh, you know, it's,
it's open everybody. That's one of the things that has to be publicly accessible, publicly
open thing because there's nothing to hide. Uh, this is my first H2K2 that I'm going to. I went to
Defcon last year and I mean, you know, it's, it's great. I mean, there's everyone from, you know,
the, uh, the, uh, you know, pale face, pale skinned, uh, black t-shirt wearing, uh, you know,
uber geeks to, uh, guys in their khakis and polo shirts that work for various federal agencies.
And they're all there and they're, you know, all for the same kind of thing, learning information,
finding information, sharing information. I'm not sure how much information the feds can share,
but so they're at least they're learning. So it's, it's kind of an interesting atmosphere to, uh,
to go to and see that. So we're looking forward to that. And if you're going to Defcon,
be sure to, uh, try to find us. We ought to have some old-school freak shirts, uh, that will be
wearing and we'll, uh, make them available. It's other folks if they're interested in doing that as
well. So, uh, anyway, packing is not just about breaking into computers. Hopefully we've gotten
that message across. It's about finding clever solutions to things. For example, the, uh, we've
talked about it a little bit on the show before. The new Celine Dion CD is supposedly impervious
to copying. It crashes computers if you, uh, actually even just try to play the CD in there. Now,
I'm not a big Celine Dion fan, so I don't know that it'd be really be worried about that, but the,
uh, implications of that are great. I mean, if that would take off there, who knows who,
what other kinds of things are going to try to put it on. So, um, you can go and find out without
too much difficulty how to defeat copy protection with a, uh, with a magic marker with a felt tip pen.
Um, again, not too hard to find out. And technically, you know, with the, uh, the digital millennium
copyright act, now felt tip pen should be illegal because that allows people to defeat the, uh,
the copy protection. So, that's a, that's a very bad thing, but you know what? I say it's a clever
hack. It's a really cool way that someone figured out how to do something. Uh, another thing you
may have seen that's a clever hack is these biometrics, you know, measuring some, something on the
human body for identification. People have been doing, uh, you know, uh, face recognition. We all
know about the implications of that, but they've been doing, um, fingerprints. And you can even buy
some laptops now. I think a micron has some laptops now with fingerprint readers built in.
And well, it turns out that a, a clever hacker in, uh, Japan, I'm going to try to pronounce his name
here, but, uh, long story made short, he figured out by using regular household kind of things you
can find in a little, uh, circuit board etcher for making, uh, you know, computer circuit boards and
stuff. And anyway, bottom line is basically using gummy bears. You can fake out these fingerprint
readers. Uh, if you want to read more about it, go to count your pain at C-O-U-N-T-E-R-P-A-N-E.com
and type in the word gummy bear, G-U-M-M-I gummy B-E-A-R. And it gives all the details about it.
And the cool thing about that is, I mean, it's a very clever hack, but as one of the other articles
I was reading about it was saying basically all the companies that are doing biometrics for, uh,
recognition basically should pack it in. I mean, that kind of defeats their whole thing. It's like,
G, you know, we figured out a way to open up the envelope to see what's inside, uh, you know,
it's just not that secure. And the thing is, if people didn't publish this kind of information,
only the, the real bad guys would have that type of stuff. You know, it won't have to be like the
movies you see where, you know, they cut off someone's thumb to, uh, get past the fingerprint readers.
They'll, uh, just be able to grab a fingerprint off something like a glass. Again, this article
and counter pain talks about it. Get that fingerprint cast it into, you know, make it basically
like into a little mold and, uh, you know, make your own duplicate of that fingerprint using gummy bears.
You kind of melt down the gummy bears and it takes the shape of that. So a very clever hack.
Another clever hack is, and I was trying to get one, uh, to play for you here as we were closing
out the show, but, uh, Dictionary Okie, if you haven't heard about it, it's, uh, Dictionary,
pronunciation of various words, uh, Merriman Webster Dictionary at m-w.com and other Dictionaries
online. You can go in type a word. It gives you the definition. You can click on a little icon
and it gives you the, uh, pronunciation of the word. Very cool. I mean, I'm interested in language,
right? Uh, click on things, uh, type in words that I'm not really sure of. Uh, where's
that? Maybe not necessarily sure of how to pronounce. And you get the pronunciation. Well,
that's great and they're fine and everything, but some of the clever hacks somewhere figured out
that something really cool to do would be to get a midi of your favorite song. And instead of
the lyrics, instead of singing the lyrics like you would with traditional karaoke, uh,
now it takes a bit of time, I'm sure, but you go and take all of the words, the lyrics. You save
those sounds from these online dictionaries and you have the dictionary people sing the song.
Well, it's hilarious. And like I say, I'll try to see if I can find one to dig up here, but I think
my favorite one was, uh, uh, from nine-inch nails, uh, closer. And they hear the dictionary people
sing the lyrics or pronounce the lyrics of that particular song is, uh, kind of, kind of interesting,
kind of funny. But that's what it's all about. Figuring out clever things to do. You know,
defacing a website, that's just vandalism. I'm sorry, call it cybervandalism if you want.
Uh, what some people do, they'll go and they'll find out things. They will leave a message. They'll
try to contact the system. Uh, the, uh, boy, that's showed you how old school I am. They'll try to
contact the webmaster, uh, the system operator of, of the, uh, of those computer systems and let them
know that they're vulnerable. And unfortunately, this litigious society that we live in,
generally when people do that, they have to do it anonymously to, you know, try to prevent any
kind of negative repercussions or doing that thing. Um, but there's also things called like, you
know, white hat hackers. There's companies that are doing things. Um, used to be loft heavy
industries. Can't think of the name now of what they, what they do. Uh, they're, their new website
thing, but they, a loft was making, you know, password crackers and other kinds of things.
And, I mean, they found out that companies were coming to them and say, hey, you guys know about
security. You can figure out things. I'll pay you X-ember of dollars, see if you can penetrate my
securities. You know, tell me what's wrong with, with the security on my network. And so when
you're doing it with the, the blessing with the sanction of the, uh, people that own the equipment
and own the services, that's called white hat hacking. And it's certainly a way to make a living.
Uh, is it less fun because it's lethal? I don't know. That's up to you. Um, you know, certainly,
I'm not interested in, uh, you know, spending time in any kind of prison and, uh, making friends
there. Uh, and I'm taking some of these things and I'm applying the, the techniques and tools
and that that I know of and learn. I'm making those things available for my clients. I want to
help them have a better environment. And I think most hackers out there that are doing things,
uh, you know, except, except for the crackers, except for the attackers out there, they want to
ultimately see things be better. So if people find out solutions to things, you know, like this
fingerprint, um, hack that's the Japanese guy came up with. If he just kept that information to
himself or just, you know, traded it with some other, uh, you know, pulled on quote friends, uh,
if it got into the underground, only those people would know about it. And, uh, it would be
exploitable, certainly. So by making it generally available to the public, you are actually doing a
service to them. Um, companies, Microsoft included have tried to come up with ways of not allowing
people to make that information generally available right away to let the company have, uh,
have that information so they can fix it. But you know, if you hold people up to, uh, the light of
days sometimes, it tends to motivate things a little bit more. You know, if people know about it,
if the whole world knows about the fact that you can bypass fingerprints, um, biometrics,
by going through a couple of steps, do you think the companies out there that were thinking about
buying biometrics, do you think they're probably going to go through that or biometric fingerprinting
I should say? Do you think they're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on these
solutions thinking that they're secure? Hell no. They need to know that just as well as everybody
else needs to know that knowledge needs to be free, keeping information free, keeping knowledge
free about that. Is there proprietary stuff that needs to be kept control of, kept under wraps?
In the corporate environment, I'm sure most people would say yes, certainly for security,
national security. Uh, there are certain things that definitely need to be kept under wraps for
that. Unfortunately, especially in the wake of September 11, um, that whole thing has been
certainly blown out of proportion. The Patriot Act, uh, is something going on here in the US. It's
basically making it a felony to do all kinds of things, including, uh, you know, illegal entry
into computer systems. And we've talked about this a little bit before. Patriot, by the way,
is an acronym. I don't have it at my fingertips what it stands for, but it's not, you know,
you people think, oh, I don't want to be unpatriotic. Well, guess what folks? It's a little bit of,
oh, smoking mirrors or it's a little bit of media kind of misconception, what that it is actually
an acronym standing for something, but you know, it appeals to that patriotic nature and everybody
that, uh, they don't want to be unpatriotic and do these things against their country. Certainly,
you know, I'm not encouraging you to do things against the country. I'm not encouraging you
to do things against companies. I'm encouraging you to think creatively, find solutions and share
that information with other people. If we can take and share all this information back and forth
with people, we can improve the quality of the technology, the quality of information. Hell,
it'll even eventually once it's spread enough can help to improve the quality of life.
You know, there's a whole big thing about the digital divide, the haves and have-nots. There
are certainly, you know, other countries rather than, you know, US, Canada and Western Europe where
technology is not that readily available. There are a whole lot of people out there that can benefit
by it. Of course, you know, they need basic things like food and shelter and clothing before they,
you know, start worrying about computers, but if we all can try to work together, if we can help
keep corporate America's greedy hand out of everything, we can help keep the government honest
by sharing this information. We can end up benefiting everybody else and I don't know about you,
but that's what I'm in it for. You know, it's fun. It's, you know, it's all that other stuff, but,
you know, I think it's basically ending up coming down to helping people. And anyway,
that'll wrap up the show for today. Next week, we'll see if we can get us slipping away or
condor back on the line. They were supposed to be calling in this week. I guess it just didn't end
up happening. Dole is still going to be off on assignment, working away on some stuff, so
we'll be talking to you later. See you online. Check us out at www.oldschoolfreakoldskol.phru.cak.com
for a dual parallel who always says, be the media. I'm Rax. Keep knowledge free.
I'm now standing on the plains of Abraham, watching the dung, the sun rise.
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